The dams came down. 20,000 salmon didn't wait.

Roughly 20,000 chinook salmon have migrated up the Klamath River in the two years since four dams came down, according to a new study reported by Inside Climate News. The river runs through southern Oregon and northern California, and the fish are returning faster than the scientists tracking them thought possible. "The biological response has been much faster than I, and most of us, expected," said Damon Goodman, lead author of the study. Removing the dams was the largest project of its kind ever undertaken in the United States, and it was supposed to take years to show results. The salmon did not wait. Challenges remain, including questions over water allotments and two dams still standing on the river. But the fall-run salmon have come back, which is what the whole thing was for.