As salmon resources dwindle worldwide, the importance of spawning grounds in Alaska’s Wood Tik-Chik Park and the Bristol Bay region has become increasingly important. To protect the pacific salmon stock, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initiated a project to ensure that private properties important to the salmon resources receive high levels of conservation protection.

To assess the conservation potential of 100+ Alaskan native in-holdings in the 1.7-million-acre park, RES partnered with The Conservation Fund to perform ecological assessments and GIS data collection.

The team developed conservation strategies for the highest-ranked parcels and summarized each property’s conservation values. Conservation values were assessed using available data on salmonid use, wildlife use, and field inspections.

Parcels were recommended for protection strategies because of the potential for significant impacts from future development on anadromous fish, migratory birds, other fish, and wildlife.

Protection strategies were grouped into categories: financial, policy and legislation, land use, and education. The analysis suggested a combination of strategies could effectively protect the highest-priority parcels in Wood Tik-Chik. Ongoing work in Alaska is implementing recommendations to meet local and global objectives.