Despite legal battles raging in the background about responsibility and costs, the Environmental Protection Agency continues to push ahead with its evaluation of whether pollution in the upper Columbia River and Lake Roosevelt in Washington poses enough risk to warrant designation of the area as a Superfund site.
The Army Corps of Engineers began collecting and barging migrating juvenile salmonids at the Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam this week, but will hold off smolt transportation at two downstream dams until next week.
A favorable vote next month by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council would trigger a summertime start to construction on the Northeast Oregon Hatchery, part of a vision first adopted into the Council's Fish and Wildlife program nearly 20 years ago.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer on Thursday pitched new and alternative energy production and urged the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to recognize concerns about endangered species in the upper Columbia River Basin.
Oregon and Washington fishery officials expressed optimism that this year's upriver spring chinook salmon will eventually make a surge towards their home hatcheries and spawning areas in reasonably high numbers.
Fishing and conservation groups in a complaint have asked a federal court to restore "endangered" species protections for naturally produced upper Columbia steelhead and declare invalid a "hatchery listing policy" that tallies both hatchery and wild stocks in assessments of species' vitality.
Documents filed in federal court this week detail how Federal Columbia River Power System agencies plan to implement court-ordered spill for fish passage this spring and summer and how a "collaborative" effort to rework the hydrosystem salmon protection plan is progressing.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers used relatively strong catch rates in the lower Columbia River mainstem as a signal that upriver and other spring chinook salmon returns are ample enough to allow continued sport fishing for at least another week.
A Canadian-based effort to track salmon and other sea-going creatures up the North Pacific coast's continental shelf will fully flower this spring and summer with the goal of detailing fish movements and survival that have to this point mostly mystified fish managers.
The Oregon and Washington fish and wildlife departments beginning April 1 will expand on federal efforts to keep sea lions and other pinnipeds ill at ease in the waters below Bonneville Dam.
A plan to relocate much of the world's largest Caspian tern colony from their Columbia River estuary nesting site will not jeopardize the survival of protected salmon and steelhead in areas where biologists envision the birds will make new homes.
Relatively low numbers of spring chinook salmon in test fisheries and at dam counting windows have made Oregon and Washington fishery managers wary of the future and forced non-tribal commercial fishers to remain docked for the second week in a row.
An independent scientific review agrees with criticisms on numerous technical points but says the Fish Passage Center's ongoing Comparative Survival Study is generally heading in the right direction and doing well with the tools at hand.
Sport and commercial salmon fishing opportunities off the Oregon and Washington coasts will limited this summer as compared to recent years with one alternative under consideration that would close all fisheries from the north Oregon coast to Cape Sur just south of San Francisco.
The swelling presence of upriver spring chinook salmon and protected wild winter steelhead in the lower Columbia River has forced non-tribal commercial fishers off the mainstem until at least late next week.
The California sea lion labeled C-404 by federal and state biologists appears to be the prototypical troublemaker.
Idaho Power Company late last month awarded Starr Corporation of Twin Falls a contract worth approximately $10 million to build a new salmon/steelhead hatchery complex on the site of the company’s upper Pahsimeroi Fish Hatchery in central Idaho.
Grant County PUD moved one step closer in the relicensing process for the Priest Rapids Project when commissioners adopted a resolution that establishes a Habitat Conservation Account and a No Net Impact Fund (NNI).
Like an armada of small rototillers, female salmon can industriously churn up entire stream beds from end to end, sometimes more than once, using just their tails.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission has given Fish and Game officials up to 30 days to revise a proposal to remove up to 43 wolves in two game management units in the Clearwater Region.
Even though the Klickitat Subbasin Anadromous Fishery master plan's hatchery scheme is still a work in progress, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Fish and Wildlife Committee has recommended that $474,000 be spent this fiscal year for an environmental review of related passage improvement proposals.
Among the 4H’s of salmon recovery, harvest won the headlines Tuesday (Feb. 21) when three Northwest Congressmen conducted their third public meeting to gather information on the survival of returning adult salmon and steelhead populations.
Tribal fishers are being asked for information that will help guide the management and operation of an 800 square foot commercial fish processing facility being built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at East White Salmon in Washington.
The federal agency responsible for protecting salmon in the Pacific Northwest last week hired Jim Waldo, a regionally respected attorney, facilitator and hatchery expert, to oversee a strategy leading to hatchery reform, said federal agencies in a joint press release.
A federal judge has dismissed three Idaho irrigation districts' cross claims asking for an order to end harvest of salmon in the Columbia/Snake river basin and flow augmentation from Upper Snake River reservoirs.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
