Then she moved to Seattle for a job with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. Orienting herself in the Salish Sea’s complex network of bays, lakes and fjords was a very different challenge. For help, she turned to salmon.

“Tracking where the salmon were helped me to figure out where I was in these strange new landscapes,” says Dr. Sullaway. “Salmon really helped me get to know both the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.”

Photo Credit: Photo courtesy Dr. Genoa Sullaway.

Wild Salmon Center Fisheries Analyst Dr. Genoa Sullaway.

As Wild Salmon Center’s new Fisheries Analyst, Dr. Sullaway leverages data to help us see where salmon are today—both physically, in oceans and rivers, as well as how they’re faring in a changing world. 

Below, Dr. Sullaway shares why she doesn’t take a “winner-takes-all” approach to salmon conservation, the big questions her research can answer, and why her home river gives her hope. 

“Tracking where the salmon were really helped me get to know both the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.”

Wild Salmon Center Fisheries Analyst Dr. Genoa Sullaway

Wild Salmon Center: Were salmon part of your early life? 

Dr. Genoa Sullaway: They weren’t, not really. Around San Diego, rivers are different. They’re pretty dirty, with lots of concrete. My first connection came from eating salmon, as food. But perhaps even more, from loving the ocean.

My family are water people. Driving down the hill from my parent’s house, you can see tidepools and kelp forests. I grew up surfing and sailing. It’s remained a big force in my life. In my spare time now, in Port Angeles where I live, I spend a lot of my time connecting with the ocean. I free dive for sea urchins, forage for shellfish, recreate on or near the water.

Do you have a favorite salmon memory?

Maybe the first time I went to Lake Iliamna, in Alaska. It was 2023. I was completing my PhD in Fisheries with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. My research focused on both Bristol Bay sockeye and chum populations in the Yukon River. 

We came into the inlet of Knutson Bay, and the water was so blue, so clear. That year, Bristol Bay recorded the biggest run of sockeye it had ever seen, and before me stretched what seemed like walls of red fish. From the boat it seemed like it went on forever. I think sockeye are still my favorite fish.

Photo Credit: Photo courtesy Dr. Genoa Sullaway.

Dr. Genoa Sullaway with a sockeye salmon in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.

What was the focus of your doctoral research?

Broadly speaking, I used models to understand how both climate change and anthropogenic factors impact salmon. 

For Lake Iliamna sockeye, for example, I was looking at how changes in climate impact when sockeye come back from the ocean. One of the things we found is that in warm years both in the lake and in the ocean, sockeye runs were returning younger. 

For Yukon chum, we looked at both climate and human factors, and how they impacted return numbers overall. It was clear from the data that these runs were struggling.

Zooming out: what would you say was your big takeaway? 

In salmon conservation, sometimes people try to pick winners and losers. It’s true that sockeye in Bristol Bay so far seem to be doing really well at adapting to climate change—especially as compared with Yukon chum, who we’ve seen to be feeling negative impacts from climate change at all stages of their life cycle. By the data, some might say that these runs are losing in the race to adapt.

But conversations like that can leave out a huge lever, which is fisheries management. Every year, we change how we manage different fisheries. These decisions are actually right in the middle of the winners and losers narrative. So what we do, as humans, can be huge in nudging even a so-called loser toward more successful adaptation.

“In salmon conservation, sometimes people try to pick winners and losers. But that can leave out a huge lever. What we do, as humans, can be huge.”

Wild Salmon Center Fisheries Analyst Dr. Genoa Sullaway

You joined the Wild Salmon Center team in late 2025. What convinced you?

The stronghold approach is pretty exciting to me. It’s relatively unique in the conservation space. It brings a more positive lens to salmon conservation, in protecting these ecosystems that really do give us so much, rather than focusing on direness and decline.

I’m also excited to have a seat at the table between many groups. Inside the agencies that manage fisheries, folks are really busy day in and day out. It can be hard for our partners to find time to develop new tools, or move toward more sustainable fishing practices. In this role, I can zoom out, look at the bigger needs.

What kinds of needs are you seeing?

There are a lot of questions that we can answer to help our partners be more strategic with their resources. For me, I can thread a lot of salmon ecology data that’s out there—like the genetics work of my colleague Dr. Tasha Thompson—with other datasets to help with these decisions.

“It can be hard for our partners to find time to develop new tools, or move toward more sustainable fishing practices. In this role, I can look at the bigger needs.”

Wild Salmon Center Fisheries Analyst Dr. Genoa Sullaway

Photo Credit: Photo courtesy Dr. Genoa Sullaway.

Dr. Genoa Sullaway, center right, with colleagues sampling salmon carcasses for research.

Take spring Chinook: we’re looking at questions like whether access to exclusive habitat is make-or-break for the persistence of these populations. When spring Chinook can access places that fall Chinook can’t reach, what magnitude of benefit do we see? These are insights that could be really useful.

There are many questions right now about marine salmon fisheries—particularly around stock interception in the ocean. Where specific stocks are, for example, and how many are being caught at sea? 

Answers are critical for fisheries to be able to adapt to climate change and the dynamics we’re seeing in salmon. With the Wild Salmon Center Science team, I’m working to pull together and synthesize data so that communities and fisheries can pursue more informed and equitable approaches to salmon management in a changing ocean.

Issues around salmon fisheries can be pretty fraught, especially between different nations and regions. How do you see your role?

Good science, in my view, can really help more people engage in processes like these. Conversations about salmon fisheries can be difficult and emotional. At Wild Salmon Center. I’m part of a team that’s deeply committed to sharing data in a fair way and helping people follow the science.

