May 21, 2026 · 11 min · 7 segments
“The river heals, the river's free, the salmon are free, and so are the people,” says Yurok Tribe attorney and devoted advocate for Indigenous rights and environmental restoration Amy Bowers Cordalis…
Ben HurstHost[upbeat music] Welcome to Climate Curious Quickies, bite-sized nuggets of climate goodness from our TEDx experts in under 10 minutes.
In this week's Climate Curious, we're headed to the banks of the Klamath River to ask what happens if we just hit undo on a concrete dam to bring back salmon from the brink of extinction.
Amy Bowers Cordalis is an attorney and fisherwoman from the Yurok Tribe and ceremony family from the village of Requeoi at the mouth of the Klamath River.
In 2002, after 70,000 salmon died, Amy set out to make sure that this sort of ecocide never happened again.
Over two decades later, her winning dam removal case resulted in the biggest salmon restoration ever in US history.
On how fish ladders were the ultimate legal loophole for blowing up a dam, here's Amy Bowers Cordalis in conversation with Mariam Pasha, live at TED in Vancouver.
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