A New Approach to Salmon Recovery
Advancing a climate-resilient recovery approach for Pacific salmon throughout their North American range
The impacts of climate change are accelerating and further stressing Pacific salmon populations that are already in crisis. This calls into question the future viability of salmon runs and fisheries along the Pacific coast of North America from California to Alaska.
A Changing Environment
The impacts of climate change are accelerating and further stressing Pacific salmon populations that are already in crisis.
A future in which resilient salmon can flourish and salmon populations can support harvest in the face of climate change depends on forward-looking management, innovative science, dramatically increased funding, and significantly greater collaboration and information sharing across a wide geographic range.
Creating this future will require an unprecedented expansion of coordination and effort to catalyze improved outcomes for salmon and benefits to salmon-reliant communities.
While there are many valuable climate adaptation efforts underway at the watershed and basin-levels, we need to step back and look collectively at the impacts on salmon across their natural range: south to north and from trees to seas. From that view we can assess critical opportunities to identify, collaborate, and solve shared challenges.
There is also an urgent need to increase public support for implementing resilience measures and to facilitate the exchange of solutions, new technologies, and best practices.
Time to Take Action Together
We are calling for the creation of a region-wide, transboundary, coordinated response to climate change.
Long Live the Kings, the Pacific Salmon Foundation, Salmon Defense, and our partners are launching a decades-long Salmon and Climate Initiative to coordinate and activate solutions to cross-cutting climate impacts for Pacific salmon across their home range from the Sacramento River in California to the Yukon River in Alaska.
Together, leaders from Tribal, First Nations, state, provincial, and federal governments, academia, NGOs, communities, and the fishing industry will identify, prioritize, fund, and implement actionable solutions for salmon in Western North America. The Salmon and Climate Initiative will improve prospects for the long-term sustainability of salmon and steelhead, while strengthening ecosystem resilience and salmon reliant communities.
Inspire
INSPIRE regional collaborative efforts and foster innovations to identify, develop, and ACCELERATE SOLUTIONS to salmon recovery in the face of climate change.
- Amplify innovative and effective solutions developed at the local and basin scale.
- Provide leadership and a cooperative environment to set ambitious goals and eliminate barriers related to salmon recovery and climate change.
- Fill gaps in knowledge or management systems to inform and advance major regional actions.
- Share knowledge and foster a transboundary understanding of the challenges facing salmon.
- Create informed and proactive strategies for planning, management, and recovery actions across the region.
Action
PROVIDE a compelling case for additional FUNDING to implement MORE salmon resiliency ACTIONS, FASTER.
- Provide solutions to funders and policymakers that significantly increase the number, scope and rate of major projects completed to advance recovery and facilitate adaptation of salmon across the region.
- Develop the cross-jurisdictional, regional case that increased public and private funding is needed to enable solutions that scale with robust regional economic activity and related threats.
- Bring regional leaders to meet with major philanthropic funders to champion the benefits of a west coast wide response to climate impacts on salmon.
- Coordinate educational opportunities for law and policy makers to establish the value proposition of increased funding for actions that support resiliency of both people and fish.
Unify
UNIFY regional efforts and RESPOND to changing ecosystems by SHARING DATA, standardizing monitoring approaches, and supporting COORDINATED DATA ANALYSES, reporting, and storytelling.
- Coordinate efforts to unify data collection, and management from California to Alaska to inform resilience actions.
- Produce regular, comprehensive reports for decision-makers that explain climate impacts and the actions needed for management and recovery.
- Develop a joint, regional communi-cations campaign for multiple audiences that increases understanding of the combined impacts of our human footprint and climate change on salmon and salmon reliant communities.
- Gain local support by sharing the story of the current and future impacts of climate change on salmon in specific river basins.