“Conversations about salmon fisheries can be difficult. I’m part of a team that’s committed to sharing data in a fair way and helping people follow the science.”

Wild Salmon Center Fisheries Analyst Dr. Genoa Sullaway

What kind of impact would you like to make with your research, in the coming years?

Ultimately, my hope is that my work can help drive change in fisheries management. For example, many managers today base escapement goals on the reproductive ability of an average salmon, salmon of a certain size. That average salmon size might be from the 1990s. And yet we know that fish are returning to rivers smaller and smaller. Smaller fish have fewer eggs. So these escapement goals might need to shift.

Since your boat trip to Knutson Bay, you’ve spent a lot more time in salmon rivers. What do these places mean to you today?

 

Photo Credit: Photo courtesy Dr. Genoa Sullaway.

Dr. Genoa Sullaway gets a little too close to a bed of mussels. Ouch! (Photo courtesy Dr. Genoa Sullaway.)

I live about 10 miles away from the Elwha River. I see it every day. I walk my dog there, gather there with friends, camp and backpack along the stretch of the watershed. There’s an encouraging story there, with the return of ceremonial fisheries to the river.

I think about what salmon represent outside of ecology, or science. I think of them as part of my community. I think about hosting a potluck, having a bunch of people over where we’re all eating salmon. And I want to be able to keep doing that. 

“I think about what salmon represent outside of ecology, or science. I think of them as part of my community.”

Wild Salmon Center Fisheries Analyst Dr. Genoa Sullaway

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Wow. This was a year of epic victories and new challenges for all of us here at Wild Salmon Center. With our partners in Alaska and beyond, we stopped Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay; meanwhile, geopolitics forced us (for now) to suspend our Russia partnerships. All told, this year showed us that even in times of strife, wild salmon and steelhead can still bring us together across the North Pacific. From our high tech work with First Nations to a $174 million win for Oregon rivers, read on for why 2023 just might be our best year yet!

1) Victory for Bristol Bay, Alaska

In mid-February, WSC hosted a party with our Bristol Bay Defense Fund coalition partners here in our Portland office. With EPA’s final decision on Pebble Mine then just a few weeks out, let’s just say that the occasion called for celebration. The fact that Bristol Bay is now safe from the threat of this toxic mine owes so much to our amazing partners, from our valiant and unstoppable coalition leader Alannah Hurley of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay to our friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council, SalmonState, Arc Initiatives, the Alaska Venture Fund, Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay, the Native American Rights Fund, Business of Bristol Bay, Cassidy & Associates, and True Blue Strategies. LONG LIVE BRISTOL BAY!

2) Salmon Vision Steals the Show in B.C.

In October, WSC Senior Watershed Scientist Dr. Will Atlas along with First Nations partners and others officially debuted “Salmon Vision,” a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence tool piloted on First Nations fish weirs on the British Columbia Central Coast. International media picked up the story of how this Indigenous-led automated fish counting and identification technology—with promising early results published in Frontiers in Marine Science—could be a game-changer for salmon managers across the Pacific Rim.

3) The Klamath Dams are Coming Down

As of November, work to tear down Copco No. 2—the first of four Klamath River dams scheduled for removal near the Oregon/California border—was officially complete, bringing this historic salmon system one step closer to flowing freely for the first time in a century. By November 2024, all four dams are scheduled to be fully out: the largest dam removal ever. But our work is just getting started. In 2024 and beyond, WSC scientists will be lending a hand to partners including the Karuk Tribe on an ambitious plan to recover Chinook salmon in the Klamath Basin. 

4) $174 Million For Oregon’s Water Future

In August, the Oregon State Legislature allocated a whopping $174 million for drought resiliency and water security funding, including tens of millions of dollars for programs and projects that improve stream flow and reconnect rivers. This unprecedented investment in Oregon’s water future is due in no small part to the sustained advocacy of the Oregon Water Partnership: a WSC-convened coalition of seven statewide conservation groups. “There’s a lot we can’t control out there,” says Caylin Barter, WSC’s Oregon Water Policy Senior Program Manager, “but there are obvious and achievable ways we can do a better job of protecting our home waters.” (Watch Barter explain how in our short video “Finding Flow.”)

5) 12,000+ Action Takers

From thanking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for saving Bristol Bay to closing loopholes for Oregon water rights violators, you really spoke up for wild salmon in 2023! Year after year, we count on the WSC community to take action for wild fish, our home watersheds, and the wide-ranging benefits they provide. Salmon are a keystone species, but you, our community activists, are key to why we’ll make sure these species thrive.

6) $22 Million for Pacific Northwest Restoration

Our program staff and grants team worked overtime this year to fund an astonishing number of shovel-ready restoration projects across the Pacific Northwest. This year we secured more than $8 million in Oregon grant commitments from NOAA and the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, and nearly $14 million for Washington projects from NOAA, NFWF, and Washington State’s Recreation and Conservation Office. These funds will support coastal jobs, repair ecosystems, and help revitalize fisheries that have sustained people here for millennia.

7) Tribal Partnerships on the Olympic Peninsula

Tribal partnerships are key to protecting and restoring salmon stronghold habitats. With historic levels of federal infrastructure funding flowing into salmon restoration, we’re thrilled to be working alongside a growing number of Tribal partners on the Olympic Peninsula, including the Quileute, Hoh, and Makah Tribes, and the Quinault Indian Nation. Together, we’re rapidly scaling our work to correct culverts, decommission failing roads, and expand climate-resilient habitat for steelhead, Chinook, coho, and other wild salmonids—like threatened Lake Ozette sockeye.

