The Center for Biological Diversity submitted a petition this week asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce sea otters to a large stretch of the West Coast. Threatened southern sea otters occupy only 13% of their historic range, and a small population of the animals currently lives on California’s central coast.
Climate projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2003 were accurate and skillful in predicting subsequent global warming and contradicted the company’s public claims, a new Harvard study shows.
At its January meeting, Northwest Power and Conservation Council members elected Idaho’s Jeff Allen to serve as chair and Washington’s KC Golden to serve as vice chair of the four-state agency.
A long-term Pacific Northwest study of landslides, clear-cutting timber and building roads shows that a forest’s management history has a greater impact on how often landslides occur and how severe they are compared to how much water is coursing through a watershed.
Three Montana juvenile grizzly bears tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus this fall.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week announced the completion and publication of the final recovery plan for the Meltwater Lednian stonefly and Western Glacier stonefly.
Douglas-fir trees will likely experience more stress from drier air as the climate changes than they will from less rain, computer modeling by Oregon State University scientists shows.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week announced expanded efforts to reduce wildfire risk across the western U.S. aimed at protecting at-risk communities and critical infrastructure across 11 landscapes in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
NOAA Fisheries determined this week that the Oregon Coast and southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Chinook salmon may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
A chemical used in the production of toilet paper and ‘forever chemicals’ have been found in the bodies of orcas in British Columbia, including the endangered southern resident killer whales.
Bonneville Power Administration will divvy up $500 million of excess revenue from its 2022 fiscal year, giving 70 percent to its customers to keep power rates down, 20 percent to pay down debt or for revenue financing and just 10 percent to its fish and wildlife program, mostly to help pay upkeep for hatcheries and fish screens, not directly for recovery of salmon and steelhead.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice this week of its intent to sue two federal agencies for approving a habitat conservation plan in the upper Deschutes River that it says fails to ensure that Wickiup Dam water-release operations won’t drive the threatened Oregon spotted frog extinct.
Despite recent rains and a strong mountain snowpack, Columbia River basin January water supply forecasts are painting a dismal picture for stream flows this spring and summer.
Of the seven species of salmon and steelhead that inhabit Washington state’s waters — and are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act as at risk of extinction– Hood Canal summer chum salmon and Snake River fall Chinook salmon are approaching their recovery goals, according to a biennial report soon to be released by the Washington Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office.
Researchers project that most glaciers in western Canada will be gone in 80 years.
More than a century of preserved fish specimens offer a rare glimpse into long-term trends in parasite populations. New research from the University of Washington shows that fish parasites plummeted from 1880 to 2019, a 140-year stretch when Puget Sound — their habitat and the second-largest estuary in the mainland U.S. — warmed significantly.
Oregon continues to face new and enduring hazards related to climate change, but opportunities for adaptation and mitigation are also expanding, the latest assessment released by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute indicates.
National parks are the backbone of conservation. Yet mounting evidence shows that many parks are too small to sustain long-term viable populations and maintain essential, large-scale ecological processes, such as large mammal migrations and natural disturbance regimes.
Fishery managers from Oregon and Washington today closed sturgeon retention in Bonneville Pool as of Jan. 12.
Hugh Morrison has been selected to serve as Regional Director of the Pacific Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Morrison, who has been the acting regional director since May 2022, will begin effective immediately. In this role, Morrison will administer conservation efforts spanning one ocean, four states and multiple territories and time zones.
Dredging will begin in areas of the lower Snake River this month that will solve an issue raised in recent years by federal, state and tribal fisheries managers – how to drop the Lower Granite Dam pool to improve summer conditions for salmon and steelhead that are at risk at the same time the Port of Clarkston needs more depth in the river to unload barges.
In mid-September 2022, Central Oregon’s Crooked River became the first river in the state to close to recreational angling specifically due to drought-related low flows. It reopened October 31 after six weeks of extremely low water levels that left as much as 50 to 90 percent of the river’s channels dry.
Due to ongoing low returns of upriver summer steelhead in the Columbia Basin, fishing restrictions will continue in the new year in the Columbia River mainstem upstream of The Dalles Dam and in the John Day and Walla Walla Rivers.
Twelve scientists are urging the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to promptly protect the Pacific walrus under the Endangered Species Act. The Center for Biological Diversity first submitted a petition to list the Pacific walrus as threatened or endangered in 2008, more than a decade ago.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, after completing its review of a petition to list a Columbia/Snake river basin snail under the Endangered Species Act, found that listing the Columbia Oregonian is not warranted at this time.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
