On the Move

[theme music]

Host, Leah Palmer: Welcome to On the Move, a podcast mini-series about wild animals, their amazing migrations, and how people are finding ways to free them up from all the things standing in their way. I’m Leah Palmer, a storyteller at The Nature Conservancy.

[birdsong]

Host, Leah Palmer: On an early Spring morning in Ellsworth Creek, scientists at The Nature Conservancy captured a chorus of birdsong in the iconic, moss-draped rainforest. For six weeks, devices placed by scientists recorded the sounds of the forest and snapped photos of animals when triggered by motion. These sounds and photos helped them understand biodiversity and animal movement in the forest.

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams:  So, it’s like the dawn chorus. When the sun first comes up, birds just like go wild.” It's amazing. And they're just all singing at the same time. And people don't really know why, which I think is such a cool, I mean, there's all sorts of theories, but it's another one of those things that's just like intrinsic... animals loving life, you know, or like, like just existing in the world.

Host, Leah Palmer: That’s Maia Murphy-Williams, associate director of science at The Nature Conservancy in Washington, introducing me to the concept of life histories. Life histories is a scientist’s term, encompassing the strategy plants and animals use to survive on the planet—their behavior at different ages, reproductive patterns, seasonal movements, everything we expect to happen before they die.

In six weeks that Spring, Maia and her team captured over 91 distinct birdsongs in the forest, and they’re identifying more as the study continues. She cautions me about giving human qualities, motivations, or emotions to animals, but to me, their calls sound joyful, connected, content. Here’s the interesting thing: if Maia recorded birds singing in the same forest at a different time—say in Winter—the sounds would be entirely different. That’s because, like many creatures on the planet, birds... are on the move.

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Host, Leah Palmer: Migrations have always inspired us. But our planet is changing. What does that mean for the way animals come and go with the seasons? I decided to find out.” Over the next six episodes, I take you with me on my learning journey. More than a dozen top experts agreed to sit down and shed light on the way animals pursue historic migrations, playing out their life histories in our modern world. I’m Leah Palmer, a storyteller for The Nature Conservancy, and you’re listening to “On the Move.”

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Host, Leah Palmer: So, what is a migration anyway? A quick google search defines migrations as “seasonal movement of birds or animals from one region to another.

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: “Birds, for example, migrate to seek food or get better temperatures to wait out the winter months. Whales migrate to warm waters to have their babies in a safe place and then they return to colder waters that have more food in different seasons. Smaller animals tend to move less. But, in the forest I study, the coastal temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, the larger the body of the animal typically the bigger home range they need so that means the more space they need to live out what we call their life history strategy.”

Host, Leah Palmer: Maia grew up in Washington and has spent her career studying wildlife across the West. At The Nature Conservancy, she focuses on how conservation interventions affect wildlife.

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: “What else about me? My background's in wildlife science and I've always just had a real love for the creatures. But, when I was going through undergrad and grad school and my field work jobs, I kind of like had this nagging feeling of like I really care about wildlife and our wild spaces, but humans are in crisis too. The environmental template on which humans and animals depend is in crisis. And so, sometimes it felt kind of incomplete to just focus on wildlife in kind of the traditional academic setting. And, so that kind of led me away from academia, away from just studying one specific taxa or animal and towards looking at how climate change is affecting our landscapes and the wildlife that depend on it—just more broad conservation focused on people and nature. And that led me to The Nature Conservancy, where you do have the opportunity to look a little bit more “big picture” and how this all fits together. But I would say my first love is wildlife for sure and that continues to be a guiding force in the work that I do.

Host, Leah Palmer: My ears perked up listening to Maia talk about how both humans and nature are in crisis as the climate changes. Did you catch her mention of our environmental template and how it’s changing? Well, I did a little searching for a reliable definition and some context. First of all, our environmental template simply refers to the physical and chemical structure of a habitat. It includes temperature, light, soil, moisture, nutrient availability—basically all the characteristics of a place that allow life, yes even humans, to thrive. Maia says these key features of Earth are changing. But what’s causing this change? Well, I’m realizing that human actions—like our dependence on fossil fuels, our disruption of natural habitats and the pollution of our clean air and water—have rapidly reshaped this environmental template, pushing the needle on climate change further and faster than ever before. The impact of that change is hard to fathom. More and more, people are experiencing climate disasters, dealing with the impacts of a warming climate, sea level rise and severe wildfire events. But, there are places in the Western U.S. where the impacts are hardly noticed, where the potatoes still grow and cities still bustle. Yet, underneath the veneer of normalcy, farmers are planting climate resilient crops outside the traditional growing season, and sportsmen can’t seem to harvest deer, elk or fish in the places they once always were. And if humans are changing the way we relate to our environments, I can assume animals are experiencing these changes too. Somewhere in our relentless pursuit of growth and development, humans modified habitats, initiated severe declines in biodiversity, and changed the planet forever.

Maia tells me a diverse ecosystem is essential to ecosystem health. The more diverse an ecosystem is the more resilient it is to disturbance and disruption. She tells me that monitoring biodiversity is a primary method for researchers to determine overall health of an ecosystem. Diversity is key for human and animal systems.

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: That's why it's really important that we're monitoring biodiversity on the landscape. And especially with climate change and changing land use practices. So with logging, with flooding, as the climate is changing and as humans increase their impact on the landscape. That changes where wildlife go, right? Where they shift, where they move. By monitoring wildlife biodiversity, we can get a sense of what's happening on the landscape, what areas might need our attention.

Host, Leah Palmer: There's a lot of listeners out there like me who maybe don't use the word biodiversity in their everyday conversations. And so I thought it'd be interesting to ask you, what does that even mean?

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: Yeah, that's a great question. And maybe I'll start with a general definition of biodiversity. In general, it's a measurement of the number of species within a set geographic area. So say in your local park, there might be squirrels, there might be deer, there might be various types of birds. So it's counting the number of species. And then often there’s some um estimation of the amount of each of those species.

Host, Leah Palmer: Maia and I spent some time looking at photos she’s captured on motion-activated wildlife cameras.

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: Here it is. Look at that.

Host, Leah Palmer: Oh my goodness! Is this in Ellsworth?

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: This is Ellsworth. Yeah.

Host, Leah Palmer: It’s this beautiful, sun-dappled forest with a lot more mature trees and then, kind of following behind its mother, is this baby bear. Beautiful.

