Changing Planet

120 miles upriver from the sea, I encounter a landscape that has been completely trashed for commercial gain. But now, mile by mile, that process is being reversed. The Klamath-Trinity River system stretches 450 miles from southern Oregon to California. The Yurok is the biggest of the three local tribes that for generations have looked upon this land as their own. Since the time of the goldrush, waste from mining has piled high on either side of the river, blocking its seasonal movement. These are all old mining tailings. When the gold miners came in, they turned the entire river upside down to create a very narrow channel. Now, that's bad enough on its own, and then put dams in that lock that into place. My guide, Frankie Myers, explains how the Yurok are leading the project to unlock the river system and bring back the salmon that once filled the river. We do right around a mile a year, a mile of restoration. A mile every year? Every year a mile, we are taking the river and giving it space for it to live again. If the river had a chance to move back and forth, it would have left these little side channels, little shoots from the river that would fill up during the high water, create a floodplain and that's great habitat for juvenile salmonids, invertebrates and all kinds of stuff. The majority of the work is carried out by Yurok tribe members like excavator-operator Josh Meyer. He's guaranteeing that his children and their children will always be able to harvest salmon. It's more than a paycheck, right? Yeah. Where I'm from, we believe in this fish. I am all the way at the mouth of this river, born and raised, and this fish is, like, part of who we are and part of everybody that lives on this river. You're a tribe member? - Yes. Do you have any kids? - I have four kids. They know I'm over here trying to help the fish and it's an amazing feeling. One of our operators two years ago was working on a project towards the end of the year and they were finished making a section for spawning adults who had a spawning adult in the tracks of an excavator. It happens like that. Instantly it happens. Why are they taking all these logs down here? We are trying to biomimic the river system and in order to do that, in naturally-occurring systems, trees fall into the river and they create habitats. The Yurok are using logjams and rocks the size of SUVs to vary the flow and restore a more natural spawning habitat for salmon. Wow! Look at that!