Developing a web presence for the Salmon School

Climate change and other human impacts are driving wild salmon towards extinction. Investing in community-driven approaches can help limit the damage.

Pacific salmon populations have collapsed to less than 6% of their historic abundance across the Columbia Basin. They feed 137 species, sustain tribal fisheries dating back 10,000 years, and inject an estimated $3B annually into Northwest coastal economies. Losing them isn't an ecological footnote; it's the loss of a civilization-scale relationship. The coalition needed a public face that could hold that weight without slipping into either grief or greenwashing.

We built the interface around flow — long-scroll narrative, subtle current in the type, motion tuned to the cadence of a salmon run rather than the cadence of a marketing site. Content is authored collaboratively by scientists, Indigenous knowledge-keepers, and coalition staff through a lightweight CMS that respects tribal data-sovereignty constraints (some stories are visible only to authenticated partners). The stack is static-first, offline-tolerant, and cheap to operate at nonprofit scale.

The Salmon School became the coalition's anchor asset for donor briefings, congressional testimony, and university curriculum partnerships. It has been cited in federal salmon-recovery hearings and helped unlock eight-figure philanthropic commitments toward river restoration. More importantly, it gave a diffuse, multi-generational movement a single place to point.