Without passable waterways, wild salmon cannot complete their life cycle, which involves swimming from their natal streams out to the ocean and then returning several years later to the freshwater rivers and streams where their life started.  If salmon cannot swim upriver, then they cannot reproduce, meaning no future generations of wild salmon.

That is why TU has been a national leader in reforming current hydropower operations and dams, many of which were constructed without factoring in the salmon’s life cycle. In California alone, 50 federal licenses for 150 dams are up for renewal by 2020, and these licenses will govern their operations for 30-50 years. The dams often divert 95 percent of the river's summer flow and have inadequate or absent fishways. Therefore, this is a once-in-a-lifetime-chance to bring these dams up to date and bring wild salmon and steelhead back to hundreds of miles of lost habitat that these remarkable fish have not been able to access since the early 1900s.