President George W. Bush this week sent Congress an FY03 budget that
would boost spending on Columbia Basin salmon recovery to $506 million,
according to Northwest federal agency leaders.
A long-pondered settlement agreement calling for the removal of
southwest Washington's 125-foot-tall Condit Dam was called "the best and
most cost-effective means of removing the project facilities and
reservoir sediments," in a report issued Wednesday by Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission staff.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has made minor changes to its
December draft Native Fish Conservation Policy and intends to present
the policy, along with initial draft rules, February 8 to the Oregon
Fish and Wildlife Commission and to push for initial rulemaking by
April.
Former U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Sid Lezak, has agreed to lead a
mediation effort among the parties involved in a lawsuit that claims a
2000 National Marine Fisheries Service Federal Columbia River Power
System biological opinion is doomed to failure and should be rewritten.
Plum Creek Timber Co. proposes to piggy-back grizzly bears onto a
conservation plan for native fish on its corporate lands in northwest
Montana.
The gap between threatened bull trout and threatened grizzly bears may
not be as wide as it seems, said Tim Bodurtha, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service's habitat conservation plan coordinator in Montana.
Despite opposition from other federal agencies and environmental groups,
the Army Corps of Engineers this week revised its permitting rules for
small dredge-and-fill projects.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers submitted to the National Marine
Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Jan. 3 a
biological assessment of impacts to salmon and wildlife if it were to
deepen the Columbia River shipping channel from Portland to Astoria by
three feet.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking comments on a proposal to
construct and operate a juvenile surface collection and bypass system at
the Bonneville Dam's Second Powerhouse to improve salmon passage.
Federal agencies are treating three instances of deliberately planted false evidence of Canada lynx in southwestern Washington by several of their biologists as an isolated incident, but members of Congress are demanding further investigation and punishment.
Oregon's senators have agreed on a $175 million federal spending plan to alleviate conflicts between agriculture and endangered species over water in the Klamath Basin.
After more than five years of research conducted at a cost of $25
million, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week that major
systems improvements -- not dam breaching -- will be the preferred path
for trying to improve salmon and steelhead survival through four lower
Snake River federal hydroelectric projects.
The "federal executives," along with representatives of states and
tribes, met this week to consider the potential of transitioning from an
informal organization to a more formal, regional decision-making forum.
Federal, state and tribal representatives raised issues this week with
the federal "implementation plan" released by the federal action
agencies in mid-November.
The plan describes the specific measures the agencies will implement
between Oct. 1, 2001, and Sept. 30, 2002, to comply with the National
Marine Fisheries Service' 2000 biological opinion.
An October discovery that a section of north-central Washington's Methow
River had run dry has caused funding entities to rethink a March
decision to spend $2.5 million to protect the reach's riparian habitat.
Federal agencies estimate that efforts to restore fish passage through a
maze of some 122,000 miles of roads on federal lands in Oregon and
Washington "may ultimately cost over $375 million and take decades,"
according to a General Accounting Office report issued Monday.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it expects to release in
mid-December an assessment of the biological effects that deepening the
Columbia River shipping channel by three feet from Portland to Astoria
may have on 13 listed species of salmon, steelhead and trout.
A federal decision to revisit Endangered Species Act listing decisions
for 23 of 25 West Coast salmon and steelhead stocks has provoked a
variety of opinions about the future of the region's fish recovery
efforts.
Four Northwest tribes with treaty fishing rights will be at the "heart"
of plans to re-evaluate the hatchery policies of the National Marine
Fisheries Service following a September federal court ruling, said
Donald Sampson, executive director for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal
Fish Commission.
Instead of appealing a federal court order that tossed out the Oregon
coastal coho Endangered Species Act listing, the National Marine
Fisheries Service has opted to use that decision as a springboard toward
the re-evaluation of as many as 23 other West Coast listings and its own
artificial production strategy.
Fishing and conservation groups and two Columbia Basin tribes this week
announced the filing of lawsuits claiming that the Bonneville Power
Administration has violated the Northwest Power Act by failing to manage
the federal hydrosystem "equitably" to produce energy and to restore
salmon.
The Northwest Power Planning Council marched ahead Thursday with a plan
that allots nearly $35 million in fiscal year 2002 spending on new and
ongoing fish and wildlife projects in the Columbia Plateau Province.
"This is an example of the Council approving on-the-ground projects that
will benefit fish and wildlife, and doing so within the budget
established by Bonneville," Council Chairman Larry Cassidy of Vancouver,
Wash., said.
U.S. District Circuit Judge Michael Hogan on Tuesday turned aside
arguments that federal protection for Oregon coastal coho and their
habitat be continued while the federal government rethinks the status of
the salmon's wild and hatchery produced populations.
A shower of petitions asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to
drop numerous Pacific fish species from the federal endangered species
list has been followed by flurry of letters to the agency calling the
requests "spurious," "facially deficient" and "frivolous."
A shower of petitions asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to
drop numerous Pacific fish species from the federal endangered species
list has been followed by flurry of letters to the agency calling the
requests "spurious," "facially deficient" and "frivolous."
If higher river flow is provided for chum salmon spawning downstream
from Bonneville Dam beginning Monday, as Oregon and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service want, the Bonneville Power Administration doubts it
could sustain the flow through January without jeopardizing juvenile
salmon operations next spring and summer.
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