Less than a week after the Montana Legislature passed a water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, a group of Flathead Reservation irrigators filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of the Legislature’s actions.
A one-year permit that will allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to carry out the first year of its plan to significantly cull the East Sand Island population of double-crested cormorants in order to reduce the birds’ predation on juvenile salmon was approved this week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
All 26 lawmakers representing Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana urged President Obama this week to make the Columbia River Treaty a priority.
Despite determined efforts to block or amend a controversial water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the compact was passed by the Montana House of Representatives Wednesday.
The number of domestic fish stocks listed as overfished or subject to overfishing has dropped to an all-time low since 1997, when NOAA began tracking stock status, according to the 2014 Status of U.S. Fisheries report to Congress.
A water rights compact for Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes is approaching a culmination for its tumultuous trip through the Montana Legislature.
A federal judge recently ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency and Washington’s Department of Ecology have come up short in their approach for reducing PCBs in the Spokane River, which is regarded as one of the more polluted waterways in the state.
A federal judge earlier this month declined to immediately cut the number of hatchery chinook salmon released into Oregon’s McKenzie River, but recognized the need to protect the wild spring chinook salmon that spawn in the river.
NOAA Fisheries is proposing in its draft environmental assessment of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s 2013 hatchery and genetic management plans (HGMP) substantial cuts in hatchery releases of salmon smolts in Oregon’s Sandy River.
The Audubon Society of Portland last week announced its intent to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent it from putting a plan in place to reduce the population of double-crested cormorants at East Sand Island in the lower Columbia River estuary.
An Oregon appellate court recently rejected claims by commercial fishing businesses that a new policy to phase out gill netting on the lower Columbia River violated state law.
Since the plaintiffs in a long-running legal battle over salmon and steelhead recovery plans for the Columbia River Basin filed for an expedient conclusion to the case last December, the federal government and supporting parties have been seeking summary judgement since March 6.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has appointed fishing columnist Dave Graybill and retired public health physician Kim Thorburn to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission has made Curt Melcher its choice to be the next director for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A bid by commercial fishing interests to reverse Washington management direction aimed at eliminating gill-net salmon fishing on the lower mainstem Columbia River was thwarted last week by a state appeals court.
A liquefied natural gas terminal and pipeline that was first proposed more than ten years ago in the Columbia River estuary is now under review by two federal agencies.
A final environmental impact statement released today says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would like to take a double-barreled approach in its attempt to reduce double-crested cormorant predation on protected juvenile salmon migrating through the lower Columbia River estuary toward the Pacific Ocean.
An Alaska-based commercial fishing advocacy group on Jan. 16 submitted a petition with NOAA Fisheries asking the federal agency to consider dropping the Snake River fall chinook salmon “evolutionarily significant unit” from the Endangered Species Act list.
Oregon’s Foster Dam just got an upgrade, one that may be vital to the survival of threatened Upper Willamette River spring chinook salmon and winter steelhead.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have disapproved the state of Oregon’s coastal nonpoint pollution control program because it does not sufficiently protect salmon streams and landslide-prone areas from logging impacts or reduce runoff from forest roads built before 1971.
Columbia River basin state and tribal fisheries managers could gain a new tool in their battle to reduce sea lion predation on threatened salmon if legislation proposed this week to amend the Marine Mammal Predation Act passes muster with Congress.
Managing the impacts of sea lions and seals on protected salmon and steelhead and other fish stocks is a tough job that has only gotten tougher in recent years due, probably, to fluctuations in both predator and prey species populations in the lower Columbia River.
So far, things have been relatively quiet at the Montana Legislature when it comes to a water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, but that is likely to change soon.
Jim Unsworth, deputy director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, has been chosen as the new head of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Planned dredging of lower Snake River sites in southeast Washington this winter in the name of navigation safety and economy can move ahead as planned, according to a federal court order issued Wednesday.
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