- There's two ways to describe the river today.
Number one is an urban river,
probably one of the most populated watersheds in the state.
The other way to describe it as this is home.
This is where I come from, is where my people come from.
Without a river there isn't a people.
Without a people, there's no River.
Salmon are part of my family.
Native people understood
how much of an important species it is.
Eagles to Heron, they're all feeding on the salmon.
It is the salmon that's giving that life to you.
They are an icon.
It's hard to think about Puget Sound without Salmon.
- In 2019, we named the Green-Duwamish
one of America most endangered rivers.
And this is a call to action
around rivers that are facing urgent threats.
These are rivers where the public needs to take action.
Urge decision makers to do the right thing.
- American rivers is a nationwide nonprofit
focused on river protection and conservation.
Flood protection measures over the years,
constrain this channel so that it can't move
can't function like a river
and increase temperatures in this area
are making the water so hot.
It's actually lethal to salmon.
Baby salmon are kind of this last story.
Once they hatch in the headwaters,
they have this arduous journey moving downstream
where they go through this complete transformation.
They go from a freshwater fish about this big
all the way down to the ocean.
And along that journey, they need complex habitat.
They need areas with low velocity and cool water
that are abundant in food.
Natural rivers create side channels
and deep pools where they can congregate
and where they can have those areas
and where they're safe from predators.
When you have river that's been levied or heavily modified,
you lose that complexity,
you lose that floodplain habitat
and you lose those critical areas for salmon to rear.
Aletheia is essentially a mount of earth
that has been piled up next to a river
next to a floodplain area so that people can build
areas behind it.
And so here in the lower green
majority of this area has been levied over the last decades,
and development has come in behind it.
- On the Green-Duwamish,
we've seen a lot of outdated big levees
that have really destroyed a lot of salmon habitat,
we're down to 10% of that historic abundance.
And this actually can create worst flooding
because it raises the flood waters
raises the level of the river
and it threatens downstream communities
because that water has to have somewhere to go.
- By building these levees here.
You've cut off all that complexity
and eliminated all of those natural process from functioning
and you're left with this open flat water ditch.
- This river used to be 15 miles
and bands and all kinds of things.
And when they cut the New River
so that this area could be useful as an industrial area
and accessed by a lot of ships,
they straight only five miles.
So they took 10 miles of the river out
Salmon are like this incredibly key species
in the middle of the web.
It's kind of like the genre game
where you can pull out a piece of wood
and the tower still remains together.
Salmon are that one thing that if you take it out,
that whole thing falls apart.
(slow upbeat music)
- Rivers are remarkably resilient,
they can be restored.
Even After decades, even after 100 years of damage,
you can bring a river back.
- By looking at Google Earth way,
we're able to see strategic locations
where habitat opportunities might exist.
These levees could be set back,
back into the floodplain further
and make these waters salmon safe again.
- There are so many species that rely on the salmon itself
that that whole tower doesn't fall.
That's why they're so important.
We are connected through water.
Everybody is connected through water,
where we find that water is in the rivers.
I described the creeks and the rivers very much
like the veins in your hand and your arm,
in your chest in your legs.
We have taken advantage of these systems
and not respected them.
So we have to change that.
- Salmon or keystone species for the Pacific Northwest,
not only are they ingrained
in the cultural legacy of this area
and to indigenous communities have lived here
for thousands of years,
but they really are the keystone of the entire food chain.
- Hope that I have
for the ecosystem, the whole system, the estuary here,
and then with that salmon
is that when the Duwamish tribe has a function
at the longhouse and cultural center,
we don't get our fish from Alaska.
That we can actually say,
it's okay to have fish from this river.
We don't do that today.
Because we don't trust the fish here.
That's going to be a day that's really special.
Because now the system is put back together again.
And that doesn't mean that the industry's have to go.
The whole system can work better,
and we can do a better job.
It's our own survival that we're looking at.