With Bonneville Dam fish counts holding strong, sport and commercial fishers are preparing to shift after June 15 from a “spring” chinook emphasis to targeting what is expected to be the highest “summer” chinook salmon return to the Columbia River basin since at least 1980.
Over 250 tribal leaders, federal fisheries managers, state fisheries managers, scientists, non-tribal fishers and members of the public attended the Future of Our Salmon conference last week, June 1-2.
A better-late-than-never surge of spring chinook salmon over the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam has brightened the fishing picture for non-Indian sport and commercial and tribal fishers.
A federal judge in a March 11 order ruled that the federal government can and must legally consider a request from Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes for permission to go fishing in northeast Oregon’s Grand Ronde and Imnaha rivers.
The Nez Perce Tribe has put its lawsuit over the Lewiston Orchards Irrigation District on hold while it and other parties seek an alternate water source for the project that diverts water from critical steelhead habitat.
There's been good news coming from Idaho's Bear Valley Creek this summer.
First, fish biologists are excited about last June's construction and operation of the new Bear Valley Creek Chinook Salmon Abundance Monitoring Project -- the first fish monitoring station in a key portion of Bear Valley Creek.
Bonneville Power Administration officials were recently shown on-the-ground results of the 10-year Columbia Basin Fish Accords -- a spring chinook salmon in a newly scoured pool on Meacham Creek on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeast Oregon.
Bruce Jim, a Warm Springs tribal member, has been selected by officials from the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Warm Springs tribes to lead the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission as its new chair.
After a near century of no spring chinook or salmon fishing in the Walla Walla River, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation last Sunday (June 20) opened a fishing opportunity for tribal members on the South Fork Walla Walla River on a 2-mile reach downriver from Harris Park. A 100-fish harvest was approved for this fishery.
The four Columbia River treaty tribes opened the commercial sales of local, fresh summer chinook (historically called "June Hogs" because of their large size) at 6 a.m. Wednesday.
There were smiles, and praise, aplenty this week as the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation closed in on a long-held dream -- boosting salmon returns to tribal lands that were decimated long ago with construction of fish-stopping Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams.
Portland General Electric and its innovative Deschutes River salmon passage project were named Monday by the Edison Electric Institute as one of six finalists for the Edison Award, the electricity industry's highest honor.
Tribal fishers from the Umatilla and Warm Springs Indian tribes are expected to start fishing this weekend for subsistence purposes in a four-mile stretch of the Columbia River below Bonneville Dam, according to a memorandum of understanding signed Wednesday by the two tribes and the Oregon and Washington departments of fish and wildlife.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has awarded $7 million in grants to fund 42 Native American projects that benefit fish and wildlife and their habitat. Of those funds, $1,302,539 will be awarded to tribes in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Thursday approved a move by the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho to go into the next phase of planning for an expansion of its landmark white sturgeon hatchery program and the creation of a one-of-a-kind burbot production program.
Now in the 11th hour of an eight-year, $8 million study, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, along with the states of Oregon and Washington, local officials and the farm community, have started working with congressional leaders and the Obama Administration to secure funding for a $300 million project that would guarantee a source of water to irrigate crops while leaving flows in the Walla Walla River for migrating salmon and steelhead.
Tribal leaders from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission praised the Obama Administration for a long-sought funding increase for tribal treaty rights-based natural resource management.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was overly hasty and acted without proper environmental impacts analysis in licensing the proposed construction and operation of a liquefied natural gas ship terminal and plant in the Columbia River estuary, according to legal briefs filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Plaintiffs in the long-running debate over the legality of the Columbia-Snake river hydro system salmon protection plan say the federal government is "proposing illusory ways" to satisfy the Administrative Procedures Act and convince the court that after-the-fact information should be considered in the case.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday gave its endorsement to seven "accord" fish and wildlife projects that will absorb more than $28 million in funding over a 10-year span.
Nez Perce Tribe officials on Thursday for the first time in the 15-year history of the Clearwater Coho Restoration Project delivered fertilized coho salmon eggs from Idaho back to a western Oregon hatchery that has enabled the coho program to take wing.
A proposal by the Colville Tribes to build a salmon hatchery near central Washington's Chief Joseph Dam appears to have cleared another procedural hurdle with the release last month of what is a mostly positive final Environmental Impact Statement.
Both effort and knowledge have increased since early 2007 when the Nez Perce Tribe first authorized the use of gill-nets fall-winter commercial fishing in the lower Snake River basin.
It isn't exactly on the fish recovery front burner, yet a Kootenai Tribe of Idaho effort to rekindle populations of kokanee in Idaho Panhandle streams is showing signs of success.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Portland District is seeking public comments on its proposal to construct a treaty fishing access site on the bank of the Columbia River near Dallesport, Wash.
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