President Biden’s executive orders on climate change come as a warming climate already plays a key role in continued declines of Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead populations listed under the Endangered Species Act. One of the orders directly addresses fisheries.
The effects of a changing climate continue to significantly affect Oregonians and the state’s resources and infrastructure, the latest biennial report released today by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute concludes.
During the summer of 2020, an area of unusually warm ocean water—a marine heatwave—grew off the West Coast of the United States. It became the second most expansive Northeast Pacific heatwave since monitoring began in 1982. The heatwave eventually encompassed about 9.1 million square kilometers, almost six times the size of Alaska, towards the end of September.
Unusually warm river conditions killed most adult sockeye salmon migrating up the Columbia and Snake River system in 2015, reflecting a “new normal” with climate change, a new NOAA Fisheries study finds.
In a letter Friday (Oct.9) the four Northwest states announced they have agreed to work together to rebuild Columbia River salmon and steelhead stocks and to advance the goals of the Columbia Basin Partnership Task Force.
To date in 2020, 1,217 wildfires have burned 1,473,522 million acres of National Forest System lands in California; 8,486 wildfires have burned over 4 million acres across all jurisdictions in California.
Oregon again was recognized as a leader in efforts to stem climate change and ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH).
Spawn timing for wild chinook salmon in the Skagit River system in Washington is slowly occurring later in the year as the river warms due to climate change, a finding that fits with previous research. However, the trend for hatchery-origin stray chinook salmon in the same river is towards earlier spawning, according to a recent study.
Squeezed by changing ocean conditions that limit their food options and the long-term loss of old forest needed for nesting, marbled murrelets would benefit most from conservation efforts that take both ocean and forest into account, new research by Oregon State University shows.
As oceans warm due to climate change, scientists are trying to predict how marine animals — from backboned fish to spineless jellyfish — will react.
Natural disasters alone are not enough to motivate local communities to engage in climate change mitigation or adaptation, a new study from Oregon State University found.
The size of salmon returning to rivers in Alaska has declined dramatically over the past 60 years because they are spending fewer years at sea, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Summer steelhead in the interior Columbia River Basin listed under the Endangered Species Act are in the midst of a down-cycle, with several recent years of extremely depressed returns. Oregon has decided the time has come to reduce angler pressure when these threatened fish seek cold water refuges during their upstream mainstem migration.
Marine heatwaves across the world’s oceans can displace habitat for sea turtles, whales, and other marine life by 10s to thousands of kilometers. They dramatically shift these animals’ preferred temperatures in a fraction of the time that climate change is expected to do, new research shows.
Recognizing changes in the state’s climate and in the ocean, Oregon last week adopted a policy that gives its fish and wildlife agency guidance on how to respond to the threat of climate change.
Climate change will leave some farmers with a difficult conundrum, according to a new study by researchers from Cornell and Washington State University: Either risk more revenue volatility, or live with a more predictable decrease in crop yields.
A new University of Alaska-led study provides the first evidence that declines in many of Alaska’s chinook salmon populations can be attributed in part to climate-driven changes in their freshwater habitats.
Drought can mean restrictions for watering the lawn, crop losses for farmers and an increased risk of wildfires. But it can also hit you and your power company in the wallet.
The Columbia River is warming and salmon and steelhead are taking advantage of cold water refuges in their migration, an adaptation to climate change, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
When drought reshuffles the green-up of habitats that mule deer migrate across, it dramatically shortens the annual foraging bonanza they rely on.
There is truth in the saying “you are what you eat”; even more so if you are a salmon or herring swimming off the British Columbia coast, a recent University of British Columbia study discovered.
Ocean temperatures that in 2015 and 2016 were abnormally warm – at times more than 2.5 degrees Celsius higher than normal – stressed juvenile steelhead just entering the California Current and impacted their size and condition. Most of the change occurred in the first few days after ocean entry, according to a recent study.
Marine life off the West Coast, from Mexico up through Canada, inhabit the California Current. The cool, nutrient-rich water supports life from invisible phytoplankton to the economically important salmon, rockfish and Dungeness crab to the orcas.
Discussions of drought often center on the lack of precipitation. But among climate scientists, the focus is shifting to include the growing role that warming temperatures are playing as potent drivers of greater aridity and drought intensification.