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: And it’s June first, is the date on the camera and the baby bear is teeny tiny. And so this guy was probably very fresh.

Host, Leah Palmer: Wow, well thanks for showing me. That’s a very special thing to see.

I still get giddy at the opportunity to talk with experts like her who have a pulse on animals, big and small, that move through TNC preserves in Washington. She showed me migrating songbirds in trees, cougars hunting a snack, baby black bears tumbling behind their mamas and becoming acquainted with their legs. I’m beginning to get a sense of what biodiversity really looks like. I can see just how important a healthy habitat is for living things to thrive.

This makes me think about ancestors in my family who live through dramatic migrations—some moves they chose, and others were imposed. When I think about wildlife migrations, I can’t help but see echoes of human movements too. I asked Maia if there was anything humans can learn from animal migrations.

Speaker, Maia Murphy-Williams: I keep coming back to this, the concept of connectivity, and how important that is for animals and especially as the physical landscape is changing. And that's kind of a parallel I see with human populations, right? Is like the climate, both the physical climate and the political climate is constantly changing. You know, an Elk or a grizzly bear has no idea if it's in Canada or the US, right? They’re also like going back and forth between borders.

I think what we can learn from animals is the arbitrary nature of modern borders. Because how an animal exists in space is looking for food, for community—if its an animal that is not solitary—for shelter, for all these things that both humans an animals need to exist. And that is what defines their geographical area, right? It’s not arbitrary borders that humans have imposed on the landscape. I mean, especially, you look at a lot of our states. I mean, some of them are squares. I lived in Colorado; it is a perfect square. And that is not something you see in nature ever. You see boundaries along mountain ranges, or along rivers, or along forests. So you think about.. back to our squirrel, or our elk, like what they need to survive...

I think that's something we can really learn from animals is that movement across borders to seek safety to seek shelter, seek a good life that we all deserve is just the most natural thing and it's been happening for millennia.

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Support comes from The Nature Conservancy. In the Emerald Edge, we support Indigenous and community leadership to restore coastal rainforests, protect wildlife and strengthen communities across Southeast Alaska, British Columbia, Oregon and Washington. Learn more at nature dot org slash Emerald Edge.

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Host, Leah Palmer: Experts have been studying wildlife migrations across borders, this “most natural thing” for a while now. But in the last few decades, their questions have changed in response to accelerated change in the climate. I sat down with Josh Lawler to discuss how new questions have informed what we know about animals on the move.

Host, Leah Palmer: Hi Josh. How are you?

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Good. How are you?

Host, Leah Palmer: I’m doing pretty well. Thanks for joining me and talking about wildlife migrations today.

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Yeah, I’m happy to. Thanks for having me.

Host, Leah Palmer: Of course. Well, Josh, before we jump in, I was hoping you might introduce yourself a little, maybe tell us your name and your title and what that means.

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Sure. So my name is Josh Lawler and I'm a professor at the University of Washington. I'm also the faculty director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens and I'm the co-director of something called Nature and Health. And all that means, I'm professor, I teach classes, I do research and then I help direct the academic activity that happens at our Botanic Gardens. And I help direct a group of researchers and practitioners who are interested in the connection between time spent in nature and our health.

Host, Leah Palmer: Wow, that sounds like really fascinating work and it must be something that's driven by passion. How did you get here?

Speaker, Josh Lawler: It is. So I've been interested in conservation, oh, probably since I was little. My parents used to take me on nature walks and hikes and every summer our summer vacation was camping on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Even though I grew up in the suburbs, I grew up spending a lot of time outside and had an appreciation for natural world since I was a kid.

Host, Leah Palmer: I came across Josh Lawler’s work through a collaborative mapping project he worked on with The Nature Conservancy, called Migrations in Motion. It’s a model that helped me visualize how historic migration pathways for birds, mammals, and amphibians may change as climate change accelerates and alters their usual habitats.

Now this isn’t your typical map—static, familiar, green, brown and blue. Instead, this map comes to life in streaks of magenta, cyan, and yellow. Visually, it’s nothing short of stunning. If you’d like to check it out, search Migrations in Motion map and it’ll come right up. Underneath this gorgeous science communication tool, there’s a message. Here’s Josh again.

Speaker, Josh Lawler: So many years ago, over 20 years ago, I was doing some research with the EPA and we were looking at where to protect biodiversity. And so we were trying to plan out where one might put parks and preserves and protected areas. And as I was doing that, I realized about the same time all the researchers working on those kinds of questions realized that climate change was going to move species around and that planning for where species are today might not be as effective as planning for where they might need to be in the future. And so I said, okay, instead of just using maps of where all these animals on plants are now, we should be using maps of where they're likely to be in the future.

Host, Leah Palmer: Hmm.

Speaker, Josh Lawler: And so that got me interested in that question. And I started doing the modeling that would project where species might need to go in the future. And so that map of all the streaks of color is an animation of lots of individual potential movements that species might need to make in any given place to get from where it's suitable climate-wise today to where it's going to be suitable climate-wise in the future.

Host, Leah Palmer: Okay, let’s pause here for a quick definition. Did you hear Josh say he “started doing the modeling?” Modelling allows scientists to create simplified representations of a complex world system. They help us visualize information that may be difficult to observe with the naked eye. Now you know! Let’s get back to my conversation with Josh. He’s about to really break it down for us.

Speaker, Josh Lawler: So what we started with was we started with roughly 3,000 species of vertebrates in North and South America. And for each one, we wrote an algorithm, a bit of computer code that asked what are the climatic conditions that that species exists in today? So, if we look at where the species is on the landscape—where is it warm enough, cool enough, wet enough, dry enough, as they have long enough summers, where are those conditions on the landscape? And that gave us an equation of those climate variables or environmental variables that would determine where the species is likely to be. And then we plugged into that equation, projected future climate data coming out of global climate models, general circulation models.

And that told us where on the landscape the species was likely to be in the future. So that's the sort of the basis for the modeling. And then on top of that, we said, OK, now we know where they are and we know where they're likely to need to be in the future. How do they get there? And that was a separate set of modeling where we modeled these little pathways from where they are today to where they're likely to be in the future. And that involved modeling how they might avoid things that most animals are probably not going to easily move through. And that's human parts of the landscape, such as big agricultural fields or highways or other built infrastructure. So then we modeled all these little potential movements across the landscape that avoided those things for each of those different species.

