Fishery officials, as well as those who catch salmon, steelhead and other species, have stressed this week that the money and effort spent to revive Columbia River basin fish stocks is a wise investment.
Coastal commercial fishermen and business people marched inland last week to vouch for the economic benefits received from a terminal fishery project funded through the Northwest Power Planning Council.
After three months of bi-monthly meetings, Oregon's Native Fish Conservation Strategy task force has not reached a consensus. Although fish conservation groups generally support the draft policy, detractors say it is biased against hatchery fish.
The Northwest Power Planning Council this week gave its stamp of approval for nearly $2 million in spending for the development of fish and wildlife assessments and management plans in 12 of the Columbia River Basin's subbasins.
The decisions, at Wednesday's Council meeting in Spokane, signal approval of work plans and budgets and authorizes NWPPC executive director Steve Crow to negotiate contracts with the lead entities for the individual subbasins.
Flat federal funding for Mitchell Act facilities and the imminent hatch of spring chinook salmon eggs may force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to start destroying some 1.5 million eggs next week at their Carson and Little White Salmon hatcheries.
An eight-month effort to resolve issues through mediation has ended, coincident with a cavalcade of new filings in the lawsuit brought to challenge the federal government's Columbia Basin salmon recovery plan.
Plaintiffs in the case, National Wildlife Federation, et al. v. National Marine Fisheries Service, are asking the court to require NMFS to withdraw its 2000 Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion and reinitiate consultation on hydrosystem operations.
A Citizens' Forum pledged to consensus building will present a conceptual "White Paper" that supports hatchery supplementation as a tool for rebuilding salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin.
The diverse group, which has been meeting since its organization in February of 2001, was the outgrowth of meetings started in 1999 between staff and policy makers of the Oregon Wheat Growers League and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Four U.S. wolf experts agreed this week that education is one of the most important ingredients of a good wolf management plan.
The four experts speaking to Oregon's seven-member Fish and Wildlife Commission said, with so many misconceptions about wolves, both from those who favor their reintroduction and those who fear it, that it's important to get the wolf story right.
Caspian terns that settle in each spring on an island in the Columbia River estuary and prey on passing salmon and steelhead smolts do hinder Endangered Species Act fish recovery efforts, according to a report released Sept. 26 by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
A massive fish die-off over the past two weeks has fanned the flames of controversy in the Klamath River Basin of southern Oregon and northern California with tribal members, conservation and fishing groups, a politician and California fishery officials saying federal water management policies give too much water to irrigators and too little for in-river fish flows.
Commercial fishermen on the lower Columbia River say they need more fishing time to take advantage of what is the third largest fall chinook salmon return on record and to help reduce what is a surplus of adult fish returning to the basin's hatcheries.
The Northwest Power Planning Council has nearly completed the first round in its newly created three-year rolling "provincial review" process for selecting projects to be funded through its Columbia Basin fish and wildlife program.
The Nez Perce Tribe's hatchery supplementation program -- and to some extent Mother Nature -- can be credited for this year's fall chinook salmon count at Lower Granite Dam, which is expected to set a record with a return of 10,000 adult fish.
On Monday, 604 fall chinook were counted at the dam, located 20 miles northwest of Lewiston, Idaho, on the Snake River. That's higher than the total fall season counts in six individual years since the dam was built in 1975.
The federal Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead recovery effort can list $3.8 billion in costs over the past 20 years, but can not identify a biological benefits bottom line, according to a report recently released by U.S. General Accounting Office.
A report by the RAND Corporation says removal of the four lower Snake River dams and replacing the lost power with at least 20 percent conservation and renewable energy would have a negligible effect on the Northwest's economy and could even add up to 15,000 new jobs.
Anglers up and down the Columbia River are sharing the bounty as fall chinook salmon course their way upriver.
Sport and tribal and non-Indian fishers are hauling in chinook in numbers unprecedented in recent years. The fall chinook return to the river mouth was predicted to be 659,800 adult fish -- the third highest since 1948 behind those of 1987 and 1988. That number is expected to include nearly 500,000 chinook from hatcheries and spawning grounds above Bonneville Dam.
Researchers are taking stock as the latest batch of Snake River sockeye salmon begins to trickle back into Idaho's Stanley Basin where a captive broodstock program aims to perpetuate a still-flickering genetic line.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on Thursday directed state fishery managers to negotiate rules for next year's Columbia River spring chinook commercial fishery that set a maximum size for tangle nets at 4 1/2 inches.
Lower Columbia River treaty tribes are poised for what could be their most bountiful commercial fall chinook harvest ever in the mainstem waters above Bonneville Dam.
The Northwest Power Planning Council sorted through sometimes conflicting advice in making a decision to recommend that 10 projects be funded under its "innovative" fish and wildlife project category during the current fiscal year at cost of nearly $2 million.
Already behind schedule, implementation of the Columbia Basin salmon recovery plan would slip further under an annual federal funding bill recently approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Plans and actions taken by key federal agencies to implement a 10-year Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead recovery program are -- for the most part -- on schedule to meet the first major benchmark in the plan -- a major 2003 evaluation, the National Marine Fisheries Services announced Tuesday.
The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday released a preliminary draft hatchery policy that reaffirms the agency's emphasis on building self-sustaining salmon and steelhead populations in their natural ecosystem with careful consideration of the risks and benefits that hatchery fish might bring to the recovery process.
A surprisingly high "bycatch" of steelhead this past spring during Columbia River mainstem commercial fisheries targeting spring chinook salmon has sport anglers concerned, and angered.
The National Marine Fisheries Service on Thursday announced it would officially consider petitions asking that the agency define and list only the "wild" fish for 15 separate Pacific salmon and steelhead stocks, forgoing ESA protection for hatchery fish in the same waters.
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