A science panel says a key ongoing salmon survival study should better take into account potential impacts of climate change on future flows and environmental conditions in the Columbia/Snake river basin.
A large marine heatwave would double the rate of the climate change impacts on fisheries species in the northeast Pacific by 2050, says a recently released study by researchers from the University of British Columbia and University of Bern.
Weakened wind patterns likely spurred the wave of extreme ocean heat that swept the North Pacific last summer, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
With a dwindling number of summer steelhead returning to the Columbia River each year and warming waters resulting from climate change, Oregon fishery managers are considering setting certain dates and locations designated as thermal angling sanctuaries in three tributaries upstream of Bonneville Dam.
A new Simon Fraser University-led study looking at the effects that glacier retreat will have on western North American Pacific salmon predicts that while some salmon populations may struggle, others may benefit.
A Washington state agency has laid out a plan for withstanding and adapting to the impacts of global climate change. The state’s Department of Natural Resources last week released its “Plan for Climate Resilience” that the agency says will minimize the impacts of climate change and “maximize new opportunities” in making the state more resilient to changes.
When the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife approved in late January a new permit allowing Cooke Aquaculture to begin growing rainbow trout/steelhead in its Puget Sound net pens, there were a number of groups and tribes that had already lined up in opposition to the permit. And one group may seek legal action to stop it.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency received a 30 day extension from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to develop Columbia and Snake river temperature limits, known as Total Maximum Daily Load, but the EPA is still not saying what it will do at the end of the 30 days.
Arctic sea ice cannot “quickly bounce back” if climate change causes it to melt, new research suggests.
It was unprecedented when nearly one million common murres died at sea and washed ashore from California to Alaska in 2015 and 2016. Scientists from the University of Washington, the U.S. Geological Survey and others blame an unexpected squeeze on the ecosystem’s food supply, brought on by a severe and long-lasting marine heat wave known as “the blob.”
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is being briefed Friday, Jan. 17, on an agency-developed Climate and Ocean Change Policy. The public will also have a chance to comment on the policy during the all-day meeting in Salem.
A new analysis shows that in 2019 the world’s oceans were warmer than in any other time in recorded human history, especially between the surface and a depth of 2,000 meters (about 6,500 feet). The analysis also shows that the past five years have shown the highest global ocean temperatures and that recent ocean warming is 450 percent greater over the past 30 years than in the 30 year period beginning in 1955.
The value of protecting cold water refuges during adult salmon and steelhead migrations is especially important with rising water temperatures in the Columbia River basin caused by climate change, but the draft Cold Water Refuge Plan by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is not expansive enough to protect those fish, many listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, and it lacks a sense of urgency.
The manipulation of rivers in California is jeopardizing the resilience of native chinook salmon. It compresses their migration timing to the point that they crowd their habitats. They may miss the best window for entering the ocean and growing into adults, new research shows.
Life cycles for birds, insects and trees are shifting in this current era of a rapidly changing climate. How migration patterns, in particular, are changing and whether birds can track climate change is an open question.
More than half of the climate tipping points identified a decade ago are now “active”, a group of leading scientists have warned.
A global coalition of scientists led by William J. Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University says “untold human suffering” is unavoidable without deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other factors related to climate change.
Summer water temperatures in the Columbia River can rise high enough (above 20 degrees Centigrade, 68 degrees Fahrenheit) to have adverse impacts on salmon and steelhead migrating upstream. Such temperatures cause disease, stress, and lower spawning success and can kill the fish.
The newest marine heat wave off the West Coast that emerged this summer and resembles what became known as “the Blob” of 2014 and 2015 is not as warm and it already is diminishing in strength, according to Nick Bond, Washington State Climatologist.
The planet baked under the sun this summer as temperatures reached the hottest ever recorded and heat waves spread across the globe. While the climate continues to warm, scientists expect the frequency and intensity of heat waves to increase. However, a commonly overlooked aspect is the spatial size of heat waves, despite its important implications.
In the wake of recent wildfires that have ravaged northern and central California, a new study finds that the severity of fire activity in the Sierra Nevada region has been sensitive to changes in climate over the past 1,400 years. The findings suggest that future climate change is likely to drive increased fire activity in the Sierras.
Traditionally it was thought that warm coastal water temperatures in Alaska were considered beneficial for salmon productivity, while the opposite was true off the coasts of British Columbia and Washington State where warmer temperatures were not as good for salmon.