Host, Leah Palmer: It's fascinating. I imagine along the way you were surprised by some of the things you ended up modeling in this final result. Can you talk to me about what you learned and describe an aha moment that you had as you doing this research?

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Sure. Yeah, there are maybe two things that stood out to me. One is that if you look at that map, there are some clear pathways that emerge, and I don’t think we really expected that. In retrospect, we probably should have expected that because there are portions of the continent that are going to facilitate movement and those that aren’t. But there were very clear pathways that showed up: one in Western North America that went from Mexico all the way up into Canada, following the Rockies and up through the Canadian Rockies. It was sort of a Yellowstone to Yukon pathway that went all the way down to the Yucatan. So, that was impressive to us—it was this long pathway that we didn't quite expect to be so prominent. And then in the Eastern US, the Appalachian Mountains stand out as a potential route for species moving north.

So, how clear those pathways appeared was impressive to us. The other thing that was sort of an aha was at the same time we were doing this work, I had a student that was using those same models that tell us where the species might need to go. And she was looking at whether mammals in particular would be able to keep up, whether they'd be able to go as fast as they needed to go to get to the climates they needed to get to. So we had one group of people who was looking at how are they gonna move across the landscape, what routes, and then she was really interested in, well, can they even make it there in time? And so an aha that came out of that was that there would be a good percentage of mammals across North and South America that in any given place might not be able to move fast enough to get to those climates they need to get to.

Host, Leah Palmer: And what happens to an animal that maybe can't make it to more habitable conditions?

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Well, there several things. One is we might be able to make it easier for animals to move across the landscape. And so we could restore habitat. We can create corridors for them to move through. Because, you remember, some of the modeling involved landscape factors that they can and can't move through. So, removing some of those human barriers, bridges over highways or passageways through agricultural fields. Those kinds of things might help. We may need to pick some species up and move them. And that has in the past been a fairly controversial idea. In the past, it's been called assisted colonization or assisted migration. It's often now called managed relocation. And it all means picking up a species and moving it from where it is now to where it will need to be in the future so that it can survive.

And that's probably gonna be something we reserve for cases where there really is no other way to allow the plant or animal to move. But those are some things we can do. And , even though we found that there were a lot of places where species couldn't keep up, there were other places in the species range where they might be able to keep up. And so it may mean prioritizing protection or management for certain parts of the landscape where certain species have a better chance of keeping up.

Host, Leah Palmer: Now, if you’re like me, you might have some alarm bells going off. It’s troubling to think that the 3,000 species Josh studied may be motivated by climate change to pick up and leave their current home ranges to find more suitable habitat. This situation seems urgent. The good news is Josh thinks there’s a lot of things humans can do to support plants, marine animals, birds, and mammals that are already relocating in surprising directions. Scientists and conservationists are working overtime to do their part. They’re reducing our carbon footprint by siting renewable energy sources, advocating for policy that protects nature, and working with Earth’s natural ability to store carbon and other harmful emissions before they degrade our atmosphere; this is sometimes called Natural Climate Solutions, by the way.

But, have you ever wondered what you can do to make an impact? While I had Josh's attention, you know I had to ask.

Host, Leah Palmer: I wanted to just kind of get into your thinking about how we mitigate climate change. And, I think I'm a lot like most of our listeners, where we hear that this is happening and it feels daunting and maybe induces like grief even at a really extreme level—or maybe that's not the most extreme response; maybe that's a very healthy response. But it sort of feels like something that's out of my hands. And I was just curious, you know, you talked about what some of our experts are doing, but what could just everyday people like me be doing?

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Our personal choices throughout the day can help too. And how we choose to get from place to place. Not everybody can bike or walk to work or places, but some of us can take buses and public transportation. And, uh, and even the type of fuel we put in our car, whether we have electric vehicles or we ride electric buses or those things all help. Um, even things like diet. So, meat tends to contribute more to emissions and carbon in the atmosphere than does a plant-based diet. And so the more we shift from a meat-based diet to a plant-based diet, the better it is for climate. So there are things like that. There are things like the light bulbs that we have, whether they're more efficient than the other devices in our home, how efficient they are. And so there are definitely things we can do on a personal level that reduce our own footprint. And one of the things, particularly for scientists, one of the things that increases our footprint is flying. So, travel—we all love to travel when we can—but that's one of the things that has a big impact on carbon in the atmosphere is flight because it uses so much fuel.

Host, Leah Palmer: That's a really good and helpful list. I think a lot of what you just mentioned is so actionable right away.

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Support comes from The Nature Conservancy. We’re working with communities toward clean energy solutions that protect wildlife and Western landscapes. Learn more at nature dot org slash care.

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Host, Leah Palmer: I'm curious if there's any one or two species that really just have a soft place in your heart. Or maybe a better way to frame that question is one or two species that are worth watching.

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Yeah. So I'm going to talk about one species here in the Pacific Northwest that I think everybody at least know its name if they haven't... they probably have not seen one in person   because they’re very elusive but the wolverine is a species that just comes down into Washington a bit. But we have them in Washington. They depend on snowpack in the winter and they depend on a fair amount of snowpack and they don't like people. So they're elusive they like to be farther from people and they need a fair amount of snowpack. And those are things that aren't good in today's world to need. It's dangerous to need those things. And so the projections of, we've done several different kinds of models for wolverine and they all show that things don't look good for wolverine. And that's what you see across the literature too. And so that's a species that I think we should watch out for and that we'll have to be very careful about if we want to keep them on the landscape.

Host, Leah Palmer: This may be a dumb question, but what's the importance of keeping a wolverine around?

Speaker, Josh Lawler: Yeah. So it's not a dumb question. And I mean, there's the question of like, why do we care about any one species? So I'll answer the Wolverine question. We've lost over time a lot of our carnivores, a lot of our, particularly our higher-level carnivores that are higher on the trophic scale. And those carnivores have an effect on everything else in the system.

So they affect the populations of ungulates or other herbivores. And those herbivores, when their population numbers grow, because they're not being preyed on as often by the missing predators, they can affect the landscape and affect the vegetation. And that, in turn, affects habitat for other species. And so even though it's one species, they play a role in a larger system.

And so losing those top predators, or losing any species that's playing its role in the system, can have an effect that's larger than just losing a species.

