SOS Blog
Read news, opinion articles and special pieces from Save Our wild Salmon staff and its guests.
NextGen Salmon Collective student leaders share their perspective in Olympia!
We are thrilled to share a story of hope and inspiration! On March 21, five NextGen Salmon Collective leaders spent the day in Olympia advocating for salmon, orcas, and all the communities that depend on and cherish these iconic species!
The students delivered a timely petition with over 200 student signatures to Governor Ferguson’s office – advocating for leadership to protect and restore Snake River salmon and Southern Resident orcas.
They wrote to the Governor, “As youth of the Pacific Northwest, we will see the consequences of the decisions you make today. We will either see a bright future with abundant salmon, a healthy ecosystem, and prosperous communities, or we will be faced with the unacceptable outcome of salmon extinction. We ask that you choose abundance over extinction, and that you strongly support the continued implementation of the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative.”
We are deeply appreciative of their leadership to ensure salmon abundance and healthy Southern Residents for future generations. See below for their reflections on the first inaugural NextGen Legislative Advocacy Day!
“My favorite part of the Legislative Advocacy Day was meeting with Tribal representatives and senators to talk about Treaty rights and our rights to salmon restoration.” - Keyen Singer, University of Oregon
“I really enjoyed meeting with so many different legislators and talking about what they can do for salmon recovery.” - Katie Chase, Western Washington University
“I advocate for salmon and orca because they are a crucial part of our ecosystems and our communities all throughout Washington and without them, we are not Washington!” - Virginia Owens, Gonzaga University
Applications for the summer internship program are now open! Learn more about the NextGen Salmon Collective and apply here. Reach out to abby@wildsalmon.org if you have any questions.
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Envisioning A Restored Lower Snake River
What would a restored river mean to you?
The benefits of a restored lower Snake River are enormous for our region – including opportunities for people to experience a thriving ecosystem and healthy water, resilient energy future, Tribal cultural sites restoration, protection, and education, and significantly expanded recreation and outdoor activities such as fishing, boating, rafting, kayaking, birding, hunting, and much, much more.
We are deeply inspired by discussions across the region to shape a vision and identify opportunities and priorities for accessing and experiencing a healthy restored river—and what it means to you, your family, your community, and/or your business.
Join us in sharing your vision of what a restored river means to you by submitting your comments below. Feel free to include videos of you sharing your story or photos of recreating on or near the river.
Thank you for sharing your vision of a restored lower Snake River!
Save Our wild Salmon's 2024 Year-in-Review
Thank you for supporting SOS’ organizing and advocacy work to rebuild the health, connectivity, and resilience of the Columbia and Snake Rivers, salmon and steelhead and orcas, and the many benefits they bring to our region and nation.
The year has flashed by. SOS’ strategic collaborative leadership continues to move both salmon policy and politics. Working with our partners, we’ve mobilized people to support and lean on our decision-makers to act on their commitments. We continue to deepen our relationships and work with Indigenous communities, and we’re investing more to support youth advocates and develop their leadership.
The new emerging political landscape will bring both change and challenge. The strong alliances we’ve developed recently will be critical for both defending our gains and moving key policies and programs forward regionally in the next several years. Read on to learn about some of our accomplishments and key developments in 2024 – and look ahead to the new year. We hope you will support our work with a generous tax-deductible year-end donation and help propel us forward in 2025.
We appreciate your partnership and wish you and yours a peaceful, restful holiday season.
I. Celebrating some 'salmon country' milestones in 2024:
We'll start with a shout-out for a restored Klamath River! The historic removal of four dams was just completed in October. Thanks to the leadership of Klamath Basin Tribes and conservation and fishing allies, the river is flowing freely for the first time in a century. 450+ miles of ancestral habitat is again available for anadromous fish – and they aren’t wasting any time. Big, beautiful chinook salmon have already dug redds 100+ miles upriver, above former dam sites. There’s still lots of healing work to do – by the river itself, and by Tribes and partners who are working hard to replant native vegetation, restore habitat, and much more.