Rising ocean temperatures have long been linked to negative impacts for marine life, but a Florida State University team has found that the long-term outlook for many marine species is much more complex — and possibly bleaker — than scientists previously believed.
Oregon has a new roadmap for addressing rising ocean acidification and hypoxia – two climate change-induced conditions that could have widespread consequences for the state’s ocean ecosystem and the economy.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report highlights the urgency of prioritizing actions to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere, the frozen part of the planet.
With warming temperatures, average snowfall frequency is estimated to decline across the Pacific Northwest by 2100 — and at a faster rate if greenhouse emissions are not reduced, according to a new Portland State University study.
Beginning in 2014, the U.S. West Coast experienced an extreme marine heatwave. Could it have been predicted so that fisheries managers and stakeholders could have better planned for impacts?
Glacier-fed rivers in northern Canada may be consuming significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to new research by University of Alberta biologists.
Sea temperature and ocean acidification have climbed during the last three decades to levels beyond what is expected due to natural variation alone, a new study led by Princeton researchers finds.
Three runs of Pacific Northwest coho salmon and two runs of fall chinook have been added to the overfished list in NOAA Fisheries 2018 Report to Congress on the Status of U.S. Fisheries.
Consecutive low snow years may become six times more common across the Western United States over the latter half of this century, leading to ecological and economic challenges such as expanded fire seasons and poor snow conditions at ski resorts, according to a study.
In Oregon’s fertile Willamette River Basin, where two-thirds of the state’s population lives, managing water scarcity would be more effective if conservation measures were introduced in advance and upstream from the locations where droughts are likely to cause shortages, according to a new study.
A new study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego suggests that a new regime of wet and dry extremes is emerging in California and that the projected bolstering of extreme precipitation is likely to be caused by streams of moisture in the sky known as atmospheric rivers (ARs).
Nearly 18,000 river kilometers (11,185 miles) of Columbia River basin streams currently has suitable habitat for an invasive predatory fish that, as climate warms, is a range that is predicted to increase by 10,000 river miles by 2080, according to a recent study.
A catastrophic forest die-off in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range in 2015-2016 was caused by the inability of trees to reach diminishing supplies of subsurface water following years of severe drought and abnormally warm temperatures.
The National Park Service has approved a plan to purge non-native fish in Glacier National Park’s Upper Camas Basin with a fish toxin, followed by efforts to re-stock the lakes with native westslope cutthroat trout and bull trout.
One silver lining to emerge from the severe drought that impacted California earlier this decade was that it whetted an appetite to study the event and compile data designed to help fish and aquatic species better weather future droughts.
New strategies for river management are needed to maintain water supplies and avoid big crashes in populations of aquatic life, researchers argue in a perspective piece published this week in Nature.
Wildfires spew smoke and harm overall air quality, but they contribute a lot less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than many people assume — and that many scientific models predict — according to a University of Idaho study.
An ample buffet of freshwater food, brought on by climate change, is altering the life history of one of the world’s most important salmon species.
Forest fires are causing snow to melt earlier in the season, a trend occurring across the western U.S. that may affect water supplies and trigger even more fires, according to a new study by a team of researchers at Portland State University, the Desert Research Institute, and the University of Nevada, Reno.
Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
For the Pacific Northwest, long-range outlooks suggest fire danger will rise to be above average in during the summer, particularly west of the Cascades where outlooks suggest a warmer than average summer, said the National Interagency Fire Center this week.
In an unusual new study, scientists say they have detected the fingerprint of human-driven global warming on patterns of drought and moisture across the world as far back as 1900.
Rising temperatures are well documented back at least that far, but this is the first time researchers have identified resulting long-term global effects on the water supplies that feed crops and cities
Glaciers are set to disappear completely from almost half of World Heritage sites if business-as-usual emissions continue, according to the first-ever global study of World Heritage glaciers.
Heavy rain over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean is a good indicator that temperatures in central California will reach 100 degrees in four to 16 days, according to a collaborative research team from the University of California Davis and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Climate Center in Busan, South Korea.
A multi-institutional team of researchers has assessed how environmental, demographic, and genetic factors play a role in the reintroduction of bull trout in Washington State.
