The US Fish and Wildlife Service has announced a $10,000 cash reward for information regarding a wolf poaching incident on private property in eastern Oregon’s Morrow County. The Oregon Wildlife Coalition has a standing reward of $10,000 for wolf poaching in that area, raising the reward total to $20,000.
In early 2025, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether to delist some populations of grizzly bears in the U.S. Northern Rockies. As Montanans consider their future with grizzly bears, University of Montana scientists are helping inform the social, ecological and policy aspects of the dialogue.
The Great Salt Lake has lost more than 15 billion cubic yards of water over the past three decades, is getting shallower at the rate of 4 inches a year, and an analysis of its water budget suggests reducing irrigation is necessary for saving it.
Citing new information and changed circumstances, two federal agencies are reopening this week their 2020 final environmental impact study for operations at 14 Columbia/Snake river federal hydroelectric dams and are now seeking public input. The final EIS guides the dams’ impacts on salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The average number of salmon and steelhead returning to the Columbia River each year has remained mostly constant over the last twenty years. While today’s returns of the fish have improved dramatically since the 1990s at a time when many of the species were being listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, today’s combined returns are still only half of the 2025 goal of 5 million fish set by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
The Department of Commerce and NOAA Fisheries has announced up to $99 million in funding through the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund for conservation and recovery projects focusing on Pacific salmon and steelhead. The funding — which includes $34.4 million from the Infrastructure Law — is aimed at advancing state and tribal efforts to restore salmon populations and habitats.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published a final recovery plan for the Oregon spotted frog, a threatened species living in the Pacific Northwest. The plan provides a road map to help recover the frog so it can thrive and ultimately be delisted from the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is opening a 60-day public comment period on a proposed rule to list Suckley’s cuckoo bumble bee as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. This determination also serves as the 12-month finding on a petition to list the bee.
Canada will store several million-acre-feet of water that can be used in 2025 and for the next 20 years to help prevent floods in the Columbia River basin downstream in the United States, according to a virtual briefing earlier this month by federal dam operators on the Columbia River Treaty Agreement in Principle’s flood risk management protections.
How did climate change impact ocean waters off the U.S. West Coast this past year? What does that tell us about the growth and survival of juvenile salmon for the years to come?
NOAA Fisheries has completed 5-year status reviews of the recovery progress and prospects of four salmon and steelhead species in Northern California and Southern Oregon and found that all four should remain threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing protection for one of the nation’s most beloved species — the monarch butterfly — and is encouraging the public to be part of its recovery.
Twenty years of habitat improvements on southeast Washington’s Tucannon River are resulting in a mix of outcomes for adult anadromous fish returning to the river, especially over the past few years. Steelhead returns have grown significantly, while spring Chinook salmon returns are far below project objectives and the fish continue to be at serious risk of extinction.
A NOAA Fisheries biological status review team has determined that the summer and winter Olympic Peninsula steelhead are at moderate risk of extinction, a reversal of the previous status review in the 1990s that had determined the fish were not at risk of becoming threatened or endangered then or in the future.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has seen the first returns of threatened coho salmon to the upper Klamath River Basin in more than 60 years following historic dam removal completed last month.
Using smaller hooks, avoiding landing nets, and de-hooking and measuring fish in water are three of 15 solutions University of British Columbia researchers recommend to help released salmon thrive.
The change from the Biden to the Trump administration is primed to alter the trajectory of salmon recovery in the Snake and Columbia river basins.
By Eric Barker, Lewiston Tribune
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has directed Washington state agencies to take all actions necessary, in cooperation with the state of Oregon and four lower Columbia Basin treaty tribes, to fulfill the State of Washington’s commitments to the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative.
The Bonneville Power Administration plans to spend next year $41 million more in fish and wildlife projects in the Columbia River basin than it actually spent in 2023, and five million more than what was budgeted for 2024, for which actual spending is not yet available.
In just its second year of court-ordered drawdowns at two Willamette River dams to aid passage of threatened spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced just prior to Thanksgiving that it halted the drawdown at one of the dams due to water quality issues at three municipalities downstream.
Washington’s Industrial Stormwater General Permit, which covers nearly 1,200 facilities, has new requirements to ensure cleaner stormwater is flowing into local waterways, and is less harmful to salmon.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it is taking two significant steps to support the conservation and recovery of the threatened Canada lynx population in the lower 48 states.
The Center for Biological Diversity has filed petitions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking Endangered Species Act protections for the Owyhee hot springsnail and Owyhee upland pyrg.
Just the third executive director of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in 45 years is about to leave. After nearly five years in the position, Executive Director Bill Edmonds is planning to step down in spring 2025.
Comment Re: CBB article of November 26, 2024, entitled “2024 Survival Rate Of Migrating Juvenile Salmon In Columbia/Snake Rivers? Hard To Say With Yet Another Year Of Low Detection, Tagging Rates.”
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