A team of scientists completed its sixteenth consecutive annual review of the Fish Passage Center’s draft Comparative Survival Study of salmon and steelhead that migrate past federal dams in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Wild wolves living in Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Territory on BC’s central coast have learned to pull crab traps out of the ocean—behavior that represents the first documented case of potential tool use in the species, according to a new study.
How and where water bird predation impacts juvenile salmon and steelhead must be considered on a case- by-case basis before taking action against the birds, according to a new report being considered at this week’s Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting.
One of the enduring ichthyological mysteries is how migratory fish know when it is time to move from their winter to summer habitats. The ability to tell when the seasons are changing is crucial for a wide range of major life events, including feeding and spawning, as well as migration.
New research has confirmed that West Coast transient killer whales who live between British Columbia and California are two distinct subpopulations: inner and outer coast transients.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has published preliminary harvest and value figures for the 2025 Alaska Commercial Salmon Fishery.
A satellite imagery analysis shows that the 2021 “heat dome” scorched almost 5% of the forested area in western Oregon and western Washington, turning foliage in canopies from a healthy green to red or orange, sometimes within a matter of hours.
The Center for Biological Diversity has sued the Trump administration for what it says is a failure to decide whether to protect Olympic marmots, a rare species that lives only on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. The marmots are threatened by climate change and predation by coyotes.
The Skamania fish hatchery on the Washougal River in Washington is shutting down due to budget cuts at the state’s fishery agency that have also resulted in layoffs and cuts in monitoring and fisheries management.
The state of Washington and Columbia River tribes are lining up in U.S. District Court to support a request for a preliminary injunction filed Oct. 14 by Earthjustice seeking emergency operational changes at federal Columbia and Snake river dams aimed at protecting endangered salmon and steelhead from harms caused by dam operations.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, and Puget Sound Energy announced that this year a record number of sockeye salmon returned to northwest Washington’s Skagit Bay and the Skagit River on their annual spawning migration.
Following an “unprecedented” level of livestock attacks across the Sierra Valley, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has lethally removed four gray wolves from the Beyem Seyo pack. This action follows months of intensive non-lethal management efforts to reduce livestock loss and, the agency says, “is grounded in the best available science and understanding of wolf biology.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and its partners have initiated a second year of spring-run Chinook salmon reintroduction efforts into historic habitat in the North Yuba River.
The population of white sturgeon from Hells Canyon Dam to Lower Granite Dam is in decline, with fewer juvenile sturgeon found in both the 101 miles of free-flowing river and 36 miles of reservoir water. That decline began when the lower Snake River dams were completed, according to information provided by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at last week’s Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting.
For the third consecutive year, Idaho poisoned a section of the Snake River near Twin Falls to rid the river of dangerously invasive quagga mussels first found in 2023.
Although no chum salmon have showed up yet at spawning grounds downstream of Bonneville Dam, fishery managers and dam operators agreed this week to a phased-in beginning for chum flows as a way to save Lake Roosevelt water for spring flow augmentation and to protect resident fish in the lake.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fishery managers will hold two virtual town halls on coastal steelhead to review 2024-25 returns, present 2025-26 run forecasts, and summarize proposed fishing regulations.
In addition to continuing tribal commercial gillnetting upstream of Bonneville Dam that is currently targeting the fourth largest run of coho salmon in the last 10 years, tribes also received approval this week from the two-state Columbia River Compact for a little-known fishery that commercially removes from the John Day Dam pool non-native fish that prey on salmon and steelhead.
The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect two declining freshwater fish species in Oregon and California under the Endangered Species Act. Petitions were submitted for the Umpqua chub in southwestern Oregon and the northern roach in northeastern California and southern Oregon.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and California Trout, joined by several community and conservation partners, invite the public to join in celebrating the fall return of Chinook salmon to the Shasta River in the Klamath Basin.
Before bear spray, encounters between people and bears often ended in bullets. That changed when graduate student Carrie Hunt developed the life-saving deterrent at the University of Montana in the 1980s.
A hatchery program designed to compensate for the loss of nearly half the historical abundance of steelhead returning to the Snake River caused by the installation and operation of dams in the 1960s is “highly effective,” according to a recently released review by a panel of scientists. The scientists added that the program practices good science, uses sound actions and is adaptable to the changing conditions in the river.
Washington is predicting a huge run of pink salmon into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound this year and is encouraging anglers to take advantage of the run while they are there. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is forecasting a run of pinks of nearly 7.8 million, up 70 percent over the 10-year average.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is alerting Willamette Valley residents that it will begin drawing down reservoirs backed up behind some of its 13 dams in the river system, an action designed to aid the downstream migration of salmon and steelhead through the dams, but also one that has increased downstream turbidity that impacts city drinking water.
A video camera captured a Chinook salmon ascending the fish ladder at Keno Dam on the upper Klamath River last week (Sept. 24), the first picture of a salmon ascending the upper bays of the ladder since four hydroelectric dams were removed on the Klamath River last year.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
