The District has built and funds eight fish hatcheries, and every aspect of upstream and downstream passage is being evaluated.

The Atlantic salmon, historically a vibrant denizen of wild, free-flowing rivers, had been eliminated from New England, except for Maine; its upstream passage to spawning grounds has been blocked by dams.

Dams that blocked the upstream passage of the fish to their spawning grounds were the major cause of this.

Save for Maine, the Atlantic salmon, historically a vibrant denizen of wild, free-flowing rivers, had been eliminated from New England streams by the turn of the century, its upstream passage to spawning beds blocked by dams.

Two full days of hard labor at the oars, and the skill of Tiphys as steersman, were needed to win an upstream passage through the twenty miles or so of the strait.

After the construction of Long Lake Dam in 1915 by Washington Water Power blocked upstream passage, the river's salmon populations disappeared completely.

Before their upstream passage was blocked by dams, Atlantic salmon swarmed up the Connecticut River by the tens of thousands to reach their spawning beds on the upper river and its tributaries.

Most of the dams on the Columbia River have ladders for upstream passage of fish, and it is highly unlikely that any of the big Federal dams in the Northwest, which provide a vast network of cheap power, would ever be torn down to save fish runs.

In the last five years the Holyoke fishway has given upstream passage to 400,000 shad on average.

Then there were summer droughts: dams that had upstream passages but no safe way to swim back down, oceanic changes that disrupted salmon feeding grounds off Greenland, and overharvesting by opportunist fishing boats.