Oregon may soon have a new wildlife area in Union County called the Qapqápa Wildlife Area (pronounced cop-COP-a). The property would be owned by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and co-managed with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, continuing a decades-long partnership.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District has awarded a $15 million construction contract to Syblon-Reid Co. to build a new fish ladder at the Mill Creek Diversion Dam in Walla Walla.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s recent legislatively adopted budget did not include funding to continue the operation of Salmon River Hatchery near Lincoln City, one of more than 30 hatcheries that ODFW maintains in the state.
A team of scientists has proposed additional guiding principles and performance measures — based on the full lifecycles of salmon and steelhead — that they believe will help with Columbia River estuary restoration.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, has completed major rehabilitation to the South Jetty at the mouth of the Columbia River, marking the end of a decade-plus effort to restore the three jetties that protect one of the nation’s busiest trade corridors. Work on the $171.3 million South Jetty wrapped up in August 2025 after six construction seasons.
The Trump administration released draft plans that could strip away protections for the greater sage grouse on about 50 million acres of public lands across the West. The Obama- and Biden-era greater sage grouse proposals were intended to prevent the extinction of the iconic dancing bird.
Northern Arizona University and University of California Berkeley scientists working along the region’s California’s Eel River have discovered a micro-scale nutrient factory that keeps rivers healthy and allows salmon to thrive.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District, has issued a five-year construction license to the Benton Conservation District for the Amon Creek Habitat Restoration Project, a $1.2 million initiative aimed at improving fish habitat and migration conditions at the Yakima Delta Habitat Management Unit near McNary Lock and Dam.
From corn chips to tofu, climate change is messing with the menu.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has completed a five-year status review of the Columbian white-tailed deer and found that it has met the criteria outlined in its recovery plan. As a result, the Service is recommending the deer be removed from the federal Endangered Species List.
A copper-based chemical treatment to rid a portion of the Snake River of invasive quagga mussels – the first to be found in any Columbia Basin stream – destroyed up to 90 percent of water-based macroinvertebrates (bugs), nearly all gastropods (snails and slugs) and most white sturgeon residing near the area where the poison was applied, according to a recent study.
In a draft report, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council says since the Northwest Power Act in 1980 its energy efficiency programs have saved some 8,000 average megawatts, enough to power seven cities the size of Seattle, while saving energy consumers some $5 billion in lower utility bills.
With what may have been the last round of federal funding support, a research team gathered offshore monitoring data throughout Puget Sound once more this summer.
Following a “thorough review of the best available scientific and commercial information,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it has determined that listing the Northern California-Southern Oregon distinct population segment of fisher under the Endangered Species Act is not warranted.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins this week announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken the next step in the rulemaking process for rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule by opening a public comment period.
This summer, Idaho Fish and Game biologists are testing whether trail cameras can help estimate the number of black bears in one of the state’s most popular bear hunting areas, Unit 32A.
Idaho’s wolves will remain under state authority despite a judge’s recent decision that calls for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider a previous determination that relisting wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming under the Endangered Species Act was not warranted.
So-called “100-year weather events” now seem almost commonplace as floods, storms and fires continue to set new standards for largest, strongest and most destructive. But to categorize weather as a true 100-year event, there must be just a 1% chance of it occurring in any given year. The trouble is that researchers don’t always know whether the weather aligns with the current climate or defies the odds.
Pollinators like honey bees require healthy food to survive and thrive. To learn more about the pollen they gather and the nutrients within it, Washington State University is leading a new endeavor dubbed the Pacific Northwest Pollen Atlas.
A federal judge in Oregon last week confirmed the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s legal duty to consider preventative measures — rather than a “spray first, ask questions later” approach — in its program allowing insecticide spraying to kill native grasshoppers and crickets on millions of acres in 17 western states.
A collaborative research and outreach effort led by Oregon State University to protect whales and sustain Oregon’s commercial Dungeness crab fishery has been recognized as one of four regional winners of the 2025 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award.
For years, scientists at Washington State University’s Puyallup Research & Extension Center have been working to untangle a mystery: Why do coho salmon in Puget Sound creeks seem to suffocate after rainstorms — rising to the surface, gaping, and swimming in circles before dying?
Predation by sea birds on salmon and steelhead smolts in some years is responsible for as much as 50 percent of all smolt mortalities during the outmigration to the sea from the Columbia and Snake river basins, according to a presentation this week at a meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
European green crabs were first discovered in Washington state in 1998 in Willapa Bay, where they remained in small numbers for over a decade. The green crabs were first documented in Washington’s inland waters in the San Juan Islands in 2016.
More than 7,000 Chinook salmon are expected to return to Whatcom Creek in downtown Bellingham, Washington this season thanks to an ongoing collaboration between Bellingham Technical College, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and the Lummi Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