Host, Leah Palmer: Now, imagine just for a moment you’re in Josh’s position, knowing what he knows. How would you share your findings with the world? Well, he and his co-authors published a paper called “Projected Climate-Driven Faunal Movement Routes” in 2013. It served as source material for the map. I know from my work as a science communicator that for critical information to reach everyday people, sometimes you have to break the mold. That’s just what the Migrations in Motion map did.

My colleague Dan Majka is a developer for The Nature Conservancy, and he’s one of the masterminds behind the map. I emailed him to ask why he chose to share Josh’s data in such a unique way. Let me share a bit of his response:

Dan says he and his colleagues were influenced by an interactive wind map they loved and felt it was the first time they saw a map that made data come to life. They had the idea for the data visualization when Josh's paper first came out in 2013, it took a year or two to get funded, and then it sat on his computer for a year after he finished it because no one knew what to do with it.

Dan writes, quote “I think the remaining aesthetic choices I made—the layout and bold cyan, magenta, yellow, and black process colors used for the printing process—came from an interest in modernist and post-punk design aesthetics and feeling bored with naturalistic cartography. Most of the time, when I make maps I strive to make them align naturally with the world around us—blue water, green forests, etc. But most of my cultural interests align more with experimental art and music, and the Migrations map felt like a good opportunity to try something fun.”

Dan's innovative choices on this map earned him some distinction. In 2018, it was featured in a small exhibition in Paris. In 2022, it went on to be featured as a performance art piece at one of the world's most prestigious art and architecture exhibitions in Venice. Dan says he’s, quote, “The only scientist within TNC who had to sign a contract in French where I was where I was referred to as “L’Artiste," which is endlessly funny to me.”

[outro music]

I’m Leah Palmer and this On the Move: a podcast mini series about wild animals, their amazing migrations, and how people are finding ways to free them up from all the things standing in their way.

In the next episode of On the Move, we’ll explore seasonal salmon migrations, from the streams where they spawn, to the ocean where they feed, and their harrowing journey back home. Join me as I talk with experts who say human cultures are at risk when salmon migrations are threatened.

Special thanks to Maia Murphy-Williams, Josh Lawler, and Dan Majka for sharing their expertise. And thanks to my Storytelling team, the brilliant creatives behind On the Move. This episode was written and produced by Leah Palmer with support from Kate O’Neill and Dustin Solberg. Custom artwork was created by Erica Simek Sloniker with support from Mitch Maxson. Web and social production come from Danielle Kagan and Traci Swift. And more from this series at nature.org/onthemove.

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: Ne naniha, “my name is,” they call me Sammy Matsaw Jr. I'm an enrolled member of the Shoshone Bannock tribes. I say tsaan davai. So I don't know where anybody is in their day right now. So, I'll just say, “good day,” not good morning or good evening. I was raised in a salmon-based culture. And throughout my life, I've been challenged in this story of sort of my origins, at least with that, and seeing my father catch a salmon.

Host, Leah Palmer: Welcome back to On the Move, a podcast mini series about wild animals, their amazing migrations, and how people are finding ways to free them up from all the things standing in their way.  I’m Leah Palmer, a storyteller at The Nature Conservancy. You’ve been listening to Sammy Matsaw Jr., Director of the Columbia Basin Salmon Program at TNC. In this episode, you’ll hear from Sammy and other experts whose work supports the complex migrations salmon make, and who are helping to ensure these incredible species persist for generations to come.

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr. My first experience was seeing a salmon caught in a small stream in central Idaho and just not believing that story. So for me to witness that, and see a large fish—like a massive fish—coming out of these small streams, where I knew you could catch cutthroat trout, but to see that big fish come out was really the origins of me understanding what that means for us as a people as we take that food and we celebrate it and we eat it. And there’s a lot of storytelling that’s around that for us, as a people. In my own personal experience, is how does that expand out to larger into my academic pursuits in college and also my pursuits as a profession as a salmon ecologist and now as an Indigenous leader within The Nature Conservancy leading the Columbia Basin Salmon Program.

Salmon was scarce. They were really at a downfall. There was a deficit of salmon, and there has been since then, it’s just we've had some good years but mostly bad years and that was a bad year. We would go out with our spear poles. We have these long spear poles that we hunt salmon with. And the back ends of them, you’ll use to push  them under the banks to see if there’s a fish hiding under there. Because during the day they hide under the banks or they’ll hide in log jams. And we got to a hole and there was a salmon in there that my uncle found. And he calls my dad over to get it. And my dad spears it and pulls it out. But after walking in the stream all day in July, it seemed like a lot of work to get one fish. And so to see my dad pull that one fish out after we spent all that work through the day looking for a fish. It meant a lot. I could feel that. I felt that amongst our relatives that were there and our family, my dad was to feel really proud of himself that we finally got a fish. And it ended. That was it. We knew we had enough. There was fish in there. We could have found more. We could have kept going. It was just the one fish that we carried to our camp and we enjoyed that fish. So to me, it felt like the resource was being held in a way that as I understood later was that we take what we need and no more. And so that one fish—being able to share that ith everybody and make sure everybody had some to eate was.. It felt very special. It felt really.. The idea of like sacred. It felt like something sacred, like we were honoring this animal by making sure we remember our culture and our way of life through our mouth and the ways that we bring food into our ceremonies and our life and our bodies. But also just to carry that on to know that there's more fish out there. We could go get them, but we're not going to do that. We just want this one fish just to make sure the culture continues on. That was important to me.

Host, Leah Palmer: How old were you then?

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: I was about nine, ten years old then. Fourth or fifth grade. It was in that range, yeah.

Host, Leah Palmer: Sammy holds a PhD in Water Resource Science & Management from the University of Idaho in Moscow. He is a combat veteran, who saw deployments in Iraq as an Infantry team leader and sergeant. Throughout his career, he served as a research scientist for the Shoshone-Bannock Fish and Wildlife Department and also as a Tribal leader on the Fort Hall Business Council.

His work at TNC comes at a critical time for salmon in the Columbia River Basin, which are now on the verge of extinction. This Basin spans over 250,000 square miles in British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Historically, the Basin was known for its abundant salmon runs, reaching an estimated 16 million fish in the rivers and streams annually. In this region, salmon are inextricably linked to economic wellbeing, healthy forests, rivers, and ocean ecosystems. Their migrations have sustained industry, recreation, rural communities and thriving Indigenous cultures for millennia, so much so that many Indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest consider themselves “Salmon People.”