Despite significant snow in parts of Washington, water supply shortages are projected in the Methow, Okanogan and Upper Yakima basins, prompting Gov. Jay Inslee to declare a drought emergency in those watersheds.
Idaho Fish and Game staff will share updates on the Lake Pend Oreille fishery and activities planned for 2019 at the annual State of the Lake public meeting on Thursday, April 4 from 6-8 p.m. at the Pend Oreille Events Center. The Events Center is located at 401 Bonner Mall Way, Suite E, in Pend Oreille.
Rising global maritime traffic could lead to sharp increases in invasive species around the world over the next 30 years, according to a new study by McGill University researchers.
New research shows that recent climate change is having profound effects on wetlands across the American West – affecting birds that use these wetlands for breeding, migration and wintering.
Coastal waters are cooling and attracting higher value, more fat-rich food — a good sign for salmon, steelhead and ocean predators, such as Orcas — after several years of unusually warm conditions (2014 – 2016), when the warm water “blob” dominated coastal conditions, according to a report released last week by NOAA Fisheries.
Online registration is open for the Columbia Basin Transboundary Conference: One River, One Future, an international conference addressing key issues related to the future of the Columbia River, its ecosystem, management, and international implications.
During the marine heatwave of 2014-16, scientists from the University of California, Davis, noticed creatures typically seen only in places like Baja California, Mexico, showing up outside the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory. These included warm-water species of jellyfish, crabs, nudibranchs, fish and even dolphins and sea turtles.
A fifth round of Columbia River Treaty negotiations was recently concluded by the United States and Canada in Washington, D.C., this time focusing on American priorities for managing water in the basin.
In a recent study, University of Montana researchers explored the ways forest succession and climate variability interacted and influenced fires in Alaska’s boreal forests over the past four centuries – from 1550 to 2015.
At a 2-hour work session prior to its last meeting, Feb. 12, in Portland, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee reviewed staff summaries of recommendations it has received through its process to amend the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Total human carbon dioxide emissions could match those of Earth’s last major greenhouse warming event in fewer than five generations, new research finds.
Some 8,000 aging culverts under roads and driveways around Puget Sound block threatened Puget Sound steelhead from reaching high headwaters streams where they historically spawned, creating a major obstacle to the species’ recovery.
Under climate change, plants and animals will shift their habitats to track the conditions they are adapted for. As they do, the lands surrounding rivers and streams offer natural migration routes that will take on a new importance as temperatures rise.
In one generation, the climate experienced in many North American cities is projected to change to that of locations hundreds of miles away–or to a new climate unlike any found in North America today.
A changing climate in the 21st century will significantly alter the coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest, according to modeling by Oregon State University researchers.
Climate change is causing significant changes to phytoplankton in the world’s oceans, and a new MIT study finds that over the coming decades these changes will affect the ocean’s color, intensifying its blue regions and its green ones. Satellites should detect these changes in hue, providing early warning of wide-scale changes to marine ecosystems.
Nearly $1 billion has been spent on salmon recovery activities in the State of Washington since 1999 when the Washington legislature passed the state’s Salmon Recovery Act, according to an annual report released this month by Gov. Jay Inslee’s Salmon Recovery Office.
Populations of coastal cutthroat trout and coastal giant salamanders in the Pacific Northwest show the ability to rebound quickly from drought conditions, new research by Oregon State University suggests.
Jennifer Anders of Montana was unanimously elected this week to Chair the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, replacing outgoing chair Jim Yost of Idaho. The Council held the elections and made the transition to new officers at its meeting in Portland, Wednesday, Jan. 16.
Tree rings tell the story of what’s happening physiologically as fire suppression makes forests more dense and less tolerant of drought, pests and wildfires, new research shows.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced late last week a budget that includes investments to save Southern Resident orca whales in Puget Sound. Much of his budget is aimed at increasing the number of chinook salmon, the killer whales’ primary food source, in the Columbia River basin and in Puget Sound, and includes funding a task force to look at breaching Snake River dams.
The ability to smell is critical for salmon. They depend on scent to avoid predators, sniff out prey and find their way home at the end of their lives when they return to the streams where they hatched to spawn and die.
Bull trout populations in the upper Columbia River basin in Idaho and Montana are small and some are continuing to decline, according to a recent study.
