The Salmon-Safe Standards were inspired by more than a decade of work by the Salmon-Safe US Agriculture Project team, who worked with producers to improve their land management practices to mitigate impacts to salmon. Driven by the ecological ​and market needs they saw in this work, the co-founders of Salmon-Safe put together a multidisciplinary team of scientists, fish biologists, engineers, and academic researchers to develop a set of certification standards that were based on the biological needs of salmon. These standards were then piloted and peer-reviewed by the science and academic community, as well as by US regulatory agencies. A similar review of the US standards was completed in BC before the launch of the Salmon-Safe BC Urban Certification Program in 2013. The BC review team found that the standards were appropriate for the BC context and both the standards were adopted for Salmon-Safe BC.