The study, published June 20 in Nature Sustainability, details a new system for leasing rights to water from the basin while reallocating some water to imperiled habitats.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has hired Peter Cogswell as its new executive director. Cogswell’s first day at the Council will be Monday, July 7th.
The Trump administration issued a memorandum this week that disrupts Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead recovery by rescinding a 2023 agreement that included the federal government, two states and four Columbia River tribes and funded that effort with nearly $1 billion.
A public comment period for ending hydropower production at federal dams in the Willamette River basin, and thoughts on deep drawdowns at Detroit Reservoir on the North Fork Santiam River, has been extended from June 6 to June 21.
Habitat work by Columbia River tribes is in progress to maintain and rejuvenate refuges of cold water in the Columbia River upstream of Bonneville Dam in partnership with the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement.
The Wild Fish Conservancy filed a lawsuit this month in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. in an effort to speed up NOAA Fisheries’ review of the Washington-based conservation group’s proposal to list Chinook salmon in Alaska under the federal Endangered Species Act.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) says the Trump Administration’s spending plans for the Army Corps of Engineers would steer hundreds of millions of dollars more in construction funding to red states while cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in construction funding for blue states.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation are extending the public comment period for the Columbia River System Operations Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to August 15, 2025.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget released would cut all funding for the Marine Mammal Commission, a federal agency dedicated to the protection of marine mammals.
President Donald Trump, in an April proposed rule, has directed the Secretary of Commerce, NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescind the long-standing definition of “harm” to species covered by the federal Endangered Species Act. The existing definition of harm as the ESA is currently written, the Administration says, is contrary to the “best meaning” of the term “take.”
The Center for Biological Diversity has sued the Trump administration for what it says is a failure to release public records about ocean conservation work “interrupted by firings and layoffs” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
An April 17 Executive Order President Donald Trump calls for suspending or revising regulations on the U.S. seafood industry, saying that regulations “overly burden” America’s commercial fishing and fish processing industries, as well as the nation’s aquaculture industry.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has released the first environmental impact statement since 1980 for its Willamette Valley system of 13 dams. The final EIS analyzes several alternatives and selects the preferred alternative the Corps says will be best for spring Chinook and winter steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act. The Corps expects to release its Record of Decision in May.
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has named Eugenio Piñeiro Soler as Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries. Piñeiro Soler has assumed his new position, taking the helm from Acting Assistant Administrator Emily Menashes, who will return to her previous position as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Operations.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins issued a Secretarial Memo to establish an “Emergency Situation Determination” on 112,646,000 acres of National Forestry System (NFS) land, including the national forests of the Pacific Northwest.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District says it will not perform a deep drawdown at the Willamette Valley’s Detroit Reservoir in the fall of 2025.
The U.S. has paused negotiations with British Columbia on a modernized Columbia River Treaty that was nearly complete after both the U.S. and Canada reached an Agreement in Principle in 2024.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the process of revamping the dam’s northern-most fish ladder near the Washington shore at a cost of some $8 million. According to the Corps, the project is changing out a portion of the fish ladder, which spans 800 feet from top to bottom, that was originally a serpentine passage of concrete walls, called baffles, with a newer baffle design more friendly to lamprey.
The Center for Biological Diversity has sued five cabinet-level agencies seeking to stop the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its DOGE teams from taking further actions against multiple environmental agencies until each team fully complies with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Oregon’s U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden—along with Oregon U.S. Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Val Hoyle, Andrea Salinas, Maxine Dexter, and Janelle Bynum -- joined over 100 Members of Congress to demand that the Trump Administration stop and reverse its “dangerous efforts to fire employees and defund programs” that serve Tribes and Tribal members.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced the selection of 15 projects that will receive funding for the restoration, enhancement and protection of salmon and steelhead (anadromous salmonid) habitat in California watersheds.
Western Washington’s Olympic Peninsula summer and winter steelhead were found by NOAA Fisheries in November 2024 to be at moderate risk of extinction, but the federal agency has yet to list the fish as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to a new complaint filed Jan. 17 in federal court by The Conservation Angler and the Wild Fish Conservancy.
The U.S. Department of Energy, Washington State Department of Ecology, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have finalized an agreement that outlines a course for cleaning up millions of gallons of radioactive and chemical waste from large, underground tanks at the Hanford Site near the Columbia River.
Canada will store several million-acre-feet of water that can be used in 2025 and for the next 20 years to help prevent floods in the Columbia River basin downstream in the United States, according to a virtual briefing earlier this month by federal dam operators on the Columbia River Treaty Agreement in Principle’s flood risk management protections.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has directed Washington state agencies to take all actions necessary, in cooperation with the state of Oregon and four lower Columbia Basin treaty tribes, to fulfill the State of Washington’s commitments to the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative.
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