We believe in acts over talk. So the Save The Natives donations comes from transparent and simple formula:

We donate 1% of the annual profit of Vision Group Oy.

And

We donate 50% of the profit that comes from Save The Natives products.

Kuusinki Kuntoon ry (”Free Kuusinki” registered association) has started a project in order to restore Kuusinki river and facilitate the run of brown trouts further 50 km up the river free from artificial obstacles.

The plan of the association is to purchase and shut down the Myllykoski hydropower plant owned by Koskivoima oy and to free the water flow around the plant. The project would buy and restore natural water flow in Kuusinki river.

There are three different wild species of brown trout in broader Oulanka river, part of which Kuusinki river is. Brown trout of Kuusinki, however, is particularly famous and desired by many anglers. The viability of Kuusinki brown trout has weakened a lot over last 30 years and the trout is currently classified as especially endangered species.

Restoration of Kuusinki river would be wellcome in many respects: biodiversity of species, environmental improvement, recreational fishing and tourism.

The project seems to have strong local support and it is also well in line with national public environmental targets.

The Association is naturally working closely together with local and central authorities.

Since 2010 there have been a few comparable projects in Finland (Hiitola river in Rautjärvi, Saramo river in Nurmes, Kirakkokoski in Inari) with the same approach of shutting down hydropower plants in order to improve environmental conditions of endangered fish species.

Through the Save the Natives fund we support the Free Falling project in 2024 which is an extremely timely follow-up documentary on the state of Baltic salmon. The Free Falling project continues the story from the documentary ”Home rivers recycled: a salmon fishing documentary from the Swedish rivers up North” which was released a year ago and can be watched on YouTube. The previous documentary was an ode to the glorious rise of Baltic salmon from the brink of extinction in less than thirty years. At the end of the documentary, the creators promised to revisit the situation in 25 years, but just 2,5 years later, the state of Baltic salmon seems so deteriorated that the time for a revisit is now.

The Free Falling documentary will be released in March 2025. Through Save the Natives we aim to support the general awareness and popularization of the state of fish populations by all possible means. Save The Natives want to raise the awareness so that the fish and aquatic nature receives the necessary visibility and attention in today’s world.

River Vantaa flows in to the Baltic sea in the capital of Finland, Helsinki. River Vantaa is a large 1686 km2 watershed that runs through 14 municipality. The main riverbed is around 100km long and River Vantaa has been well known for its seatrout stocks. Happily we can say today that River Vantaa is producing again rapidly growing stocks of seatrout despite there’s great amount of political and volunteering work still ahead.

Virtavesien Hoitoyhdistys has done remarkable job together with volunteers and several authorities. In few decades the work has expanded migrating fish spawning grounds from 17km up from the sea to 95km in to the very upper parts of the river. The infamous cesspool has restored to be the pride and pivotal part of local communities along the river system.

We at Vision have supported work of Virho constantly during many years. The support has been financial and supplying wading gear for the volunteers.

We have always been the number one brand of predator fly fishing in the Europe. These super valuable predator species like pike were undervalued for decades in fly fishing scene. At the same time people easily take predator species for granted and the focus of fish stock talk is only on migrating species.

But the fact is that the pike stocks need urgent actions as well. The amount of suitable spawning grounds has reduced due to human actions. Pike has a crucial role to balance the natural structure of ecosystem and species. Three major threats and problems for pike are: 1) eutrophication, 2) changes in species ecosystem and 3) built environment by humans.

FFRF is running program ‘Pike Factories’ (Haukitehtaat) where spawning areas are restored for pike in lakes and sea area.