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Wild Salmon Ecosystems Initiative

Snapshot

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Outcome:

Maintain a healthy salmon ecosystem at the scale of the North Pacific.

 

Geography:

The North Pacific, with habitat efforts focused on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, Alaska and northern British Columbia.

 

Strategies:
  • Protect habitat in selected watersheds across the North Pacific
  • Reform aquaculture practices to substantially reduce risk to wild fish from escapes, disease/lice transfer, and unprocessed waste outflow
  • Reform hatchery propagation practices to safeguard the productivity and diversity of wild fish
  • Ensure that salmon fisheries are managed sustainably

Map - Salmon - North Pacific

Initiative Overview

As human activity and development have edged northward along the Pacific coasts, wild salmon and the dependent ecosystems have declined substantially, particularly in rivers in the southern reaches of their historic range. Today, many of these watersheds are highly degraded, and when compared to historical standards, only a small number of wild salmon return every year. In contrast, healthier salmon rivers are found from central British Columbia northward to Alaska and across the Bering Sea to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. Here, salmon populations are generally thriving, with abundant runs returning every year that support numerous fisheries and fuel ecosystems.

 

Salmon play a critical ecological role that stretches from the streams where they hatch, to estuaries, to the open ocean, and back to their natal streams to spawn and die. The Foundation’s Wild Salmon Ecosystems Initiative is working in collaboration with grantees and partners to ensure that these salmon ecosystems remain healthy.

 

An important focus of the Initiative has been to expand the scale of salmon ecosystem conservation by helping coordinate the work of grantees and other collaborators across a large region. As such, to understand how salmon are fairing across the North Pacific, the Initiative helped launch a clearinghouse for data called the State of the Salmon program.

Announcements
2006 Year in Review
[Wild Salmon Ecosystems Initiative chapter]
Recent Grants
Biocomplexity Science and Fisheries Modeling :: University of Washington, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
$3,600,000May 2008
Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform in BC :: Living Oceans Society
$1,843,531May 2008
Grantee Collaboration
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