The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and California Trout, joined by several community and conservation partners, invite the public to join in celebrating the fall return of Chinook salmon to the Shasta River in the Klamath Basin.
A hatchery program designed to compensate for the loss of nearly half the historical abundance of steelhead returning to the Snake River caused by the installation and operation of dams in the 1960s is “highly effective,” according to a recently released review by a panel of scientists. The scientists added that the program practices good science, uses sound actions and is adaptable to the changing conditions in the river.
Scientists at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center helped pioneer the study of an automobile tire toxin found to kill coho salmon when it runs off highways in stormwater and into streams. Now they have found a way to measure the toxin, 6PPD-quinone, directly in marine life, including fish, shellfish and marine mammals.
For the fifth time, the Washington Department of Ecology is getting ready to offer competitive grants for streamflow restoration projects. The upcoming grant cycle includes up to $40 million in available funding for projects that aim to improve streamflows throughout the state.
Authorization that allows states and tribes to lethally remove hundreds of sea lions from the Columbia and Willamette rivers as a way to reduce predation on salmon and steelhead has been extended for five more years by NOAA Fisheries.
After lifting the stay Sept. 11 on long-running litigation that challenges federal environmental impact statements and biological opinions regarding the impact of operations of Columbia and Snake river federal dams on imperiled salmon and steelhead, a federal judge last week set a court schedule that continues the legal battles.
The Walla Walla basin is a complex watershed that crosses the border between Oregon and Washington. Its rivers and streams connect the two states, but the watershed is chronically short on water and struggles to meet the needs of local communities. Watershed restoration and water management projects are increasingly important to the basin and those efforts will soon receive new support from both Washington and Oregon.
Plaintiffs in long-running court battles that since 2001 have challenged environmental impact statements and biological opinions regarding the impact of operations of Columbia and Snake river federal dams on imperiled salmon and steelhead are heading back to court, according to a filing by the groups this week in U.S. District Court in Oregon.
The Nez Perce Tribe filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court this week challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a large open-pit gold mine in the headwaters of Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River. The undammed Salmon River basin is a critical source of Idaho’s salmon, steelhead and bull trout.
A team of scientists has proposed additional guiding principles and performance measures -- based on the full lifecycles of salmon and steelhead -- that they believe will help with Columbia River estuary restoration.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District, has issued a five-year construction license to the Benton Conservation District for the Amon Creek Habitat Restoration Project, a $1.2 million initiative aimed at improving fish habitat and migration conditions at the Yakima Delta Habitat Management Unit near McNary Lock and Dam.
For years, scientists at Washington State University’s Puyallup Research & Extension Center have been working to untangle a mystery: Why do coho salmon in Puget Sound creeks seem to suffocate after rainstorms — rising to the surface, gaping, and swimming in circles before dying?
Two environmental groups are suing to halt what they say is pollution released from three commercial net pen aquaculture facilities that produce steelhead located on the Columbia River in Eastern Washington. The groups say Pacific SeaFood Aquaculture LLC has been violating its Clean Water Act permits since 2020 and has been harming wild fish and the river’s ecosystem, home to anadromous fish species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
In a review of 40 years of habitat restoration projects, a panel of fisheries scientists concluded that projects that remove barriers to salmon and steelhead, augment stream flows and add wood to give streams structure would likely achieve what they set out to do within a short period of time.
Yellowstone National Park is celebrating an ecological milestone along with a key anniversary this summer, Oregon State University researchers report.
A vitamin deficiency likely killed as many as half of newly hatched fry of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River in 2020 and 2021. These new findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation awarded the Tribe $3.3 million to remove the 55-foot-tall, 425-foot-long Kwoneesum Dam on Wildboy Creek. The dam, which was removed in 2024, blocked upstream salmon and steelhead migration on the creek for almost 60 years.
The eastern North Pacific population of gray whales that migrates along the West Coast of the United States has continued to decline, with reproduction remaining very low. Two new Technical Memorandums from NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center report the estimated population size and calf productivity in 2025.
The Trump administration issued a memorandum this week that disrupts Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead recovery by rescinding a 2023 agreement that included the federal government, two states and four Columbia River tribes and funded that effort with nearly $1 billion.
The Wild Fish Conservancy filed a lawsuit this month in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. in an effort to speed up NOAA Fisheries’ review of the Washington-based conservation group’s proposal to list Chinook salmon in Alaska under the federal Endangered Species Act.
This spring, the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership broke ground on a large-scale salmon habitat restoration project on the lower East Fork Lewis River in Washington State. This project will support the recovery of threatened steelhead and salmon on one of the few undammed rivers in the Lower Columbia River watershed.
Due to a drier and warmer than normal April, the water supply forecasts for May-September for the Columbia and Snake river basins have dropped, according to NOAA’s Northwest River Forecast Center’s last water supply briefing of the season held online this month.
Growing communities and extensive agriculture throughout the Western United States rely on meltwater that spills out of snow-capped mountains every spring. The models for predicting the amount of this streamflow available each year have long assumed that a small fraction of snowmelt each year enters shallow soil, with the remainder rapidly exiting in rivers and creeks.
Stretches of coasts and their rivers form enormous salmon nurseries for the exploring juveniles, the scientists said. The researchers documented coho salmon, steelhead, and cutthroat trout using coastal rivers separated by salt water, and suspect other species may do the same.
President Donald Trump, in an April proposed rule, has directed the Secretary of Commerce, NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescind the long-standing definition of “harm” to species covered by the federal Endangered Species Act. The existing definition of harm as the ESA is currently written, the Administration says, is contrary to the “best meaning” of the term “take.”
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