Bruce Reichert: It's an old story.

Another remarkable species, once numbering in the millions, now on the path to extinction.

Some biologists say it could happen in 30 or 40 years.

But now a high-ranking conservative member of Congress, who started out to save the Bonneville Power Administration, has placed himself squarely in the middle of the Salmon debate.

His proposal?

Remove the most recently constructed four dams on the Snake River.

Take them out or breach them .

and leave economically unharmed all those affected by this drastic action, to the tune of 33.5 billion dollars.

Congressman Mike Simpson: Twenty five years ago, when I was in the state legislature, it was the first time that anybody had ever come to me and said, you know, we ought to breach these lower Snake River dams.

I started to laugh when they said that, because I thought that was the craziest idea I've ever heard.

I said, you've got to do everything else you can to save salmon before you go to that extreme.

Well, guess what?

We've tried everything else and nothing's worked.

nothing's worked.

Bruce Reichert: Simpson's conversion has a lot of people talking, in part because he's been preaching his message not just in Idaho but throughout the northwest.

Congressman Simpson: You're not going to restore them with the dams in place.

That's what every fish biologist that I know of has said.

To me the science is clear.

You've got to remove the dams.

Reichert: The four dams are in Washington state, not Idaho.

And one person who's been covering this debate for decades is a long-time environmental reporter with the Seattle times.

Lynda Mapes, Reporter, Seattle Times Newspaper: All of a sudden onto the scene comes somebody named Mike Simpson.

I never heard of Mike Simpson.

I had to keep looking up his name.

Is it Tom?

Is it Pete?

Is it, what is it?

Some one-syllable name guy.

Who is he?

And, Mike Simpson, Republican out of Idaho, whoever would have thunk it.

The thing that strikes me as a reporter covering this all this time is how little of it has really changed.

I mean, that's not to say that nobody's doing anything.

I mean, what is it, 17 billion dollars have been spent on hatchery operations and habitat fixes and a lot of changes in the dams.

But the fact is, these fish are still headed to extinction.

And now so are the orcas.

Ed Chaney, Salmon Advocate: The salmon have run out of time.

The extinction train is still rolling down the tracks.

And if we don't do something, it's over.

Reichert: And that makes the stakes pretty high, not only for the salmon, but also for farmers and irrigators, as well as power consumers, outdoor recreationists and even other wildlife.

Ed Chaney: Those dams don't even pay for their own maintenance.

Idaho is losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

They're zombie moneylosing dams.

Link Jackson, Salmon Advocate: We get 15 cents for every dollar we put into those dams and these fish are not worth destroying over that.

They're way, way, way too magnificent and valuable.

The thing is, we're human.

We make mistakes.

Take the dams out.

It was the wrong idea.

They don't generate much good for humanity and they're killing the most magnificent run of salmon on the planet.

We need to get rid of them.

Pronto.

David Reeploeg: Tri-City Development Council: We don't know that removing the dams would have the desired effect.

Removing the dams would be like throwing a Hail Mary pass in a football game when you don't even really know the score.

Steve Hartgen, Retired Idaho Legislator: The conditions are so complex.

Changing currents, weather patterns, climate change.

Salmon were here before we got here, but that doesn't mean they have to stay here.

So were mastodons.

And so were large herds of bison.

And so were Dodo birds.

Reichert: But, to the northwest tribes, losing salmon would be devastating to their way of life.

Hemene James, Coeur d'Alene Tribal Council Member: Without the salmon, it's a pretty lonely world.

Not just for us, the human beings in our country, but the waters, they're not whole.

The riparian zones, they're not whole.

The birds that fly, that used to feed on the fish, they're not whole, and they never will be, until those salmon are returned.

Congressman Mike Simpson: You all inspire me, to do what I'm doing.

I'm trying to restore a fish from going extinct.

I don't think we should ever let a species go extinct if we can prevent it.

Especially when it's going extinct because of actions we've taken.

We will never, never, never give up.

