Nearly $4.2 million in within-year fish and wildlife project funding budget expansions got the endorsement Wednesday of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week that results of a recent status review indicate that Endangered Species Act listing of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout, found in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Nevada, is not warranted.
Steelhead are spawning in the new artificial stream channels at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center in the Alsea River basin, and researchers have begun studying how the fish choose mates and where they prefer to spawn – key factors in preserving fish runs.
This week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began installing permanent barriers at Bonneville Lock and Dam to keep sea lions from entering fish ladders -- a key element in a new strategy to cut down mammals' predation on migrating adult salmon.
Cormorants settling in the Columbia River estuary last year again appear to have eaten more migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead than their more studied and oft-vilified neighbors, Caspian terns, according to a 2005 Draft Research Summary released this week.
President Bush’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2007 includes $578 million for “Columbia River Federal Basinwide Salmon Funding” – an increase of $19 million over FY 2006’s enacted budget of $559 million.
Three Idaho irrigation districts have asked a U.S. District Court judge to put an end to all Columbia River mainstem salmon and steelhead fishing and to strike down a federal salmon protection plan that calls for flows from Upper Snake River storage projects.
A preliminary set of "terms and conditions" submitted last week by NOAA Fisheries would require the owners of the Snake River's Hells Canyon Complex of hydro projects to make flow manipulations and do habitat work for the benefit of salmon and other species, but would not require fish ladders to provide access to historic spawning grounds.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council entered the New Year with a revised power plan in place, but with much work to do balancing power requirements with actions outlined in subbasin plans adopted recently as part of its Columbia Basin fish and wildlife program.
More than a million fertilized white sturgeon eggs were released into the Kootenai River's braided, canyon reaches upstream of Bonners Ferry, Idaho this past summer as a strategy to revive flagging wild populations.
With an eye toward recent court rulings and Wyoming politics, the federal government is moving once again to delist wolves in the northern Rocky Mountain region.
The Bush Administration announced this week that NOAA Fisheries will soon launch a collaborative review of how harvest and hatcheries are affecting the recovery of Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The Bush Administration's announcement of a major new initiative to reform salmon and steelhead hatchery and harvest practices in the Columbia Basin elicited both support and concerns.
Concerns about the run size and about potential impacts on federally protected spring chinook salmon prompted Oregon and Washington fishery managers Thursday to limit the time and range of Columbia River mainstem sport fishers this spring.
NOAA Fisheries Service chose to follow the advice of the state of Oregon this week in announcing that it feels the Oregon coast coho "evolutionarily significant unit" -- a collection of wild and hatchery populations -- is robust enough that it does not warrant listing under the Endangered Species Act.
The heads of the Oregon and Washington departments of fish and wildlife hope to reconcile within the next week the states' differences over how the mainstem Columbia River harvest of spring chinook salmon will be allocated this year between sport and commercial fishers.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission, in a unanimous vote last Friday (Jan. 13), approved a department proposal to remove up to 75 percent of the wolves in a portion of the Clearwater Region.
A U.S./Canada scientific panel says there is no ready, or inexpensive, cure for problems that have beset the north Pacific's coded-wire tag program for monitoring ocean fishing's impacts on individual stocks of fish.
Last year proved to be "a pretty typical migration" for Columbia/Snake river juvenile spring chinook salmon and steelhead in terms of timing and survival but the jury's still out on Snake River fall chinook, which rushed toward the ocean a bit earlier than normal.
The process for revising the federal government's Columbia River hydrosystem salmon protection plan are described in a set of documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court in Portland.
Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne Thursday signed a Memorandum of Agreement transferring most of the responsibility for managing gray wolves in central Idaho from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to state wildlife officials.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game says deep-water trap netting showed an increase in lake trout numbers in Lake Pend Oreille over the past two years.
A new report from the University of Idaho's College of Natural Resources examines the Endangered Species Act to promote understanding of how threatened and endangered species are added to and, more importantly, removed from the federal list.
The Bonneville Power Administration's 2005 annual report shows the agency earned just over $126 million in modified net revenues, the highest since prior to the West Coast energy crisis of 2000-2001.
Resident rainbow trout populations were out, then potentially brought back in, and ultimately left out of 10 West Coast steelhead listings announced Dec. 23 by NOAA Fisheries Service.
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