Now that diversion dam is gone, dismantled through the cooperative efforts of local irrigators, Kittitas County Conservation District, and the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan partners, Mid-Columbia steelhead, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, are now re-establishing themselves in more than 20 newly accessible miles of healthy creek habitat.
Once spring-run chinook salmon disappear, they are not likely to re-emerge, indicates genetic analysis of the revered wild fish in a study led by the University of California, Davis. Prompt conservation action could preserve spring-run chinook, as well as their evolutionary potential.
A future warmer world will almost certainly feature a decline in fresh water from the Sierra Nevada mountain snowpack. Now a new study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that analyzed the headwater regions of California’s 10 major reservoirs, representing nearly half of the state’s surface storage, found they could see on average a 79 percent drop in peak snowpack water volume by 2100.
In 2015, low river flow conditions, coupled with high air temperatures and warm water in the Snake and Columbia rivers and their tributaries from mid-June to mid-July, resulted in the highest mainstem water temperatures recorded in the Columbia River Basin.
An innovative tool that can confirm the recent presence of any given fish species in a sample of water will be highlighted at the first National Conference on Marine Environmental DNA held in New York City. The conference began Thursday and continues today, Nov. 30.
Forests in the Pacific Northwest will be less vulnerable to drought and fire over the next three decades than those in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, computer modeling by researchers in Oregon State University’s College of Forestry shows.
Which Pacific Northwest streams will warm the most in the next 50 years, and where would restoration work make a difference for salmon? Where will wildfires and pests be most aggressive in forests as the Earth warms, and how can better management help?
The University of Washington’s College of the Environment has teamed up with Seattle visual analytics company Tableau Software to create a new, interactive visualization for historical observations of temperature and precipitation in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana, and for Washington snowpack.
After nearly 40 years absence the first adult coho salmon entered the mouth of northeast Oregon’s Lostine River Sunday night. The silvery female is returning to the river where she was released as hatchery smolt in 2017.
A report by the Independent Science Review Panel that reviews 25 research-focused projects that touch on fish and wildlife populations, habitat and the effectiveness of restoration actions and fish propagation, and the effectiveness of hatchery supplementation, was released by the ISRP Sept. 28 and was out for review until Oct. 24.
A recent study that summarizes adult salmon and steelhead body temperatures as they migrate upstream in the Columbia River and into the Snake River found that spring and summer chinook salmon body temperatures largely match stream temperature, causing few delays as they migrate.
An updated blueprint for the management of 5.5 million acres of public land in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington prioritizes habitat restoration for threatened salmon and steelhead where the fish need it most, boosting their chances for recovery in coming decades, says NOAA Fisheries.
The National Science Foundation announced that it has awarded a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations a five-year, $220 million contract to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative.
Flood control, ecosystem management, salmon reintroduction and inclusion of tribes directly in the negotiating process were concerns raised by local participants at a town hall on what modernizing the Columbia River Treaty should look like.
NOAA Fisheries’ Columbia Basin Partnership Task Force provisional quantitative and qualitative goals are out for review and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council at its meeting this week in Eugene, Ore. approved comments to the Task Force that were developed by the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee and staff.
University of British Columbia researchers studying the marine food web of the Northeast Pacific Ocean have found that the exposure and accumulation of chemical pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organic mercury, will be exacerbated under climate change.
When given the chance, landlocked sockeye – kokanee – will bolt for the ocean, but as it turns out in one study where a dam had been in place for 90 years, just 20 percent of kokanee in the reservoir were ready to smolt, according to a recent study out of Canada.
Researchers from the Benton Conservation District, Yakama Nation, and U.S. Geological Survey are profiling cooler areas in the lower 100 miles of the Yakima River that may serve as safe havens for fish during warm weather.
NOAA Fisheries has released a final recovery plan under the Endangered Species Act for Central California’s green sturgeon.
A program that has consumed an average of 18 percent of the Bonneville Power Administration’s fish and wildlife budget each year and has cost the agency over $560 million over its 10-year life is coming to end, although it may be extended.
The lead negotiators for the United States and Canada tasked with modernizing the Columbia River Treaty remained reserved and diplomatically congenial during a forum on the treaty in Spokane this week, but other people weren’t shy in sharing their views on how the 1964 treaty has caused harm on both sides of the border and how it can be improved.