8) A 28-Million-Acre Chance to Save Alaska Public Lands

WSC and our partners have launched a campaign to seize a once-in-a-lifetime shot to protect 28 million acres of Alaska public lands: some of the largest intact landscapes left on Earth. These salmon-rich federal lands are located across the state: in the Bristol Bay, Bering Sea Western Interior, East Alaska, Kobuk Seward, and the Ring of Fire regions. And they’re under threat: pending public land orders from the last days of the Trump Administration would open these lands to extractive industrial development. In 2022, the Biden Administration decided to take a closer look at these orders. Now our chance to speak up is here, as the Bureau of Land Management opens a review and public comment period.

9) The International Taimen Initiative Kicks Off

In May, many of the world’s top taimen experts gathered in Hokkaido for the first in-person meeting of the WSC-convened International Taimen Initiative. Taimen are the planet’s largest salmonids, but comparatively little is known about this ancient group of species. Our kick-off meeting in Hokkaido brought together members of the IUCN Salmonid Specialist Group and partners in Japan, the Russian Far East, and Mongolia. Through the scientific collaboration that the ITI aims to foster, we hope to develop new strategies to protect these fascinating and increasingly imperiled species. (Travel to some of the world’s most remote taimen strongholds with WSC CEO & President Guido Rahr in our film “River Tigers.”)

10) Stand Tall Oregon Steps Up

By September, our three-month-old Stand Tall Oregon campaign already had more than 6,400 sign-ons from Oregonians ready to support a 70-year habitat conservation plan for more than 500,000 acres of Western Oregon state forests. That’s a groundswell of new support for clean water and healthy fish and wildlife habitat on these cherished public lands. Strength in numbers is how we’ll counter relentless pressure by the timber industry and its allies to weaken and delay this legacy plan for Oregon state forests, now less than a year away from likely federal approval.

11) Amazing New Team Members

This year, the WSC welcome wagon was open 24/7, as we onboarded eight incredibly talented professionals to our team. We’re thrilled to have the smarts and skills of Science Intern Luke Brockman, Grants Coordinator Sheila Hanson, Human Resources Assistant Annie Kleffner, Government Grants Manager Jordan McCauley, Photo Library Intern Griffin Morse, Olympic Peninsula Fish Habitat Specialist Nicole Rasmussen (meet Nicole here), Alaska Campaign & Outreach Manager Morgan Urquia, and Staff Accountant Mariah Williams. Our 2023 gratitudes list wouldn’t be complete without you.

12) More Live Time With You!

With growth comes opportunity, and in 2023, we seized every chance to interface and celebrate with you, the greater Wild Salmon Center community. This year, we hosted more events than ever. You might have celebrated with us at SalmonFest 2023 in Ninilchik, Alaska, packed the crowd at our sold-out screening of The Lost Salmon in Seattle, or rallied for state forests on Oregon’s North Coast. And we’re just getting started! 2024 will bring even more opportunities for all of us to gather, learn, laugh, and grow our powerful base for wild salmon action.

Thanks for being on our team this year. If you haven’t yet had a chance to contribute to Wild Salmon Center, it’s never too late.

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Is this our moment to get it right for an extraordinary—and imperiled—species?

For as long as there have been Quileute people on the remote, rugged Olympic Coast, returning steelhead have signaled the end of what’s called “bad weather season,” and the beginning of fishing. In the Quileute language, early winter is literally known as “steelhead season.”

Some try to map the solar calendar onto this cycle, and peg steelhead season to a specific month. But that shifts the focus to Western ways of knowing, rather than the ancient bond between steelhead and the first people of the Pacific Northwest.  

“Fish, to us, it goes way back,” says Ann Penn-Charles, a member of the Quileute Tribe of the Quillayute River basin, prevention specialist, and teacher of the Quileute language. “If you took the fish away from the people, the people wouldn’t be able to feed their spirit. Fish are the heart of it.”

For Miss Ann, as she is known in the Quileute village of La Push, there isn’t a way to separate salmon and steelhead from the story of her family, her community, her history. 

There is her father, Christian “Jiggs” Penn, Jr., a fisherman, Korean War veteran, and lifelong advocate for Tribal fishing rights. And her grandmother, Lillian Payne Penn Pullen, who passed on the traditions of fish-handling, processing, and community spirit.

The story goes back farther, to her great great grandfather, one of the Quileute leaders who participated in the Treaty of Olympia in 1865. In this treaty, the United States government acknowledged the perpetual right of the Quileute people to hunt, fish, and gather in all “usual and accustomed places”—even as it sought to restrict Tribal members to a tiny reservation at the mouth of the Quillayute River. 

In 1974, Miss Ann’s father was the Quileute Tribe’s representative in U.S. vs. State of Washington, a landmark case led by Federal Judge George Boldt. Her father’s testimony, alongside dozens of other witnesses, convinced the judge to reaffirm treaty rights following more than a century of broken promises, harassment, disenfranchisement, and violent, capricious policing by non-Tribal authorities. In his ruling, Judge Boldt agreed with the plaintiffs that the Treaty of Olympia enshrined the right of signatory Tribes to co-manage fisheries across their traditional homelands.

In the five decades since the Boldt Decision remade Washington fisheries, Tribal, state, and federal agencies are still negotiating paths through these waters. Resource co-management is painstaking work, made harder by the weight of history.

Miss Ann is proud of what Quileute fisheries managers are doing to nurture the salmon and steelhead that return each year to the Quillayute River—from water temperature monitoring to natural infrastructure projects that aim to protect La Push while enhancing fish habitat. 

She’s keeping an eye on this work herself, monitoring new streamside replantings on her walks to collect items for medicine. And she enjoys hearing from fishers where salmon are showing up—especially if these are spots where her parents once were caretakers.

