Seattle tries a new hook to save salmon

SEATTLE — This is a city that takes its salmon very seriously -- as a delicacy, and as a regional icon.

Now a new citywide ad campaign is asking grocery shoppers to step up and do their part to save the salmon.

The bus ads remind shoppers to look for the "Salmon-Safe" label, which blesses fresh locally produced eggs, milk, wine and produce. This label assures the customer that the agricultural practices of the farm or vineyard in question do not harm salmon habitat.

It's a message that seems tailor-made for this city, where organic coffee shops, farmers markets and agricultural cooperatives flourish.

Stewardship Partners, a local nonprofit that works with private landowners to restore and preserve the natural landscape, has been running the Salmon-Safe program in the Seattle area since 2004. The bus campaign and recent radio spots are its first large-scale promotions of the label.

"We've been scaling up," said Stewardship Partners' program director, Larry Nussbaum. "We had to have enough producers in the program to meet demand before we could run this kind of a campaign."

The Salmon-Safe program dates to 1995, when it was developed at the Pacific Rivers Council. Now the certification standards are set by Salmon-Safe Inc., a nonprofit in Portland, Ore., that looks for groups like Stewardship Partners to administer the program locally. Oregon, Washington and Marin County are among its partners.

Overall, the program has certified more than 150 farms and wineries.

The certification inspection takes into account a producer's water use, erosion control, pesticide management, and maintenance of biological diversity, among other factors. A producer need not be certified organic to qualify, though many are.

Salmon-Safe's managing director, Dan Kent, says the program's growth and success in Seattle has been "phenomenal."

Thirty farms, vineyards and dairies have been certified in the Puget Sound area.

Nussbaum attributed Seattle's interest in the program to a number of factors -- primarily public awareness and concern for local agriculture.

"There is a huge amount of buzz here around the whole issue of salmon. The government is spending millions of dollars on programs to restore wild salmon habitat -- and this is a program that gives private landowners a way to be a part of that effort," Nussbaum said. "We also have two big trends -- growth in the natural organic foods market and even more growth in the local sustainable agriculture movement -- that have been huge."