Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correct Carrie Herrman’s name.
Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson created a proposal to demolish the Snake River dams to restore the salmon and steelhead populations.
Two years ago, only 14 wild Sockeye salmon were reported to have made it to the Stanley Basin in Idaho, said Carrie Herrman, outreach coordinator for Save Our Wild Salmon.
“Before any dams were here in the Pacific Northwest, there were hundreds of thousands [of salmon that made it through],” she said.
Since the dams were built in the late 1950s, the salmon population has decreased by 90 percent, said Bill Arthur, chair of the Snake/Columbia River Salmon campaign at the Sierra Club. The populations are being flushed to the ocean and through the dams too quickly, killing migrating salmon.