Currently browsing: Biological Opinions

President Obama's fiscal year 2015 budget request released Tuesday identifies a total of $1 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation, the nation's largest wholesale water supplier and second-largest producer of hydroelectric power.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Walla Walla District this week announced it has completed an environmental assessment for its Inland Avian Predation Management Plan – a strategy that contains management actions designed to reduce predatory birds’ impacts on salmon and steelhead species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

NOAA Fisheries Service says that a new biological opinion issued today serves to confirm that its plan for improving salmon and steelhead survival through the Federal Columbia River Power System on the Columbia and Snake rivers is working, and that efforts to rehabilitate habitat for the fish will indeed help dodge extinction for species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Corps of Engineers is set to reestablish the long-clogged main channel of northwest Oregon’s Sandy River near its confluence with the Columbia River, thus restoring historic conditions that are expected to provide more habitat benefits for protected salmon and steelhead as well as other fish and wildlife species.

The Bureau of Reclamation announced this week the receipt of a joint, coordinated biological opinion delivered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that analyzes the effects of the ongoing operations of Reclamation’s Klamath Project through March 2023.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week announced it is asking for public comments on a project it is proposing, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to restore tidal connection and fish access to 68 acres of long-blocked tidal wetlands on the mainstem of the lower Columbia River.

Flows sent down from northwest Montana’s Libby Dam with the intent of benefiting endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon will take a new shape this year in an ongoing attempt to lure the big beasts away from badly functioning spawning areas and onto gravelly river bottoms believed to be prime habitat for reproduction.

A 750-foot long, 45-foot wide, 8-foot high dam built in the 1930s would be removed next summer under a proposal aimed at restoring habitat in southwest Oregon’s lower Sandy for the benefit of, particularly, young salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling Monday that says the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated federal law -- both the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act -- in sanctioning the construction of the 700-mile Ruby pipeline from natural gas fields in Wyoming to southern Oregon.

Montana's Libby Dam has been releasing water over its spillway this week to test possible benefits to white sturgeon spawning in the Kootenai River near Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

Columbia Land Trust and the Bonneville Power Administration on Wednesday announced the purchase of 560 acres near the mouth of the Columbia River to permanently protect riverside habitat for Northwest fish and wildlife, including threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.

Research on northeast Oregon’s Catherine Creek is helping to focus habitat restoration efforts needed to recover the creek’s spring chinook, steelhead and bull trout populations, which are all listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The complete elimination of the West Coast’s largest double-crested cormorant colony, located each spring and summer just inside the mouth of the Columbia River at East Sand Island, could, as a result of reduced predation on juvenile fish, boost populations of upriver steelhead by as much as 2.5 percent, according to a recent research report.

A new “synthesis” of research data points to three bird colonies, out of nine total, in the mid-Columbia/lower Snake River region that might be the best targets for management actions to reduce predation on migrating wild juvenile salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The Estuary Partnership is requesting proposals for habitat restoration projects in the lower Columbia River and estuary. Projects that address salmonid restoration and protection are the priority of this request. Applications for the first round of funding are due on April 22.

The Bonneville Power Administration this week proposed an 8.5 percent average wholesale power rate increase primarily to support maintenance and refurbishment of Northwest hydroelectric and nuclear generating facilities.

Federal biologists feel they might have found the right combination of actions at John Day Dam to lift juvenile salmon survival to standards targeted in a Columbia-Snake hydro system biological opinion that prescribes actions believed necessary to avoid jeopardizing protected fish.

Because of the need to review a mountain of related documents, and an otherwise busy work schedule, a coalition of fishing and conservation groups asked U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden for 17 additional days to formulate their legal challenge to the federal government’s Columbia River hydro system salmon protection plan.

The eternal quest to determine how, and if, habitat restoration actions affect the status of imperiled Columbia River basin salmon is taking wings in three intensively monitored watersheds.

U.S. District Court James A. Redden on Tuesday granted permission for the state of Oregon and a coalition of fishing and conservation groups to file amended complaints in a long-running lawsuit that has brought legal challenges to a series of federal strategies for protecting salmon that swim up and down the Columbia-Snake river hydro system.