Advocating for Southeast Alaska Waters

Our Inside Passage Waters Program works with Southeast Alaska communities to develop solutions for protecting, managing, benefiting from, and celebrating local waterways.

Southeast Watersheds

Water Quality

Photo by: Susan Stephens

Photos by: Michele Cornelius (top) Connor Gallagher (below)

The Waters of Southeast Alaska

Southeast Alaska is as much water as it is land. Here, the interconnected web of the Inside Passage is home to lush wild salmon rivers and immense watersheds that feed the trees of the Tongass and the oceans of the world. It is a place teeming with biodiversity — from whales and wolves, to eagles, deer and bears, to salmon and human communities.

There is wisdom here too, connection, balance, and resilience — lessons learned through millennia of change and adaptation.

Yet, balance is becoming more difficult in a world of rapid change and large-scale resource extraction.

What We Do

Our Inside Passage Waters Program supports Southeast Alaskan communities in having a strong voice, developing solutions for managing, protecting, and benefiting from local waterways, and learning from local knowledge about what works for maintaining balance in this place.

Photo by: Alex Crook

Donate to Protect Southeast Alaska Waters

Southeast Watersheds

Our work is currently focused on three transboundary watersheds: the Chilkat | Jilkaat Heeni (near Klukwan and Haines), the Stikine | Shtax’héen (near Wrangell and Petersburg), and the Unuk | Junak (near Ketchikan, Saxman, and Metlakatla).

We have selected these rivers because they are all vitally important to the survival of wild Pacific salmon and nearby communities, they are threatened by upstream mining activity, and there are still opportunities to take protective action in each case.

Click the graphics below to learn more about these three rivers and how to protect them.

Chilkat • Jilkaat Heeni

Stikine • Shtax’héen

Unuk • Junak

Chilkat River

Stikine River

Unuk River

Transboundary Watersheds Area Map

Click on the rivers on the map below to learn more about these three rivers and how to protect them.