Thursday April 17, 2025
PhysOrg —
A new study published in the journal Fisheries shows how a salmon-focused ecosystem protection strategy in the North Pacific can deliver meaningful results in the global drive to protect biodiversity.
The approach, called the stronghold strategy, aims to proactively protect the world’s greatest remaining “strongholds”—a select group of salmon, steelhead, and trout systems that collectively comprise 119 distinct watersheds.
According to Wild Salmon Center President & CEO Guido Rahr—lead author of the peer-reviewed study—salmonids center the strategy because they are both iconic and globally recognized as keystone species. For the past 25 years, WSC has deployed the stronghold strategy in rivers across the North Pacific, with impacts that ripple far beyond the rivers that salmon call home.
“When you protect salmon, you protect the benefits of healthy watersheds,” Rahr says. “The science is clear that salmon rivers can safeguard food security, species biodiversity, and climate resilience. So we built a strategy centered on strongholds—some of the best salmon river systems in the world.”