President orders cabinet to withdraw from deal in which federal government invested in salmon recovery and study, in exchange for pause on lawsuits
Eric Barker, June 12, 2025
President Donald Trump is killing the sweeping agreement that pledged significant investments in salmon recovery and could have paved the way for breaching the four lower Snake River dams.
In a presidential memorandum issued Thursday, Trump directed members of his cabinet to withdraw from a memorandum of agreement between the Biden administration and Columbia River Basin tribes like the Nez Perce.
That pact exchanged a pause in salmon-versus-dams litigation for salmon recovery investments and a series of studies on the best way to replace the hydropower, irrigation and commodity transportation made possible by the dams. While the agreement stopped short of sanctioning dam breaching, it was designed to lay the groundwork for the move.
"My Administration is committed to protecting the American people from radical green agenda policies that make their lives more expensive, and to maximizing the beneficial uses of our existing energy infrastructure and natural resources to generate energy and lower the cost of living," the president said in the memo.
Trump also rescinded Biden’s executive order issued in September of 2023 that called for a “sustained national effort” to honor treaty commitments to the Nez Perce and other tribes by restoring Snake and Columbia river salmon and steelhead to healthy and abundant levels.
"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," said Shannon Wheeler, chairperson of the Nez Perce Tribe in a news release. "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."
According to a White House fact sheet published Thursday, “President Trump recognizes the importance of ensuring the future of wildlife populations in the Columbia River Basin while also advancing the country’s energy creation to benefit the American Public,” but it did not elaborate on how to save the imperiled fish.
The deal between Biden and salmon advocates was expected to bring more than $1 billion in federal investments to help recover wild fish in the Snake and Columbia rivers. But it was viewed by dam proponents as an unfair pact for which they had little input.
Hydropower proponents like Kurt Miller, executive director of the Northwest Public Power Association, cheered the move. A news release from his organization said keeping the dams “provides a lifeline for the Northwest’s clean energy economy and its most vulnerable families.” Miller and others claim the agreement was one-sided.
“As someone directly involved in the broader process leading up to the agreement, I can say with confidence that public power utilities — who serve tens of millions of Americans — were deliberately excluded from the negotiations. In short, the MOU was never authorized or endorsed by the people or communities most affected by increasing energy costs.”
Abandoning the agreement will almost surely mean the issue will return to federal court, where litigants have battled for more than 30 years. In each iteration of the case, the salmon advocates have succeeded in convincing federal judges of the inadequacy of the government’s plan to protect 13 runs of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead, including four runs that return to the Snake River and its tributaries in Idaho, Washington and northeastern Oregon.
Prior to 1850 and the over-exploitation of the runs by commercial fishing along with habitat damage, and followed by development of the hydropower system, as many as 16 million wild fish returned to the Columbia River Basin annually. By the 1990s, that number dipped to about 1.3 million, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Over the past two decades the return has climbed to 2.3 million.
Most returning adult fish are now from hatcheries and Snake River wild spring chinook, steelhead, sockeye and fall chinook are all protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Scientists have long identified the dams, which have fish ladders for adults and sophisticated fish bypass systems for juveniles, as a significant source of mortality. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration went on record three years ago saying dam breaching is required to restore the runs to abundance.
Breaching would benefit the fish, according to multiple studies, but it would also end tug-and-barge transportation on the lower Snake River and reduce the amount of electricity generated by the federal hydropower system at a time energy demand is rising sharply.
When the Nez Perce and other tribes of the lower Columbia River Basin signed treaties with the federal government, the pacts enshrined in the Constitution protected their rights to fish for salmon at usual and accustomed places. The tribe’s have argued the dams are driving the fish that are central to their culture, well-being, religion and economies to extinction and amount to a breach of their treaty rights.
Chris Wood, president and chief executive officer of Trout Unlimited, called the president’s move a missed opportunity and “a good day for the lawyers.”
“The history of salmon recovery in the Northwest has been driven by court orders and regulations, and what made that agreement unique is that it was collaborative in nature,” he said. “I think it's unfortunate we are not going to give that a shot to work. What it will do is drive people back to the courtroom, and I don’t know how many salmon have been recovered as result of court orders, but I know there has been a tremendous amount of social and economic dislocation as result of that approach.”
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