“As my father would paddle home with a canoe full of fish, he’d check certain areas to see how many fish were in the creeks,” Miss Ann recalls. “He’d get brush and put it along the banks, where he knew fish would spawn. My grandfather taught my father to heed all of the things taught to him. It takes all of us to be stewards of the land.”

The reward of good stewardship is health. For millennia, the flash of steelhead in rivers brightened the winters of the Quileute people—a sign of a thriving relationship. Now, with Indigenous leadership resurgent in fisheries management, Tribes and First Nations are reclaiming traditional spaces for hunting, foraging, and fishing, and their role as primary stewards.

But as the Quileute Tribe finally sees respect for sovereignty on land and water, something else has gone wrong. The steelhead are disappearing.

“If you took the fish away from the people, the people wouldn’t be able to feed their spirit. Fish are the heart of it.”

Ann Penn-Charles

Lillian Payne Penn Pullen loved steelhead, particularly smoked. Miss Ann remembers that about her grandmother, as well as her lessons on using all parts of the fish. 

Dwayne Pecosky, the Director of Quileute Natural Resources, also loves steelhead. That’s because along with his day job managing Tribal fisheries and restoration work—including an ambitious river rewilding project with Wild Salmon Center and other partners—he’s also an avid angler.

“It’s a special thing, seeing winter chrome come into the Quillayute Basin,” Pecosky says. “Steelhead are hard to catch. They call it the ‘fish of a thousand casts’—that’s the saying, but maybe I know it because I don’t catch a lot.” 

Pecosky laughs, and acknowledges that for him, it’s not really about catching fish. It’s enough just to float on a rainy winter day and know that steelhead are out there.

“You’re talking to a person who knows how amazing steelhead are in their behavior, their life history,” he says. “It’s incredible to be able to touch a winter steelhead and realize that it might have made it home, went back out to the ocean, jumped through all these hoops, and made it back home again.” 

“It’s incredible to be able to touch a winter steelhead and realize that it jumped through all these hoops, and made it back home again.” 

Dwayne Pecosky, Quileute Natural Resources Director

Unfortunately, steelhead are scarce in smokehouses these days. Instead, the Quileute Tribe is watching with concern as steelhead numbers drop, year after year.

“We know we’re doing the right things, and we’ll always put an emphasis on conserving for future generations,” Pecosky says. “The Tribe is doing what it can on the lower Quillayute, aiming to manage its fisheries with a meticulous eye.” 

The Tribe is worried enough that it’s taking drastic conservation measures—a reaction echoed in recent emergency rules adopted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). In recent years, the co-managers have responded to low steelhead forecasts with a suite of seasonal actions for the recreational fishery, including mandatory catch-and-release and bans on bait fishing and fishing from boats. In 2020 and 2021, the Quileute and other Washington Coast Tribes voluntarily reduced steelhead fishing days by more than half.

When decisions are made to cut back fishing days, Pecosky says it’s important to remember that’s a very big deal for the community.

“We’re salmon people and fishing is a way of life for the Quileute Tribe,” he adds. “When a Tribe shuts down their treaty fishery, that’s instrumental in demonstrating the conservation concern.” 

In 2022, with steelhead forecasts again looking dire, coastal Tribes volunteered once more to reduce fishing days. Meanwhile, WDFW announced early steps to overhaul its steelhead management strategy entirely. The era of complacent fisheries management was over. Now, agencies—and fishers—need answers.

Up and down the Washington Coast, there’s no doubt that steelhead are in trouble. New research from Wild Salmon Center and our partners shows that steelhead have been in decline for decades—and perhaps more than a century, since the introduction of canneries, commercial fishing, logging, mining, and other ecosystem-altering practices.

These insights might seem obvious, in hindsight. But for Pacific Northwest fisheries managers, it hasn’t been easy to see the big picture. For these agencies, the earliest reliable steelhead spawning records date back just 40 years, to the early 1980s soon after the Boldt Decision.

Last year, one humble discovery showed us the bigger picture. Thanks to a team of scientists including WSC Director Dr. Matt Sloat, we can now track Olympic Peninsula steelhead to the late 1940s. What the data reveals is raising alarm bells all the way east to Washington, D.C.

Up and down the Washington Coast, there’s no doubt that steelhead are in trouble. Now, agencies—and fishers—need answers.

The discovery—a single dusty ledger in an Olympia office—didn’t look like much. But for Dr. Sloat and scientists from Trout Unlimited and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Office, the ledger’s data unlocked a world of insights. Starting with the vast chasm between what steelhead runs might have looked like for Miss Ann’s father, as a young man in the 1950s, and what they are today.

“Olympic Peninsula steelhead are at a fraction of their historical abundance,” Dr. Sloat says. “Until now, we weren’t able to fully appreciate that loss, because our frame of reference only went back a few decades.”

The team found that between 1948 and 2017, wild winter steelhead numbers plummeted by at least 67 percent in the Quillayute River. In the neighboring Hoh, Queets, and Quinault systems, the rates were 80, 73, and 71 percent respectively. According to Dr. Sloat, the most recent data suggest that decline rates are accelerating.

Why are steelhead in such trouble? To answer that, Dr. Sloat and his colleagues are investigating a range of potential factors including ocean warming, hatcheries, and habitat loss. Recent breakthroughs in conservation genetics are revolutionizing this work, he says, enabling us to better grasp the steelhead biodiversity that so amazes anglers like Dwayne Pecosky. 

“For millions of years, steelhead have drawn on a range of life histories and behaviors to survive,” he says. “We’re just now beginning to understand what’s in that genetic toolkit.”

