In support of a statewide voter-led initiative passed in November 2020, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized the designation of an experimental population of gray wolves in Colorado under the Endangered Species Act. This action provides management flexibility in support of the state of Colorado’s voter-mandated gray wolf reintroduction program.
When bottlenose dolphins nurse their young, they transfer toxic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and DDT to their calves through their milk. New research shows that the calves end up with higher concentrations of the toxins than their mothers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public input on a draft environmental impact statement and draft Barred Owl Management Strategy that addresses the threat of the non-native and invasive barred owls to native northern and California spotted owls.
Parties to the lawsuit challenging the federal government’s 2020 environmental impact statement and biological opinion for imperiled salmon and steelhead traversing Columbia/Snake River federal dams have developed a package of “actions and commitments” that they will present to regional partners to get buy-in over the next 45 days.
The Biden Administration says $60 million will be available for NOAA Fisheries to invest in upgrades identified as tribal priorities for Columbia River Basin hatchery facilities that produce Pacific salmon through the Mitchell Act.
The world’s largest dam removal and restoration project currently underway on the Klamath River in Oregon and California will aid salmon populations that have been devastated by disease and other factors. However, it will not fully alleviate challenges faced by the species, a team of researchers conclude in a just-published paper.
Oregon and Washington this week set 2024 sturgeon winter retention seasons for recreational anglers in the Columbia River upstream of Bonneville Dam, beginning Jan. 1.
Low water in the upper reaches of the Columbia River — and concerns about releasing water now from Grand Coulee Dam when it might be needed later for refill and to augment river flows — has caused fisheries and dam operators of the interagency Technical Management Team to change Columbia River chum salmon operations at Bonneville Dam.
The Portland District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will gather the public’s perspective and opinions on the future of hydropower across the Corps’ Willamette Valley system of dams during three listening sessions – one in-person and two virtual.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has published preliminary harvest and value figures for the 2023 Alaska Commercial Salmon Fishery, which show an increase of 69 million harvested salmon over last year. But the market value was way down.
Firsthand observations of a wolf hunting and killing a harbor seal and a group of wolves hunting and consuming a sea otter on Alaska’s Katmai coast have led scientists to reconsider assumptions about wolf hunting behavior.
In the early morning of October 6th, Kyriacos Panayiotou of McCall waded into the cool waters of the Clearwater River, Idaho’s legendary steelhead mecca. Using a two-handed spey rod, he began searching the water, hoping a steelhead would grab the fly.
Studies over the 33-year history of a program designed to remove Northern Pikeminnow, a natural predator of salmon and steelhead smolts, from the Columbia and Snake rivers still has not been able to make a direct connectionbetween mass removals of the predator and recovery of salmonids in the rivers, according to a recent report by the Independent Scientific Review Panel.
Idaho Fish and Game biologists learned on Oct. 10 that Lake Lowell near Nampa now likely has a reproducing population of walleye. While the effects to Lake Lowell and other area fisheries are uncertain at this point, they are concerned about what this might mean for this fishery and others in Southwest Idaho, including the Snake River below Hells Canyon, which is a major migration corridor for salmon and steelhead.
Deschutes River basin water rights were over-appropriated more than 100 years ago and today some 86 percent of the river’s total water is used for irrigation while only 12 percent of the water is appropriated for instream flows and just 2 percent for municipal water, according to Kate Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy.
This year, El Nino is in place heading into winter for the first time in four years, driving the outlook for warmer-than-average temperatures for the northern tier of the continental United States, according to NOAA’s U.S. Winter Outlook released this week by the Climate Prediction Center — a division of the National Weather Service.
For the first time in more than a decade, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is exercising its treaty right to harvest salmon from the Elwha River.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s recent count of spring-run Chinook salmon returning to the South Umpqua River showed just 17 wild adult fish detected during snorkel surveys. This dismal return is 12% of the 10-year average of 139 fish returning to the river and “signals an urgent need for federal Endangered Species Act protections,” says the Center for Biological Diversity.
An international coalition of climate scientists says in a paper published this week that the Earth’s vital signs have worsened beyond anything humans have yet seen, to the point that life on the planet is imperiled.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice this week of its intent to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service for what it says is a failure to protect marine mammals from being killed by the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands groundfish trawl fisheries.
NOAA Fisheries says the agency and its fishery management partners reached a major milestone this summer – the rebuilding of a 50th fish stock. The Snohomish coho salmon stock was declared overfished in 2018 and has now rebuilt to its sustainable level.
Matt Hosking of Lewiston, Idaho caught a colossal coho in the Clearwater River in on October 13th, setting a new state record for coho salmon.
Facing the uncertainty of how it will operate the Columbia River hydroelectric system without the flood risk management controls and water storage space in Canada currently offered by the Columbia River Treaty, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it may need to switch to a “real-time” operation to ensure flood control south of the Canadian border after September 2024 when the Treaty expires.
A claim for $27.6 million in damages was filed in a Douglas County Circuit Court in Oregon claiming that more than half a million juvenile Pacific lamprey died in August during repairs to Winchester Dam, located on Oregon’s North Umpqua River.
High spill volumes to maximum total dissolved oxygen levels in order to reduce passage of juvenile salmon smolts through turbines at federal Columbia and Snake river dams is likely to be most effective at night, during high river flows and when temperatures are colder, according to a recent study. These are times when juveniles are less active and their swimming ability is low.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
