2 Responses

1. Dams have reduced salmon populations by preventing access to spawning grounds upstream. To help, most dams in salmon habitat have fish ladders installed.

2. The fish are impacted in a number of ways. Hydroelectricity generated in dams has environmental impacts and risks that definitely outweigh its benefits.

   Fish has their natural habitat disrupted, and a number are displaced during the construction of the dam. The dam changes the flow of water in a stream, making it (usually) much more difficult for fish to travel upstream and spawn. Ladders are installed in SOME dams but do not accommodate the majority of fish.

   Because dams rely on a reservoir of water that wasn’t previously there, dead plants and marine animals rot stationary on the bottom of the basin. This releases a toxic gas called methane in these reservoirs that kills of living fish in trapped because they can’t travel downstream as the river would have allowed them to.

   And this is only a few impacts that fish face with dams. it doesn’t even begin to cover the impacts hydroelectricity has on the environment for people and other animals. Check out a book called Silenced Rivers, one of the best resources for discovering more about the truth on hydroelectricity in large dams. Notice you haven’t heard talk of them among clean energies like solar, wind, nuclear, and the like.