Thank you all.

Reichert: Outdoor Idaho takes a deep dive into the latest proposal to save Idaho's imperiled salmon.

Can it work?

Should it work?

And what does it mean for Idaho and the northwest?

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho; by the friends of Idaho Public Television; by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Bruce Reichert: For thousands of years it has been one of the world's great migrations, akin to the wildebeest in Africa and the caribou in Alaska.

Hi, I'm Bruce Reichert and welcome to Outdoor Idaho.

You know, there are those who say it's probably already too late to save Idaho's salmon.

They point to lousy ocean conditions, dangerously hot rivers, predators, over harvest, dams.

And then there are those who say, hold on.

There are things we can do.

But it will cost a lot of money, and it won't be without pain.

Reichert: You'd think getting salmon back into Idaho would not be so complicated.

After all, the fish are genetically programmed to return.

But if ever there was an issue with a hornet's nest of conflicting viewpoints and concerns, this is it.

Congressman Mike Simpson and his staff began laying out the complexities on the walls of his Washington DC office.

And in 2019 the Congressman shared his plan with the rest of the world, at a salmon conference in Boise.

His original goal, he said, was to save the struggling Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency charged with providing cheap hydropower to the northwest.

The BPA, in debt with no end in sight, was struggling as badly as the fish.

Congressman Mike Simpson: The BPA has always been the piggy bank.

If you're going to make them sustainable into the future, you've got to reduce some of these ancillary costs that go on top of this.

One of them would be capping and reducing fish costs, about $750 million a year that rate payers pay in trying to recover salmon.

We spent $17-billion trying to recover salmon.

And the one thing we have not done is recover salmon.

Reichert: So Simpson has concluded you can't save the Bonneville Power Administration without saving the salmon.

And the way to save the salmon, he says, is to take down or breach the four lower Snake River dams, the last four built on the Snake River, all located in the state of Washington.

He points to a major difference between Columbia River salmon numbers -- which are relatively stable -- and the numbers of those salmon heading east to Idaho.

Congressman Simpson: If you look at salmon coming back into the Columbia River basin, they've all gone through the same ocean conditions.

They all pass the same predators.

They all go over the four dams on the lower Columbia River.

But the SAR rate, or the smolt to adult ratio rate, which is how you measure the health of the salmon runs, are good for all those species that cross these four dams.

Then Idaho's salmon that are coming into the Stanley Basin, have to go over four more dams.

And when you look at their SAR rate, it is at extinction levels.

And the only difference between them and those that go into the John Day and Yakama drainage is that they go over four more dams.

Reichert: Simpson's constituency is largely agricultural and yet salmon don't make it to eastern Idaho, a large part of his district.

Shoshone Falls stops them.

So why should farmers care?

Congressman Simpson: I have spent a career defending agriculture and, I've wondered for a number of years, why we're sending 487,000 acre feet of Idaho water down the river to flush salmon past these dams.

The one thing it's not doing is recovering salmon, and that's the reason we flush that water down the river.

In southern Idaho, we have an aquifer that's being depleted.

Couldn't we use this water for agriculture or to recharge our aquifer, rather than sending it down the river for no apparent reason?

Reichert: Lynda Mapes has covered salmon issues for 30 years and has also been a guest speaker at an Andrus Center conference on salmon.

We caught up with her in Seattle to get her read on the Simpson proposal.

Lynda Mapes, Reporter, Seattle Times Newspaper: It seems to be picking up steam in a rather unexpected way.

It's really been embraced by the tribes from interior Columbia Basin all the way to Puget Sound, western Montana and northern California, southeast Alaska.

All these tribes are coming together and embracing as salmon people.

Douglas James, Lummi Nation Tribal Member : It's up to us to speak up for them.

It's our sacred obligation, to fulfill whatever we can do, to make something right.

Reichert: Treaties signed by the Federal Government more than 100 years ago give the tribes significant leverage in any decision concerning salmon.

