Salmon Defense is an organization of people committed to recovering and sustaining healthy populations of salmon. It is an initiative of people strong in their commitment to align and utilize a combination of communication and legal strategies to turn the tide for salmon: the biological, cultural and economic centerpiece of the Pacific Northwest.
From the earliest beginnings, in the oldest stories, the people of the Pacific Northwest have known, spoke of and understood the essence of the salmon and the critical relationship of its health and abundance to their own health and prosperity.
Today, more and more people calling the Pacific Northwest home recognize that the health and prosperity of human life is woven into the larger ecological community that the health of our watersheds are bound to those of economics and politics. Extinction of the Pacific Northwest salmon in the name of a healthy and fair economy is a failure of vision and action by leadership of this region. While the day to day interaction of contemporary society with salmon is much less than their ancestors, the interdependence is no less critical. Indeed, in the words of Robert Kennedy Jr., "The environment is the economy".