There are more salmon in the North Pacific Ocean than at any time in the past 100 years, according to a study released this month. The increase is due to changes in the marine ecosystems caused by warming seas -- changes that mostly benefit pink salmon, industrial-scale hatchery production, and commercial fishing.

Twenty years of habitat improvements in the Columbia River estuary have yielded 80 projects and 11,100 acres of reconnected tidally influenced flood plain habitat, according to two presentations by estuary scientists at a recent Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting.

Oregon and Washington opened the entire mainstem Columbia River to fall Chinook and coho salmon fishing from Buoy 10 to the Oregon and Washington state border last week. The change by the two-state Columbia River Compact came at its Sept. 18 hearing and was based on an increase in expected fall Chinook returns, as well as higher than average returns of coho.

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.