Sound Salmon Solutions

The wait is over! Our 4th Annual Online Silent Auction is officially open, and every bid helps support critical salmon recovery efforts in the Stillaguamish, Snohomish, and South Island County Watersheds. From now until 6:00 pm on June 28th, you can shop for a purpose, with every bid directly supporting a future with salmon for generations to come.

You’ll find an exciting selection of items, experiences, and unique opportunities donated by generous community members and businesses. Proceeds from the auction will directly fund projects that restore salmon habitat, provide engaging educational opportunities for our next generation of stewards, and help ensure healthy salmon populations for future generations.

It is more important than ever to show your support for salmon. With less than 3,500 wild Chinook salmon expected to return to the entire Snohomish Basin this year, they need your support. Our salmon, our orcas, and every other species that relies on salmon need us to stand together to restore and protect wild salmon populations.

Don’t miss your chance to support our critical efforts to save our salmon while bidding on something you love. Log in today, browse the auction catalog, and start bidding. Together, we can make a lasting difference for salmon and all the species that depend on them.

The auction is now live—place your bids and help salmon thrive!

Visit the link in our bio or www.soundsalmonsolutions.org/silent-auction

We are incredibly grateful for all of this year’s donors. Without the generosity of these businesses and individuals, we would not be able to offer this exciting opportunity to support our salmon.

It’s the end of hatchery season at Willow Creek Salmon & Watershed Education Center, and we’re looking back on another successful year!

1. At the beginning of the season in December, our new pier was completed, thanks to generous donations.
2. Our 80,000 coho eggs arrived from the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery on December 5th
3. All of our salmon hatched and became alevin by December 15th, which is 9 days sooner than our first hatch last year.
4 & 5. With the help of some amazing volunteers and an intern, our alevin were moved into our two rearing troughs.
6. The near-fry stayed in the rearing troughs until they learned how to swim and how to rise for food. These two skills are essential for life in the outdoor pond.
7. Once the fry were ready to move outside, volunteers including Edmonds College Restoration for All class helped to clean the pond to prepare for the fry to move.
8. Volunteers then ushered the fish down the drains that will carry them into the pond, allowing us to move 80,000 fish in under 20 minutes, without using a single net!
9. Once outside, the fry needed the help of dedicated fish feeding volunteers to help them grow strong enough for release. Feeding takes place for the entire time the salmon live in the pond, which is about 4 months.
10. Once our salmon were big enough, releases began in March. We used a combination of dip netting and seine netting, which is the large net in this photo. It requires 5 people to operate, and allows us to catch thousands of fish at once.
11 - 15. All of our salmon were released with the help of community volunteers! We released into 12 different streams and tributaries in the Lake Washington and Puget Sound watersheds.
16. All of our fish were released as fry by May 31st, and since then the pond has been cleaned to prepare for summer maintenance.

Thank you to all who were involved this season! And thank you to all of the generous hatchery funders, including the Hazel Miller Foundation, Hubbard Family Foundation, the Rose Foundation, King County Flood Control District, the Olympic Fly Fishing Club, Puget Sound Anglers, Edmonds Floretum Club, and all individual donors.

We’re already excited for next year!

Interested in volunteering more with the Edmonds Stewards? Join Sound Salmon Solutions and the Edmonds Stewards for training in habitat restoration. Participants will learn the role the Edmonds Stewards play in restoring City of Edmonds Parks, native and invasive plant ID, and techniques for this restoration work. After attending the training, participants will be qualified to lead restoration work at sites and guide community volunteers who have not participated in the training. Please note space is limited so please register in advance. This training is offered twice a year in spring and fall.

We finished planting! Thanks to the amazing help of our volunteers and the hard work of our restoration crew, this planting season (Fall 2025 - Spring 2026), we planted 19,558 native trees and shrubs!! We could never do this without the support of our volunteers and donors. From the Sound Salmon Solutions team to all of you, thank you.

Having a healthy and robust native ecosystem along a riverbank makes all the difference for the survival of salmon eggs and fry. Young salmon need cold, clean, and clear water to thrive. Native trees and shrubs are better adapted for erosion control, groundwater filtration, and providing shade than introduced or invasive species such as Himalayan blackberry. By reintroducing plants such as western redcedar, Douglas fir, salmonberry, and snowberry, we are helping to rebuild the system that salmon rely on!

If you are interested in getting involved, keep an eye out on our events page this coming fall for when our planting volunteer events start again.

