In “Encounters with the Archdruid,” his narration of David Brower’s battles
with developers, John McPhee writes: “[P]ossibly the reaction to dams is so violent because rivers are the ultimate metaphor of existence, and dams destroy rivers. Humiliating nature, a dam is evil — placed and solid.”
The recent news that Tahlequah, a matriarch of the Southern Resident killer whales, has lost a second calf and is again, as she did in 2018, carrying her dead calf around Puget Sound, demonstrates just how evil dams can be and how much destruction they cause. The four dams on the lower Snake River have killed not only the river itself, turning it into several over-heated, stagnant ponds, but also numerous salmon and steelhead runs that have nourished Salish Sea orcas for millennia.
These facts about the Snake, the salmon, and the orcas do not really constitute news; this biological and ecological information has been known for decades. What is “new” is the heartbreaking realization that the remaining orcas cannot now consistently reproduce. Too few salmon; too much pollution. While another calf born late in 2024 is apparently still alive, the loss of Tahlequah’s female calf reifies the “bright extinction” phenomenon: an extinction happening in present time when the solutions to reversing the process are known but not implemented: i.e., removing the dams on the Snake River.
Tahlequah is crying out to us! We must not ignore her. We successfully razed dams on the Elwah and the Klamath. Why not the Snake?
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
