Restoring rivers for wild salmon involves removing barriers, improving water quality, and reconnecting spawning habitats — actions that benefit not just salmon but the entire river ecosystem and the welfare of millions of fish.
Wild salmon undergo one of the most physically demanding migrations in the animal kingdom. Dams and weirs force fish to make exhausting repeated jumping attempts at impassable barriers, causing physical injury and energy depletion that reduces survival and reproductive success. Warm water temperatures cause cellular heat stress and impair the immune system, predisposing fish to infectious disease. Degraded spawning gravel from agricultural runoff smothers eggs, eliminating entire year classes. Restoring free-flowing rivers reduces all of these welfare harms and benefits billions of individual fish across multiple species, not just salmon.