New research reveals global 30x30 target insufficient to sustain salmon populations 

This a joint news release between Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, University of British Columbia, and the Council of Yukon First Nations.

New research released in Environmental Reviews shows that current international commitments to protect 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030, the global 30x30 target, will not be enough to support thriving salmon populations.

The findings from Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Canada, alongside partners from the University of British Columbia, the Council of Yukon First Nations (CYFN) and the Yukon First Nation Salmon Stewardship Alliance (YFNSSA), demonstrate that 70-80 percent protection of the watersheds on which salmon depend is much closer to what's needed.

Across North America, salmon are incredibly important for First Nations culture, subsistence food, the fisheries economy and healthy watersheds. Despite this, the freshwater ecosystems that salmon depend upon are increasingly at risk of ecological collapse due to the cumulative effects of human activities like industrial development. Pacific salmon are especially vulnerable to these cumulative effects due to their long migratory life cycle from oceans to upstream rivers, which exposes them to a greater than average quantity of stressors.

“Conserving 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030 might be a catchy slogan, but it doesn’t capture what’s actually needed for salmon populations to thrive,” commented Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle, Co-Director of WCS Canada’s Northern Boreal Mountains program and senior author of the research. “Right now, salmon are spawning in rivers across Western Canada and Alaska, as they have done for thousands of years. But if we want to continue to see salmon in our waters, identifying the true ecological tipping points that could lead to irreversible degradation of ecosystems and species loss, and planning at the watershed-scale, is critical for effective watershed planning and management.”

Today’s findings come ahead of COP17 in Armenia, which will include the first global review of progress made toward implementing the 23 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) agreed to in Montreal in 2022, including the target to protect 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030.

“Protecting salmon and their habitat requires us to look at the bigger picture. We need land use planning that considers the health of entire watersheds and the cumulative impacts of development, rather than looking at projects one at a time,” said Math’ieya Alatini, Grand Chief of CYFN. “Yukon First Nations have been clear that land use planning and the protection of salmon habitat must be prioritized. This requires capacity, resources and long-term funding to ensure we can properly plan, protect and care for these lands and waters for generations to come.”

“After comparing studies that looked at the effects of land cover change on salmon and their habitats, we found that reports from watersheds that have had greater than 20-30 percent of their area changed had larger and more variable effects on streams,” commented Riley Finn, analyst and lead author of the paper. “By looking at different ways watersheds can be impacted by human activities, including changes in flow, sediment deposition, and habitat structure, as well as biological responses like the amounts and types of insects found, we were able to get a fuller picture of the cumulative effects that change the ecosystems salmon rely on.”

As governments consider progress toward the global 30x30 target, the findings provide a clear reminder that effective conservation must be grounded in science, First Nations knowledge and the realities of individual ecosystems. Protecting the health of salmon and their watersheds will require coordinated, long-term action to address cumulative impacts and ensure these ecosystems continue to support people, communities and salmon for generations to come.