We humans have been making many decisions about our planet. We’ve also spent a great deal of our personal history oblivious to the impacts and effects of the choices we make, often allowing social differences to become a barrier to environmental change. This mistake is finally being amended, at least along the Columbia river.

A Memorandum of Agreement recently signed by the Bonneville Power Administration and several prominent Northwest tribes is about to launch a series of environmental reclamation projects on the Columbia. There are several sites along the Columbia that will be restored because of the MOA, including the Chinook River Estuary. At the estuary there are now plans in place, with the funding to back them, to “re-establish flow between channel and floodplain, opening rearing habitat in shallow slough and wetlands. Spring chinook, coho and steelhead benefit from access to deeper estuary habitats.”

Aside from the obvious environmental benefits of this new agreement, like restoration of critical habitats for 13 different species of endangered salmon and steelhead stocks, this is a huge step forward for the politics of environmental restoration. The Columbia river is in a unique place politically and legally. Positioned along the border of two states and two countries, managed by a number of overlapping federal agencies and projects, the management of the Columbia river has been a contested issue for generations.

From the flooding of crucial native fishing grounds which was particularly devastating to the Colville Indian tribe, to the restriction of commercial fishing – environmental and social conflicts keep emerging along this river. The new MOA is a step beyond all of the political naysaying and social distress, and it’s an acknowledgment of the rights of Native American tribes who have been fighting for the health of the Columbia ecosystem.