One of those tools is a drive within some steelhead to return months ahead of their fellows. These are the first freshwater arrivals in the height of winter—those heralds of fishing season for the Quileute people. But across the Olympic Peninsula, steelhead runs are losing their vanguard: a clue that somehow, critical biodiversity is getting lost.

Across the Olympic Peninsula, steelhead runs are losing their vanguard: a clue that somehow, critical biodiversity is getting lost.

“These early returners are simply not there anymore,” Dr. Sloat says. “This fact alone might shed some light on why it feels like steelhead are vanishing in plain sight.”

If we can learn why early returners are disappearing, he says that insight could help conservation scientists and fisheries managers develop powerful new recovery strategies. But good science takes time and resources. Meanwhile, for steelhead, the clock is ticking.

That’s why Dr. Sloat isn’t surprised that NOAA Fisheries is now considering the most dramatic move of all: listing Olympic Peninsula steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. 

This  winter, NOAA announced a 90-day review period, the first step in its formal review process. Should the process move forward to public comments, rulemaking, and a final decision, more sacrifices could be ahead—both for the sport fishers who flock to the Olympic Peninsula, and for Tribes like the Quileute. ESA listing could mean yet another renegotiation of fisheries co-management: an exhausting prospect for all involved.

But while ESA listing would add complexity, it could also unlock a new level of resources for Tribal and state fisheries managers: perhaps enough to pivot away from crisis mode, and toward a consensus-driven, science-based approach to long-term conservation.

“Sound science is key to getting steelhead recovery right,” Dr. Sloat says. “Because no solution that we come up with will work without everyone agreeing on the facts and pulling in the same direction.”

NOAA Fisheries is now considering the most dramatic move of all: listing Olympic Peninsula steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. 

Can we save steelhead? From La Push to Olympia to Washington, D.C., many are skeptical. When it comes to this priceless fish, our history is a fraught one. And conditions today aren’t necessarily different. Across the Pacific Northwest, and beyond, different fishing factions are often more comfortable pointing fingers than finding common ground.  

No one knows this history better than Miss Ann. And she thinks it’s high time we learn from it.

“We have to work together—sport and Tribal fishers, Washington State, everyone—to make sure that the mistakes of the past don’t happen in the future,” she says. “It will take all of us to make sure that our salmon and steelhead are here for the next seven generations.”

“We have to work together. It will take all of us to make sure that our salmon and steelhead are here for the next seven generations.”

Ann Penn-Charles

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Up and down the West Coast, Wild Salmon Center is working with local communities to prioritize the most important salmon and steelhead restoration actions and then put money on the ground to get restoration projects done. Our science-based approach is already paying dividends. And, with new federal infrastructure and resilience funding coming online, we could see a quantum leap forward for watersheds and communities in the next five years. Natural infrastructure investments mean good things for people, fish, and wildlife.

Learn more about our Coastal Restoration campaign to return Oregon and Washington rivers to their full strength.

Quillayute River, Washington

On the Quillayute River on the Washington Coast, Wild Salmon Center and the Quileute Tribe are restoring salmon and steelhead habitat and protecting the community of La Push from catastrophic flooding. This massive cooperative undertaking will cool down water in the lower river for fish and redirect the river’s energy into historic floodplains away from the village. The Quillayute project demonstrates the multiple benefits of sound natural infrastructure planning and execution.

Elk River, Oregon

Working alongside landowners along Oregon’s Elk River, Wild Salmon Center and community partners have improved salmon habitat, upgraded local transportation infrastructure, and protected working landscapes for the future. The cumulative impact of seven restoration projects on the lower Elk in recent years means Oregon Coast coho are starting to return in stronger numbers and local landowners are benefiting from less erosion and flooding.

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Within months, the first flows of federal infrastructure bill money will reach Pacific Northwest salmon streams.

On April 11, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced awards of $38 million from its National Fish Passage Program for projects addressing fish barriers in 23 states and Puerto Rico. The 2022 funding represents round one of the five-year, $200 million infrastructure funding.

Seven of the 40 funded projects directly benefit Pacific Northwest salmon strongholds in Oregon and Washington. Three are projects on tributaries of the Sol Duc, a key producer of Chinook, coho, and steelhead in the larger Quillayute River basin. 

The Sol Duc projects, which received awards totaling over $1.5 million, were secured through Wild Salmon Center’s Cold Water Connection campaign with the Coast Salmon Partnership and Trout Unlimited.

“This summer, work will be underway to free up critical spawning and rearing habitat for wild salmon in many of the watersheds we care about,” says WSC Salmon Habitat Specialist Betsy Krier. “We’re proud to be playing a part in making that happen.”

“This summer, work will be underway to free up critical spawning and rearing habitat for wild salmon. We’re proud to be playing a part in making that happen.” 

Betsy Krier, WSC Salmon Habitat Specialist

The Cold Water Connection campaign was created to help unlock federal dollars for a shovel-ready pipeline of high-impact fish barrier projects in coastal Washington. 

Last summer, our partnership helped coastal Jefferson County secure $1.8 million in federal transportation funding for a Hoh River culvert correction. USFWS’s new award shows that our effort is continuing to pay big dividends.

According to WSC Government Affairs Director Jess Helsley, this could be the first of several rounds of infrastructure bill funding for fish barrier projects in Oregon and Washington.

“USFWS is just the first agency out of the gate,” Helsley says. “The federal infrastructure bill contains multiple pots of money for culvert removal. Our goal is to assist Tribal and local communities in accessing these new funding streams to knock out as many projects as possible over the next five years.”