Ed Chaney, Salmon Advocate: The courts and the politicians have failed them.

We have laws that say we have to protect their treaty rights.

Reichert: Salmon activist Ed Chaney won some of those first lawsuits advocating for salmon.

Ed Chaney, Salmon Advocate: It's a federal law.

You can't do this to these salmon and to these people who depend on them.

It's against the law.

Reichert: In fact, for the past 20 years Federal judges have consistently ruled that not enough is being done to save Idaho's dwindling salmon runs.

To have one branch of government demanding change has not gone unnoticed by those who depend upon the dams.

Lynda Mapes: What we have here is no change.

And so if change is going to happen, it's not going to come from these agencies; it's going to have to come from the court room.

That's exactly the concern that irrigators and others who depend on the river today have, that change is definitely going to come; and they would rather shape that change themselves through the Simpson proposal or something like it, a Northwest decision by North westerners, rather than something imposed from a courtroom.

Reichert: But there are people who may never get on board with the Simpson plan .

even if key to his proposal is a halt to legal challenges at the remaining dams in the Columbia River basin.

Take, for example, those who argue that the dams provide a clean source of energy, at a time when clean power is exactly what the world needs.

David Reeploeg, Tri-City Development Council: They're very important.

They provide carbon-free, low cost power, and so the dams are an incredibly important part of the economy, the life-style and the history of eastern Washington.

Rick Dunn, General Manager, Benton PUD: It's a big deal.

For us, hydro is over 80 percent of our power supply on an annual basis.

The Snake River dams provide 10% of that.

You might think that's a small number when you start talking about percentages, but it all adds up.

Reichert: Benton public utility provides electrical power to customers in Kennewick and surrounding areas of Benton county in Washington.

Rick Dunn: Electricity demand goes up and down.

And during peak demand periods, all utilities really count on all of the hydro system, including the Snake River dams.

Certainly we all want good salmon runs.

We all want fish to be restored.

And so I guess the number one thing for us as utilities, is if you're going to propose to do something as serious as removing those dams as a part of our power supply, then you've got to be absolutely certain of the science.

Reichert: Someone who knows a thing or two about the science is this man.

For 40 years, Virgil Moore has studied these fish, and eight of those years as director of the Idaho Fish & Game Department.

Virgil Moore, Retired Director, Idaho Fish & Game Dept: There is no surprise to me that these four lower snake dams are creating the problem they are.

Reichert: Moore will not put a timetable on when salmon will cease to exist in the state.

Virgil Moore: Others have modeled it.

There are models that give us those dates 20, 30, 40 years.

We spent the last 20 years narrowing that uncertainty down to the point where folks like Congressman Simpson can now come out and say, there is very little, if no uncertainty about the fact that we can't get functional recovery with these dams in place.

The survey results are very clear.

The vast majority of Idahoans desire us to do the right thing.

Congressman Simpson's concept has tapped into that.

He's looking at what the fish need and what society needs.

If we know anything in natural resources today, the only way to move forward is with these huge collaborative efforts that bring everybody to the table to sit down and talk.

It is refreshing to see our elected officials step forward and put it on the line to try to resolve this conflict that could continue to actually divide and hurt our state and our region.

Reichert: Idaho is 465 miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean.

And yet Lewiston, Idaho is essentially a seaport.

The most inland US seaport off the Pacific coast.

But take out the four lower Snake River dams, and that goes away.

You lose the option of barging large amounts of grain and lentils from Lewiston to Portland and other lower Columbia ports.

That's a devastating blow to nearby Palouse farmers.

David Doeringsfeld, General Manager Port of Lewiston: Ninety percent of all the soft white wheat grown in the US is grown within 100 miles radius of Lewiston; 95% of that is exported overseas, primarily to the Pacific Rim.

This is our highway to International markets.

If we lost that river system, it would dramatically change what we grow in this area.

We more than likely wouldn't be growing that soft white wheat.

The transportation costs would just be too high.