Thank you to WA Dept of Ecology, King County Flood Control District’s Cooperative Watershed Management, the Salmon Recovery Board, WA Recreation and Conservation Office, and Ducks Unlimited for funding these projects. Thank you also to the Tulalip Tribes, the Stillaguamish Tribe, the Snoqualmie Tribe, King County DNRP, and the King County Noxious Weeds Control Program for their partnership.

For over 5 million years, Pacific salmon have been a keystone species, maintaining the ecological balance in the Pacific Northwest. Since time immemorial, they have been the foundation of the Coast Salish Peoples’ culture and way of life. In only the last 100 years, we have depleted this vital resource. You have the ability to help ensure the future of salmon. It is our responsibility to now show up for salmon, to restore and protect salmon for generations to come.

Thank you to the generosity of a loyal supporter, donations made now through May 8th will be matched up to $5,000. This means you can have double the impact by giving to salmon recovery today!

A huge thank you to all those who have already donated! Your support is truly appreciated!

Make your donation today at the link in our bio or www.soundsalmonsolutions.org/donate

As we reflect on Earth Day, we encourage you to think of our salmon. Keystone species that connect our mountain headwaters to our riparian forests to our estuaries and the Salish Sea. They disperse nutrients to countless species including our evergreen giants, they maintain an ecological balance that acts as the foundation for the beautiful ecoregion we call home to flourish. Salmon are our foundation, but they are under threat, and with them we risk ecological collapse. You have the opportunity to restore and protect them. Let your dollars be the catalyst for ensuring a future with salmon for generations to come by making a donation this GiveBIG season.

Give for the future today by visiting
www.soundsalmonsolutions.org/donate

Thank you to everyone who celebrated Earth Day with us by releasing the coho fry from the tank at Rose Hill Community Center!

These salmon were raised in their tank from eggs to fry and released into Big Gulch Creek near the Mukilteo Library as part of the 2026 Salmon in the Community program, which is funded by the City of Mukilteo Surface Water Management. The goal of this program is to connect our community with the salmon that were historically in our local streams through education and place-based volunteering. As our community grows, so does our ability and need to care for these foundation species.

We’d like to extend a special thank you to the team of dedicated Kamiak High School students who volunteered their time to maintain the salmon tank between January and April. We’d also like to thank the staff of Rose Hill Community Center for graciously hosting the tank and feeding the fry as they grew. We could not have done it without our amazing community!

As we celebrate Earth Day, we want to send out a thank you to the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic keystone species. Conceptualizing the importance of salmon is to understand our ecosystems as a whole.

When salmon return to spawn, they are heavily predated upon by our local fauna, and in turn the discarded carcasses are spread across the landscape and fertilize our soils. The salmon that survive to reproduce proceed to die and leave their bodies sometimes thousands of miles from the ocean! Over the ages this process built the very landscape we stand on by delivering marine derived nutrients to our estuaries, lowlands, riparian forests and even mountain headwaters. To be a keystone species is more than just feeding predators. It means the keystone’s role is so indispensably important to the ecosystem it is a part of that removing it would mean collapse.

As the challenges that salmon face continue to mount and increase in severity, the opportunity for us to play the pivotal role in salmon survival continues to grow. Sound Salmon Solutions is dedicated to the earth we all share by engaging in this work, and by encouraging our community to join in with us!

Happy Earth Day, Salish Sea!!

Sound Salmon Solutions is thrilled to invite you to join us on April 18th at Experience Momentum for the 2026 edition of SWEAT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT! This is an outstanding opportunity to get active and move your body in the name of supporting your favorite local environmental champions!

This event is centered around a partnered fitness competition whose winners will help allocate $12,000 in donations to their chosen 1% for the planet nonprofit in attendance. Endurance, strength, and efficiency will all be tested in the name of protecting our environment.

Not only will you get the benefits of a great workout and an opportunity to support our community’s finest environmental advocates, but you will also have the chance to win a host of exciting prizes from Experience Momentum. Delicious food and live music will also be in attendance!

More information on this event as well as instructions on how to register are available on our website.

Sound Salmon Solutions invites you to celebrate Earth Day early by restoring salmon habitat along the Snoqualmie River on Saturday April 18th! For this last restoration event of the season, we need help on the final push to fixing our site in Carnation that was hardest hit by the flooding in December. Eight excellent volunteers came out in January to fix all the tree cages that were fixable, and now we need to put new ones in to protect the native trees along the river! Register now at https://www.soundsalmonsolutions.org/events or at the link in our bio. We hope to see you there!

This event will be taking place at a private site in Carnation. Exact address will be shared with registered participants closer to the event.

Volunteers ages 5+ with parent/guardian are encouraged to join us.

Thank you to King County Flood Control District for funding the restoration of this site!