Abstract
North American salmon once ranged from ocean waters near the Arctic Circle southward to southern New England on the Atlantic and Mexico on the Pacific. The colonial and industrial transformation of rivers and oceans have led to extirpation or endangered status of many southern populations. Today, chronic anthropogenic stressors interact with climate change, which means that effective conservation must address changes in transformed ecosystems. Conservation goals are designed to recover both the species and their habitats. While seemingly congruent, habitat and fish management have different timetables due to speed of changes in climate, habitat, and biological processes relative to regulatory processes, habitat restoration, and project implementation. The Resist‐Accept‐Direct (RAD) framework facilitated exploration of ideas and actions to restore suitable conditions for salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act at their southern edge. Creative and big solutions are needed to recover salmon and RAD provided a way to examine conservation options to sustain salmon in an era of change.