Speaker: Dan Bottom, retired fishery research biologist from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA

Topic: Return of the Salmon’s River: Vulnerability and Resilience of a Small Coastal Watershed

Oregon’s Salmon River is a microcosm of the changing concerns that have shaped Northwest coastal ecosystems and tested their resilience. For the last 40 years, environmental concerns about the health of a small estuary and its local salmon populations have superseded the economic and fish production priorities of an earlier generation.  The resilience of the Salmon River’s tidal wetlands and salmon populations is a hopeful sign, even as the attention of a new generation inevitably shifts to growing concerns about climate change and sea level rise.