More than 4,300 fish barriers dot the Washington Coast, a staggering number that can make it hard for Tribal and county planning agencies to identify the most critical to address.

According to Mara Zimmerman, executive director of the Coast Salmon Partnership, the CWCC team has done the groundwork to narrow that list down to the most important project opportunities for both people and wild fish. 

The team adds further value for resource-strapped local agencies by leveraging private donations to build out the kind of conceptual design plans that federal agencies often want to see when making awards.

“We have built the foundation to accelerate smart salmon recovery funding for the Washington Coast,” says Zimmerman. “Our partnership model was designed to meet opportunities exactly like this once-in-a-generation federal infrastructure investment.” 

Poorly designed or degraded fish barriers can prevent juvenile salmonids from accessing critical cold water habitat and can block adult fish from reaching spawning grounds. 

But they can impede human communities as well, Zimmerman says, by flooding roads and washing out undersized culverts: hazards that impact towns and transportation routes. That makes addressing problematic fish barriers a critical part of upgrading America’s infrastructure system to meet the challenges of a more volatile climate.

“This is a win for Washington State,” says Zimmerman. “It’s further proof that the multiplier effect we’re going for is paying off for both people and fish.”

“Our partnership model was designed to meet opportunities exactly like this once-in-a-generation federal infrastructure investment.” 

Mara Zimmerman, Coast Salmon Partnership Executive Director

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Dr. Mary Ruckelshaus is a keen surveyor of landscapes. 

There’s the DC political landscape, practically a birthright for her and her siblings. In 1970, father William Ruckelshaus, an Indiana attorney and congressman, became the first administrator of the new Environmental Protection Agency. 

Relocating to Seattle as a teenager, Mary climbed deep into the Cascades while working summers with the Youth Conservation Corps in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness between Stevens and Snoqualmie Pass. 

“I loved DC, and getting to feel the pulse of government,” she says. “But the Northwest is home for sure. Those real wild mountains, I just never came back from that.”

Then there are the seagrass meadows off San Juan Island, which fascinated her as a doctoral candidate. Immersed in this underground forest, she saw the complexity of these marine systems, which connect species from sea stars to Salish Sea killer whales.

“I’d go home after work, grab my dog, and watch sunsets with a snack,” she recalls. “And I’d almost always see the whales. It was a given, a big part of my experience. And I knew that they were there for the salmon.”

This past year, Dr. Ruckelshaus—director of the Natural Capital Project and a consulting professor at Stanford University—joined Wild Salmon Center’s board of directors, a position to which she brings both her personal love of nature and a deep well of professional experience. (She also serves on the Nature Conservancy’s science council and is a member of the United Nations’ High Level Panel on Building a Sustainable Ocean Economy.)

Below, Dr. Ruckelshaus shares more about the connections that drive her work and life, from the hard work of salmon recovery to the home waters that can motivate all of us.

Dr. Mary Ruckelshaus, in her own words:

I’ve always loved nature. As an undergrad, I worked summers on the Pacific Crest Trail as part of the Youth Conservation Corps. But it was when I learned how to scuba dive that I felt my mind open up—parts of my mind that weren’t otherwise apparent to me. Just being able to see what it looked like down there. 

My first love of science came from what it felt like to be out there in the natural world. It was love that made me want to understand it better. That’s what drew me into science. I definitely entered this field from an emotional place.

My research started as purely ecological: what are plants and animals doing, how are they interacting. But then I started studying how the state of nature impacts people’s well-being. It was coming full circle: how our attitudes and mindset affect the state of nature, and vice versa.

I feel incredible admiration for salmon. The way they go about their life history, how they go through this incredible journey, this gauntlet, to get out into the ocean, and back. The great thing about research in seagrass meadows is that, unlike deep-water scuba diving, you can stay in the shallows for a long time. You can just watch juvenile salmon move around, like in a forest. You can watch up close and personal, and see how industrious and creative they are.

In seagrass meadows, you can watch juvenile salmon up close and personal, and see how industrious and creative they are.

Over the course of my career I’ve come to learn how intertwined salmon are with the lives of people in Salmon Nation. It’s so rich and inspiring to think about how intertwined Native communities have been with salmon for so long.

In my ten years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [Editor’s note: Dr. Ruckelshaus previously led the Ecosystems Services Program at NOAA’s Seattle-based Northwest Fisheries Science Center], I worked with many stakeholder groups throughout the Pacific Northwest, much of that in Puget Sound and the Columbia Basin.

In Washington State we worked on salmon recovery with the 21 Treaty Tribes in Puget Sound as well as businesses, local governments, watershed councils, and 16 counties. We asked, what would be a recovered salmon run in your watershed?

These representatives—who were not only stakeholders but also affected by this—they came up with what they would do to achieve the science-based goals. What would they commit to? I worked on that process for about five years and it was transformative for me, because I saw all the ways that people care. They might have different entry points, but they do care. And those different entry points strengthen the conversation, and build toward a greater good, a shared vision around salmon. 

People might have different entry points, but they do care. And those different entry points strengthen the conservation, and build toward a greater good, a shared vision around salmon.

It’s an art to get all those people to that place. It’s a conversation, a connection, and a building of trust. That’s what works. But it takes vigilance and determination. You can’t just do it once. We can’t just say, okay we all love salmon, so let’s do these ten things and call it done.

That’s a big part of why I’m excited to become a part of Wild Salmon Center’s stronghold approach, which focuses on durable outcomes that don’t just stop with getting protections for one part of a watershed. It’s about getting people to become the true stewards of their watersheds. Getting people who care, or are invested, or hopefully both, to internalize the value that their watershed brings to them and their communities. So that they know it in their deepest soul and that permeates their decision making. 