And as bad as farm prices have been for commodities, one of the reasons a lot of those farmers are still in existence is because of the transportation benefits of the Columbia-Snake River system.

It's a very emotional issue.

In a lot of ways we need to back off the emotion in this and look at the science.

Let the science drive what we're going to do to bring back our runs.

And I believe the concept right now of just taking out these dams is just an emotionally charged issue.

It's something that we can point to and say, by God, this is going to fix everything, when it's not.

Reichert: Fewer salmon in Idaho mean less of a human connection with these ocean going fish.

And throughout the state there are people who remind us of that connection, either through their art or through annual events like this one in the Sawtooth valley.

Two distinct species.

the chinook and the sockeye.

make the journey to and from the ocean, coming back to the Sawtooth valley to lay their eggs and then to die, bringing nitrogen and phosphorus to the Idaho batholith.

In 2021 the Salmon Festival featured Congressman Simpson.

Congressman Mike Simpson: Change is coming.

Are we going to take advantage of it?

Are we going to design our future or are we going to have it imposed on us.

I think we can do a better job designing it ourselves.

I think we can save salmon.

In our plan you can actually get grain down the river to the Tri cities to be barged from the Tri cities to the rest of the way, and it would cost them less than it would today.

They use about 1,000 megawatts of power a year on average.

We can replace the power.

There's so much technology now.

There's pump storage, there's wind, there's solar, there's battery storage.

Elon Musk tells me, you're not gonna believe in 10 years, what happens with battery storage.

It's going to grow like you've never seen, and we'll be able to store that energy and use it when the demand is there.

And as I've said to every person I've talked to you about this, if you got a better idea, if you think there's a way we can save salmon without removing dams, that we haven't tried, let me know.

Reichert: The lower Snake River dams have always been controversial, even before they were constructed in the 1960's and '70's by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Critics of the dams included the Washington State Department of Fisheries, concerned about salmon survival.

But supporters of the long-sought barge route from Portland to the port of Lewiston eventually won out.

Besides, the dams would produce hydropower for a growing population.

Paul Ocker, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: One of the big challenges for the Corps is that we are required to balance the needs of both the environment and people.

So that's a very hard place to be.

If I was told, Paul, tomorrow, you need to remove the Snake River dams and that's written down, that is my mission.

And I will follow that.

As of today, my mission is to operate these dams for the American public in balance with the environment as best as we can, and that is my mission today.

Tomorrow, who knows what it would be?

Reichert: It is indeed rare when something as large and permanent as a dam comes down.

But in 1992 Congress authorized the removal of two obsolete dams on the Elwha River in the state of Washington.

And in 2011, the largest dam removal in the world began.

It was a project of the National Park Service, to restore the altered ecosystem and the native anadromous fishery.

Lynda Mapes, Reporter, Seattle Times Newspaper: The lesson of the Elwha is that Nature responded more quickly, more dramatically in more ways than anyone ever expected.

And so here we are, it's not even 10 years and we've got 8,000 Chinook salmon adults coming back to the Elwha River.

I mean, life finds a way.

This is not some crybaby species.

These animals have radiated since the Pleistocene into every single possible usable habitat.

And you can be absolutely sure that if you provide habitat for them, they will utilize it.

Virgil Moore, Retired director Idaho Fish & Game Dept: Salmon are amazingly resilient.

Their long migration, their ability to switch from fresh water to salt water is phenomenal.

And they do the same thing when they come back up.

If habitat is available, they'll pioneer into it and use it.

They'll adapt to it.

They create populations that come into those areas, and our salmon still retain that.

That's why they're so important.

That's why we've got to keep that resiliency that these Columbia basin stocks have.

One of the most productive stocks in the world.

And our vast amount of back country that provides the backbone for salmon recovery and our quality of life that we have is so important to Idaho.

Deirdre Abrams, 5th grade school teacher: I noticed that a lot of 5th graders did not know that Idaho actually had migrating fish.

And they didn't know they were on the Endangered Species list either.

