Donald Trump has withdrawn the US federal government from a landmark agreement aimed at reviving the salmon population in the Pacific north-west, citing it as “radical environmentalism.” The presidential memorandum issued by Trump removes the US from a deal brokered by Joe Biden with Washington, Oregon, and four Native American tribes to restore salmon populations and develop clean energy for tribes. The tribes have long argued that four hydroelectric dams on the north-west’s Snake River have led to a decline in salmon populations. The government had pledged to assess the dams’ impact, but this commitment has been scrapped by the US president in favor of prioritizing energy infrastructure and natural resource utilization over climate change concerns.

The decision has sparked condemnation from the region’s tribes, with Gerald Lewis of the Yakama Tribal Council criticizing it for breaking promises to tribes and contradicting Trump’s supposed commitment to domestic energy development. The agreement, known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, was hailed as historic when reached in late 2023. It entailed a halt in decades of legal battles over the dams’ detrimental effects on fish, with the federal government planning to invest over $1 billion to aid salmon recovery and develop new clean energy projects to replace hydropower from the dams if they were ever removed. Conservation groups, Democratic lawmakers, and the tribes have decried Trump’s decision as shortsighted and harmful to salmon recovery efforts in the Columbia River Basin, once a major salmon-producing region now facing multiple species’ extinction due to dam operations. Efforts to rebuild salmon stocks will persist despite this setback.