Supporting Tribes and working with our partners and allies, Save Our wild Salmon covered important ground in the Columbia-Snake River Basin in 2024! Our team has been very busy – coordinating, communicating, and collaborating to educate and mobilize people and policymakers, strengthen our relationships and alliances, and support and apply pressure to key decision-makers in the Northwest and in D.C.
SOS worked closely with our coalition member organizations to support, defend, and help advance key elements of the historic Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement (RCBA) announced a year ago by Biden Administration and the ‘Six Sovereigns’: a powerful new regional alliance with four Tribes – the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Yakama Nations – and two states – Oregon and Washington. The RCBA is the first significant step forward to realize the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative (CBRI) – the visionary regional salmon recovery strategy developed recently by the Six Sovereigns. It includes many important pieces, including a path to lower Snake River dam removal, starting with dam service replacement planning that is now underway.
II. Some of SOS' top accomplishments and developments in 2024:
We’ve expanded our team – with new staffer Abby Saks and consultant John Engber. Abby S. is based in Spokane with Tanya Riordan where she'll focus on outreach and organizing projects in Inland Northwest communities. SOS has a long relationship with John that began back when he was serving as Sen. Patty Murray’s state director. You can view our whole team here.
Under Abby Dalke’s leadership this year, SOS launched the NextGen Salmon Collective – a new program focused on developing youth leadership and supporting salmon, orca, and justice advocacy by students across the Northwest to build our support base and engage key policymakers. NextGen leaders Keyen Singer and Owen Begley-Collier joined Abby, Tanya, Joseph, and others in D.C. as part of a week-long citizen lobbying visit in September.
SOS partnered with publisher Braided River to launch a new book: Big River: Resilience and Renewal in the Columbia Basin. We hosted events that reached thousands of people in Seattle and nine Columbia Basin communities. We showcased the book’s beautiful imagery and commentary and featured local Tribal and community leaders who shared their perspectives on the importance of abundant salmon and healthy waters for all communities.
We published our 9th annual Hot Water Report this summer. Delivered weekly to policymakers, the press, and the public, the Hot Water Report highlights the now-routine harmful water temperatures in the lower Snake and Columbia river reservoirs during July and August. SOS also published a Toxic Algal Blooms White Paper as part of a larger effort to bring attention to this new emerging issue on the lower Snake River. We first observed these 'blooms' in the summer of 2023, and they returned and expanded this year. These blooms thrive in the warm, stagnant waters created by the reservoirs; they can cause illness and death to people, pets, and wildlife; and are symptomatic of a sick river getting sicker.
SOS continues to challenge the Bonneville Power Administration to be a regional partner rather than a problem. In one highly visible project, SOS organized 27 coalition partners for a full-page ad in the Seattle Times calling on BPA to not “short-circuit our region’s future” as it considers joining a new regional energy market. After steady pressure from policymakers, NGOs, and others, BPA has extended its decision timeline by several months, but this critical battle over BPA’s decision on markets will continue in 2025.
Under Britt Freda’s leadership, Northwest Artists Against Extinction has expanded its work with artists to reach people’s hearts as well as minds; to inspire action; and to deepen our relationships with both people and the places we call home.
- We just published a beautiful children’s book, Autumn Spawn, by Robin Koontz.
- We hosted an art contest in spring and then featured the winning entries in a series of powerful posters as part of our creative ‘Get Out The Vote’ project during the summer and fall. Working with dozens of volunteers, we distributed and displayed more than 1,000 posters (shown above), which feature artwork by a few of the art competition winners: Cyaltsa Finkbonner (Lummi Nation), Mollie Brown, Antonia Prinster, and Kat Martin.
- Artwork from NWAAE partner artists was featured at events throughout the year. Photos above show Gabriel Newton’s SUPER POD paintings and Cyaltsa Finkbonner’s All Our Relations steel sculpture, which were part of the All Our Relations: Tribute to the Orca event.
