Salmon Nation, and the search For What Works
Working with Salmon Nation, for COP26, has helped us realise that it represents more than just an organisation. It represents an idea that centres around the preservation of North America’s iconic Pacific Northwest. This Bioregion, held at the heart of Salmon Nation’s movement, represents a zone unified by centuries of interlinked nature, trade, and human myth. The preservation of this habitat demands new approaches to action. As such, Salmon Nation focuses on inspiring regenerative development from the northern counties of California to the northernmost shores of Alaska and everywhere between. In doing so, Salmon Nation offers conservation-minded people, across the planet, a framework by which they can develop like-minded communities that put preservation high on their list of priorities.
The Salmon Nation Bioregion, stretching from northern California to the Bering Strait.
The crisis of 2020, and the alarming findings of the 2021 IPCC climate report, has led to a widespread realisation that many of our global system’s norms need to be rethought. However, Salmon Nation sets their focus on the ways local action and initiatives can confront the challenges faced by the watersheds stretching from the Sacramento River in California to the Yukon in Alaska. By moving beyond pilot projects to a wholesale re-imagining of the region’s economy, Salmon Nation puts the vitality of North America’s northwest coast into the hands of its most adaptable agents for change. Their approach has made collaboration a source of great excitement, and inspiration, as our most dynamic asset in the effort to arrest Atlantic Salmon’s decline has been those local people most invested in the rivers and watersheds wherein those Salmon reside.
Yet there are challenges to a localised effort to address the issues of habitat loss and destruction. Peoples in the Pacific Northwest’s peripheries are often also those least served by the existing networks, institutions, and infrastructure that might benefit their cooperation. As such, one of Salmon Nation’s aims is providing the framework wherein these rural, Indigenous and urban “edge” communities, with the tools they need to offer the alternative perspective their position naturally provides.
As such, Salmon Nation remains both non-prescriptive, and apolitical. The aim is to link people to eachother and the land they live on, to connect stories of successful stewardship and alternative approaches. Through initiatives such as the Magic Canoe and the Festival of What Works, Salmon Nation unites like-minded people together in their experience of, and desire to protect their local watersheds and others in the nature state of Salmon Nation.
As an Alliance of five organisations, we will build on the existing work of our partners and maximise our impact by taking a coordinated approach and vital action in order to halt and reverse the decline of wild Atlantic salmon.
The goal of the Missing Salmon Alliance is to build an evidence-base to influence national and international decision-makers to regulate activities that adversely impact wild Atlantic salmon.
The Missing Salmon Alliance
The MSA is comprised of the following members:
Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, Atlantic Salmon Trust, the Angling Trust with Fish Legal, The Rivers Trust and Fisheries Management Scotland.
https://www.missingsalmonalliance.org