A recent hydrosystem operations/fish and wildlife project funding agreement between the Bonneville Power Administration and five Columbia River tribes was described Wednesday as a step toward a broader agreement on how funding resources should be directed across the basin.
A solicitation for "innovative" fish and wildlife project proposals was approved this week, but its fleshing out awaits a Bonneville Power Administration determination on what it is willing to fund and how much it is able to spend.
A signed agreement filed Tuesday in federal court promises the support of five Columbia River tribes for a specific set of 2007 federal dam operations designed to improve salmon and steelhead survival in exchange for the promise of funding for more than $5 million worth of fish and wildlife projects.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., will headline one of two meetings Jan. 15 in Kalispell on coal-mine development in British Columbia’s Flathead drainage.
In a significant development, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council is taking up the issue at its meeting this month.
A Northwest Power and Conservation Council initiative to better define appropriate costs for wildlife operation and maintenance projects gained momentum this week with discussions kindled on a variety of fronts.
Timing, not the stress from barge travel, is the most likely reason that transported juvenile Snake River spring chinook salmon have greater overall post-Bonneville Dam mortality than those migrating in-river to the ocean, according to an article published in the November edition of the American Fisheries Society's on-line journal “Transactions.”
The Washington Department of Ecology has revised a portion of the state's water quality standards that officials say will make dozens of watersheds across the state healthier for salmon and trout.
Fish management agencies from Oregon, Washington and Idaho announced this week that they have asked the federal government for permission to use lethal means, as a last resort, to remove individual California sea lions that prey on chinook salmon and steelhead below the Columbia River's Bonneville Dam.
The Bureau of Reclamation and Washington Department of Ecology announced this week their decision to move forward into the feasibility phase of a storage study designed to bring more water to the Yakima River basin.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday put the cap on its 2007-2009 recommendation process with a final decision document that details how and why it made its decisions on specific fish and wildlife project funding and programmatic issues.
Conservation and environmental groups this week continued their call for the breaching of four federal dams on the lower Snake River, citing a staff-produced report that claims such action would provide net biological benefits for salmon and economic gains for residents of the Columbia River basin.
A new 50-year license for Chelan County PUD to continue operating the Lake Chelan Hydroelectric Project has been issued.
NOAA Fisheries says the long-term benefits for protected Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead outweigh what will be short-term negative effects resulting from the proposed removal of Condit Dam on Washington's White Salmon River.
The largest and most devastating hypoxic event ever observed in marine waters off the Pacific Northwest coast has finally ended, researchers at Oregon State University say.
A congressionally driven process is building momentum toward its goal of delicately balancing Columbia River Basin hatchery production so it provides desired harvest and, at the same time, protects threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service said this week that it had reached an important agreement with the state of Idaho and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that spells out how the state and the two federal agencies will
cooperate under the Endangered Species Act for the long-term
benefit of both fish and foresters in the state.
A hydropower plant near Cle Elum, WA may be in the future power generation mix for Grant County PUD.
The Northwest Power and Conservation on Wednesday completed its fiscal year 2007-2009 fish and wildlife project funding recommendations with but a few, albeit sometimes contentious, changes from a draft list produced a month ago.
The Entiat National Fish Hatchery spring chinook program should be terminated because it provides little harvest benefit and poses "significant straying genetic risk" to naturally produced, listed stocks in the Entiat River subbasin, according to a report released Oct. 13 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
If you think Pacific Northwest winters are gray and rainy now, just wait.
By the end of this century winter storms are likely to be much more pronounced, particularly west of the Cascade Range, according to new University of Washington research.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council next week will ponder a wealth of newly-arrived advice when decides how it wants to allocate available fish and wildlife funding for the next three years across the Columbia River Basin.
A 15-year analysis of spawning steelhead in one Oregon fishery concludes that fish from traditional hatcheries which migrate to the ocean and return to spawn in natural habitat, produce fewer offspring than their wild relatives.
Issues have "narrowed" but much work still needs to be done before agencies put together a federal Columbia/Snake river hydrosystem "action " that can be judged as to whether or not it jeopardizes the existence of protected salmon and steelhead, according to a report filed this week in U.S. District Court.
NOAA Fisheries Service on Sept. 29 released a proposed Endangered Species Act recovery plan for upper Columbia spring chinook salmon and steelhead that it says meets requirements under the Endangered Species Act.
Every year, blooms of the plankton that feed the marine food chain in the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon coast draw enormous quantities of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, annually negating the effects of approximately 100 million tanks of gasoline feeding greenhouse gas discharges into the air.
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