The Wild Salmon Center is the only international conservation organization working to protect wild Pacific salmon throughout their entire range. Our work is based on the best available science and our conservation solutions support sustainable economies, regional cultures, and the great rivers of the Pacific Rim.

Runs of wild salmon are vanishing at an alarming rate from many of the rivers and streams that feed the Pacific Ocean. The cause of these declines is no mystery: logging, mining, dam building, overharvest, diversion of rivers for agriculture, and global climate change.

We direct our efforts where there is still time and opportunity to prevent healthy rivers and salmon populations from declining. Freshwater sanctuaries not only safeguard salmon--but also the entire marine, riverine, and land-based food webs that depend on salmon nutrients to flourish.

For over fifteen years, our commitment to the protection of wild salmon ecosystems has led to some of the most important victories for wild salmon ecosystems in decades:

• Designation of the world's first headwaters-to-ocean reserve devoted to salmon habitat protection, the 544,000 acre Kol River Salmon Refuge on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East.
• Creation of the North America Salmon Stronghold Partnership, an initiative that joins federal, state, tribal, and other organizations to conserve the most productive and resilient salmon strongholds in North America.
• Creation of the Shiretoko World Heritage Site, the first protected area of its kind in Japan.
• Establishment of the Hoh River Land Trust to permanently protect the Hoh River basin on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
• Designation of the 165,000 acre Vostochnii Refuge on Sakhalin Island, Russia, a reserve that protects two entire wild salmon river basins.