Thanks for watching our film, and for your comments — our primary goal with the film was to shine a spotlight on these issues, to spark dialogue and encourage changes in the way we think about river and fish conservation and fishery management. The common ground we all seem to share is a love of rivers and an interest in seeing wild fish return in greater abundance. Patagonia has been working to protect wild rivers and wild fish for over 40 years. We were founded by an avid fly fisherman – and we’re proud of all our connections to the fish world, which range from our fly fishing and salmon product lines, to the over $20 million in grants we’ve given to local groups working on these issues in communities around the world.
To that end, whatever your point of view, we hope you visit Patagonia Action Works, to learn more about and support groups working to protect wild rivers and wild fish – https://www.patagonia.com/actionworks/about
Further, this is the 3rd film we’ve made about these issues. First was Damnation, which highlights the destructive effect of obsolete dams on healthy river ecosystems and habitat; and then, Blue Heart of Europe, which shares the shocking story of a tsunami of dam development in the Balkans region of Eastern Europe, and calls for a stop to the construction of 3,000 new hydropower dams and diversions. We couldn’t agree more that habitat destruction, dam building, mismanaged harvest, and pollution of our waterways are also incredibly important issues – check out these films to get a sense for some of our advocacy across the issues.
Watch Blue Heart here: https://youtu.be/OhmHByZ0Xd8
Watch DamNation here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00QH8UZUY/ref=atv_dl_rdr
If you have questions about our position – please visit https://www.patagonia.com/artifishal.html and review our “Get the Facts” section and visit our Provisions Sourcing page for more information on our Salmon products: https://www.patagoniaprovisions.com/pages/salmon-conservation
Finally, if you have questions about the science on this issue, we recommend these links, housed on the Native Fish Society and Wild Fish Conservancy web pages:
https://nativefishsociety.org/science/hatcheries
http://wildfishconservancy.org/wild-steelhead/scientific-evidence-on-adverse-effects-of-steelhead-hatcheries
http://wildfishconservancy.org/what-we-do/advocacy/steelhead-hatchery-reform/the-effects-of-hatchery-production-on-wild-salmon-and-trout
http://wildfishconservancy.org/resources/science-library/HatcheryImpactonWildSalmonidsBakke.pdf