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The Conservation Fund’s Pedro Bay Rivers Project
Orvis was proud to partner with The Conservation Fund and donate $25,000 to the Pedro Bay Rivers Project, a collaboration with Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust and the Pedro Bay Corporation that permanently protected over 44,000 acres of some of the most vital sockeye salmon spawning habitat in the Bristol Bay ecosystem. In 2022, Bristol Bay's salmon run was the largest on record at 79 million fish. Three conservation easements across three watersheds on Iliamna Lake, created by the Fund’s successful capital campaign, helped to secure the future of Bristol Bay salmon and ensure a vibrant and sustainable recreational and commercial fishing economy, while maintaining subsistence uses, traditional activities, and cultural resources important to the Pedro Bay Corporation and its Alaska Native shareholders.
EPA Clean Water Act Protections for Bristol Bay
Working with our partners at Trout Unlimited Alaska, Orvis committed $20,000 in ongoing advocacy work, raising awareness and driving community action to help ensure continued protection of the Bristol Bay region. Our work with TU, our partners, and our customers for over a decade helped lead to the EPA’s decision to finalize Clean Water Act safeguards in the headwaters of Bristol Bay in January 2023. The ruling was a significant setback for the Pebble Partnership’s bid for a federal permit. Orvis remains committed to ensuring permanent, long-term protections for the Bristol Bay region—25 million acres of the largest sockeye salmon fishery on the planet.
Everglades Restoration
Orvis continued to partner with organizations like Everglades Foundation and Captains for Clean Water in 2022, supporting a flagship ecosystem restoration project that is also the largest in the world.
In 2022, Orvis traveled to Florida to tell the story of this massive effort through the words of the guides, anglers, and scientists on the ground, working every day to create momentum and make change. After decades of start-and-stop progress, lack of funding and political inertia, restoring the natural 200-mile flow of freshwater south through Florida, the Everglades and into Florida Bay is within reach in this decade.
A restored Everglades will enhance the carbon sequestration capacity of this unique ecosystem, which spans three million acres of freshwater and estuarine wetlands. It will also support Florida’s $86B tourism industry, including $11B recreational fishing industry and $23B recreational boating industry and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
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Native American Fish & Wildlife Society’s Summer Youth Practicum
Orvis was a proud sponsor of the NAFWS Summer Youth Practicum, designed to introduce Native students from grades 10-12 to Tribal natural resource management and career opportunities available in natural resource focused professions. Students representing Nondalton-Den’ina Athabaskan (Alaska), Navajo Nation (Arizona), Native Village of Kotlik (Washington), Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation of Idaho, and Cherokee Nation (Pennsylvania) took part in a week-long practicum including workshops on field-sketching, fisheries, forestry, wildlife corridors, and Tribal conservation law.
Chattahoochee Riverkeeper: Becca Sue Klein All Kids Fish
The annual Becca Sue Klein All Kids Fish events inspire the next generation of fly anglers and conservationists through three full-day fly-fishing retreats that cultivate an inclusive and equitable community. Kids ages 10-18 spend the day in the headwaters region of the Chattahoochee River watershed or in the heart of Atlanta at Piedmont Park, learning to cast a fly rod, tie knots, safely handle fish, and how a healthy river sustains life.
Bristol Bay Fly Fishing & Guide Academy
For the 13th year, Orvis funding supported the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing Guide Academy, providing local indigenous students with a week-long introduction to fly fishing and the skills needed to be a guide in the Bristol Bay lodge and tourism industry. The program is offered at no cost. In addition to local students, this year’s Academy welcomed guests from Blackfeet Nation (Montana) interested in starting a guide academy in Montana geared towards Indigenous youth in the lower 48.
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Morris Animal Foundation
Since 2009 our beloved Cover Dog Contest and partnership with Morris Animal Foundation has helped support canine cancer research. The Foundation’s Golden Retriever Lifetime Study advances the health of all dogs and is one the largest, most comprehensive of its kind in the United States, collecting valuable data on over 3,000 enrolled golden retrievers. Funds help train veterinary pathologists essential to correct cancer diagnosis, improve scientists’ understanding of earlier disease detection, and launch new studies around lymphoma detection and obesity risk in dogs.
Petfinder Foundation
In our 10th year of partnership, we along with our customers reached the $1 million mark on Giving Tuesday, saving the lives of over 75,000 dogs in shelters across the United States. Orvis support impacts shelter dog enrichment programs, improving the quality of life for dogs, making them happier and healthier, and increasing their chances for adoption—ensuring that no adoptable pet is euthanized for lack of a good home.
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