Wild Salmon Center

Wild Salmon Center seeks to permanently safeguard healthy and intact wild salmonid populations across the North Pacific -- while they are still healthy -- so they can continue to benefit human communities, sustainable fishing industries, and hundreds of wildlife species that depend on them to thrive.

Wild Salmon Center employs a three-part strategy to conserve wild Pacific salmon by: 1) protecting vital habitat; 2) promoting fish and land management policies that prioritize wild fish and their habitat; and 3) establishing strong partnerships across the Pacific Rim and building capacity for local watershed stewardship groups, who can safeguard these watersheds over the long-term.

Over the last 28 years, WSC has built a strong network of partner NGOs, scientists, and agencies working together across the North Pacific to put wild fish first - and to benefit the millions of people and hundreds of communities that rely on salmon from the Russian Far East to Northern California. We have the significant scientific, legal, communications, and fundraising expertise necessary to 1) identify the healthiest wild salmon watersheds (or "strongholds"), 2) establish close ties with local watershed groups already working to protect them and identify their needs, 3) defend the river from local threats like new dams and mines, and 4) help build capacity at our partner organizations, so they can continue to conserve the watershed far into the future.

Recent achievements in Oregon include reforming forest practices for private land that better protect riparian buffers along streams for wild fish and improve water quality for local communities, securing State Scenic Waterway designation for 17 miles of the Nehalem River, wider riparian buffers on 2,500 miles of salmon streams on private land on the North Coast and the Rogue-Siskiyou region, a permanent ban on suction dredge mining in sensitive fish streams, and the prevention of the sale of the Elliott State Forest to a private logging company.
In Washington, we’ve launched a campaign to stop a 24-story dam from being built on the Chehalis River that threatens critical spawning ground for spring Chinook and steelhead and we're working to remove defunct culverts and other barriers to cold water reaches, and plan to free up 150 miles of spawning and resting habitat for heat-stressed fish.
In British Columbia, we recently helped our partners block a massive LNG terminal planned at the mouth of the Skeena River, atop vital and vulnerable juvenile salmon habitat, and will next work to establish long-term conservation protections for the region. We also helped establish a new Canadian-based NGO called Coastal Rivers Conservancy (CRC) on the BC central coast to conserve vital watersheds like the Dean River and are collaborating with the CRC and the Nuxalk nation to build genetic library of the full range of native salmon and steelhead stock diversity.
In Alaska, we helped block a massive and ill-conceived hydropower dam on the Susitna River, and we're continuing our work to protect Bristol Bay's world-class, $1.5 billion wild salmon fishery and local communities from threats like the Pebble Mine.
Finally in the Russian Far East, we helped secure Protected Area status for over 250,000 acres in the Tugur and Nimelen river basins, and continue our efforts to build their catch-and-release ecotourism economy, educate the public about the social and economic importance of salmon, and combat rampant poaching operations on remote rivers.