… Benefits from restoration projects will take time to become evident, cautioned Barry McCovey, director of the Yurok Tribe’s fisheries department. “From an engineering perspective, when you build a highway or you build a bridge, you do the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and everything’s beautiful and brand new. That’s the best that’s gonna look. Over the years, it’s gonna degrade; it’s just going to get worse and worse. River restoration and dam removal projects are the opposite. When you do the ribbon-cutting ceremony, it’s the worst it’s gonna look cause the heavy equipment just pulled out. It’s muddy, it’s dirty, it doesn’t look like a river yet. But come back in a year. Come back in ten years, come back in twenty years. It just gets better and better and better as the ecosystem fixes itself.” This work is a large-scale example of what the tribes have been doing for thousands of years, McCovey said.