Reichert: And so this Donnelly Idaho teacher asked the Nez Perce tribe for salmon eggs for her classroom aquarium.

Deirdre Abrams: They thought it was a great idea to get kids involved in salmon recovery and learning about salmon and understanding that they're endangered and understanding the obstacles they face.

Reichert: And when Deirdre Abrams discovered that there were few resources available at the 5th grade level, she wrote a book on the life cycle of a salmon and got it published.

So over the course of a year, the students had a ringside seat as the baby salmon broke free of their egg's soft shell, and began feeding on the yolk sack still attached to their bodies.

Eventually the fish became free swimming fry, then parr with dark rounded vertical markings on their sides.

Deirdre Abrams: Every time they see a change, they get so excited.

They say, look, they're starting to swim, they're starting to eat, and they just became really attached to these fish.

Reichert: Abrams used her book to explain the remarkable life cycle of a salmon .

how the tiny fish heads downriver tail first, pushed along by the current.

How along the way this fresh water creature somehow transforms its internal organs to survive in salt water.

It's called smolting.

Then, if the smolt can pass the 4 lower Snake River dams and the 4 dams on the Columbia River, it arrives at the ocean.

If it can survive all kinds of predators, it will live for 2 to 3 years, sometimes longer, traveling to feeding grounds as far away as Alaska.

And then something truly remarkable happens.

These large salmon decide to head back home, upriver past each of the 8 concrete structures, back to the very stream in which they were born.

Along the way they stop eating, and the males develop hooked noses, in order to fight for dominance.

When they arrive at their natal waters, the female builds a nest, or a redd, creating a depression in the gravel with her body.

The dominant male courts the female, and upon spawning, they release eggs and milt simultaneously.

It's a life cycle that has taken them thousands of miles.

But now, it's over and both male and female die, their bodies supplying nutrients to a whole host of creatures, including a new generation of salmon.

Today Deirdre Abrams' 5th grade class has arrived at the banks of the Salmon River in central Idaho to bid farewell to their tiny salmon friends.

Deirdre Abrams, 5th grade school teacher: We have watched their life cycle all the way to release and because they're fall chinook, they'll actually start migrating immediately and head to the ocean.

Those fish will be on a site called a tagas, and so students will be able to track this group of fish all the way for the next four years to see if any of them make it back.

Thanks to the Nez Perce tribe.

Anthony Capetillo, Nez Perce Fisheries Technician: As a tribal member, it really means a lot, especially with the children being involved because the children are basically our future; they're the ones that are going to take over.

I know they learned a lot and they're really excited about this journey that their fish are going to take.

At the same time they're sad.

I knew they grew pretty attached to these fish while they had them.

Student, Donnelly Elementary School: Dear little chinook, I watched you bloom into an amazing little fish.

It is always so fun to see you swimming with your fellow fish, and I will always miss that.

I very much hope that your species is still around when I'm older.

Safe travels.

Reichert: These children have learned enough in the past year to know that their young friends are in for some tough times.

And without major changes, the same can be said for all of Idaho's migratory fish... And that we may be witnessing the demise of one of the world's great migrations.

Congressman Mike Simpson: If you look at the history of salmon in England and Ireland 200 years ago, and how they lost their salmon runs, we're having the same debate right now in the Pacific Northwest.

Different issues but essentially the same debate.

And we're hoping for a different result.

I think that's what Einstein called insanity.

Reichert: Perhaps it's just in the nature of what we call progress, that choices are made and some things win and some things lose.

It's hard to imagine a time when rivers flowed with abundance.

Maybe Idaho's salmon are doomed; but maybe wise men and women will find a way to give salmon the river or part of a river they need.

and deserve.

Because one thing we can all agree upon.

Idaho's star will shine more brightly if these fish can continue to return to central Idaho, just like they've done for thousands of years.

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho; by the friends of Idaho Public Television; by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

To find more information about these shows, visit us at idahoptv.org