Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife staff at the Ashland Boat Inspection Station found quagga mussels on a pontoon boat that was being transported from Lake Mead, Nev., into Oregon on Jan. 4.
Nearly 75 percent of the U.S. could experience damaging earthquake shaking, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey-led team of over scientists and engineers.
Montanans have varying attitudes and beliefs about wolves and wolf management, and over time some of those feelings have shifted, according to a new survey conducted cooperatively by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and the University of Montana.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee last week directed the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission to draft new rules to guide when wolves can be killed for conflict with livestock and prioritize using nonlethal methods of conflict deterrence over killing wolves.
Curt Melcher, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Director since 2014, has announced he is retiring effective April 1, 2024.
Idaho and Montana – along with the region’s public power utilities and inland ports in Idaho, among others, are opposed to the Biden Administration’s Memorandum of Understanding on Columbia Basin salmon recovery and have filed their displeasure in federal court, saying they were entirely left out of making the deal.
The precision of estimating salmon and steelhead smolt survival rates through Snake and Columbia river dams during the 2023 spring outmigration is remaining elusive. This is the fifth straight year that high levels of court-ordered spill at Columbia and Snake river dams have impacted detection rates of the tagged juveniles as they migrated downstream through eight dams.
NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation is using $27 million under the Infrastructure Law to support four major projects aiming at boosting threatened salmon and steelhead in Oregon’s Willamette River watershed.
Toxic chemicals produced from oil emissions and wildfire smoke have been found in muscle and liver samples from Southern Resident killer whales and Bigg’s killer whales.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, at a workshop last month, determined that revision of the Wolf Plan was not needed at this time, while directing staff to focus on addressing key challenges including wolf-livestock conflict, reducing illegal take, and population monitoring.
Oregon and Washington closed recreational white sturgeon retention from Bonneville Dam upstream to the tailwater of the John Day Dam this week. The closure began the end of the day on January 3.
Forests on the west slope of Oregon’s Cascade Range experienced fire much more often between 1500 and 1895 than had been previously thought, according to new research by scientists at Oregon State University.
NOAA’s 2023 Arctic Report Card documents new records showing that human-caused warming of the air, ocean and land is affecting people, ecosystems and communities across the Arctic region, which is heating up faster than any other part of the world.
Consistent with direction from President Biden in an executive order to conserve and restore old and mature forests, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced a proposal to amend all 128 forest land management plans to conserve and steward old-growth forest conditions on national forests and grasslands nationwide.
Last month, the Canadian Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard, Diane Lebouthillier, and the British Columbia Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, Nathan Cullen, announced $86,119,340 for 58 projects receiving funding under the second phase of the British Columbia Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund (BCSRIF).
The Biden Administration, Columbia River treaty tribes and the states of Oregon and Washington agreed Thursday to work to restore wild salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake river basins and to delay ongoing litigation for five years, with an option for the delay to go as long as 10 years.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and U.S. Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this week sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urging them to finalize an agreement between the U.S. and Canada to modernize and strengthen the treaty.
The early run size forecast for spring Chinook salmon next year into the Columbia River basin is slightly lower than the 2023 actual return of the spring fish and much lower than last year’s early run size forecast.
The Burns Paiute Tribe of southeastern Oregon has sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking that action be taken to identify measures to return salmon to the Malheur River Basin upstream of Idaho Power’s three-dam Hells Canyon Complex on the Snake River along the Idaho-Oregon border. Idaho Power, in the midst of relicensing those dams, says salmon and steelhead were extirpated before the dams were built and the complex was not central to these losses.
The state of Washington has successfully reduced the number of commercial Columbia River gillnet licenses in the state from 240 to 67. The reduction is the result of a $14.4 million commercial license reduction program approved by the state’s legislature in 2021, and a part of a plan to move gillnet boats off the mainstem of the river and to give more of the salmon harvest to recreational anglers.
More than 17,000 adult coho salmon and nearly 5,000 wild spring Chinook salmon returned to Portland General Electric’s North Fork Dam on the Clackamas River this fall, according to the utility.
Idaho Fish and Game biologists quickly learned that the copper treatment to rid a stretch of the Snake River from quagga mussels caused high mortality in certain species – at least six to seven tons of dead fish — while others survived quite well.
Biden administration officials bound by court-ordered confidentiality declined to participate in a congressional oversight hearing Tuesday focused on a leaked draft settlement of the long-running salmon and dams litigation in the Columbia River basin.
Mercury concentrations are twice as high in smallmouth bass found in reservoirs than those in the free-flowing sections of the Snake River in Idaho and Oregon, according to a joint U.S. Geological Survey and Idaho Power Company study that looked at 1,815 specimens of this popular recreational fishing species from a variety of habitats in 31 sites along 530 miles of the Snake River.
The final winner in the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program this year received a whopping $107,800 for their efforts to catch the aggressive predator of juvenile salmon and steelhead. Even the second-place angler received nearly $100,000 in winnings with a total catch of 9,786 pikeminnow.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