But in the early 1900s we see a rise in human impact on the land and waters where salmon migrate. Humans built affordable and low-emission hydropower, new transportation infrastructure and irrigation technology for agriculture. This innovation came at a significant cost to salmon. Today salmon habitats are degraded and disconnected, with studies confirming we’re running out of time to save the species in the Columbia Basin.

I sat down with Sammy, to find out what it means to be part of a salmon-based culture and to explore his strategy to salmon recovery. I found his approach isn’t only about removing physical barriers to their migration. It’s about removing relational barriers that divide recreational river users, rural communities, industries and Salmon People. These groups haven’t always agreed on a best path forward for salmon. The good news is despite sometimes clashing worldviews, these parties have one thing in common: this is a species none of us can afford to lose.

Before we explore these clashing worldviews, I think it’s important for listeners to know what a healthy salmon migration looks like and how these fish became a cultural icon. Here’s more from our conversation.

[river sounds and music]

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: So the salmon is born in a small stream, high in the mountains usually, cold clean water. The mother buries the eggs in gravel, like a nest to protect it. Inside of that gravel bed, it's taking the yolk sac and it's eating that. Once that yolk sac disappears, it starts eating on its own. It emerges from that gravel and starts gathering its own food. It stays in the stream for a year to two years, as it’s starting to move out to the ocean. It goes through a smolting, what they call it. And that high amount of hormones going through its body helps it imprint wherever it turns back to.

So it stresses every time it goes into a new water system that it doesn't recognize through its nose and its eyes and its ears and its sensories, it spikes in hormones that then imprints on it where it was from. And so when it goes out to the ocean, gathers all of this food, gets really big, comes back as an adult, it goes back to the imprinting as a map and has its own way of unfolding the story of how it was born and brought into the world goes back to usually within that same stream it was born in and reproduces itself and starts the process all over again.

Host, Leah Palmer: How does this process and its repetition over time form culture?

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: For Indigenous peoples, if you look at the stability of their knowledge systems and how much they grew. So our knowledge system has all of these teachings in them, and governance, and science and the things that we hold dear in any society. And that gets reflected in art and regalia and customs, protocols, traditions. And so all of that stability and how those societies are structured really comes from that salmon-based culture, from this very special animal and its behavior. We explain it in biology or in the sciences that... the life history. SO that knowledge system comes from observing behavior becomes really seminal to the complexity of the governance and all the things that I mentioned earlier.

Host, Leah Palmer: So, what world view clashes with the Indigenous knowledge system Sammy is describing, and how has this clash impacted salmon? Well, according to Sammy, this is best understood when you look at language structures.

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: Most Indigenous languages are based in verbs, so thousands of verbs and less than thousand nouns, whereas the English language that we currently speak through is thousands of nouns and less than a thousand verbs.

Host, Leah Palmer: Sammy explains that noun-based language systems, like modern English, value what a thing is, in contrast to another thing. Verb-based languages, like what's spoken by Salmon People, tend to value a thing, not for what it is but for what it does—its unique relationship to the people and world around it.

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: The real focus is on behaviors of things. How do these things move? How are they connected? That's why relationality and relationships becomes the basis of our knowledge systems. Like how does relationality really start to shape the way that we're networking within that seasonal round throughout time?

Host, Leah Palmer: Sammy says that when noun-based knowledge systems first settled in the Americas, the course of salmon migrations along the Columbia River Basin was fundamentally changed. Dams and other infrastructure became new barriers to successful salmon runs.

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: So we're in this point, right? We've had colonialism for the last 500 years. Since then, there's been this impact between a noun and a verb thought world. Specifically, under that larger umbrella, as we see barriers to movement for big animals like salmon or bison being able to move across large landscapes. So salmon that are now born in those small streams here in central Idaho have to go through eight dams to go out to the ocean and then return to those eight dams back as adults. So 16 dams that they have to go through. Each time they come to a dam, their mortality reduces. So a female will have up to 4,500 eggs, but the survivability is lower than replacement. Because of those dams,  very very very low numbers. Actually, we're trending towards extinction.

Host, Leah Palmer: So, if part of Sammy’s work is to advocate for removing these barriers to salmon migration, his conversations begin with understanding the deeper reasons behind their presence on the landscape.

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.:  It feels like where we’re at now in the 21^st century is we’re starting to understand these two different thought worlds and how they touch. And we can actually review some of these barriers and say, are they really delivering the things that are desired? Does it really help with flood control? Does it help with energy production? Does it help with agriculture? And if it doesn’t, and we can reduce some of these barriers and also have salmon, it seems to make sense that some of these barriers should be considered for removal. Because it was at a time of great American idealistic expansion, these artifacts and histories of moving manifest destiny forward. So you have these monuments to that. But, I realized that there's a cultural connection from, you know, white settlers as they view those, there's a cultural connection to those. It's a reflection of their grandfathers and the people before them. And to remove them is like, it's the same impacts we felt once they, as those dams went in, we seen our cultural artifacts go underneath the water of those dams. So we're now at a place where we're trying to understand like, how do we recognize and honor both cultures?

I think we can talk about all the desired sort of outcomes from what a dam does. But I think it's the history that underlies that, that makes people feel nostalgia, sentiment. And those are big human issues about what I talk about is what are real barriers and sort of joke around about which day you wear your sweats on.

We joke around, me and my wife. Like, there’s that scene in Mean Girls when they’re at lunch, and Regina’s wearing her sweats. And it’s like you’re not supposed to be wearing sweats today. And she’s like I just made that rule up.

Host, Leah Palmer: Yeah! It’s Wednesday! [laughter]

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: Yeah. [laughter]

Host, Leah Palmer: That’s funny. It’s arbitrary.

Speaker, Sammy Matsaw Jr.: Some of it can be arbitrary.

