A water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes cleared a huge hurdle with the approval of the Montana Legislature this spring, but opposition to the perpetually binding conditions for tribal water rights under the compact persists.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fish managers will release "early winter" hatchery steelhead into inland lakes again this year, now that federal fisheries officials have decided to conduct a full-scale environmental impact analysis of all Puget Sound hatchery steelhead programs.

Representatives from the Coastal Conservation Association Oregon, Columbia River treaty tribes, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and others will be joined by U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-OR, in Oregon City Saturday, May 30, to support proposed legislation that would enhance fish and wildlife managers’ abilities to reduce predation on threatened and endangered salmon, steelhead and other native fish species in the Columbia River system by removing predators such as sea lions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy have reached a settlement over DOE’s failure to meet a critical September 2014 Tri-Party Agreement milestone for beginning sludge removal from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s K West Basin along the Columbia River.

An Oregon LNG appeal to overturn Clatsop County’s 2013 decision that turned down the company’s application to site 41 miles of natural gas pipeline in the lower Columbia River estuary was denied this week by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.

Conservation and animal welfare groups filed a lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court of Oregon to stop the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to kill and harass double-crested cormorants on East Sand Island in the lower Columbia River estuary.