Wild Fish Runs

The Wild Fish Conservancy Newsletter
July 2026

This month's Wild Fish Runs brings updates from every corner of our organization. In the field, we share progress on some of our habitat restoration efforts on the Kitsap Peninsula. On the legal and policy front, we provide updates on a new lawsuit on the North Fork Toutle River and a decision by the Bonneville Power Administration to end funding for a hatchery program that has undermined wild fish recovery for decades. As summer temperatures rise, we examine the threat warm water poses for Columbia Basin sockeye. And we invite you to get involved with the Let Our Salmon Come Home campaign as we grow our volunteer base across the Pacific Coast. 

Field Notes: Updates on Our Current Projects

Discover how Wild Fish Conservancy staff are working in the field to safeguard wild fish and their habitats. Here’s a look at just some of the projects we’re focused on right now.

Juvenile cutthroat trout that Wild Fish Conservancy captured in the headwaters of Olalla Creek. Wild Fish Conservancy photographs captured fish on-site using a Photarium, a versatile tool that we developed for water typing surveys and available for purchase in five sizes on our website.

Watershed Assessments Guide Habitat Protection and Restoration on the Kitsap Peninsula

This spring, Wild Fish Conservancy was hired by Kitsap County to conduct watershed assessments of two priority west Puget Sound watersheds on the Kitsap Peninsula, located just west of Seattle, Washington: Burley Creek and Olalla Creek. The assessments will help guide habitat protection and restoration actions throughout the region—complementing other assessments available on the West Sound Partners for Ecosystem Recovery website.

Building on its watershed-wide water typing surveys completed in 2020, Wild Fish Conservancy will consolidate decades of existing data from Kitsap County, the Suquamish Tribe, and state agencies into a comprehensive geographic information system (GIS) platform, then add new field data on water temperatures, fish passage barriers, fish species distribution, and stormwater runoff. That combined dataset will be analyzed using TerrainWorks' NetMap, an innovative modeling tool that enables sophisticated watershed-scale analyses—helping drive informed habitat protection and restoration strategies that improve conditions for wild fish.

The final report and supporting GIS, expected in fall 2027, will give habitat practitioners a science-based platform to identify and prioritize restoration projects in the Burley and Olalla watersheds—helping ensure that every investment made on habitat protection and restoration in these watersheds goes where it will do the most good for wild fish.

This month, Wild Fish Conservancy and local conservationist Mark Smith sued the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect wild salmon and steelhead from a project to raise the Mount St. Helens Sediment Retention Structure on the North Fork Toutle River.

The large earthen dam—which was built in 1989 to trap sediment runoff from the eruption of Mount St. Helens—already blocks wild fish from up to 50 miles of their historic habitat, and the Corps is now pushing a costly expansion that puts Endangered Species Act-listed Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead at even greater risk. Our lawsuit alleges that the National Marine Fisheries Service's 2022 Biological Opinion—the federal analysis required to evaluate whether the project would jeopardize protected fish—is deeply flawed and violates the Endangered Species Act.

"Federal agencies cannot continue to engineer our rivers into extinction while ignoring the law and the best available science," said Emma Helverson, Executive Director of Wild Fish Conservancy. "We are taking this action to ensure our wild salmon and steelhead are not pushed past the point of no return." Read the full press release on our website.

SAFE program net pens. Photo by David Moskowitz.

A Step Toward Recovery: Bonneville Power Administration Ends Funding for the SAFE Hatchery Program

The Bonneville Power Administration is ending funding for the Select Area Fisheries Enhancement (SAFE) hatchery program below Bonneville Dam—a program that releases more than seven million hatchery Chinook and coho into the Columbia River each year purely to harvest.

Hatchery programs like SAFE can create a false sense of abundance: when hatchery fish flood mixed-stock ocean fisheries, harvest rates set to those inflated numbers significantly impact co-migrating wild fish that can't sustain the pressure—including Endangered Species Act (ESA)-listed populations from rivers across the Pacific Coast. Additionally, hatchery fish that spawn with wild fish are known to reduce the fitness of wild populations; and hatchery fish often compete with wild fish for limited food and habitat.

By the Bonneville Power Administration's own assessment, the program hasn't shown a benefit for weak or ESA-listed stocks and exists only to augment harvest while failing to rebuild fish abundance above Bonneville Dam. Under the Northwest Power Act, the $1.6 million that ratepayers spend each year to support the program is meant to mitigate harm to fish and wildlife—not to subsidize fisheries.

Wild Fish Conservancy welcomes this decision as a long-overdue shift away from hatchery-dependent harvest and toward the habitat restoration, fish passage, and harvest reform that wild salmon, steelhead, and Southern Resident killer whales need to recover. Visit our website to read the full press release. 

Get Involved: Volunteer for Let Our Salmon Come Home

The Let Our Salmon Come Home movement is growing—and we need your help to keep the momentum going. We're building a volunteer base of passionate advocates across the Pacific Coast to help us expand our reach and bring new individuals, businesses, and organizations into the movement.

Reforming unsustainable ocean fisheries and safeguarding our salmon, orcas, and coastal communities for generations to come requires a broad coalition—and community organizers and volunteers are how we build it. If you're interested in volunteering, join the movement today and indicate your interest in volunteer opportunities when submitting the form—or reach out to us directly at [email protected].

Ready to get involved? Join the movement and sign on as a volunteer today!

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