SOS is supporting Tribal priorities and elevating Indigenous voices and perspectives:
- SOS played a leading role working with other organizations to support the Indigenous-led NGO Se’Si’Le to host a standing room-only event – All Our Relations: Tribute to the Orca – at the Seattle Aquarium as part of Orca Action Month this past June.
- As an extension of that event, we worked with Se’Si’Le and others to produce this powerful 7-minute film to help deliver Indigenous voices and values to many more people and policymakers.
- We are supporting and attending the second annual Rise Up Northwest in Unity Convening this December – led by the Nez Perce Tribe, and joined by many Tribes, NGO leaders, advocates, and the public.
SOS continues to lead the U.S. Conservation Caucus coordinating people and NGOs to advocate for a modernized Columbia River Treaty. For 60+ years, the Treaty has prioritized power and flood control while ignoring fish and river health, the climate crisis, and Indigenous expertise. After six years of confidential negotiations, the U.S. and Canada announced an Agreement in Principle (AIP) in July that may perpetuate many of the original Treaty's failings. Our urgent organizing projects with members and outreach to press and policymakers is pushing for meaningful improvements before the terms of a new Treaty are finalized.
III. Looking ahead into the new year:
2025 will bring a new and challenging political environment. We're gearing up now to work with our partners, policymakers, and people to defend our progress and advance our priorities. SOS will support the leadership of the Six Sovereigns and work to build support for and implement key elements of the RCBA and CBRI. We’ll lean in on our strengths – coordinating with allies on strategic communications, community organizing projects, and policy advocacy to expand public support for salmon and orca recovery and to hold our elected officials accountable.
We’ll work to ensure that we (1) fund critical projects, (2) keep lower Snake River dam service replacement planning moving forward, and (3) expand Congressional support for dam removal as part of a larger regional strategy to rebuild salmon and orca populations and invest in healthier, more sustainable communities, lands, and waters.
With support and assistance from you and many others, SOS' collaborative leadership and coordinated community organizing, strategic communications, and policy advocacy has accomplished a tremendous amount in 2024. Our coalition is heading into the new year with momentum and opportunity to build upon our recent successes.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND ADVOCACY!
We are grateful and humbled by your partnership and support. To see some additional highlights from the SOS team in 2024, visit our Year-In-Review photo gallery.
Please reach out if you have questions about our priorities and program work in the coming year, how you can support us, or to get more involved.
Onward together,
Joseph and the whole SOS team
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P.S. – You can make a year-end gift online or you can mail it to our office here:
Save Our wild Salmon
811 First Ave., Suite 305
Seattle, WA 98104
SOS' IRS 501(c)(3) EIN: 91-1673170
Thank you!
Gov. Inslee issues Executive Order emphasizing the critical nature of salmon recovery through restoring the Columbia River Basin
Gov. Inslee signs new Executive Order on salmon recovery through restoring the Columbia River Basin.We are excited to share some excellent news out of Washington! Save Our wild Salmon Coalition commends Gov. Inslee for issuing an Executive Order that strongly emphasizes the "critical nature of salmon recovery through restoring the Columbia River Basin." "We need to think of our state and its waters as borrowed rather than inherited. We owe future generations a healthy state," said Inslee. "These fish and these waters are our responsibility to defend. We’ve charted a course for salmon recovery, and this order holds us to it."
In the Executive Order, Governor Inslee expresses strong support for the full implementation of the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative (CBRI)—as a "complement to Washington’s other efforts statewide to meet our decarbonization and climate goals, to secure a resilient, reliable, and affordable energy system, and to modernize our infrastructure to be best positioned for a prosperous future."
We look forward to continuing this important and urgent work in partnership with Governor-elect Bob Ferguson.
