Hydropower dams create energy but impede salmon migration, causing population decline and welfare harm to individual fish unable to complete their life cycle, requiring innovative engineering solutions.
The conflict between hydropower generation and salmon welfare is one of the most significant human-wildlife welfare challenges in river management. Salmon that cannot pass dams cannot complete their reproductive life cycle, experiencing the frustration of a fundamental biological drive that cannot be expressed. Fish that attempt turbine passage suffer injury and death. Fish ladders address adult upstream migration but often fail juvenile downstream migrants. The welfare and conservation solution requires a portfolio approach: improving fish ladder design for both directions, maximizing spill operations during migration periods, designing turbines to reduce fish mortality, and prioritizing dam removal where hydropower value is low relative to ecological and welfare benefit.