The world’s system for allocating fish stocks is being outpaced by the movement of fish species in response to climate change, according to a study undertaken by an international team of marine ecologists, fisheries and social scientists and lawyers.
Even small amounts of running water–less than a gallon per second–could mean the difference between life or death for juvenile coho salmon in coastal California streams, according to a new study published in the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.
In the fall of 2014, West Coast residents witnessed a strange, unprecedented ecological event. Tens of thousands of small seabird carcasses washed ashore on beaches from California to British Columbia, in what would become one of the largest bird die-offs ever recorded.
Steelhead trout, a member of the salmon family that live and grow in the Pacific Ocean, genetically adapted to the freshwater environment of Lake Michigan in less than 120 years, says a new study.
If tribes pursue a salmon and steelhead reintroduction program upstream of Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams, some 1,160 miles of tributary habitat would be available for steelhead and 355 miles of tributary habitat would be available for spring chinook salmon, according to an overview of a draft assessment of potential habitat in the blocked areas presented at the Lake Roosevelt Forum, April 24 – 25.
More frequent El Niño events in the future may have surprising impacts on seabirds and some fish species, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
A natural parasite that can infect salmon, it has been thought that sea lice can be transferred from farmed salmon in net pens along Canada’s east and west coasts, but knowledge of whether and how that occurs is thin, according to a recent study.
A record number of pink and chum salmon in the North Pacific Ocean may be contributing to the depletion of other salmon stocks, such as chinook salmon, according to a recent study.
New research shows that extreme climate variability over the last century in western North America may be destabilizing both marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
Most migratory bull trout populations in the Upper Columbia River are found in low abundance and their numbers are either stable or declining, according to a recent study.
As the Northwest Power and Conservation Council prepares to amend its 2014 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, it will seek input from tribes, state and federal agencies and the public. The Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee also had asked for a science review of the current program to provide information that will be useful for the amendment process.
A new analysis of heat wave patterns appearing this week in Nature Climate Change concludes that climate change driven by the buildup of human-caused greenhouse gases will overtake natural variability as the main cause of heat waves in the western United States by the late 2020s and by the mid-2030s in the Great Lakes region.
A new study of long-term snow monitoring sites in the western United States found declines in snowpack at more than 90 percent of those sites – and one-third of the declines were deemed significant.
Individual species of animals, like polar bears, aren’t all that are at risk from climate change and the resulting accelerating rates in the rise in sea level. Pacific coastal wetlands are also at risk of extinction and the doomsday clock for Pacific Coast salt marshes isn’t that far off, according to a recent study by the University of California, Los Angeles, and the U.S. Geological Survey.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced the completion of a scientific review of the Canada lynx in the contiguous United States, concluding the species may no longer warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act and should be considered for delisting due to recovery.
When it ordered more spring spill at eight lower Snake and Columbia river dams for 2018, the U.S. District Court of Oregon was acting well within its discretion, according to plaintiffs who brought the case to the court last January.
One of Central California’s most ancient fish, the green sturgeon, will soon have a new recovery plan to steer it toward sustainability.
Idaho and Montana members will lead the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in 2018.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are launching a major initiative to more effectively enable their extensive body of work on climate science, impacts, and response options to inform the public and decision makers.
A symposium to share information about the state of wild and hatchery white sturgeon found in waters from the mouth of the Columbia River to the Snake River to the Kootenai River was hosted in mid-November by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Snowfall on a major summit in North America’s highest mountain range has more than doubled since the beginning of the Industrial Age, according to a study from Dartmouth College, the University of Maine, and the University of New Hampshire.
NOAA Fisheries this week released two final recovery plans for Snake River salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act which detail recovery actions, time-frames, and costs aimed at de-listing.
Federal agencies that operate fourteen Columbia/Snake River dams described this week their progress one year into a five-year National Environmental Policy Act process required by a court-ordered rewrite of the biological opinion for protected salmon and steelhead.
Canadian scientists are recommending that the federal government add Fraser River sockeye salmon to Canada’s list of at-risk species after an assessment found a sharp decline in numbers for eight of the British Columbia river’s sockeye populations.
A new University of Washington study points to an often overlooked factor that is hampering the ability of fish to reproduce: the timing of fishing seasons.