Salmon, orca, and fishing advocates deeply appreciate Governor Inslee's leadership, commitment, and resolve to recover salmon, uphold our nation’s promises to Tribal Nations, and work collaboratively for a healthier, more resilient Columbia-Snake River Basin. Wild salmon and steelhead are essential to our state’s cultures, economy, and ecosystems. Washington State’s continued strong partnership with the Six Sovereigns and prioritizing additional opportunities to implement the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative is essential to our region's health and future.
Take Action: Please join us in thanking Governor Inslee for issuing an Executive Order reaffirming Washington’s commitment to restoring wild salmon, steelhead, and other native fish populations in the Columbia River Basin.
Learn more about the Executive Order:
- Washington’s Executive Order 24-06: Salmon Recovery: Riparian Protection and Restoration and Advancing the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative and Agreement
- Medium article by Gov. Inslee: New executive order stays the course on salmon recovery
- Nez Perce Tribe Press Release: Nez Perce Tribe commends Governor Inslee for his leadership in Washington
- Earthjustice Press Release: Earthjustice Plaintiffs Applaud Washington State’s Bold Leadership on Columbia Basin Salmon Recovery
- Columbia Snake River Campaign Press Release: Columbia Snake River Campaign Praises Governor Inslee’s Bold Leadership on Salmon Recovery
SOS Photo Gallery - Highlights from 2024!
With your support and your advocacy, the SOS team and our coalition partners have covered a lot of ground this year.
Scroll down to see some photo highlights from our program work and activities in 2024. Thank you very much for your partnership - we can't do our work without you!
From all of us at SOS - Have a relaxing, restorative holiday season!
The election and our way forward
Photo credit: John Gussman
By Joseph Bogaard
Executive Director of Save Our wild Salmon Coalition
The Save Our wild Salmon team and I would like to share a few thoughts on the recent election and what it means for our work to protect and restore Northwest endangered native fish and the many benefits they bring to people, fish and wildlife, and ecosystems.
We expect the incoming Administration to pursue dramatic changes starting early next year regarding the federal government’s approach to salmon and orca conservation, and to environmental, energy, and other policies and priorities across the country. While our advocacy strategies and tactics may change in 2025, our overarching goals and values will not.
With your strong support and advocacy over the last four years, we’ve made truly historic progress to advance salmon and steelhead recovery, lower Snake River restoration, and dam service replacement planning. We’re proud of our success to build bipartisan leadership by state and federal policymakers across the Northwest; our outreach and community organizing projects to help Southern Resident orcas by rebuilding the salmon they depend on; and our work to support and elevate the voices and priorities of Tribal Nations – the Salmon People. And we’ve built new and stronger relationships with diverse stakeholders throughout the region.
Regardless of who is in the White House, SOS remains 100% committed to continuing our work with Northwest people and policymakers to develop comprehensive and durable solutions to restore imperiled salmon and orcas, invest in clean water and healthy habitat, support vibrant communities, and uphold our nation’s promises to Tribes – to build a brighter and more resilient future for the generations that will follow us.
Yes, we have a lot of hard work ahead. But that’s almost always the case. At SOS, our team is all in and we’re gearing up now for whatever may come in the new year – and we look forward to continuing our partnership with you. We are very grateful for your past support and advocacy. It means everything to us – and it’s the critical ingredient for our continued success and progress.
Before signing off, I leave you with closing thoughts from an inspiring book I recently finished: Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife recoveries that change how we think about animals, by Christopher J. Preston. Very readable, Tenacious Beasts explores a series of ecological restoration success stories involving wolves, bears, bison, whales, and, yes, wild Pacific salmon. Dr. Preston grew up in England, but teaches today at the University of Montana.
When I first moved to Missoula, I heard that it was once possible to see giant chinook salmon in the mountains that loom above the Lochsa drainage. The idea one might walk among towering cedars and see a salmon in the dappled light of a mountain stream seemed too ancient to be real. The Bitterroot Mountains are hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean. I assumed the salmon had died in the great maw of postwar development that reshaped the Northwest. Most of the talk of salmon these days concerned the obstacle four Snake River dams posed to fish that made it through the gauntlet of the Columbia. I doubted any fish still made it to the mountains. But I had never heard definitively that they were gone.
