The Department of the Interior announced this week the establishment of the Willamette Valley Conservation Area in Oregon as the 572nd unit of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-managed National Wildlife Refuge System.
On July 11, 2024, Canada and the U.S. reached a milestone in the process of modernizing the Columbia River Treaty – an agreement-in-principle (AIP) that sets the stage for an improved treaty that supports people and ecosystems on both sides of the border.
The Bureau of Reclamation last week announced four projects totaling more than $1 million to be awarded as part of two Klamath Basin Salmon Restoration grant programs.
Idaho Fish and Game researchers have developed a new genetics-based method of estimating the state’s wolf population. The method uses genetic and age information taken from every harvested wolf checked by Fish and Game.
Last week crews broke through the cofferdam at the JC Boyle Dam site, returning the Klamath River to its historic path and restoring fish passage in that reach of the river.
The removal of four dams on the Klamath River will reopen more habitat to Pacific salmon than all previous dam removals in the West combined. Now it will have a monitoring program to match—designed by salmon scientists to track when and how many fish of different species return and where they go.
A newly enhanced database is expected to help wildfire managers and scientists better predict where and when wildfires may occur by incorporating hundreds of additional factors that impact the ignition and spread of fire.
Environmental groups celebrated a legal victory last week when a federal district court judge overturned an offshore oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, saying the federal government violated the law when holding the sale.
Upper Willamette River spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead are benefitting from long-running habitat projects downstream of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 13 Willamette Project dams, according to a recent presentation at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Biologists in Idaho are hoping that the large migratory bull trout that overwinter in the Snake River downstream of Idaho Power Company’s Hells Canyon Dams can in the next few years be trapped and moved upstream.
A pilot project proposed in Port Angeles, Washington is designed to test whether seawater can be used to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air. It is a first-of-its-kind pilot project that has the potential to remove carbon dioxide from marine waters.
Northern California steelhead require continued protection as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to a recent 5-year review by NOAA Fisheries.
The 1.1 mile long North Cove beach is located along the north entrance to Willapa Bay in Pacific County and was once the fastest eroding ocean beach on the U.S. West Coast.
New research has connected warming ocean temperatures to higher Pacific salmon abundance in the Canadian Arctic, an indicator that climate change is creating new corridors for the fish to expand their range.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is designating 1.2 million acres of critical habitat in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon for the coastal distinct population segment of the Pacific marten, also known as the coastal or Humboldt marten.
A threatened run of wild steelhead thought to be at a high risk of extinction in 2017 is making what could be a dramatic comeback in Oregon’s Willamette River. The comeback is mostly due to better ocean conditions and fewer sea lions feeding on the fish at Willamette Falls, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife this week successfully completed the release of more than 2 million fall-run Chinook salmon smolts into the Klamath River.
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, Olympic National Park, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that a tribal ceremonial and subsistence fishery for coho salmon on the Elwha River will be open for a limited time during fall 2024.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the ocean off the coast of Los Angeles was a dumping ground for the nation’s largest manufacturer of the pesticide DDT – a chemical now known to harm humans and wildlife. Due to the stubborn chemistry of DDT and its toxic breakdown products, this pollution continues to plague L.A.’s coastal waters more than half a century later.
Nearly $5 million to move forward on the removal of northeast Washington’s Enloe Dam is included in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announcement that 29 states will receive just over $70 million to support 43 projects that will address outdated or obsolete dams, culverts, levees and other barriers fragmenting the nation’s rivers and streams. Another $8 million will go to projects in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington.
American Rivers is leading a project team to remove the Kellogg Dam at the mouth of the Kellogg Creek, a tributary of the Lower Willamette River. The work will help threatened Upper Willamette River Chinook and steelhead, Lower Columbia River coho, and Pacific lamprey to access upstream spawning and rearing habitat for juveniles.
The status of southwest Washington salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act is generally stable, although none of these fish populations are close to meeting recovery goals, says a recent report by the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Researchers who created “family trees” for nearly 10,000 fish found that first-generation, wild-born descendants of hatchery-origin Chinook salmon in an Oregon river show improved fitness.
Well-placed woody debris in streams results in a two- to three-fold increase of juvenile salmon, according to a recently completed review.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says that a report by a new group that recently asserted the four lower Snake River dams are a major source of greenhouse gases, particularly methane gas, largely used emission figures from dams and reservoirs outside of the Columbia and Snake river basins.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