Saying that the five-year timeline to complete a National Environmental Policy Act process for the federal Columbia River power system’s impact on salmon and steelhead is aggressive, federal agencies this week also said they would continue to target completion of the process — which includes an environmental impact statement — with a record of decision by September 24, 2021.
An Idaho Climate Summit will be held at Boise State University, University of Idaho and Idaho State University and live streamed to other locations on Nov. 16-17.
An Idaho Climate Summit will be held at Boise State University, University of Idaho and Idaho State University and live streamed to other locations on Nov. 16-17.
Following a formal, but general letter to the Independent Science Advisory Board requesting a review of its 2014 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week approved a less formal, but more detailed query to the ISAB for more information.
Productivity of wild chinook salmon from the Columbia River to northern Alaska is subject to large-scale atmospheric and ocean circulation trends, especially the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation, according to a recent study.
A new analysis suggests that open-ocean aquaculture for three species of finfish is a viable option for industry expansion under most climate change scenarios – an option that may provide a new source of protein for the world’s growing population.
The 2011 Japanese tsunami set the stage for something unprecedented. For the first time in recorded history, scientists have detected entire communities of coastal species crossing the ocean by floating on makeshift rafts.
Unusually warm ocean conditions off the Pacific Northwest in the last few years led anchovies, sardines and hake to begin spawning in Northwest waters much earlier in the year and, for anchovy, longer than biologists have ever recorded before, new research has found.
NOAA Fisheries has finalized a recovery plan for the southern Distinct Population Segment of eulachon, a small smelt that spawns in coastal rivers such as the Columbia River Estuary.
A recent study is the first to explore how infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) spreads among juvenile hatchery-raised fish in the Pacific Northwest, where high rates of infection and mortality can occur.
Density of juvenile steelhead in an Idaho creek is expected to decline as the water warms due to climate change.
A white paper produced by Columbia Riverkeeper that used computer simulations says that if the four lower Snake River dams had not been in place in 2015, river water would have naturally remained cool enough for the sockeye salmon migrating in the river that year to have successfully completed their journey to their spawning grounds in the Sawtooth Basin in Idaho.
The University of Washington is the new host for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Northwest Climate Science Center.
Pink adult and juvenile salmon in Alaska’s Auke Creek are adapting to warmer water temperatures by migrating earlier.
A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey and its partners has identified situations and conditions where some animals display behavioral flexibility – the ability to rapidly change behavior in response to short or long-term environmental changes such as climate variability.
A year-long effort to create a revised research plan that addresses the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s critical fish and wildlife uncertainties was approved by the Council last week.
An international team of scientists has concluded that “highly protected” marine reserves can help mitigate the effects of climate change and suggests that these areas be expanded and better managed throughout the world.
NOAA Fisheries has announced more than $10 million in recommended grants through the 2017 Saltonstall-Kennedy (SK) Grant competition. The solicitation closed on December 9, 2016.
A 10-year study of the influence of beaver dams – some artificially added to the stream during the study – on stream water temperature found that the dams increase surface water storage and encourage cool groundwater flow. The results are a cooler stream at a time when typically high summer temperatures stress threatened juvenile steelhead.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and California Gov. Edmund G. Brown, Jr. last week announced a request to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross for a declaration of a catastrophic regional fishery disaster and commercial fishery failure for salmon in their states.
Six projects known as umbrella projects and costing nearly $16 million were approved by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee at the Council’s meeting May 16 in Boise.
A fish and wildlife research plan that has been in the works for more than a year will go to the full Northwest Power and Conservation Council for final approval in June.
The warming climate has dramatically reduced the size of 39 glaciers in Montana since 1966, some by as much as 85 percent, according to data released by the U.S. Geological Survey and Portland State University.
A new study by University of Washington, state and federal researchers analyzed sage grouse in Eastern Washington and showed a surprisingly large benefit from a federal program that subsidizes farmers to plant year-round grasses and native shrubs instead of crops. Although the program was adopted for many different reasons, the study finds it is probably the reason that sage grouse still live in portions of Washington’s Columbia Basin.
Current wildfire policy can’t adequately protect people, homes and ecosystems from the longer, hotter fire seasons climate change is causing, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Hybridization, or the interbreeding of species, is increasing between native and invasive trout across the northern Rocky Mountains, according to a study released this week by the U.S. Geological Survey and partners.
