Session Coordinators: Shaara Ansley, Long Live the Kings, and Sherri Norris, California Indian Environmental Alliance (CIEA)
 

Robust and resilient Pacific salmon populations that support thriving ecosystems, Indigenous rights and cultures, local economies, and recreation require effective and ongoing stewardship. However, rapid climate change is making this salmon recovery goal more difficult to achieve and calls into question the viability of salmon runs and fisheries along the coast and watersheds of western North America. Climate change is adding to existing stressors, causing complex, interacting processes that drive mass mortality events and changes in phenology, range shifts, and extirpations. A future in which resilient salmon can flourish and salmon populations can support harvest in the face of climate change depends on a recognition of social – ecological systems and diverse knowledge sources, innovative science and policy, dramatically increased funding, well-informed climate resiliency planning, and significantly greater information-sharing across a wide geographic range. Salmon-reliant communities are working hard, but we need new approaches to achieve recovery and support salmon resiliency. This requires a rapid paradigm shift with an unprecedented expansion of collaborative engagement and a braiding together of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. To advance this paradigm shift, presenters in this session will share innovative and collaborative approaches to supporting Tribal climate resilience planning and climate resilience of Pacific salmon populations.