The nitty gritty is that we have centuries of sidestepping the sovereignty of Tribes, more importantly, the Supreme law of the land treaty rights. And that kind of governance being sidestepped is just that. It's a disconnect from nature because that connection to nature is a governance of nature. It's a governance that holds hands with nature. And so trying to undo some of those systemic issues that come up that are rooted in really difficult topics to deal with that are triggers for people. We understand that there are triggers and we need to continue to engage in them and be comfortable in the discomfort so that we can get to point points of equity rather than resolution. Having those stories over and over and actually working through them and getting us to a place where people aren't afraid or fearful of nature or even having a relationship with Indigenous peoples really gets us into a place where we can reshape policy because that's the permeable part where things become really real and dams get put in place. But it's also the place where things can happen, where dams can get removed. But there's a culture that undergirds that policy for us to understand and start to negotiate with that really puts us in a place where we talk about equity in real meaningful ways that not only benefits Tribes, but their neighboring communities. And so I would hope that as we think about doing that kind of work together and having those uncomfortable conversations that there's a goal in mind. It’s not that I’m just in here to be beat on or hear triggering language or feel like, you know, I’m the bad guy. I don’t think it’s about bad guys or even good guys. It's about the human experience and where we are in our history and how we understand that now. And what does it mean for future generations and our children? If we say those things are important, those two things—our young people, which give us hope, and the lands that we live upon, that we see beauty in.

As neighbors we need to really think realistically about what do we want for the places that we call home? And really importantly thinking about the places that we call home, the places where we step out the door and we feel a sense of belonging. We feel a sense of holding a salmon on a stream bank and bringing that home to our dinner tables and sharing that with our families. I think that commonality in that thread about belonging through that kind of animal connection and connection to nature and a connection to a place when you step out the door you say this place is so beautiful.

Why would I want to ruin this?

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Support comes from The Nature Conservancy. In the Columbia River Basin of the Pacific Northwest, we’re supporting Indigenous leadership to restore and  ensure healthy salmon migrations for generations to come. Learn more at nature dot org slash Columbia Basin.

Host, Leah Palmer: To learn more about salmon recovery on the Columbia Basin, I reached out to Sammy’s colleague, Jason Nuckols to explore a landscape that’s critical to salmon habitat.

Speaker, Jason Nuckols: Yeah, it's been a long journey of a lot with The Nature Conservancy over a few decades. My background is a terrestrial ecologist. I was trained in plant ecology and fire ecology and I started out of graduate school working in prairies and savannas and doing that type of restoration really, you know, upland based work, you know, and over time, I think in the Pacific Northwest, you just get sucked into water pretty easily if you're not watching out. And I'm a water person. I love being in rivers and creeks and lakes and ponds and everything. And so when the opportunity came around to work on freshwater restoration, I just jumped right in.

Host, Leah Palmer: Jason is the Estuaries and Fresh Water Project Manager at TNC in Oregon. Estuaries are liminal spaces, where fresh water and seawaters meet. As water levels rise and fall with the tides, deep channels cut through grasslands and mudflats, delivering a perfect mix of nutrients for juvenile salmon. I like to call estuaries “the marshy middle.”

Speaker, Jason Nuckols: You hit the nail on the head. Marshy middle and places that are transitional and land and water at the same time. That's so true and I think that's what drives me there because you get a little bit of everything. I’ve always loved the saying that you can never step into the same river twice, and I think that same holds true for estuaries, maybe even more so. There's that daily tidal exchange where you have two highs and two lows that makes the environment so dynamic and so extremely different. I don't think I'll ever get used to water flowing in two directions twice a day. It's just, I'll never use that. Yeah, like you said, the salt water goes in, fresh water comes off our coast range, it mixes with the salt water, it all heads back out to sea. The depths, the water depths in our estuaries are changing so fast within minutes. So then that translates to habitats changing as well. You can witness something like a mud flat being created almost instantly. And then within hours, it disappears to open water again, just as you were saying. So this environment, it can also be hostile at times, at that huge water exchange and the wind and the waves. But if you're out there long enough and you're watching like some of our wildlife, marine mammals like harbor seals or our shorebirds, they take it all in stride. It's like they're just going up to a buffet, you know, with not a care in the world. And I think there's this historical, I don't want to miss this point, historical and cultural piece to estuaries as well, because estuaries were the settling grounds for people throughout history. This is where we went because they provided abundant food and transportation. So there's some of the oldest cultural places on earth too.

Host, Leah Palmer: You know, there's this term that comes up when you get into talking about estuaries, especially in relationship to how they can facilitate salmon migrations. And it is this term “salmon meta-nursery.” And for anybody like me who doesn't normally speak like that, I just have to pause and ask you, what does that mean?

Speaker, Jason Nuckols: [laughter] Yeah, well that's a good question. I don’t think the majority of people know, and it’s a fairly new term too, so don’t count that against yourself.  Well, you know, our estuaries are truly the nurseries. They're nurseries for our oceans and where our rivers come together. That mixing of the fresh and the saltwater, it creates that nutrient-rich environment, and it supports so much plant and animal life. It's in our estuaries that these juvenile salmon can slow down, rest, feed and grow larger before going out to the ocean. And the reason that's important is that we know that we lose the majority of our young salmon in those first few weeks when they go out to the ocean. And so you think about it, juvenile fish leaves our rivers and our estuaries and they're larger and healthier. They have a higher chance of surviving and then returning as adults. And then that term meta-nurseries is a really recent term. It's being used to describe how juvenile salmon are using multiple nurseries, not just their natal stream, that stream that they were born into. So this is a great, I guess, example of how we're still learning about salmon migrations. I don't know if you remember this or maybe you were taught that simple salmon circle of life diagram. It's, you know, the circle, the salmon are born into the headwaters of the streams, they migrate out to sea, they spend a few years in the ocean, and then they come back as adults.

Real simple. It's too simple. In reality, some of these salmon are exhibiting life histories and migratory patterns that are much, much more complex. They're going in and out, they're coming back, they're popping into different nurseries, different freshwater habitats, so that they can grow and rest and things like that. So we're kind of blowing that salmon circle of life apart right now. And this matters because these meta nurseries are providing more places for salmon to utilize and more life histories for these species. That bolsters the populations and it makes them more resilient to changing conditions. So it's a new concept and it's changing the way we think.

Host, Leah Palmer: Wow, so the idea sounds like in these meta –nurseries, we’ve kind of expanded the way we think about where salmon go in order to thrive and survive and complete their life history. And so what I'm hearing from you is that estuaries are becoming integrated into that conversation. Is that right?

Speaker, Jason Nuckols: That's correct. Yeah, a lot of people will say that, that juvenile stage and that rearing and our estuaries and that habitat type, the, the tidal wetlands of our estuaries are the limiting bottleneck for our salmon in many places. So the more work we do, the more effort we put into connecting those places and making for healthy estuaries, the better we're going to do for juvenile fish. And therefore, like I said, returning adults. Yeah.

