Nonprofit purchase and tribal renovation of polluted river and clear cut forest. After a 10-year effort the Yurok Tribe, Western Rivers Conservancy, Opportunity Fund, and U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation, a division of U.S. Bank, successfully create a salmon sanctuary to protect the cold-water lifeline of the Klamath River. The Yurok Tribe and Western Rivers Conservancy have succeeded in creating a major salmon sanctuary within the Yurok Reservation to protect Blue Creek, the most important source of cold water for the lower Klamath River and a lifeline for some of the largest runs of salmon and steelhead remaining on the West Coast. The project is part of the Yurok Tribe’s and WRC’s larger effort to return over 47,000 acres of ancestral lands to the tribe by purchasing them from Green Diamond Resource Company, which owned all the land along Blue Creek between the Siskiyou Wilderness Area and the Klamath River. The land was controlled by the tribe until the late-1800s, when it was appropriated by the federal government. As a result, the tribe lost all but a small percentage of its reservation lands, including Blue Creek, the Yurok spiritual centerpiece since time immemorial.