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.
Sea lions were, for the most part, undeterred in their pursuit of salmon in the waters below Bonneville Dam this past spring and early summer despite efforts of biologists, and noise-making devices to shoo the large marine mammals away.
The so-called Comparative Survival Study this week earned partial funding for fiscal year 2007, enough to prepare a "retrospective" report describing the 10-year-old project's methods and results and to outfit some 240,000 juvenile salmon with PIT tags so their survival can be tracked.
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.
It was a banner year for bull trout spawning across Montana's Flathead basin, even in some of the most troubled streams.
An effort this fall to find spawning lake trout, and their eggs, in north Idaho's Lake Pend Oreille has come up empty.
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 new study has found that a parasite that causes deadly “whirling disease” in juvenile trout and other salmonids may be transmitted from one fishing hole to another – and from one stream to another – on fishing boots and waders.
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.
A pair of Washington lawmakers on Monday announced their plan to introduce legislation in Congress that would allow the lethal removal of California sea lions preying on Columbia/Snake river salmon and steelhead as soon as next spring.
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.
A pilot study aimed at determining the origins of ocean-caught chinook salmon proved successful this summer, raising hopes for the eventual implementation of in-season management protocols.
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.
A long, relatively strong "tail" to the upriver fall chinook salmon run enabled Oregon and Washington fishery managers to reopen the lower Columbia River mainstem chinook season to anglers today (Oct. 13).
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.
A strong pulse of salmon continued passing over Bonneville Dam this week, prompting fishery officials to nudge upwards their estimates of the size of the 2006 upriver fall chinook run.
The No. 1 disease facing the commercial sector of the Idaho trout industry may soon be better controlled by an improved vaccine being developed by a University of Idaho fisheries scientist.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Tuesday announced more than $67 million in grants to 27 states to support conservation planning and acquisition of vital habitat for threatened and endangered fish, wildlife and plants.
Only three adult sockeye survived the 900-mile trip up the Columbia, Snake and Salmon rivers this year, matching the low since 1999, when hatchery-origin fish used to keep the run alive first began returning.
Attorneys for the U.S. government and the state of Idaho say a request to have the looming Upper Snake biological opinion remand focused on the augmentation of river flows would undercut federal authorities and go contrary to previous judicial direction.
Even as the Northwest Power and Conservation Council enters its budget-setting stretch run, it is hearing that the nation's largest fish and wildlife mitigation effort is not large enough.
Anglers will be required to release any chinook salmon they catch during the rest of this season on two major sections of the Columbia River under new rules approved Wednesday by fishery managers from Washington and Oregon.
For most of the summer, a blue catamaran raft has been plying Montana's Flathead river system, outfitted with an unusual array of high-tech equipment rather than coolers and tackle boxes.
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