Washington U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray announced $36 million in grant funds to state, local, Tribal and federal partners to support the continued conservation and restoration of Puget Sound.
In response to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed this week to a deadline of December 2024 to determine whether Suckley’s cuckoo bumblebees warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Four populations of lower Columbia River salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act are in as much trouble today as they were in 2016. In its five-year status review for these fish released this morning, NOAA Fisheries says “the collective risk” has not changed significantly and the “overall level of concern remains the same.”
The Burns Paiute Tribe, a federally-recognized Indian tribe, signed an agreement this month with the state of Oregon and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to collaborate on reintroducing salmon and steelhead to the Malheur River, a tributary of the Snake River. Construction of the Hells Canyon dams in 1958 blocked all anadromous fish from the Upper Snake River basin and Malheur River system.
Struggling salmon populations could get some help from the sky. A Washington State University study showed that drone photography of the Wenatchee River during spawning season can be effective in estimating the number of rocky hollows salmon create to lay their eggs, also called “redds.”
Gray whales that migrate along the West Coast of North America continued to decline in number over the last two years, according to a new NOAA Fisheries assessment. The population is now down 38 percent from its peak in 2015 and 2016, as researchers probe the underlying reasons.
This year La Niña returns for the third consecutive winter, and starting in December 2022 through February 2023, NOAA predicts drier-than-average conditions across the South with wetter-than-average conditions for areas of the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes, northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, according to NOAA’s U.S. Winter Outlook released today by the Climate Prediction Center — a division of the National Weather Service.
Between February and April 2022, five international research vessels participated in the largest ever pan-Pacific research expedition to study the winter ecology of salmon in the North Pacific Ocean.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking for public feedback to inform the development of proposed fish passage and screening rules intended to support salmon and orca recovery.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) joined U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week as he announced the availability of $1 billion for Tribal, state, and local governments over five years from the new National Culvert Removal, Replacement and Restoration-Culvert Aquatic Organism Passage Program established by the infrastructure bill.
Since its passage in 1973, the U.S. Endangered Species Act has been the strongest law to prevent species extinctions in the United States, and has served as a model of conservation policy to other nations.
A newly released State of the Birds report for the United States reveals a tale of two trends – one hopeful, one dire. Long-term trends of waterfowl show strong increases where investments in wetland conservation have improved conditions for birds and people. But data show birds in the U.S. are declining overall in every other habitat – forests, grasslands, deserts, and oceans.
A new analysis led by researchers with the University of California has found the 2020 wildfires in the state, the most disastrous wildfire year on record, put twice as much greenhouse gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere as the total reduction in such pollutants in California between 2003-2019.
Conservation and animal-protection groups are offering an increased reward of $51,400 for information leading to a conviction in the illegal poisoning deaths of six wolves in northeastern Washington earlier this year.
NOAA Fisheries has finalized a report that identifies actions that the agency says have the greatest likelihood of making progress toward rebuilding populations of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin to “healthy and harvestable levels.” The agency had released a draft in July for limited comments.
The Oregon Health Authority is issuing recommendations on the amount of lamprey from the Columbia River and its Oregon tributaries that people should eat after data showing high levels of contaminants in the fish.
A small invasive beetle that has decimated ash groves in the Midwest was found in Oregon earlier this summer, the first to be found on the West Coast. When – not if – it spreads in Oregon, it has the potential to destroy large swaths of ash trees in forests and along streams located on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. The loss of the trees could impact salmon and steelhead in the Willamette Valley.
Central Oregon’s Crooked River became the first Oregon river the state has closed to angling specifically due to drought-related low flows that could result in major impacts on fish as well as on efforts to reintroduce salmon and steelhead to the river.
With fewer upriver bright fall Chinook salmon now expected to return to the Columbia River, fishery managers from Washington and Oregon agreed Wednesday to close Chinook retention on the lower and middle Columbia River mainstem effective Oct. 8.
Forecasters are predicting a “three-peat La Niña” this year. This will be the third winter in a row that the Pacific Ocean has been in a La Niña cycle, something that’s happened only twice before in records going back to 1950.
State and federal biologists and engineers, in partnership with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, have begun testing an experimental system in northern California’s Shasta Reservoir that could help collect young salmon from the McCloud River in future years.
Idaho’s Stanley Basin has long been one of the West’s most iconic roundup arenas. For 160 years, cowboys and their hooved counterparts have comingled out in the vast valley beneath the towering Sawtooth Mountains where they come together each fall to round up the herds.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week removed the snail darter from the endangered species list because the fish has recovered. Thanks to collaborative conservation efforts since it was protected in 1975, says USFWS, the little fish is no longer in danger of extinction.
Bears are not cats or dogs, and feeding them like they are likely shortens their lives.
Among the first cases to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court for the October 2022 term is Sackett v. EPA, No. 24-454 (2022). At stake is the definition of “waters of the United States” and the area of land that is subject to Clean Water Act wetlands protection or land available to be developed – an issue of enormous environmental and economic consequence.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
