Wild salmon are in crisis, but there is hope.
Video Catch-Up
All the speeches and presentations from Wild Salmon Connections are now available on the Missing Salmon Alliance YouTube channel.
Click the videos below to watch, learn, and be inspired.
We aim to inspire people across the world to take action to ensure a thriving future for wild salmon. Wild Salmon Connections will demonstrate the significance of wild salmon as a barometer for the health of the planet. We will highlight the huge economic, social and environmental value of wild salmon to communities, the economy and the wider public. An understanding of these values will support advocacy, policymaking and galvanise action to protect and restore the species.
Day 1 Keynote Addresses and Session 1, Wild Salmon in Crisis
Featuring:
Mark Bilsby, Missing Salmon Alliance
Thames Salmon School children
Fawn Sharp, Former President of the National Congress of American Indians
Professor Sir Dieter Helm, University of Oxford
Katrina Connors, Pacific Salmon Foundation
Dr Alan Walker, Cefas/ICES
Joseph Rossano - international environmental artist, and Scott Schulyer - Upper Skagit Indian Tribe
Day 1 Session 2 & 3: The Health of our Environment and the Value of Salmon
Featuring:
Louie Porta, Atlantic Salmon Federation
Mark Lloyd, Rivers Trust
Ann Willis, American Rivers
Caro Cowan, Marine Directorate/Scottish Government
Elle Adams, Findhorn Watershed Initiative
Robert Otto, Atlantic Salmon Federation; and Mark Owen, Angling Trust
Day 1 Session 3-5: The Value of Salmon and Healthy Ecosystems
Featuring:
Lara Stroh, Atlantic Salmon Trust Ambassador for Germany
Fawn Sharp, National Congress of American Indians
Elle Adams, Findhorn Watershed Initiative
Guðni Guðbergsson, Marine and Freshwater Research Institute Iceland
Dr Jack Bloomer, Tyne Rivers Trust
Mark Bilsby, Missing Salmon Alliance
Day 2 Keynote Addresses & Session 1: Addressing Climate Change
Featuring:
Dr Alan Wells, Missing Salmon Alliance
Mairi Gougeon MSP, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform & Islands
Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment
Jason Hwang, Pacific Salmon Foundation
Valérie Ouellet, Atlantic Salmon Federation
Jacques White, Long Live the Kings
Day 2 Session 2-3: Fisheries, Bycatch & Aquaculture
Featuring:
Dr Sophie Elliot, Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust
Hannah Rudd, Angling Trust
Dr Tom Appleby, Blue Marine Foundation
Actor and activist, Jim Murray
Pål Mugaas, Norske Lakseelver
Anne Anderson, Scottish Sea Farms
Sondre Eide, Eide Fjordbruck
Robert Otto, Atlantic Salmon Federation
Day 2 Session 4: Cold, Clean Water in Free-Flowing Rivers
Featuring:
Alison Matthews, The Rivers Trust
Actor and activist, Jim Murray
Torfinn Evensen, Norske Lakseelver
Dr Lorraine Hawkins, River Dee
Nathan Wilbur, Atlantic Salmon Federation
Day 2 Session 5 & 6: Leadership for Salmon, People and the Planet
Featuring:
Dr Kathryn Berry, PICES
Dr Jon Emery, Missing Salmon Alliance
Kim Damon-Randall, North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (NASCO)
Dr Alan Wells, Missing Salmon Alliance
Daniel Zeichner MP, UK Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs
Featuring:
Mark Lloyd, The Rivers Trust/Missing Salmon Alliance
Alastair Fothergill, Silverback Films
Dr Ann Willis, American Rivers
Mike Meneer, Pacific Salmon Foundation
Teresa Dent CBE, Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust
Day 3 Session 2: Investment Ready for Nature Finance
Wild Salmon Connections was an international conference hosted by the Missing Salmon Alliance at Fishmongers’ Hall, London, in January 2025.
Its goal was to activate an urgent, renewed international focus on wild salmon, inspiring action to secure thriving wild salmon at the heart of healthy ecosystems.
Day 1: Inspiring People
Featuring:
Peter Williams, Six Rivers Iceland
Allison Colina, Pacific Salmon Foundation
Alex Adam, The Rivers Trust
Charlotte Harrington, BELU
Jonathon Muir, Atlantic Salmon Trust
Mark Saunders, International Year of the Salmon
Pedro Landale, Missing Salmon Alliance
Day 2: Environmental Leadership
We will demonstrate that success is possible and push stakeholders to go further, faster, to safeguard wild salmon and their habitats. Wild Salmon Connections will illustrate the state of wild salmon populations and showcase projects which demonstrate leadership and action. We will provide a forum to enable stakeholders to work together to meet the challenge of the salmon crisis. This includes exploring approaches to landscape scale restoration to provide cold, clean water, looking at progress on barrier removal, debating interactions between aquaculture and wild salmon, and agreeing urgent action at sea.
Day 3: Focusing for the Future
The critical role of finance - both public and private - in supporting environmental restoration is set out in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Wild Salmon Connections seeks to mobilise this finance. We aim to show that the salmon world is ready for investment in landscape scale restoration which provides benefits for salmon, people and the planet. We will demonstrate successful partnerships between projects and funders and explore how to hasten the roll-out of such initiatives. We will define opportunities and next steps to secure thriving wild salmon at the heart of healthy ecosystems.
Day 3 Keynote Address & Session 1: Scaling Up River Restoration
Wild Salmon Connections was hosted by the Missing Salmon Alliance in partnership with like-minded organisations across the northern hemisphere including the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Norwegian Salmon Rivers, Pacific Salmon Foundation, and Long Live the Kings.
Wild Salmon Connections was generously supported by The Fishmongers’ Company, Newcore Capital, YETI and the Piton Trust.
