Yeah there’s really no need for so many dams anymore, they were built to power hydroelectric stations that are no longer needed so this is a good thing.

“Why not just let nature take its course? Well, nature didn’t take its course when dams got put in. We can’t pretend this gigantic change in the landscape has not happened and we can’t just ignore the fact that invasive species are a big problem in the west and in California,” said Dave Meurer, director of community affairs for Resource Environmental Solutions, the company leading the restoration project. “Our goal is to give nature a head start.”

Which is another really good point, sadly there’s a lot of invasive plant species that were unknowingly brought over by Europeans mostly for ornamental purposes which have had a devastating effects on native plant life

This is a insane take. We absolutely need hydro power right now. It was the leading source of electricity before coal. More dams, please.
You can do hydropower without dams. Dams are incredibly destructive to ecosystems.

Do educate me.

It just seems like a huge waste of energy / resources to remove an existing dam than to remediate it somehow. I didn’t see any mention of if this generated power or how it’d be offset.

Not really an environmental win if this hydro power capacity was replaced by coal.