The Bureau of Reclamation and partners of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan completed a new fish passage facility at the Cle Elum Dam in July that will allow juvenile sockeye salmon to naturally pass downstream. Once all parts of the Integrated Plan are in place, annual adult sockeye returns to the Cle Elum River are projected to rise from 20,000 fish to 100,000 fish.

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.

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.

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 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 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.