Plaintiffs in long-running court battles that since 2001 have challenged environmental impact statements and biological opinions regarding the impact of operations of Columbia and Snake river federal dams on imperiled salmon and steelhead are heading back to court, according to a filing by the groups this week in U.S. District Court in Oregon.
The Nez Perce Tribe filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court this week challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a large open-pit gold mine in the headwaters of Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River. The undammed Salmon River basin is a critical source of Idaho’s salmon, steelhead and bull trout.
For millennia, Indigenous people living in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon territory have relied on Chinook salmon. The large, fatty fish provide essential nutrients for Arctic living and have influenced traditions and languages across generations.
The Washington Department of Ecology issued an official rebuke of a draft report by the U.S. Department of Energy being used to justify the Trump Administration’s rollback of federal climate regulations. At the same time, Ecology also released a new analysis that details worsening local impacts now and in the future due to rising global emissions.
Measuring mountain snowpack at strategically selected hotspots consistently outperforms broader basin-wide mapping in predicting water supply in the western United States, a new study found.
Oregon may soon have a new wildlife area in Union County called the Qapqápa Wildlife Area (pronounced cop-COP-a). The property would be owned by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and co-managed with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, continuing a decades-long partnership.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District has awarded a $15 million construction contract to Syblon-Reid Co. to build a new fish ladder at the Mill Creek Diversion Dam in Walla Walla.
