President Donald Trump on Thursday pulled the federal government out of what Northwest tribes have hailed as a historic agreement to recover salmon in the Columbia River Basin.
In a memorandum, Trump reneged on more than a billion dollars the Biden administration promised to tribes for renewable energy and salmon recovery. He also halted a government-wide initiative to restore abundant salmon runs in the Columbia and Snake rivers and signaled an end to the government’s willingness to consider dam removal.
The move drew immediate condemnation from tribes — who called it yet another in a long history of treaty betrayals — and from environmental groups that have fought to protect salmon.
“We reserved the right to actually catch fish, not merely the right to dip our nets into barren waters,” Yakama council member Jeremy Takala said in a statement.
The Biden White House struck a deal in 2023 with states, environmental advocates and four tribes with treaty fishing rights in the Columbia River Basin: the Nez Perce, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, the Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
It took two years of negotiations, and halted decades of lawsuits over the harm federally-owned dams have done to salmon populations on the Columbia River and its tributaries. It also sought to address a litany of broken promises from the United States to uphold tribes’ treaty fishing rights
The federal government pledged to help tribes build enough renewable energy to replace the output of four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state. The White House also committed to studying ways to replace services provided by dams — including energy, recreation and water storage.
Under the agreement, federal agencies also devoted hundreds of millions of dollars toward tribally-run fish hatcheries and committed to finding ways to double the amount of funding spent on salmon recovery.
Related: Northwest tribes say Trump’s proposed salmon budget cuts violate treaty rights
Thursday’s Trump White House announcement called the commitments “onerous” and denounced the Biden administration’s prioritization as “speculative climate change concerns.”
“President Trump continues to deliver on his promise to end the previous administration’s misplaced priorities and protect the livelihoods of the American people,” the announcement read.
Related: Listen to OPB's "Salmon Wars" podcast series
Shannon Wheeler, chair of the Nez Perce Tribe, said Trump’s actions undermine not just the latest signed agreement, but treaties the government signed in 1855.
“This action tries to hide from the truth. The Nez Perce Tribe holds a duty to speak the truth for the salmon, and the truth is that extinction of salmon populations is happening now,” Wheeler said in a statement.
“People across the Northwest know this, and people across the Nation have supported us in a vision for preventing salmon extinction that would at the same time create a stronger and better future for the Northwest.”
Related: The racism, and resilience, behind today’s Pacific Northwest salmon crisis
Proponents of Columbia River dams, including the publicly-owned utilities who buy federal hydroelectricity, have criticized the Biden administration for leaving them out of negotiations. But they also do not want the issue to return to court, where judges’ orders have greatly limited dam operations and driven up electricity rates.
“I’m hoping that we avoid dam operations by injunction, because that doesn’t help anybody in the region,” said Scott Simms, executive director of the Public Power Council, a nonprofit representing utilities that purchase federal hydropower.
Earthjustice Attorney Amanda Goodin, who represents the environmental advocates who signed the agreement, said the Trump administration’s actions would force a return to courts
“The agreement formed the basis for the stay of litigation,” Goodin said, “so without the agreement there is no longer any basis for a stay.”
This is a developing story and could be updated
