The Klamath River's dams are being removed. Inside the effort to restore a scarred watershed

The effort has yielded an estimated 17 billion seeds to date. In some areas, a helicopter has been used to drop seeds along the river.

The goals of the seed-planting effort include stabilizing the wet sediment, preventing nonnative weeds from taking hold, and accelerating the regrowth of grasslands, chaparral and forests.

“These reservoirs, they have a lot of invasive species surrounding the landscape,” said Joshua Chenoweth, the Yurok Tribe’s senior riparian ecologist. “And so by introducing a nice, diverse mix of native seed, that’s going to be our strongest protection against it becoming a big weed field.”

That means fewer weeds like medusahead and yellow starthistle, and more native plants like bluebunch wheatgrass and Oregon sunshine. That’s important for the health of the ecosystem.

The approach draws on lessons from the removal of dams on the Elwha River in Washington state, where scattering native seeds was found to effectively reduce the amount of invasive weeds, Chenoweth said.

Within a decade, he and others hope, a stand of young trees will form a lush, green riparian forest along the Klamath.

Alauna Grant, a member of the Karuk Tribe who is helping to plant seeds and saplings, said she is pleased to be participating in undoing the environmental damage caused by the dams, and expects the next generation, including her nieces and nephews, will appreciate a restored river.

“There’s going to be so many swimming spots for them to go hang out at and have fun once the river gets healthy,” Grant said. “I’m excited for it to succeed.”

While the draining of reservoirs let loose heavy loads of sediment, there are also areas where piles of sand, gravel and clay lie up to 15 feet deep beside tributary streams. Crews have been working with excavators, digging into the piles and sending sediment tumbling into streams.

“Dam removal is kind of messy business,” said Dave Coffman, manager of the restoration program for the contractor Resource Environmental Solutions, or RES. He likened the process to “heart surgery, where we got the arteries cleared out, and things are moving again.”

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