The Skeena & Salmon
Wild Salmon Are Pure Magic
Why the Skeena Watershed? Why Salmon? Why Now?
Salmon are the heart of the Skeena, its culture, and its people. For those who live here, the Skeena is a lifeline. For those from afar, the Skeena is a symbol of hope and inspiration that places like this- large, undammed wild salmon systems – still exist.
The Skeena River Watershed is the second-largest watershed in British Columbia and provides spawning and rearing habitat for all five salmon species, steelhead, and at least 30 other fish species which in turn feed the environement, humans, cultures and economies.
But our salmon are facing challenges. Warming oceans, more intense droughts and floods, unsustainable fisheries and habitat destruction threaten their future.
While the future will not be like the past, there is hope—especially here in the Skeena. Salmon are remarkably strong and able to survive changing conditions, as they have during previous ice ages and thaws. They’ll survive and thrive in the future, but we just need to give them a chance.
At SkeenaWild, this strength and hope fuels our work every day.
Because After All, We Are Salmon People
Where Hope Resides
In the great tapestry of North America’s wild salmon rivers, too many threads have been lost—dammed waterways, polluted streams, and critical habitat paved over. But the Skeena tells a different story. The Skeena River is one of the last remaining wild salmon strongholds.
The land here has nurtured salmon and steelhead for millennia, not just for wildlife but also for the human communities whose cultures are inseparable from the land and water. These communities, some rooted in place for thousands of years, depend on these waters, just as future generations will. Though warming oceans and rivers threaten the balance, the Skeena’s relatively intact habitats offer a lifeline—not only for the salmon but for the people who find security, tradition, and sustenance in their presence.
Shielding this delicate balance means ensuring that both the land and its resources thrive for the long term. This is a place where conservation isn’t just about our natural world thriving—it’s about keeping our way of life.
At SkeenaWild, we have hope because we’ve already seen great things emerge when salmon are put at the centre.
We Are A Salmon Community
In a diverse region marked by competing agendas, wild salmon are a thread of shared experience that runs through all of our communities.
Salmon are also a major economic driver for the region, supporting hundreds of healthy well- paying jobs, generating more than $100 million annually to local economies for more than 60,000 people.
People from around the world flock to the banks of the Skeena River every season just for a glimpse of these elite athletes of natural engineering, travelling thousands of kilometres throughout the Pacific Ocean, only to swim back to where they came from, spawn and die.
Humans lucky enough to call this place home are uniquely connected to salmon, with over 80 per cent of Skeena residents reporting that they interact with wild salmon in any given year. We have much work to do, applying science to monitor impacts, designing new government policies, and defending critical habitat, but we think it’s worth it. If we get it right for salmon, we get it right for ourselves, our kids and our grandkids.
“We’re all here to stay.” Those were the words of Supreme Court Justice Antonio Lamer in the landmark Delgamuukw court case. We think that if we’re indeed all here for the long haul, we need to work together with a view to the future.
