Salmon taught school in the San Antonio area from 1968 to 1971 before moving to Minnesota to become an outdoorsman and writer.
Salmon moved to southwest New Mexico in 1981 and began his work to preserve the free-flowing Gila River.
The Gila Conservation Coalition successfully lobbied against the Hooker and Conner dams and Mangas diversion in the 1980s and 1990s.
Starting in 2001, Salmon opposed the diversion threat under the Arizona Water Settlements Act.
[22] He was also the editor and publisher of the short-lived 1980s outdoors literary quarterly, Basin & Range.