The Department of the Interior announced this week the establishment of the Willamette Valley Conservation Area in Oregon as the 572nd unit of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-managed National Wildlife Refuge System.
New research from the U.S. Geological Survey links wildfires to increased mercury concentrations in Pacific Northwest headwater streams.
Idaho Fish and Game recently received test results confirming a positive case of chronic wasting disease in an adult female white-tailed deer roughly 3 miles outside of Bonners Ferry in hunting Unit 1. The deer was reported to Fish and Game by a landowner who found the dead deer in early July.
Yakama tribal leader Jeremy Takala was sworn in as the 2024-2025 Chair of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission at its July meeting, being hosted by the Warm Springs Tribe in Madras, Oregon. This is the second time Takala has served as the CRITFC Chair, previously occupying this position in 2020-2021.
On July 11, 2024, Canada and the U.S. reached a milestone in the process of modernizing the Columbia River Treaty – an agreement-in-principle (AIP) that sets the stage for an improved treaty that supports people and ecosystems on both sides of the border.
The Bureau of Reclamation last week announced four projects totaling more than $1 million to be awarded as part of two Klamath Basin Salmon Restoration grant programs.
The Center for Biological Diversity this week petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the banded juga — an imperiled freshwater snail in Oregon’s Deschutes River — under the Endangered Species Act.
Idaho Fish and Game reported last week a mortality event that resulted in about 33,000 young Chinook dying at the McCall Fish Hatchery in late July.
Idaho Fish and Game researchers have developed a new genetics-based method of estimating the state’s wolf population. The method uses genetic and age information taken from every harvested wolf checked by Fish and Game.
The popular Lower Deschutes River in central Oregon will remain open for steelhead fishing under permanent regulations.
It’s a phenomenal year for sockeye salmon in Central Washington, with record numbers of fish making their way upriver. Through July 31, an astounding 165,071 sockeye have been counted at Tumwater Dam on the Wenatchee River.
The Department of Commerce and NOAA have announced more than $105 million in recommended funding for 14 new and continuing salmon recovery projects and programs.
Last week crews broke through the cofferdam at the JC Boyle Dam site, returning the Klamath River to its historic path and restoring fish passage in that reach of the river.
The removal of four dams on the Klamath River will reopen more habitat to Pacific salmon than all previous dam removals in the West combined. Now it will have a monitoring program to match—designed by salmon scientists to track when and how many fish of different species return and where they go.
The number of wild steelhead returning to the Deschutes River this year remains low, although the run is still in progress, while this year’s wild spring Chinook salmon run is in critical condition, as it has been for the past few years
The Departments of Commerce and Interior Thursday (July 25) announced $240 million in funding to support Tribal hatcheries that produce Pacific salmon and steelhead.
Warm water in the upper Salmon River is leading biologists to trap the sockeye at Lower Granite Dam and haul them to the Eagle Hatchery near Boise, ID.
A newly enhanced database is expected to help wildfire managers and scientists better predict where and when wildfires may occur by incorporating hundreds of additional factors that impact the ignition and spread of fire.
Environmental groups celebrated a legal victory last week when a federal district court judge overturned an offshore oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, saying the federal government violated the law when holding the sale.
Upper Willamette River spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead are benefitting from long-running habitat projects downstream of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 13 Willamette Project dams, according to a recent presentation at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission last week voted 8-1 to approve amended cougar hunting rules. Spurred by a petition from wildlife conservation organizations, the new rules aim to avoid cougar overexploitation.
Biologists in Idaho are hoping that the large migratory bull trout that overwinter in the Snake River downstream of Idaho Power Company’s Hells Canyon Dams can in the next few years be trapped and moved upstream.
Snake River wild steelhead populations have declined significantly over the past several years, and this facility will be the first hatchery project in the basin aimed specifically at recovering this threatened run.
A pilot project proposed in Port Angeles, Washington is designed to test whether seawater can be used to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air. “Project Macoma,” as the proposed pilot is named, is an effort by a company called Ebb Carbon. It is a first-of-its-kind pilot project that has the potential to remove…
A pilot project proposed in Port Angeles, Washington is designed to test whether seawater can be used to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air. It is a first-of-its-kind pilot project that has the potential to remove carbon dioxide from marine waters.
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