The effects of climate change and cumulative marine and freshwater pressures on salmon are increasingly apparent, creating uncertainty around how populations will cope. Strengthening salmon resilience — defined as their ability to withstand and adapt to changing pressures — to ensure wild, self-sustaining populations in the face of climate change will require coordinated and innovative action across scales and jurisdictions.

The life-cycles and management systems for salmon are complex and it is often unclear which strategies at which scales will best support salmon resilience. The current paradigm in salmon management is missing a transparent, systematic approach to integrating information on the biological status, habitat status, and climate change exposure of populations and a subsequent assessment and prioritization of strategies to restore and protect salmon Conservation Units. This type of approach would look to strengthen the resilience of salmon populations by integrating information on climate changes and focusing on forward-looking and proactive strategies at multiple scales.

This project seeks to: 

1. Develop methods to integrate information on (i) habitat status, (ii) biological status, and (iii) climate change exposure to quantify the overall vulnerability of salmon Conservation Units. 
2. Develop a framework to identify and prioritize strategies for salmon recovery and protection that can be applied at different scales, from local watershed planning to province-wide. 

Outcomes

This project will focus on several key outcomes to support salmon resilience planning:

• Vulnerability assessments will be made publicly available via the Pacific Salmon Explorer, allowing users to visualize the relative impacts of current habitat pressures, biological status, and climate change exposure on individual salmon Conservation Units at different spatial scales.
• The multi-scale framework will be documented, peer-reviewed, and open access to facilitate its application and adaptation.
• We will pilot the application of the framework in a priority region.
• A database of threats by Conservation Unit and a playbook of strategies to facilitate regional recovery planning will be developed and made available in our Document Library.