The Biden Administration has announced that NOAA is designating 4,543 square miles of coastal and offshore waters along 116 miles of California’s central coast as America’s 17th national marine sanctuary.
A draft report to Congress briefly outlines progress the Northwest Power and Conservation Council made in fiscal year 2023 on its Power Plan and Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program. The draft report was approved to go out for public comment until Dec. 10 by the Council last week at its meeting in Portland.
Commercial troll fishermen in Southeast Alaska may soon be able to again legally fish for Chinook salmon in waters off the Alaskan shore. The SE Alaska troll fleet was facing a near shutdown of fishing after a District Court judge in May remanded NOAA Fisheries’ 2019 biological opinion and incidental take statement for the fishery.
NOAA Fisheries is asking the public to weigh in on alternatives on how to fund a controversial hatchery-driven prey increase program that it says would provide 4- to 5-percent more Chinook salmon in Puget Sound for endangered Orcas.
All four lower Klamath River hydropower dams have been removed. Kiewit, the dam removal contractor hired by the Klamath River Renewal Corporation to complete the construction elements of the project, finished all work this month in the river.
Worried about invasive, destructive zebra mussels coming into the state, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking aquarium and pet store shoppers in North Bend and Stayton areas who may have purchased marimo moss ball products in the last six months to contact the agency.
The latest draft annual survival study by the Fish Passage Center confirms what the organization has found each year since 2019, that recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Snake River will not occur without breaching the four lower Snake River dams.
In a recent review, a panel of scientists said the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program for the Columbia River basin is still changing and progressing after 40 years of implementation, but will need further updates and improvements, including a better strategy for incorporating climate change into the Program and a more comprehensive analysis of the outcome of removing the four lower Snake River dams.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs last week announced a nearly $10 million investment to provide critical rehabilitation at Tribal fishing sites along the Columbia River.
Dwindling snowpack, rising sea levels and dangerous heat events are among climate change challenges Washington state agencies are planning for under the guidance of a new “climate response” strategy.
Harbor seals consume as many as a third of young steelhead smolts migrating out of the Nisqually River’s delta in southern Puget Sound, new research shows.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has finalized a drone use plan that authorizes staff to conduct pinniped research and management surveys in the state’s coastal and inland waters. Department staff and researchers will use drones to survey for seals and sea lions in the Department’s Southwest, Coastal, and North Puget Sound regions.
Twenty years of habitat improvements in the Columbia River estuary have yielded 80 projects and 11,100 acres of reconnected tidally influenced flood plain habitat, according to two presentations by estuary scientists at a recent Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting.
NOAA scientists have upgraded a crucial genetic reference tool for Chinook salmon conservation that allows researchers to pinpoint the river system individual fish come from, enabling more precise management and protection of threatened and endangered populations.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has published a new long-term management plan for invasive European green crabs (EGC). This harmful shore crab species is a threat to native shellfish, estuary habitats, eelgrass, Washington’s aquaculture industry, and other tribal, cultural, and environmental values.
The Center for Biological Diversity has reached an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that puts the agency on the path to protecting imperiled fish and southern resident killer whales from toxic cyanide in Washington state’s waters.
Deep drawdowns at Green Peter and Lookout Point reservoirs to improve juvenile Chinook salmon and steelhead fish passage on the Willamette River will be explained at virtual public information sessions sponsored by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.
In a Columbia River Treaty “Agreement in Principle” with the United States, Canada will set aside 4-million-acre-feet of water each year that in the past has been used for power production. This water stored behind Canadian dams instead will be used to promote ecosystem functions and socio-economic and cultural values of British Columbia and its First Nations, according to an information session by B.C. Treaty negotiators last week.
A lawsuit contending that lower Columbia River hatcheries downstream of Bonneville Dam are a threat to wild salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act was settled in part last week.
Oregon and Washington opened the entire mainstem Columbia River to fall Chinook and coho salmon fishing from Buoy 10 to the Oregon and Washington state border last week. The change by the two-state Columbia River Compact came at its Sept. 18 hearing and was based on an increase in expected fall Chinook returns, as well as higher than average returns of coho.
The Idaho State Department of Agriculture announced this week the detection of a small number of quagga mussels in the Twin Falls area of the Snake River.
Responding to a years-long Supreme Court injunction over fish culverts, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking public input on a draft statewide strategy to prioritize the removal of small-scale barriers that prevent salmon and steelhead from swimming upstream.
Some 22,038 Columbia River basin Pacific lamprey had been counted at Bonneville Dam’s fish ladders as of Sept. 22, one-half the 10-year average and only one-third the number that had passed the dam on this date last year.
The Bonneville Power Administration is funding the construction of a state-of-the-art steelhead kelt reconditioning facility in Julietta, Idaho aimed at restoring steelhead populations in the Clearwater River. The new facility will be built adjacent to Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery, which BPA funded in 2001, and is being constructed in partnership with Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and the Nez Perce tribe.
Scientists studied two populations of fish-eating killer whales — the Southern Residents and the southern Alaska residents – to find out if these two populations different things and how their diets change throughout the year.
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