This river and it’s salmon are the reason why Finland’s capital Helsinki was built where it is today and these rapids even give a name to the biggest city of our country – Helsingfors.

Human activities had already started to slowly kill the very important salmon fishery in the 1700’s.

In the 1800’s these rapids were dammed without valid permissions blocking fish migration.
These days the smaller eastern branch is open for migration but the current is harsh and only let’s strong species like seatrout and salmon to get upstream to their spawning grounds.

Today the dam still holds a functional power plant that basically produces enough power to charge a few cell phones. The turbines however kill some of the juvenile fish migrating downstream causing indefensible devastation to these species on their way to the baltic sea.

Taking down the dam has even been discussed in the parliament but some of the deputies seem to be worried about taking down a historical but illegal brick wall and they’re even concerned about the environmental impacts..

The fish in this photo is a stocked salmon jumping against the dam because it hasn’t found it’s way to the eastern branch of river. This happens to many of the fish and some of them even end up dead because of the injuries they get from the wall and the rocks. .

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Kuvaaja: concretereasons