One of the many great outreach works run by The Salmon Project was the “Baby Salmon Live Here” campaign. The campaign challenged us to recognize salmon habitat not only among the wide, clear rivers and lakes where adults leap up waterfalls, but also to see that just as much of their lives depend on the more humble, swampier, brushier parts of the watershed where juveniles (“babies”) grow up before departing to the ocean. The more we can recognize everyday salmon habitat under our own feet, the better job we can do keeping it intact. The campaign lives on today at www.babysalmon.org, and among the hundreds of green “Baby Salmon Live Here” signs posted throughout Alaska.
In summer 2022, we discovered a small stack of these signs that were yet to be posted and got to work with our partners to get them out into the world. We are working with local partners including Kachemak Bay Conservation Society, Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, Cook Inletkeeper, and Kachemak Heritage Land Trust to deploy the remainder of these signs at places where salmon streams and lakes cross our roads and trails. Thanks also to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for supporting creation of these signs.
For those of you ready to go put up signs, read on below!
A map of where existing signs are located, along with proposed sign locations can be viewed at an online map: Map of BSLH Sign Locations.
A spreadsheet of both existing and proposed sign locations can be viewed here: Spreadsheet of BSLH Sign Locations.
Instructions for how to install Baby Salmon Live Here signs at new locations can be found here: How to Install New BSLH Signs.
If you have an idea where to put a new Baby Salmon Live Here Sign, reach out to us at hydrology@kenaiwatershed.org ! Send us your pictures if you see a sign! And we are always looking for volunteers to help put them up!
Read the May 2022 local news article from KBBI.org here
Listen to the episode of Kachemak Currents about Baby Salmon habitat
