A decision by the Trump administration further imperils salmon and demonstrates the capricious nature of the president’s governing.

President Donald Trump last week rejected a $1 billion Biden-era agreement designed to restore salmon and steelhead populations. The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, reached in 2023, was the latest effort to balance the region’s economic needs with efforts to save the endangered species. The plan did not call for the breaching of four hydroelectric dams along the lower Snake River in Washington, but it did create a pathway toward removal.

“It was one of the first times that we had a collaborative effort where people agreed to come together — nobody’s hand was forced, there wasn’t a judge or a court insisting on this,” Chris Wood, CEO of Trout Unlimited, told Outdoor Life. “Now, we’re back to the beginning — where we had been for the previous 20 years. Which is just relying on the Endangered Species Act to keep these most amazing of God’s creatures from blinking out.”

That is a crucial point. Decades worth of court arguments have slowed progress toward the shared goal of saving native species. Experts say modern salmon and steelhead runs are approximately 2 percent of their historical numbers.