Host, Leah Palmer: Well, I'm really interested in this part you were talking about where estuaries are sometimes the bottleneck to a healthy life history. So can you break that down for me?

Speaker, Jason Nuckols: Yeah. Well, I guess, going back to that point that I was mentioning about this estuaries are where people settled throughout time along our coasts because of access to food, access to water, access to transportation. They're also some of our most endangered systems now or the systems that have been manipulated the most. So in those tidal wetlands, to make them even better for people, working landscapes and towns and railroads and... We did a lot of draining and a lot of transitioning from a healthy tidal system to a levied or diked and a drained system. So the majority of our estuaries are not only privately held by people, but they're also being used for a lot of different purposes right now. So there's a lot of competing interests. And when we dike and we drain and we levy the estuaries, we're just cutting off that access to juvenile fish. And so what we're trying to do is to open up some of those areas, reconnect the tidal floodplain and the tidal wetlands back to the rivers so that have, so that fish have access. So we spent a lot of time on fish passage, connectivity, and adding that complexity back into the estuaries and the fish respond really well when it happens.

Host, Leah Palmer: Jason tells me his work to restore coastal wetlands has paid off. Just this year, juvenile salmon, born in their natal streams in southern Oregon, were tagged. He and his team found these fish accessed recently restored coastal estuaries as they migrated to and from the ocean. Without these restoration efforts, the water in the estuaries would not have been available previously.

Speaker, Jason Nuckols: So it's just amazing that the impact of the work in an estuary on the southern Oregon coast benefits fish inland and up the Columbia basin hundreds and hundreds of miles away. That was really game-changing. It tells me that our work conserving and restoring estuaries is larger than we realized. And it makes you feel really, really good that the impact is not only local, but it's benefiting those fishes and wildlifes that are in places we have yet to identify.

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Host, Leah Palmer: Now, my exploration of salmon migrations leads me to a place where salmon populations are unlike anywhere else in the world. In Bristol Bay, Alaska, summer salmon runs see tens of millions of fish returning to the rivers and streams where they were born. The Bay’s certified-sustainable commercial fishery boasts a 2.2-billion-dollar industry, where half the world’s wild salmon are harvested, feeding people around the globe. I reached out to my friend Katie Moore, Bristol Bay conservation coordinator for TNC in Alaska, to learn more.

Katie grew up in the Bay, steeped in her family’s Yup’ik fishing and harvesting traditions. She earned a degree in Environmental Studies from Fort Lewis College and has worked at the intersection of land-care and community-care throughout her career. At TNC, she facilitates the exchange of traditional ecological knowledge between local Indigenous communities and conservationists, always rooted in kindness and reciprocity.

Speaker, Katie Moore: So in 2025, this past summer, we had almost 50 to a little over 51 million salmon returned to the watershed. I am from the Nushagak River and in the Nushagak River, we saw about 15 million salmon return to that watershed. Now the Nushagak River is home to a lot of communities. It's about 280 miles long. But that run is... The whole town, the whole region comes alive in the summertime. You know, we get, seems a little quiet in the winter and everyone's kind of tucked in because it's really cold. But in the summertime, that whole place just comes alive and you can feel the energy. Like it's the town is buzzing and you get off the plane and people are just excited. And we see an influx of thousands of people in the summer, I think in Dillingham specifically during the winter we have about 2,500 people there, but in the summertime it jumps to like seven to nine thousand. That's just from yeah that's just from fishermen and people that are working in the canneries and on tenders. 

I can't describe the feeling of  seeing your net be full other than just like satisfaction. You know you're gonna make some money to take home for the winter, or you know that your freezer is gonna be full you get it's a it's a really beautiful sight to see and to know that this salmon run is still thriving and still producing sockeye salmon numbers in the same way that it has for thousands of years.

Host, Leah Palmer: I know that you work in an area called Bristol Bay, and I don't know much about that place at all. Would you take a moment and just describe what it is and what it represents to you?

Speaker, Katie Moore: Yes, absolutely. Bristol Bay is in Alaska and it's a really large geographical region. I think people say it's relative to the size of the state of Ohio. We have 31 federally recognized Tribes who call this place home, and I think there are around 30 communities here with over 7,000 year-round residents. And that's a very large area with a relatively few number of people. Despite that, the Indigenous cultures that have lived on this land have stewarded this place for, since time immemorial.

And Bristol Bay to me is just home. It's just that.

Host, Leah Palmer: I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about what it's like to come from a place that really orients itself around seasons and specifically those moments where salmon are doing different things in the waterways.

Speaker, Katie Moore: Yeah. So salmon in Alaska, especially in Bristol Bay, are a keystone species. In the summertime, when they return to our rivers from the ocean, they bring a lot of nutrients with them. And when they pass on, they give those nutrients to the places that they pass on in. And you know, you can find salmon DNA in trees, they support entire food webs and cultures and communities. You can find salmon DNA in like the tiniest microorganisms—to a 900-pound grizzly bear. And my people, Yupik people, we're here because of that relationship to the salmon. They not only feed us, but they teach us respect and about not over-harvesting, the value of sharing and about reciprocity. Beyond harvesting, salmon are also the lifeblood of the communities in Bristol Bay. Our local economies are extremely dependent on them and would not be there without the commercial fishing industry. Beyond that though, they do help to strengthen our community bonds from sharing your catch, your subsistence catch with elders who maybe aren't able to fish anymore themselves or just to spend time with family and process fish together.

One of my favorite things to do in the summertime is hang out with my mom and I think I was 18 and I hung her a net, so I put all the cork line and the lead line together. I made her this net, which she doesn't use anymore because she's an elder herself now. And she would say that, so that's why I'm calling her an elder. But yeah, now we just process fish together. And my dad will bring her, you know, like 100 sockeye. And we put on some music, and we just have a good time.

I think that time spent doing physical labor for food that is going to last her throughout the winter really connects us, but it also connects us to these beings that gave their life to feed us. When you feed your family that way, and when you feed yourself that way, there's this respect  that you can't help but to feel because when you buy meat from a grocery store it's easy to feel very disconnected from the animal that gave its life, but when you're going from either receiving fish that someone caught or you're going out and catching the fish yourself and then you're transporting it home and you're processing it and putting it away and taking time to do that, you really get a sense of all the work that goes into feeding yourself and feeding your community.

