The questions have gotten tough at recent meetings on the government's proposed critical habitat designations and bull trout recovery plan for the Northwest.
Economists this week responded to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service criticisms that said their economic review of a sample of Northwest hatcheries was based on inadequate data and that comparisons should not have been made between hatcheries with differing management objectives and using different data periods.
Tough choices are ahead for the Northwest Power Planning Council which on Thursday agreed to lead a process to cut, defer or reduce the scope of some $40 million worth of fish and wildlife work that the panel had earlier recommended, or was expected to recommend, for funding.
The 2003 return of upriver spring chinook salmon to the Columbia River basin may not match counts of the previous two years, but officials say the return should still afford plenty of fishing opportunities up and down the river.
Those testifying Tuesday evening attempted to pull Northwest Power Planning Council members in opposite directions -- some saying the panel's draft mainstem amendment follows a proper biological and economic course and others saying it ignores both legal and scientific bounds.
A Seattle-based U.S. District Court judge on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting navigation channel dredging on the lower Snake River that was scheduled to begin on Dec. 15.
Both sides in the lawsuit agree that the injunction effectively scuttles dredging for the season.
The tally of 474,000 adult fall chinook at Bonneville Dam during the summer and fall of this year is the highest since counting began in 1938, and figures to be one of the higher overall returns to the Columbia River in more than a half century.
With nearly 40,000 jacks counted at Bonneville as well, the total upriver fall chinook count swells to 514,000, also the best count on record. Jacks are smaller salmon that return to freshwater after only a year in saltwater.
The tally of 474,000 adult fall chinook at Bonneville Dam during the summer and fall of this year is the highest since counting began in 1938, and figures to be one of the higher overall returns to the Columbia River in more than a half century.
With nearly 40,000 jacks counted at Bonneville as well, the total upriver fall chinook count swells to 514,000, also the best count on record. Jacks are smaller salmon that return to freshwater after only a year in saltwater.
The Bonneville Power Administration's top official announced today that the agency will not, at least for now, pursue a rate increase as a remedy for a growing budget deficit but instead continue to scour its own activities and the programs it funds for $500 million in cost savings over the next four years.
Average temperatures will increase and snowpack in the Cascade Mountains will decline by up to 50 percent by mid-century, causing decreased summer and autumn stream flows in the Columbia River Basin, according to a draft report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy that will appear in the next edition of the journal Climatic Change.
Survival estimates for yearling chinook salmon and juvenile steelhead migrating in-river through the Columbia-Snake River hydrosystem rebounded this year from the precipitously low levels estimated during last year's drought.
But trouble spots remain, particularly for steelhead, whose in-river survival rate has charted a steady decline, according to estimates compiled by National Marine Fisheries Service scientists in an ongoing study that began in 1993.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday rolled out proposed "critical habitat" designations as well as a draft recovery plan for bull trout in the Northwest.
The draft proposals put a premium on habitat that provides "clean, cold, connected" water for bull trout, which were listed as a threatened species in the Columbia and Klamath basins in 1998. A draft recovery plan for the St. Mary-Belly River population east of Glacier National Park in Montana has also been developed.
The potential impacts to Columbia River Basin power generation from proposed changes to mainstem hydro fish operations are quantifiable based on historic averages, though year to year fluctuations in water supply and energy market prices can greatly affect costs and revenues.
Preparing for the arrival of spawning salmon downstream from its Hells Canyon Dam, Idaho Power initiated stable and even flows Oct. 14, just in time to ensure salmon redds will not be dewatered.
One week later biologists from the utility and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, while surveying the Snake River below the dam, found 30 redds made by spawning fall chinook salmon.
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, Portland General Electric, along with 21 government agencies, conservation groups and fishing groups, signed a long awaited agreement Oct. 24 to remove two dams in the Sandy River watershed, and to donate the dams' water rights to public uses and 1,500 acres of PGE property to a public land trust.
Flat federal funding for Mitchell Act facilities and the imminent hatch of spring chinook salmon eggs may force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to start destroying some 1.5 million eggs next week at their Carson and Little White Salmon hatcheries.
An eight-month effort to resolve issues through mediation has ended, coincident with a cavalcade of new filings in the lawsuit brought to challenge the federal government's Columbia Basin salmon recovery plan.
Plaintiffs in the case, National Wildlife Federation, et al. v. National Marine Fisheries Service, are asking the court to require NMFS to withdraw its 2000 Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion and reinitiate consultation on hydrosystem operations.
A Citizens' Forum pledged to consensus building will present a conceptual "White Paper" that supports hatchery supplementation as a tool for rebuilding salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin.
The diverse group, which has been meeting since its organization in February of 2001, was the outgrowth of meetings started in 1999 between staff and policy makers of the Oregon Wheat Growers League and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Four U.S. wolf experts agreed this week that education is one of the most important ingredients of a good wolf management plan.
The four experts speaking to Oregon's seven-member Fish and Wildlife Commission said, with so many misconceptions about wolves, both from those who favor their reintroduction and those who fear it, that it's important to get the wolf story right.
Caspian terns that settle in each spring on an island in the Columbia River estuary and prey on passing salmon and steelhead smolts do hinder Endangered Species Act fish recovery efforts, according to a report released Sept. 26 by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
A massive fish die-off over the past two weeks has fanned the flames of controversy in the Klamath River Basin of southern Oregon and northern California with tribal members, conservation and fishing groups, a politician and California fishery officials saying federal water management policies give too much water to irrigators and too little for in-river fish flows.
Coastal commercial salmon fishermen and conservation groups were joined by U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-California, Thursday in filing papers in U.S. District Court that challenge the federal government's ten-year plan for managing irrigation in the Klamath River Basin.
The plan leaves migrating salmon high and dry, according to the groups.
Senate energy bill negotiators this week proposed federal hydropower relicensing reforms that environmental groups charged would favor utilities at the expense of fish.
The Northwest Power Planning Council has nearly completed the first round in its newly created three-year rolling "provincial review" process for selecting projects to be funded through its Columbia Basin fish and wildlife program.
The Bonneville Power Administration says that power purchases and foregone revenues forced by federal hydrosystem operations to help migrating salmon and steelhead cost the agency's ratepayers $1.5 billion during fiscal year 2001, according to a Northwest Power Planning Council report released Wednesday.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
