The Bonneville Power Administration is paying four Indian tribes a total of $900 million to boost fish populations in the US Pacific Northwest, in exchange for an end to those tribes’ calls for dam removal and their support for federal fish management plans.

The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation (OR), the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (OR), the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (WA) and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation (WA), along with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, agreed to drop out of a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s river management plans and to support those plans for 10 years. They also agreed to stop advocating the removal of dams or the Endangered Species Act listing of the Pacific lamprey.

The Nez Perce Tribe (ID) refused the deal, saying it still wants the four lower dams on the Snake River removed.

Some environmental groups critiqued the deal, saying that only $540 million of the $900 million is even going to new conservation programs, and that most of the money is going to help fish other than the endangered salmon that lawsuits and dam removal are meant to protect.

In related news, California’s largest salmon run is in the midst of an “unprecedented collapse,” according to federal fishery regulators. The number of chinook salmon returning from the Pacific last year was 88 percent lower than 5 years ago.