A long-term Pacific Northwest study of landslides, clear-cutting timber and building roads shows that a forest’s management history has a greater impact on how often landslides occur and how severe they are compared to how much water is coursing through a watershed.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week announced the completion and publication of the final recovery plan for the Meltwater Lednian stonefly and Western Glacier stonefly.
A chemical used in the production of toilet paper and 'forever chemicals' have been found in the bodies of orcas in British Columbia, including the endangered southern resident killer whales.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice this week of its intent to sue two federal agencies for approving a habitat conservation plan in the upper Deschutes River that it says fails to ensure that Wickiup Dam water-release operations won’t drive the threatened Oregon spotted frog extinct.
One way to cool overheated summer and fall Columbia River waters might be to lower reservoir levels at the river’s dams. Drawdowns could reduce the size of the reservoirs so there is less water to heat under the summertime sun and it could reduce travel time for juvenile salmon and steelhead through the dams as the river would take on more of the characteristics of a free flowing stream.
By anyone’s measure, sockeye salmon runs have skyrocketed since 1997 in the Okanogan River basin when a transboundary workgroup decided to begin efforts to reintroduce the fish into Okanogan Lake in British Columbia, according to tribal biologists speaking at this week’s Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting.
A team of scientists generally gave good marks for a long-term, three-phase plan by the Upper Columbia United Tribes to reintroduce salmon and steelhead upstream of two major Columbia River dams that have blocked passage of the fish for 80 years.
NOAA Fisheries has approved $2.3 million for Trout Unlimited to conduct a planning and feasibility assessment for the removal of Enloe Dam on Similkameen River, a tributary of the Columbia River. The dam has blocked salmon and steelhead passage for 100 years and, if completed, its removal would be the largest habitat restoration action in the Columbia River Basin.
NOAA has partnered with McKenzie River Trust to increase natural floodplain connectivity along Finn Rock Reach in Oregon’s McKenzie River. The project is restoring important habitat for threatened Upper Willamette River Chinook salmon.
Completing a process that began with a relicensing application from PacifiCorp in 2004, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has unanimously approved the removal of four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California.
Double-crested cormorants will eat many times more salmon and steelhead per bird as a proportion of their diet the farther they are pushed upstream in the Columbia River estuary, according to a presentation this week at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee meeting.
The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has ended the remaining two finfish net pen aquaculture leases on Washington’s state-owned aquatic lands.
The growth rate of seafood farming worldwide peaked in 1996, according to new University of British Columbia research, highlighting the importance of rebuilding wild fish stocks to feed future demand.
As marine species continue to decline worldwide, the southern resident killer whale population — which now stands at 75 individuals — along the west coast of North America, has baffled scientists who are trying to understand why this population is struggling.
Conservationists filed a formal notice this week of their intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for once again denying Montana’s Arctic grayling population Endangered Species Act protections. Arctic grayling is a freshwater fish in the same family (Salmonidae) as salmon, trout, and whitefish.
New research from the University of Oxford, Yellowstone National Park, and Penn State, published this week in the journal Science, may have finally solved why wolves change color across the North American continent.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized protections for the emperor penguin, a flightless seabird endemic to Antarctica, under the Endangered Species Act. The emperor penguin is listed as a threatened species and includes a section 4(d) rule that tailors protections for the species. The impact of climate change on sea-ice habitat, where the species spends the majority of its life, is the primary threat to the penguin.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Audubon Society of Portland filed a formal notice this week of their intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to better protect the streaked horned lark, a rare bird found in Washington and Oregon.
In response to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed this week to a deadline of December 2024 to determine whether Suckley’s cuckoo bumblebees warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Struggling salmon populations could get some help from the sky. A Washington State University study showed that drone photography of the Wenatchee River during spawning season can be effective in estimating the number of rocky hollows salmon create to lay their eggs, also called “redds.”
Gray whales that migrate along the West Coast of North America continued to decline in number over the last two years, according to a new NOAA Fisheries assessment. The population is now down 38 percent from its peak in 2015 and 2016, as researchers probe the underlying reasons.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking for public feedback to inform the development of proposed fish passage and screening rules intended to support salmon and orca recovery.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) joined U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week as he announced the availability of $1 billion for Tribal, state, and local governments over five years from the new National Culvert Removal, Replacement and Restoration-Culvert Aquatic Organism Passage Program established by the infrastructure bill.
NOAA Fisheries has finalized a report that identifies actions that the agency says have the greatest likelihood of making progress toward rebuilding populations of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin to “healthy and harvestable levels.” The agency had released a draft in July for limited comments.
A small invasive beetle that has decimated ash groves in the Midwest was found in Oregon earlier this summer, the first to be found on the West Coast. When – not if – it spreads in Oregon, it has the potential to destroy large swaths of ash trees in forests and along streams located on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. The loss of the trees could impact salmon and steelhead in the Willamette Valley.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
