With governments fast-tracking industrial projects, scaling back salmon monitoring, and slow-walking the ban they promised on open-net salmon farms, it has never been more important to support the organizations pushing back.

Donations fuel our campaigns to get salmon farms off our coast once and for all, ratchet down Alaska’s brutal interception fisheries for B.C. salmon, make our fisheries more sustainable, and keep our salmon rivers flowing cool and clean through healthy, protected watersheds.

When you give, you are investing in hard-hitting advocacy, scientific monitoring, and on-the-ground work that defends and restores salmon habitat, exposes harmful industry practices, and holds governments to account.

Here are five good reasons to support Watershed Watch this Giving Tuesday:

1. We are your local wild salmon champions

For more than 27 years, Watershed Watch has been speaking up for wild salmon and advocating for solutions that support sustainable fisheries, restore habitat, and strengthen the health of watersheds across beautiful British Columbia.

2. When governments pull back, we push forward

Economic headwinds have led governments to deprioritize wild salmon and their habitats. That makes it even more important to support an organization that knows which buttons to push to make our governments do their job.

Earlier this year, when DFO mismanagement left hundreds of salmon streams unmonitored at the height of the spawning season, we mobilized and successfully pushed them to get boots back on the ground. As DFO faces massive budget cuts over the next two years, we will continue fighting to ensure frontline salmon guardians stay in place, watching out for our fish and streams.

3. We are at a crucial point in the salmon farm phase-out

Polluting, parasite-ridden salmon farms have already been removed from the Broughton Archipelago, Discovery Islands, and Sunshine Coast. The federal government is preparing its plan to remove the remaining open-net salmon farms from the B.C. coast by 2029.

This is a critical moment. We have to make sure Ottawa does not cave and sell B.C. out to the Norwegian-owned factory fish farm industry.

Your donation helps us buy social media ads to rally British Columbians to contact their MPs and demand the 2029 ban be upheld. It also supports our hard-hitting investigative work — like when we paddled out to document equipment left behind at the Lois Lake fish farm site. We will keep exposing industry misconduct and keep the pressure on until open-net farms are gone for good.

4. We’re taking on Alaska’s interception fisheries

Alaska advertises its fisheries as among the most sustainable in the world — but Southeast Alaska fleets intercept vast numbers of B.C.-bound salmon, including endangered and at-risk populations.

While B.C. commercial fishers sit tied to the docks to help rebuild collapsing runs, Alaska harvests millions of our salmon.

As Canada and the U.S. renegotiate the Pacific Salmon Treaty in the coming months, we are shining a light on this mismanagement with targeted ads, media pressure and strong advocacy to ensure the Treaty protects our salmon from reckless interception fisheries.

5. We’re telling the province it’s time for big industrial water users to pay their fair share 

Mining, fracking, and other industrial projects are being fast-tracked across the province, yet B.C. charges some of the lowest industrial water rental rates in North America: just $2.25 per million litres.

Through CodeBlueBC and the BC Watershed Security Coalition, we are demanding an end to this outrageous giveaway. Thanks to public pressure, the B.C. government is now considering a rate increase.

As we approach the next provincial budget in February, we’re pushing hard to ensure big water users and polluters pay the true cost of the damage they do and that this revenue goes directly into restoring, managing, and monitoring our watersheds.

Your Donation Powers Real Change for Wild Salmon

Wild salmon have shown incredible strength, but they can’t do it alone. Real change happens when hope is backed by action, and by the resources needed to carry that work forward.

Your Giving Tuesday gift powers that action: keeping us nimble when monitoring falls short, helping us investigate industry practices when no one else is watching, and strengthening our ability to lobby governments to defend wild salmon and the communities that depend on them.

It’s meaningful, tangible impact you can see in streams, floodplains, and policy wins across B.C.

Please join us by giving today, and help ensure this work continues into the year ahead.