Help Protect Salmon There are many ways to give to The Nature Conservancy. We rely on your support to accomplish our ambitious conservation goals. Salmon Country Watch a showcase of videos featuring Conservancy work from Alaska to California to revive threatened salmon. Dive In Five Salmon Watersheds The Nature Conservancy has identified the five large watersheds most important for salmon survival in Washington. Click here to learn more and see a map. Salmon and Carnivores Salmon are vital food for an incredible array of other creatures. Click here for a slide show of carnivores and salmon in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest. Salmon spotlight: Chinook Click here for a profile of our largest species of salmon.

Salmon touch almost every region where The Nature Conservancy works in Washington, connecting our mountains and even the arid lands of eastern Washington to the sea.

Where salmon run, forests are healthier and so are the plants and animals that live there, from eagles to bears. If you take care of the salmon, you take care of the whole watershed.

As you can see in the The Nature Conservancy's collection of salmon country videos, we are working throughout Washington to ensure the survival of this icon of the Pacific Northwest.

The Skagit River

The Skagit River accounts for 20 to 30 percent of the fresh water flowing into Puget Sound. It’s home to the largest Chinook, chum, and pink salmon runs in Puget Sound, and is the only river in Puget Sound that supports all five native species of Pacific salmon and all eight species of anadromous fish.

The size of the river and its salmon runs make it the most important in maintaining the health of Puget Sound salmon.

Here, The Nature  Conservancy has developed one of the most robust and comprehensive conservation projects in the state. Its work is rooted in sound science as well as respect for the people who live, work and play here.

For more than 30 years, the Conservancy has worked high in the watershed, collaborating with partners to protect more than 15,000 acres of forest and river.

In more recent years, the Conservancy has worked with farmers, tribes and other local organizations in the Skagit River Delta to both preserve farmland and improve fish and wildlife habitat. In the pioneering Farming for Wildlife program, the Conservancy is partnering with Skagit Delta farmers to incorporate flooding into their crop rotations to create important wetland habitat as well as maintain family farms.

The Olympic Peninsula

The Hoh and the Queets rivers come rushing down from Mount Olympus and the Olympic rainforest. These are pristine glacial Olympic rivers, with such diverse habitat as alpine lakes and braided gravel river beds. They are also two of the best salmon fisheries on the west coast of the United States, with runs of coho, chinook, pink salmon and steelheads.

These rivers could play a greater role in the survival of salmon fisheries along the coast in the future, as they are likely to be among the salmon rivers least affected by climate change. The lack of intense development along the shores and in the deltas of these rivers, combined with the protected status of much of their headwaters in Olympic National Park, means that these rivers offer great hope for the future of salmon and the systems and people who depend on them.

The Conservancy is exploring how we can best support and contribute to this great heritage with technical expertise and experience gained from restoration work around the state, particularly in our Ellsworth Creek Preserve in southwest Washington.

Climate Change

Climate change could be the greatest threat to salmon throughout Washington – potentially warming the water in rivers, changing the flow of rivers and ocean tides in crucial estuaries, causing more intense storms, even affecting the forests that provide essential clean water.

The Conservancy has set up programs throughout the state to monitor the impacts of global warming on salmon populations, from saltwater marshes to the forests of the Cascade Mountains.

The mudflats and rich tidal marshes of the Conservancy’s 4,000 acre Port Susan Bay Preserve support hundreds of thousands birds and serve as a crucial nursery for young salmon. Here, the construction of dikes, upstream development and forest management, and climate shifts have changed water flows, and now parts of these rich marshlands are washing away.

In response, the Conservancy is working to restore natural river flows and has created a program to monitor and predict how global warming will affect this vital nursery. Our goal is to ensure that young salmon will continue to find shelter and food here as they always have, returning to spawn as healthy adults.

On the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains, Conservancy scientists are monitoring the growth of temperature-sensitive tree and shrub species to gauge how climate change is affecting the ecosystem. Shifts in climate are expected to cause shifts in habitat, and the Conservancy wants to ensure that its efforts will benefit salmon and other native species not only today, but also in a changing future. Their research will help determine future conservation priorities in this place and elsewhere.

Be sure to watch our Salmon Country videos to learn more about these three Washington landscapes and why we work there.

Nature picture credits:  Left to right, Photo © Bridget Besaw (Hoh River); Photo © Bridget Besaw (salmon).