The Power to Save Salmon

Oregon’s rivers, streams and wetlands are vital to salmon and to people—yet changes caused by agriculture, ranching, timber harvest, and urbanization have resulted in loss of critical habitat and degraded water quality.

Through the Salmon Habitat Support Fund—funded by Portland General Electric (PGE) customers—The Nature Conservancy and more than 60 conservation partners have supported 216 freshwater habitat restoration projects in Oregon, reintroducing healthy ecological processes to over 740 miles of rivers and streams and 2200 acres of riparian or floodplain habitat.

“The Salmon Habitat Support Fund is a great example of the impact people can make when they take a small action to achieve something bigger,” says Zach Freed of The Nature Conservancy. “Thanks to the PGE customers who support the Fund, dozens of conservation organizations have been empowered to make positive impacts on salmon habitat and water quality.”

The PGE Salmon Habitat Support Fund directly supported the Conservancy and partner organizations such as The Columbia Land Trust, an organization that used the Fund to reconnect the natural floodplain along Hood River after it had been cut off for nearly a century by the Powerdale Hydroelectric Dam. The restored floodplain provides side channels and rearing habitat for fall Chinook, Coho, and Steelhead, as well as migration habitat for spring Chinook and Bull trout.

The Johnson Creek Watershed Council used the Salmon Habitat Support Fund to remove barriers to fish migration in The North Fork of Johnson Creek and another recent grant went to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation for their work throughout the Willamette Basin on mussel-friendly habitat restoration to ensure the maximum benefit to salmon.