Elwha River Restoration

Return of the River is a powerful film, documenting the many challenges surrounding the Elwha River restoration project. The river is home to the indigenous people of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, who depend on the flowing river and the salmon it provides. However, in the early 1900’s non-indigenous settlers began developing the region, which led to the construction of two dams in order to generate power for booming industry, drastically reducing its natural resources. As a result, the environmental consequences facing this waterway sparked a controversial restoration project to remove the dams, which has both ethically anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric views on how to address the issue. Those opposing the Elwah reclamation project have anthropocentric reasons for doing so, which are rooted in the development of the dams in the first place. Despite warnings from the Klallam people that the dams would have detrimental consequence on the river and it inhabitants, the settlers saw it as a profitable resource that played an essential role in providing cheap energy for growing industry and for the developing city of Port Angeles. The energy produced by the dams helped support the local economy, provided jobs within the …show more content…
They see the river as its own entity, deserving of respect, and that it’s worth preserving because of the ecosystem services that it provides not only to humans but to other species as well. The Klallam people have a profound spiritual connection to the river and the salmon they depend on beyond that of instrumental value, but for its intrinsic nature, which is what motivates them to bring awareness to this issue as a united voice for the