When Long Live the Kings was founded in 1986, salmon were already in trouble. Four decades later, climate change, degraded habitat, shifting ocean conditions, and retreating public funding have made the challenge even greater. Yet the salmon are still here because people like you refuse to let them disappear.

For more than 40 years supporters like you have powered Long Live the Kings’ growth from a scrappy local organization into a trusted regional and international leader. Your generosity and commitment has backed our work across borders and scientific disciplines to resolve major barriers to salmon recovery. It has sustained partnerships with Tribal nations, government agencies, universities, fishing communities, and conservation partners. It also funded a decade of international research across the Salish Sea that reshaped how this region thinks about what’s possible.

Salmon are the ecological and cultural foundation of the West Coast. They feed our forests, sustain orcas, anchor a $4.7 billion fishing economy, and tie generations to this place. When salmon struggle, everything connected to them does too, and when they persist, it’s because supporters like you have stayed in the fight.

Today, the launch of the Resilient Salmon Initiative marks the most ambitious step yet: a generational commitment stretching from the Sacramento River to the Yukon that articulates a bold, collaborative path not just to slow decline, but to forge a return to abundance. It will not be possible without you.

For 40 years, supporters have been filling gaps, fueling science and action, and keeping people working together when it would have been easier to give up.

To understand the future of salmon in the Salish Sea, you have to understand herring. These small but mighty forage fish are a critical link in the marine food web. They are a vital food source for juvenile salmon and alternative prey for predators like harbor seals that would otherwise target salmon. When herring thrive, salmon have a better chance to survive. But right now, herring populations are under significant strain.

Pacific herring populations in Puget Sound have been declining for decades, with several spawning stocks at a fraction of their historical numbers. Centuries of shoreline development, pollution, and warming waters have reduced eelgrass and kelp beds, which herring depend on for spawning and early life stages. The loss of these nearshore habitats has left herring with fewer places to reproduce successfully, weakening a foundational link in the food web that salmon rely on.

Long Live the Kings is working with the Nisqually Indian Tribe, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Kwiáht, and the University of Washington to better understand the impact of these changes and identify recovery solutions. This collaborative science is already producing important insights.

Research in the Nisqually Reach has documented what appears to be a genetically distinct herring population that spawns later in the season than any previously documented stock in South Puget Sound.

This discovery could influence how herring diversity, resilience, and recovery strategies are understood across the region. Unrestricted support from our community of donors ensures we have the people, expertise, and long‑term coordination needed to keep complex, collaborative projects like this moving forward.

Over a century of industrialization, the Duwamish River has lost 97% of its historic habitat, leaving young salmon with almost nowhere to go. In partnership with Vigor Marine Group and the University of Washington, Long Live the Kings is helping prove that working waterfronts and healthy salmon habitat don’t have to be in conflict.

Each spring, our team monitors a recent estuary restoration site to see which fish and other aquatic life are using the habitat. In 2025, the team found:

• 954 Juvenile Salmonids
• 1,771 Fish Total

The Nisqually River Delta is one of the most productive and least developed estuaries remaining in Puget Sound. It is also, to the Nisqually Indian Tribe, the center of the universe, an ancestral home and the foundation of their cultural heritage, the exercise of their treaty rights, and their way of life. However, Interstate 5 acts like a dam across the Nisqually Delta, constraining the river’s flow and making floods deeper and longer lasting. Combined with rising seas and intensifying rainstorms, the estuary is increasingly squeezed by both natural and built systems.

That pressure is now creating an unexpected opportunity. As Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) advances a major redesign of I-5 through the Nisqually Delta, the Nisqually Indian Tribe is working to ensure the project does more than modernize a highway. The Tribe, with Long Live the Kings as a supporting partner, is reconnecting the river to its historic floodplain and helping integrate ambitious habitat restoration directly into the infrastructure planning process, seeking benefits that extend beyond the roadway to salmon, the estuary, and surrounding communities.

In 2025, WSDOT agreed to incorporate restoration designs, co-developed by Long Live the Kings and the Nisqually Indian Tribe, into their highway redesign planning along a stretch of the delta. This outcome reflects years of relationship-building, the Tribe’s persistent leadership, and donor supported capacity that sustained the restoration planning.

This is just part of the story. The vision for comprehensive nature-based solutions to reduce local flooding impacts, improve key salmon habitat, and complement an elevated interstate has just begun.

Long Live the Kings and the Nisqually Indian Tribe are developing further restoration designs that, if fully realized, could restore more than 160 acres of riparian forest, reconnect over 10,000 feet of channel habitat, and reduce floodwaters.

We are working to integrate salmon habitat and flood resilience into transportation planning from the start, not as an afterthought. By restoring the Nisqually River to its historical channels, this work can deliver ecosystem and community benefits that serve the tribe and neighboring communities for decades to come.

Communities across four counties were asked what they needed from a future Hood Canal Bridge, and the response was clear: people want solutions that work for drivers and for fish. The voices we gathered will directly shape how this critical infrastructure gets reimagined. Our survey included:

• 21 Listening Sessions
• 10 Community Events
• 150,000+ Overall Views

Most people know the Hood Canal Bridge as a convenient shortcut between the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas. What few know is that it may be one of the deadliest stretches of water for young steelhead in the Pacific Northwest and that communities are calling for solutions that deliver reliable transportation and safe fish passage.

In 2025, in partnership with the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and HDR, Inc., Long Live the Kings supported a landmark community engagement effort spanning four counties, 54 cities and towns, and the traditional lands of at least ten federally recognized Tribes to ask a simple question: What do people need from a future Hood Canal Bridge?

The answer was clear and consistent: fewer delays, reliable access for drivers crossing the bridge, and a bridge designed to serve both people and fish. Sixty-three percent of respondents expressed concern about the bridge’s impact on steelhead and salmon, reinforcing a shared vision for solutions that address issues above and below the waterline.

That community voice matters because the problem is urgent. The bridge’s floating pontoons span 83% of the width of Hood Canal and extend 15 feet below the surface, forming a sort of wall that blocks juvenile steelhead near the surface as they head to the ocean. Confused and disoriented, the fish become easy targets for harbor seals and other predators. Tracking data shows that up to half of young steelhead that reach the bridge do not survive the passage. Over the span of less than a mile, Hood Canal steelhead face mortality rates comparable to steelhead passing through all eight dams on the lower Snake River and Columbia systems.

Since 2015, Long Live the Kings has played a critical convening role, serving as facilitator of a broad coalition that includes Tribes, the U.S. Navy, Washington State Department of Transportation, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and county governments. Together, the coalition is testing near-term fixes including acoustic startle devices that have reduced seal presence at a key point along the bridge by 60-80% during trials.

At the same time, partners are advancing high level conceptual ideas for how a future bridge could better support both transportation and fish passage.

With community needs now clearly articulated and early design concepts taking shape, the groundwork is being laid for the next phase of collaborative problem‑solving.

In July 2025, scientists from Long Live the Kings and the Tulalip Tribes took to the waterto get a firsthand look at how salmon are faring in Puget Sound’s open waters.

The survey covered 200 nautical miles in just 10 days and generated the kind of real-time data that shapes smarter recovery decisions for years to come.

• 21 Purse Seine Sets
• 341,447 Fish Caught (and most released)
• 6,163 Salmon Caught: 48% Chinook, 41% Chum, and 10% Coho