The environmental health of Puget Sound has a diverse and complex history. This article discusses many aspects of Puget Sound, Washington, and how this part of the west coast has a long, involved relationship with its marine and freshwater ecosystems. Many in Puget Sound have turned to population fluctuations in salmonids as indicators environmental health (Montgomery 2003).

The gold mine proposed for this stunning open country might be the largest in North America. It would involve building the biggest dam in the world at the headwaters of the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery, which it would risk obliterating.

Researchers engineer one fish to produce another, in a move that could save the sockeye.

It's the largest sockeye run in the world, accounting for more than 25% of wild salmon harvested in the US. And it's about to be turned into a gold mine that would include five dams, two of them bigger than China's Three Gorges. More than 2.5 billion tons of waste rock and toxic residue would fill two valleys, and a 104 mile road would be built.

The mysterious return of Sockeye Salmon 80 years after a stream's run went extinct has scientists and local officials intrigued. It could provide key lessons for how to restore these ocean-going fish to other former salmon habitats. Such successes would benefit the health of not just the streams and adjacent forests, but also local economies.

In what a biologist is calling "a fisheries Jurassic Park," Alouette River sockeye salmon have returned to spawn nearly 80 years after the original Alouette run became extinct.