Certainly there are things beyond our control. But if we can get back to that idea of stewardship, get people to see their vested interests, then that is a hopeful thing. I believe we can give salmon a fighting chance. 

If we can get back to that idea of stewardship, get people to see their vested interests, then that is a hopeful thing. I believe we can give salmon a fighting chance. 

Mary Ruckelshaus is the director of the Natural Capital Project and a consulting professor at Stanford University. She has also led the Ecosystem Science Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. And before that, she was an assistant professor of biological sciences at Florida State University. The main focus of her recent work is developing ecological models including estimates of the flow of ecosystem services and changes in human wellbeing under different management regimes around the world.

Mary serves on the science council of The Nature Conservancy and is a trustee on its Washington Board. She is also a member of the U.S. Ocean Research Advisory Panel—charged with providing independent science advice to the National Ocean Council and is a past chair of the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. She was Chief Scientist for the Puget Sound Partnership—a public-private institution charged with achieving recovery of the Puget Sound terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. Ruckelshaus has a bachelor’s degree in human biology from Stanford University, a master’s degree in fisheries from the University of Washington, and a doctoral degree in botany, also from the University of Washington.

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Mariusz Wroblewski’s journey starts in Poland, on the banks of the Czarna Hańcza. Betsy Krier’s begins in a backyard pond north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sam Snyder traces his roots back to the rivers of the San Juan Mountains, in Colorado and New Mexico. 

Each began a trek toward purpose, not exactly sure where they were going or why. Pulled by some unseen force—an invisible line. Slowly, steadily, circuitously, they headed west and north, to salmon country.

Then the real work began. To find a new home. To make a difference in that new homeland. That search for home, in work and in life, is the basis of the Life History Project, a new WSC video series about three staff members working around the Pacific Rim. 

The life histories of these three individuals are emblematic of many in the conservation community around the Pacific. They labor behind the scenes on behalf of coalitions and local partners, always putting fish first, along with the communities that depend on it. And their origin stories, as well as those of thousands of others across this vast salmon region, serve as inspiration for daily conservation work. Together, they are the tide that turns back Pebble Mine. They are the resolve to end poaching in Russia. The will that wouldn’t yield in the Skeena River estuary. The stamina that restores key rivers on the Oregon Coast and Olympic Peninsula.

The Life History Project: Mariusz Wroblewski

Mariusz Wroblewski had the farthest road to travel. Pressured to leave Poland as a dissident in the 1980s, Wroblewski had heard of the great salmon and trout rivers here in North America. He set out for them not knowing exactly what he would find or where he would land. Following the fish eventually took him back around the globe, to Russia, before finally settling in the Pacific Northwest. Wroblewski is now WSC’s program lead for conservation on the Western side of the Pacific, working with partners in Russia and Asian neighbors on a slew of different initiatives from scientific studies to catch-and-release programs to youth education. 

Featured at the 2022 IF4 fly fishing film festival and other festivals!

The Life History Project: Betsy Krier

Betsy Krier converted to the salmon cause after witnessing spawning rituals for the first time, during a summer in Southeast Alaska. She’s never looked back, working first as a biologist for the Forest Service and then joining Wild Salmon Center in 2019. Based in Forks, Washington, she manages complicated stream restoration projects with partners on the Olympic Peninsula. 

The Life History Project: Sam Snyder

Sam Snyder arrived in Alaska after an early career researching and writing about unlikely allies in the conservation movement. Joining the Pebble Mine campaign, however, he received a frosty reception from some of the folks he canvassed on one of Alaska’s most contentious issues. To pace himself and stay sane on the campaign trail, Snyder took up long distance running. And he’s soldiered on in defense of Bristol Bay for 11 years, through the birth of two children who are now in grade school. 

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We hope these stories are just the beginning for the Life History Project. As we emerge from travel restrictions and this isolating pandemic, we look forward to chronicling more of your journeys. While we all live for many of the same things—wild salmon, clean water, healthy forests, abundant wildlife, natural refuges, strong local communities, Native traditions, wild protein—each of our journeys is unique. 

Like the salmon runs themselves, the rich diversity of human life histories makes this place and the salmon conservation movement whole. 

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For two years, Washington’s Office of the Chehalis Basin, formed to address devastating declines in salmon and other aquatic species and protect communities from flood disasters, has been laser-focused on one idea: building a massive 24-story dam in the upper Chehalis River.

For just as long, the proposal has deeply concerned Tribes, fishing guides, conservation groups, and residents throughout the basin. According to Wild Salmon Center and its partners in the Chehalis River Alliance, this dam would risk some of Washington’s best remaining salmon and steelhead habitat, cost taxpayers upwards of $1 billion, and yet do little to solve basin-wide flooding.

By spring 2020, a groundswell of local opposition dominated online public hearings held by Washington’s Department of Ecology. Meanwhile, supporters of the Chehalis River Alliance, including members of the Wild Salmon Center community, sent hundreds of letters of opposition to the state. 

That pressure, bolstered by appeals from the Quinault Indian Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, has finally spurred state leaders to intervene. On July 22, Governor Jay Inslee sent stern letters to Ecology, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Chehalis Basin Board (OCB’s supervisory body), ordering OCB to hit pause on the dam and develop a viable “local actions alternative” to the dam with its remaining state funding. (More than $25 million has already been spent polishing the dam concept.)

“We had a lot of individuals highlight issues,” admitted Chehalis Basin board member Edna Fund in an interview with the Chronicle, in reference to the spring hearings’ strong public pushback.