Host, Leah Palmer: Katie tells me abundant salmon runs in Bristol Bay bring a lot of attention. Environmental nonprofits, researchers and the mining industry look to the area’s abundant natural resources with intention to extract—siphoning stories, co-opting traditional ecological knowledge, transferring fishing permits held by families for generations and seeking profit for outside-interests. Beneath Bristol Bay’s winding rivers lies one of the world’s richest deposits of copper, gold and molybdenum, with an estimated value of nearly half a trillion dollars. Katie says extractive and transactional relationships with outside organizations have resulted in broken trust.

Speaker, Katie Moore: Historically, when an environmental nonprofit or organization or just a research entity comes into Bristol Bay, but Alaska Native communities, they come in with a goal in mind with no care for what the community would like to see and often no care for the community period. There have been research entities that come into place and have absolutely no interaction with the Tribes and peoples of the lands that they are on and who own those lands, they come in, take some data, take whatever they need, and then leave without any recognition of those that live there. And sometimes they're even crossing like legal boundaries of people's own property.

Host, Leah Palmer: The Nature Conservancy is committed to taking a different approach by incorporating Indigenous knowledge into its conservation priorities, while considering the long-term impact on the local community.

Speaker, Katie Moore: So something that I think TNC has been very mindful of is wanting to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into their work. And I think that they've made steps in the right direction to ensure that that not only happens, but that it's done in a good way. We're either compensating our knowledge holders fairly or we're seating them at the table to drive the changes that they would like to see.

I feel that is the only way to do that work in a good way.

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Support comes from The Nature Conservancy. In Alaska’s Bristol Bay, we’re working with local and Indigenous communities to protect the world’s most important wild salmon nursery. Learn more at nature dot org slash Bristol Bay.

Host, Leah Palmer: You know, I think it'd be lost on me if I didn't ask you, what is it that these outside people or organizations are flocking to Bristol Bay or other communities in Alaska to see or witness or learn?

Speaker, Katie Moore: I mean, a lot of times it is salmon. And I guess maybe for outside of Bristol Bay, it's just to see this environment that is pristine. I won't say untouched because the Indigenous stewards of that land have cared for it and that's why it is the way that it is, but these places that are largely pristine and extremely healthy. And I think that for Bristol Bay, a large part of that is, I know, is the salmon run that happens every year. And we felt the effects of that.

Host, Leah Palmer: Katie’s work in the Bay focuses on rebuilding broken trust after this history of extractive research and conservation. She helps local communities plan for a sustainable future that benefits the local economy. Under her facilitation, the community works through a strategy called “lateral kindness,” a trauma-informed response to lateral violence.

Lateral violence is a specific type of conflict experienced between community members and is sometimes referred to as “violence against your own.” To understand this term, I sought information from the National Indigenous Women’s Resource center. They define lateral violence as, “aggressive or damaging actions” between individuals within oppressed societies. It's often a sure sign of intergenerational trauma and a competition for resources that can impact mental, emotional and physical health and destroy the important process of transferring traditional knowledge and culture within an Indigenous community. On the flip side, lateral kindness work strengthens kinship by acknowledging the true sources of a community’s issues. And it works to break down internalized oppression while restoring traditional practice as a means to heal.

Katie tells me her primary aspiration at TNC is to work with Indigenous partners in the Bay, advocating for their basic needs to met and their community bonds to remain intact. She believes conservation can’t only be about protecting the world's last healthy salmon runs or preserving tundra ecosystems. Conservation must also take a local community’s wellbeing into account.

Speaker, Katie Moore: They know that there is change happening and that there is a need for either current systems to change or policy to change. I'm Yupik myself, I have some of this that I need to work through and it becomes very personal at that point. And it means like, it means that if I want my communities to share these conversations, it means I need to be a part of these conversations as well and I need to be self-aware. And I need to do my own healing work to be able to say, like, hey guys, it gets better, you know. It's really hard at first and it's really hard to be open and kind of get raw and vulnerable but I think the more that we can share that with our communities and say like it's okay to feel angry, it's okay to feel sad. I think that that is what will begin to heal those conversations and having a safe sleep place to have those conversations with our community without outside eyes prying in, even if it may be facilitated or supported by an outside organization.

You know, organizations like TNC, they can't do this work alone. The help of the local stewards of these places that we're working in. And the relationships with those people are essential in making sure this shared vision is a success. And to advocate for our lands and waters, the stewards of that land, the community members, they need to come together with a unified voice.

In Alaska, in our rural communities, we need access to mental health resources, food security, housing, jobs and economic safety net. When you're working in these places, you can't look very far into an issue without realizing how interwoven it is into web of other inequities, you know, climate change is changing our landscape. It's making hunting harder. That leads to food insecurity, which leads to people buying processed foods that are extremely highly priced grocery stores, and that people end up buying the cheapest foods they can because healthy foods are too expensive. And that leads to a rise in health issues, which leads to a rise in mental health issues. You know, if your physical being isn't well, your mental state is going to follow—or can. And it leads to a host of other things that our communities are facing every single day.

Yet, still we're asked to come to the table and share our knowledge about stewarding a place. And we do, we still do. And I think...when we start to look at these things in conservation, specifically more holistically, and when we heal wounds that divide us and we invest in relationships, we can find a shared purpose. And when we invest in our lands and waters, we are also investing in ourselves. Because they're inseparable from our identity as Indigenous people. And conservation in Indigenous communities is not just ecological, it's cultural, it is spiritual, it is communal. And that is why I fully believe that healing work is a strategy in conservation and it's not just an outcome. I think it is a driver and it's foundational for long-term stewardship.

Host, Leah Palmer: Thanks for listening to On the Move: A podcast mini-series about wild animals, their amazing migrations, and how people are finding ways to free them up from all the things standing in their way. In the next episode, we take flight, following long distance flyers from Alaska to Chile on the Pacific Flyway.

I want to extend my deepest gratitude to Sammy Matsaw Jr., Jason Nuckols and Katie Moore for sharing their knowledge and passion for salmon migrations and the communities that support them. And thanks to my Storytelling team, the brilliant minds behind every episode of On the Move. This episode was written and produced by Leah Palmer with support from Kate O’Neil and Dustin Solberg. Custom artwork was created by Erica Simek Sloniker with support from Mitch Maxson. Web and social production come from Danielle Kagan and Traci Swift. Find more from this series at nature.org/onthemove.