Just over a year ago, I called the Idaho Fish and Game office in Lewiston whose region encompasses the Lochsa River. I asked the officer who picked up the phone if he knew the nearest place to see a salmon.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “Somebody asked me the same question recently, and I tracked down the answer.” It turned out there is a small fish trap on the Lochsa River not far over the pass that marks the Montana-Idaho border. Every year between July and September, a few chinook salmon return to the facility to spawn. […]
I visited the fish trap twice that summer and chatted to the trap tender. Sam Roetering was from the Midwest and was spending the summer working for Idaho Fish and Game. On a hot July afternoon, I found her sitting on the ground digging weeds from the gravel in front of the trap. The fish had been slow to arrive that year, she told me, but were starting to trickle in. They tended to arrive at night. Roetering hoped there would be enough to spawn by the time September rolled around. The salmon run was barely hanging on, dwindling over the years to about three hundred.
I asked Roetering if there were any fish spawning outside the hatchery this far up the drainage. I felt an urge to know if there were salmon living wild in the Bitterroots. Roetering did not know for sure, but told me she had chatted with a man named John who visited the trap frequently. He assured her there were. I asked Roetering if she could get John’s contact details if he came back.
A couple of weeks later, Roetering sent me an email that included John’s phone number. I called him up, and we talked for a while. John was retired and living in Missoula. He confessed that he had an obsession with the Lochsa. He made the hour-long drive over the pass more than a hundred times a year. Steelhead were his thing, but knew where I could see some salmon. It was a few miles above where Roetering worked. He suggested I get up there quick. The salmon were close to spawning. After that, they would die, and their carcasses would wash downriver and be pulled into the forest by scavengers.
Shortly after our conversation, I headed over the pass with John’s detailed instructions in hand. I’m not going to tell you exactly where John told me to go, but it was easy enough to find. I’m also not going to tell you exactly when I went there, though you could probably work it out. At the appointed spot, a pale slab of rock created a mini-cascade that fed a thirty-foot reach of deeper water. I hadn’t been standing there long before the dark dorsal fin of a big male chinook salmon broke the surface. It took several minutes for my eyes to adjust to the light on the creek, but when they did, I saw another male and several smaller females flicking their tails around the pool. On the far side, beneath four or five inches of crystalline water sat a gravel bed covered with pea-sized stones. It was perfect habitat for a female to dig out a small depression for her eggs. The males chased the other fish around while two mature-looking females scouted the gravel bottom. Their bodies flexed in the late-afternoon sunlight to keep them stationary in the current.
I had seen tens of thousands of salmon before in Alaska, but none were this far from the ocean or this high in the mountains. It was hard to fathom how steep the odds were that these fish had overcome. They had swum more than six hundred miles and climbed over 3,500 feet since they left the ocean for the long, freshwater pilgrimage back to their birthplace. They had negotiated fish ladders on eight giant dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, dodging fishermen and aerial predators along the way. They had eaten very little for months as their bodies went through a final transition, their skin darkening, the jaws of the males forming a menacing hook biologists call a kype. Every rational bone in my body told me it was impossible they should be here. But they were, returning to the mountains to act out the last few scenes of their life.
The chinook salmon I gazed upon that day contained a message about all returning wildlife. They were survivors. They had the power in their muscles and the wisdom in their genes to complete an improbable journey. Their eggs would nourish dippers waltzing along the bottom of the cold mountain streams. The bodies of their young would strengthen killer whales foaming the distant Pacific with their flukes. Each fish enacted its part in a story millions of years in the making. There is a reason salmon are beacons for native people and icons for those with a love of the wild. They exist timelessly alongside us, stitching together a world in which people of conscience desire to live.
At SOS, we’ll continue to take our cues and inspiration from the salmon – their patience, persistence, and forbearance. And we hope that you will as well.
Onward together,
Joseph Bogaard and the SOS team
