The Foundation’s three programmatic priorities, as well as its science-based, results-driven orientation, stem from the principles and interests of Gordon and Betty Moore.

Within our three program areas-environmental conservation, science, and the San Francisco Bay Area-the Foundation seeks opportunities to make a significant and measurable impact. Distinct “initiatives” have been created within these three program areas, in order to employ a portfolio of grants to achieve targeted, large-scale outcomes in a specific time-frame and most often within a determined geography.

To that end, the Foundation works with grantees in the U.S. and abroad (e.g. in Russia, Canada, Brazil, Costa Rica, etc.) whose work will advance the goals and strategies of the Foundation’s initiatives, and whose work satisfies our four filters, which ask if a project is important, makes a difference and has enduring impact, has measurable outcomes, and contributes to a portfolio effect. Once we identify appropriate organizations that have compatible interests and are active or potentially active in seeking results supportive of our objectives, we then work with these prospective grantees to design, fund, and manage a series of interdependent interventions that should produce the desired outcome(s). Examples of these interventions include the World Wildlife Fund’s work to create 28.5 million hectares of new national parks, ecological stations, and biological reserves in the Amazon, changing the uses of land roughly the size of Nevada; and the Woods Hole Research Center’s and others’ development of a computer simulation model that allows policy makers to visualize and forecast conservation threats and increase the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation throughout the Amazon region.

The Foundation’s interest in Russia stems from its interest in conserving wild salmon ecosystems. Today, many Pacific watersheds have been highly degraded by expanded human activity and development, to the point that only a small number of wild salmon return to these watersheds annually when compared to historical standards. By contrast, salmon populations are generally thriving in watersheds in the Kamachtka Peninsula (as in much of British Columbia and Alaska). In Kamchatka, abundant runs return every year, supporting numerous fisheries and fueling ecosystems. The Foundation’s Wild Salmon Ecosystems Initiative therefore focuses on Russia, as well as British Columbia and Alaska, in the hopes that by working in collaboration with local and international grantees and partners, these thriving salmon ecosystems will remain healthy. Additionally, to make the impact at a scale necessary for durable impact, an important focus of the initiative has been helping to coordinate the work of grantees and other collaborators across the entire North Pacific Rim. (As such, to expand the scale of salmon ecosystem conservation and understand how salmon are fairing across the entire North Pacific, the initiative helped launch a clearinghouse for data called the State of the Salmon program.)

Recognizing the important ecological role of Pacific Salmon- from the streams where they hatch, to estuaries, to the open ocean, and back to their natal streams to spawn and die-the Foundation chose to undertake this initiative because of its potential to make a real ecological difference with enduring impact, and the measurability of the goals we set for it. The long-term goal for this project is to maintain a healthy salmon ecosystem, at the scale of the North Pacific. Efforts are underway in Russia (Kamchatka), Canada (BC), and the US (Alaska). The initiative supports scientists and other specialists, from those who work to protect habitat in specific watersheds across the North Pacific, to experts in reforming salmon aquaculture and hatchery practices, to fisheries managers and others who can help ensure that salmon fisheries are managed sustainably.

Other conservation projects implemented by Foundation grantees include our Andes Amazon and Marine Conservation initiatives, to maintain the ecological function and representative biodiversity of the Amazon Basin, and to maintain resilient and productive marine ecosystems in North America, respectively. In Russia, our Wild Salmon Ecosystem initiative is the Foundation’s priority.

Our goal in our environmental conservation work is to help change the ways in which important terrestrial and coastal marine ecosystems are used to conserve critical ecological systems and functions for future generations, while allowing current uses to be sustained. This requires a focus on multiple conservation issues and interrelated topics, from economics to policy to ecology: a healthy natural environment provides us with the resources needed to sustain life and human societies-from food and clean water to medicines and raw materials-and it also maintains global biodiversity and the productivity and resilience of ecological systems.

Our interest in the North Pacific is focused on issues related the sustainable harvest and issues of hatchery propagation of wild pacific salmon, and we are supporting a number of projects in these areas, with participation by a range of partners, including some Russian organizations.

It is a privilege for the Foundation to be able to support the conservation of wild salmon ecosystems in globally significant places like Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, and we appreciate your interest in our work.