With salmon as our guide, we’ve created programs that span from watershed level in-stream recovery, to basin-wide planning efforts, to major international research initiatives.
From our earliest days as a single project in one coastal watershed, through our work as a pioneer of conservation fish rearing in Hood Canal and the San Juan Islands, to our coordination of many impressive regional recovery efforts, LLTK has become an international leader in the improvement of science and management for salmon in Northwest waters.
Our driving force and our central motivation has always been the fish itself. Our founder, Jim Youngren, had a clear vision from day one – to restore salmon and steelhead for the Pacific Northwest. Migrating from remote wild streams through estuaries like the Puget Sound, to the Pacific Ocean and back, salmon connect our communities, bringing the mountains to the sea. Along their journey, they interact with fishers, ferries and freighters, with boaters and swimmers, and with the multitude of other species that inhabit our waterways.
Protecting and preserving salmon requires connecting the dots between the myriad impacts they face during their epic life-cycles, and bringing together the people whom they encounter at each stage to work collectively toward mitigating those impacts. LLTK has been doing just that since 1986: building a brighter future for fish and people.
Our Values
LLTK is all about stewardship of the resource, collaborating with others, achieving real results and continuously learning. Â The statements below describe in more detail how these values inform our work.
- Stewardship: We value the ecological and cultural importance of salmon for the Pacific Northwest and all its people. We are mission-driven to recover Pacific salmon – a keystone species vital to the health of our ecosystems – and to preserve sustainable salmon fishing, a cornerstone of Tribal and non-Tribal ways of life.
- Collaboration: We value our relationships with rights holders and stakeholders, working together to expand our shared knowledge and implement solutions for salmon recovery. We work across boundaries and disciplines, understanding that creative solutions come from listening to and amplifying diverse voices.
- Results: We value approaches that deliver results by advancing science, improving management, and driving solutions that target the greatest threats to salmon. We evaluate our work by holding ourselves accountable to salmon recovery goals and the people who share the same environment.
- Learning: We value learning from multiple ways of knowing and honor opportunities for continuous growth. We learn from and contribute to current science, explore new approaches, facilitate information-sharing, and listen to a diversity of views to improve our work.
