In a recently completed review of their status, NOAA Fisheries has determined that Upper Willamette River spring Chinook and Upper Willamette River winter steelhead should remain listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
In a forceful letter earlier this month, the Public Power Council urged the Biden Administration to include its members as a “meaningful part” of the Columbia Basin Task Force, which the Administration’s Council on Environmental Quality formed in June.
Northern California steelhead require continued protection as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to a recent 5-year review by NOAA Fisheries.
Humans drove wolves to extinction in Washington state around the 1930s. Thanks to conservation efforts, by about 80 years later, wolves had returned
Montana’s only native rainbow trout is making a comeback in the northwest corner of the state.
Crews later this month will begin installing the power and data cables that are essential to completing construction of a new wave energy testing facility off the Oregon Coast.
As the world’s largest unfrozen freshwater resource, groundwater is crucial for life on Earth. Researchers at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have investigated how global warming is affecting groundwater temperatures and what that means for humanity and the environment.
Since 2006, a fast-moving disease known as white-nose syndrome has killed an estimated 6.7 million bats, wiping out entire colonies and decimating creatures that provide an integral means of pest control.
The governments of Canada and the United States announced Thursday they have reached an agreement-in-principle to modernize the Columbia River Treaty.
Last week, Oregon and Washington fisheries managers shut down retention of Columbia River sockeye salmon from the ocean to the two-state border at Hwy 395 near Pasco, WA, even as the run size forecast rose twice and by early this week had nearly doubled.
During recent periods of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Alaska, young Pacific cod in near shore safe havens where they typically spend their adolescence did not experience the protective effects those areas typically provide, a new Oregon State University study found.
The reservoir behind central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam is full (1,600-foot elevation), air temperatures in the lower Snake River basin are warming into the 100’s over the July 4 weekend and beyond, and tailwater temperature at Lower Granite Dam is warming towards 68 degrees Fahrenheit, the maximum allowed by NOAA Fisheries’ biological opinion on impacts of the federal hydroelectric system on salmon and steelhead.
Idaho, Washington and Oregon are in line to receive $1,840,082 to upgrade or replace existing fish screens that prevent migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead from getting trapped in canals and irrigation ditches.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week released its final environmental impact statement analyzing proposed barred owl management alternatives to protect northern and California spotted owls in Washington, Oregon and California from invasive barred owls.
A bird that spends its entire life near mountaintops in the Pacific Northwest is likely to become in danger of extinction as a result of climate change, the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service has announced.
Spearfishing for bass is allowed on southwest Oregon’s Coquille River through Oct. 31. Spears, spear guns and angling with bait to take smallmouth bass is allowed, and there are no harvest size or limits.
For the fourth year in a row, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife issued an emergency rule requiring commercial whale-watching vessels to stay at least one-half nautical mile away from vulnerable Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW) this summer.
The 1.1 mile long North Cove beach is located along the north entrance to Willapa Bay in Pacific County and was once the fastest eroding ocean beach on the U.S. West Coast.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week affirmed a lower court ruling that prevents Scott Timber from clearcutting old growth trees within Oregon’s Elliott State Forest. The decision will protect marbled murrelets, which are a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
The Biden Administration this week released a controversial “Tribal Circumstances Analysis” acknowledging the harm 11 Columbia and Snake river dams have inflicted and continue to inflict on Columbia Basin Native American Tribes.
More than 1.6 million American shad have been counted at Bonneville Dam this year as of June 17 and a few of the non-native fish have even been counted as high in the river basin as Lower Granite Dam, the uppermost of the four lower Snake River dams, and Priest Rapids Dam in the mid-Columbia. For more than a decade they have outnumbered all other anadromous fish entering the river combined.
Across most of the Columbia River basin, May brought cooler than normal weather with a mix of precipitation totals. Although providing a respite from this year’s typically lower than normal precipitation and higher than normal temperatures, water supply forecasts continue their downward trend into the summer months, according to the NOAA Northwest River Forecast Center June briefing.
Aimed at protecting wild Pacific salmon, Diane Lebouthillier, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, announced this week that the Canadian Government will ban open net-pen salmon aquaculture in British Columbia coastal waters by June 30, 2029.
Gray whales that spend their summers feeding in the shallow waters off the Pacific Northwest coast have undergone a significant decline in body length since around the year 2000, a new Oregon State University study found.
NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation says the agency and its partners are increasing numbers of threatened Upper Willamette River Chinook salmon by restoring habitat in Oregon’s McKenzie River watershed.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
