The Washington Coast Sustainable Salmon Partnership developed this Plan to achieve its Vision:
All watersheds in the Washington Coast Region contain healthy, diverse and self-sustaining populations of salmon, maintained by healthy habitats and
ecosystems, which also support the ecological, cultural, social, and economic needs of human communities.
Download the entire Plan HERE.
The Washington Coast Region represents the last best chance for the Pacific Northwest to get it right.
We still have the fish, and we still have the watersheds. What we need is a road map to get us moving in the right direction. This Plan starts that journey. We need to do both: “Protect the Best” and
“Restore the Rest,” the two components of our motto and our outlook.
Does this mean that we have healthy salmon populations? No, it does not. But we have a fighting chance here of returning their habitats and their numbers to something closer to historical health.
Although salmon and steelhead populations in the Washington Coast Region (“Region”) are seriously degraded from historical levels – experts suggest that the current abundance of coastal salmon runs is
probably only about 10% of what it was a hundred years ago – they are healthier than anywhere else in the state.
They are healthier largely because their habitat is more intact than elsewhere. Protecting intact habitat needs to be given a high priority because it is far easier and less expensive to maintain good habitat than
to recreate or restore degraded habitat. Science and common sense strongly suggest that investments made now in the Coast Region can significantly contribute to the successful restoration of wild salmon
populations and will more likely ensure the long-term sustainability of wild salmon than recovery efforts elsewhere.