The Pacific Salmon Foundation’s Community Salmon Program is a grantmaking program that supports volunteer and community–driven organizations that undertake salmon conservation and restoration projects in British Columbia and the Yukon. The program makes annual grants totaling more than $1.5 million.
Only five per cent of Canadians rank the overall quality of the environment as a top national issue, according to a recent publc opinion survey. Clearly, it’s up to conservation organizations like the Pacific Salmon Foundation to help elevate the importance of the environment in general and Pacific salmon in particular. But for people to value something, first they need to be empowered with the best information and analysis possible.
Pacific salmon are a keystone species in B.C., supporting ecosystems, culture, and more than $1 billion in economic activity. The people that care for them represent a breadth of vested and sometimes disparate stakeholders. During the last decade, the Pacific Salmon Foundation has launched some major initiatives that took a watershed-wide approach to salmon management by connecting multiple stakeholders and bridging information gaps.
When it comes to Pacific salmon conservation, there are certainly many mysteries about the range of factors that reduce Pacific salmon abundance. To help provide clarity, the Pacific Salmon Foundation’s board of directors approved a strategic plan for 2016-2018 that includes a goal to continue the Foundation’s work in salmon science and research.
The combined impacts of climate change, 150 years of industrial development, habitat degradation, and introduction of disease-causing pathogens through aquaculture have placed Pacific salmon in peril.
Building on previous research, the Pacific Salmon Foundation has launched a Salmon Health program that will undertake critical research to guide action and evidence-based policy to improve salmon health.