Now, WSC Senior Washington Program Director Jess Helsley is cautiously optimistic that the board will at last listen to community concerns and stop pushing what she calls a “20th century solution to a 21st century problem.”

A modern approach, she says, would tackle climate change, dwindling salmon populations, and a century-plus of problematic land use practices with local actions throughout the basin—not one big, destructive  wall of concrete. Those actions could include restoring natural floodplain function, promoting smarter development in the basin, and floodproofing or relocating other critical infrastructure in the basin. 

“We’ve been asking from the beginning for a local actions approach, and so have the Tribes,” says Helsley. “It’s really due to the Tribes’ leadership that the governor is finally involved and pressing for an alternative to the dam. Had the Tribes been heard from the beginning, we would have broken ground on extensive local action flood mitigation projects by now.”

The Chehalis River Alliance laid out its expectations for OCB’s next step in a statement: “The local actions alternative should be specific with detailed actions to address flood damage reduction in communities throughout the Basin and should complement the ongoing actions identified in the Aquatic Species Restoration Plan.” 

Now, Helsley says, it will be a matter of closely watching these agencies to hold them accountable for fully complying with the governor’s directive.  

“We’ll be paying close attention to the money, how it’s spent, and who is brought in to advise the development of the local actions alternative,” Helsley says. “We’re asking for a more transparent and open process. The clock is ticking. Basin residents can’t afford another boondoggle.”

“We’re asking for a more transparent and open process,” says WSC’s Jess Helsley. “The clock is ticking. Basin residents can’t afford another boondoggle.”

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Want to do more? Donate to Wild Salmon Center to help us protect wild salmon rivers across the Pacific.

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Last summer, Seattle restaurateur Renee Erickson yanked Chinook from her menus.

“I didn’t see any good reason to keep serving it,” said the James Beard Award-winning chef, whose empire includes Barnacle, the Walrus and the Carpenter, and the Whale Wins. “There’s a chunk of me, like many people, that wonders whether we should be eating salmon at all.”

Erickson’s decision followed national news coverage of Tahlequah, a Southern Resident orca off the Washington Coast who carried her dead calf—likely starved—for a heartbreaking 17 days.

Erickson isn’t alone in wondering what salmon she could, or should, be serving. As wild salmon runs decline around the North Pacific, the impacts are real for the 137 species (like Southern Resident orcas) that rely on them. For conservation-minded chefs and diners, it can be hard to know which fisheries are sustainable, who to trust, and what to make of ever-shifting marketplace lingo like “wild-caught.” Consumer seafood guides can help. But saying “I’ll have the salmon” can still sometimes feel like a fraught black box of, just, no.

And yet, roughly one year after giving up Chinook, Erickson’s saying yes to coho—boxes of it, caught at an experimental fish trap being tested three hours south of Seattle on the Columbia River.

“It redefined what we can serve people,” says Erickson. “The trap avoids all the noise, the engines, the plastic, the nets.”

Erickson first learned of Columbia River trap-caught coho through the Wild Fish Conservancy, a nonprofit that, with the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, is running the first fish trap on the Columbia River in 85 years. (Wild Salmon Center is a supporting partner of the project.)

Fish traps, also called pound nets, were once widespread along the West Coast. According to WFC biologist Adrian Tuohy, the traps’ appeal (and ultimate downfall) was their efficiency at catching fish. During the Great Depression, wildly successful fish traps—often owned by corporate cannery operators—became targets for competing gillnetters and sport fishermen. Traps were outlawed in Washington in 1934; Oregon followed in 1948. At statehood in 1959, Alaska wrote a ban into its own constitution.

Fast forward to 2016, when WFC brokered a deal with the state of Washington to begin testing local fisherman Blair Peterson’s prototype trap as a tool for saving wild salmon. Because of the trap’s passive engineering—it’s essentially a watery, non-threatening corral—Peterson and WFC argued it could solve a key need for the Columbia River’s fisheries: finding a way to catch abundant hatchery fish without killing the river’s threatened wild salmon and steelhead stocks in the process.

This summer, data published by the Wild Fish Conservancy proved the experiment successful, with studies showing the trap can operate with near zero mortality for wild salmon and other bycatch. It’s also orca-safe by default, located well above the river mouth. Says Tuohy, “the orcas already had their chance” to catch these fish in the ocean. The next step is to convince Washington State to lift its ban on traps, and then, hopefully, convert others.

It redefined what we can serve people,” says Erickson. “The trap avoids all the noise, the engines, the plastic, the nets.”

For chefs like Erickson, there’s admittedly another incentive: this fish is delicious. Tuohy says his team can move a coho from water to net to ice locker, fully bled, in nine seconds or less. That means minimal handling and stress: no bruising, scale loss, or lactic buildup in its flesh. And because it’s just one river mile to the seafood processor, Erickson can get her coho within three hours, still in full rigor, as fresh as it gets.

“Fish out of a trap is remarkable; it’s untouched, pristine,” says Erickson. “We roast it in butter, cure it. There’s very little you should do to it when it’s so fresh and perfect.”

WHAT IT IS: Columbia River Trap-Caught Coho is the market name for hatchery coho harvested in an experimental fish trap on the lower Columbia River.

WHY IT’S KEY: The trap—the first in Washington state since a 1934 ban—is being tested as a selective fishing gear type, one that can harvest hatchery salmon while allowing safe passage for wild salmon and other bycatch.

WHERE TO FIND: If Washington legalizes fish traps, fresh Columbia River Trap-Caught Coho might make it to local fish markets as soon as summer 2020; till then, a few lucky buyers are snapping up the fish trap’s limited harvest from C&H Classic Smoked Fish.

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