The Fisheries Biologist II provides support in planning, budgeting, implementation, management, and reporting for the District’s natural resource programs.
Southeast Alaska commercial trollers will begin fishing for Chinook salmon July 1 after a ruling by a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that reversed an early May decision in a Washington federal district court. That previous decision shut down the summer and winter fishery.
Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries, held a field hearing Monday in Richland, Washington titled “The Northwest at risk: the environmentalist’s effort to destroy navigation, transportation, and access to reliable power.”
Oregon State University researchers estimate that gray whales feeding off the Oregon Coast consume up to 21 million microparticles per day, a finding informed in part by poop from the whales.
With a lower-than-expected return of summer Chinook to the Columbia River, Washington and Oregon will close the river downstream of Priest Rapids Dam to recreational angling for the fish July 1, bringing the summer season that began June 15 –and was to go to July 31 — to an abrupt end.
For the second year in a row, wolf numbers in Montana did again fall slightly in 2022, according to the 2022 Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Wolf Report.
Even with a declining water supply forecast, Lake Koocanusa that backs up behind Libby Dam is still slowly refilling and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is near certain it will reach a refill target by September required by a sturgeon-bull trout biological opinion, according to the Corps’ Leon Basdekas.
As the world warms, extreme weather events grow – and they also change. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that climate change is shifting snowfall to rainfall on mountains across the Northern Hemisphere. Those surges of liquid water bring a distinct set of dangers, including floods, landslides, and soil erosion.
In a recently published study, scientists investigating the endangered southern resident killer whales have made a noteworthy observation: the prevalence of skin disease within this population has shown a significant increase.
Specially designed gardens could reduce the amount of a salmon-killing toxic chemical associated with tires entering our waterways by more than 90 per cent, new research shows.
A three-year-old hatchery production program spread across Puget Sound and the Columbia and Snake rivers, designed specifically to provide more food for Southern Resident killer whales should remain in place, according to NOAA Fisheries in its most recent declaration in federal court.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries are proposing regulations the agencies say will restore protections for species, strengthen consultation and listing processes, and “reaffirm the central role science plays” in decisions that guide the protection and recovery of endangered and threatened wildlife.
More than $25 million was approved last week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council for non-recurring maintenance at hatcheries and for fish screen maintenance throughout the Columbia River basin in fiscal year 2024. The cost of maintenance projects at 13 hatcheries that totals $23,356,074 will be paid by excess revenue funds from the Bonneville Power Administration’s reserves distribution clause.
In a January letter, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council invited Oregon and Washington transportation agencies to meet jointly to discuss their mutual problem of double-crested cormorants on the Astoria-Megler Bridge that spans the Columbia River estuary at Astoria, OR.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice of its intent to sue the Oregon and California state transportation agencies for failing to consider fatal impacts to salmon from toxic tire pollution.
In a presentation to update the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the Yakama Nation says it will begin work at its existing spring Chinook salmon hatchery on southern Washington’s Klickitat River late summer this year, with construction extending out 18 months to March 2025.
The Ktunaxa, Secwépemc and Syilx Okanagan Nations and their members will benefit from new interim agreements that share revenue generated from the Columbia River Treaty.
In a settlement agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to reconsider whether West Coast fishers in northern California and southern Oregon warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
n the quarter century between 1996 and 2020, wildfires in California consumed five times more area than they did from 1971 to 1995. Researchers at the University of California and other international institutions have concluded that nearly all of the increase in scorched terrain can be blamed on human-caused climate change.
Wildfires have become increasingly frequent due to climate change, with record occurrences in areas not historically prone to them. In California, wildfires and regional power shutoffs have cost billions and taken lives. For some 46 million Americans living next to forests – at what scientists call the “wildland-urban interface” (WUI) – the risks of wildfire can be especially acute.
The rapid growth of harmful algae along parts of the Southern California Coast is believed to have killed hundreds of California sea lions and close to 60 dolphins in the first weeks of June.
Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Troopers discovered fish with embedded hooks, sliced fins, circular scabs, and other evidence of illegal tactics, while assisting ODFW hatchery staff during the spring salmon spawning season.
All parties, both plaintiffs and defendants, along with the State of Alaska, have unsuccessfully challenged the results of a recent lower federal court decision that vacated a part of NOAA Fisheries’ 2019 biological opinion governing Southeast Alaska’s summer and winter commercial troll fishing for Chinook salmon. The litigation now moves to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The breeding season for avian predators, March–August, overlaps with the peak out-migration of juvenile salmon and steelhead, April — August, according to a recent survey of literature that looked specifically at peer-reviewed studies of Caspian terns, double-crested cormorants and gulls that prey on salmonids in the Columbia River basin.
Record average temperatures across the Columbia River basin, with little to no rain in the western and northern areas of the basin in May, are leaving the region dry with a smaller snowpack than average and declining water supply at the beginning of June.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
