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ELWHA RIVER VALLEY BIODIVERSITY
One of the greatest natural experiments of all time will start in 2012 when the National Park Service begins the removal of two hydroelectric dams on the Elwha River in the Olympic National Park (ONP). The Elwha Restoration Act of 1992 (PL102-495) has authorized $185 million in federal funds for demolition and clean-up, as well as provision to reintroduce salmon and to protect water quality, but no funds have been provided for research or education. In the years that follow the opening of the river, a world-famous salmon fishery, abruptly eliminated in 1911 by construction of the first dam, will be restored. As the salmon move upstream to spawn and die, the marine-derived nutrients in their bodies will be returned to the forest along 113 km of wild river. Several hundred thousand salmon will eventually repopulate the river annually, bringing a huge quantity of nutrients that will permeate throughout the ecosystem. Because all of the water above the upper dam is in the ONP, these ecological changes will be available for long-term study, without the confounding influences of human disturbance that are common in virtually all other river restoration projects. Thus, the Elwha dams, by far the largest ever to be removed, constitute a unique opportunity to study the recovery of a riparian ecosystem, with profound implications for the value of dam removal elsewhere as a general conservation strategy.
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