Eight years of spawning surveys in White Salmon River tributaries is showing the progression of how naturally-returning steelhead are repopulating the river after removal of Condit Dam in 2011.

What are the next steps for the proposed regional forum, the Columbia Basin Collaborative, which held an organizational workshop in February? Organizers of this new collaborative effort aimed at recovering salmonid species in the Columbia River Basin this week issued a summary of the workshop results and what might come next.

Last month 68 leading salmon and fisheries scientists sent a letter to Northwest governors, the Northwest congressional delegation, and policymakers that summarizes actions they say are necessary to protect and restore abundant salmon and steelhead runs to the Columbia/Snake river basin. Subject: “Scientists’ letter on the need for lower Snake River dam removal to protect salmon and steelhead from extinction and restore abundant, fishable populations.”

In its first public workshop the Columbia Basin Collaborative this week outlined how the new group would be organized and how it would bring parties together to rebuild the region’s threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead stocks and advance the goals of the Columbia Basin Partnership Task Force.

Fisheries managers are not happy about federal hydro managers’ decision to engage in “day load shaping operations” at Idaho’s Dworshak Dam last week, a practice that has not been implemented since 1986. The biologists say such operations negatively impact juvenile fall chinook, fisheries and river ecology.