Jaime Pinkham, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe with more than three decades of experience in American Indian governance, policy, and natural resource management, is returning to the Columbia Basin to serve as the executive director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
Transactions among willing buyers and sellers of water are delivering environmental benefits to fish while preserving economic benefits, particularly in rural communities.
Arctic sea ice in recent decades has declined even faster than predicted by most models of climate change. Many scientists have suspected that the trend now underway is a combination of global warming and natural climate variability.
Three federal agencies managing Columbia/Snake river mainstem dams closed last month the publics’ initial opportunity to comment on the court-ordered “Columbia River System Operations” environmental impact statement for endangered and threatened salmon and steelhead.
Following up on their promise in August to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act to compel the federal agency to develop a temperature pollution budget for the Columbia and Snake Rivers, five environmental groups filed the suit this week.
The immediate cost of operation and maintenance projects at Northwest hatcheries dropped to $115,000 from the previously identified $200,000 cost for repairs. The money was set aside to protect the region’s hatchery investments.
As many as 90 percent of adult salmon and steelhead that enter some Northwest rivers will die before they can complete their spawning cycle.
Despite recent cold temperatures and plenty of snow, Oregon’s climate continues to warm.
Conservation groups, the state of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe are pleading their case before the U.S. District Court of Oregon to stop eleven capital projects at the four lower Snake River dams until the three federal agencies that operate the dams complete a National Environmental Policy Act review that could call for removing the dams.
In most of Washington State salmon recovery goals are not being met.
Fishing communities can survive — and even thrive — as fish abundance and market prices shift if they can catch a variety of species and nimbly move from one fishery to the next.
Researchers this month reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a strong correlation between toxic levels of domoic acid in shellfish and the warm-water ocean conditions orchestrated by two powerful forces – El Niño events and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
After recording comments at 15 public scoping meetings, three federal agencies operating Columbia and Snake river dams are giving the public an additional three weeks to comment on the court-ordered Columbia River System Operations environmental impact statement for salmon and steelhead.
Scientists say they have solved a puzzling break in continuity of ocean warming records that sparked much controversy after climate data was published in the journal Science in 2015.
Online mapping software that tracks natural populations of Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead, along with abundance and recovery goals for each evolutionary significant unit, may be ready for review by December 30.
In a study published Dec. 15 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the University of Washington looked at the abstracts from more than 700 scientific papers about climate change to find out what makes a paper influential in its field. But instead of focusing on content, they looked at writing style, which is normally more the province of humanities professors rather than scientists.
Federal agencies operating Columbia/Snake river dams and reservoirs on Thursday in Astoria completed the last of their sixteen regional “scoping” meetings which solicited public views regarding a court-ordered environmental impact statement for salmon and steelhead.
Will the Oregon Coast coho become the first of 28 threatened and endangered species of salmon and steelhead on the West Coast to recover to the point they can be delisted from the federal Endangered Species Act?
Mountain glaciers have long been a favorite poster child of climate change. The near-global retreat of glaciers of the last century provides some of the most iconic imagery for communicating the reality of human-driven climate change.
Sockeye salmon that evolved in the generally colder waters of the far north still know how to cool off if necessary, an important factor in the species’ potential for dealing with global climate change.
In one of the most comprehensive studies to date, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have sequenced the genes of a harmful algae bloom, unveiling never-before-seen interactions between algae and bacteria that are thought to propagate their growth.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week announced a final revised “Mitigation Policy” that will guide its review of potential impacts of land and water development projects on America’s wildlife and their habitats.
Incentives that are designed to enable smarter use of the ocean while also protecting marine ecosystems can and do work, and offer significant hope to help address the multiple environmental threats facing the world’s oceans, researchers conclude in a new analysis.
As long as ecologists have studied temperate lakes, the winter has been their off-season. It’s difficult, even dangerous, to look under the ice, and they figured plants, animals and algae weren’t doing much in the dark and cold anyway.
A new chapter in the two-decade-old Snake River salmon and dams saga unfolded in Lewiston Wednesday ( Nov. 16) as hundreds of people showed up for a meeting designed to guide federal agencies in the forthcoming study of the controversial issue.
More than half a million dollars was earmarked by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee for operation and maintenance projects at hatcheries, and for yet to be identified work with lamprey, sturgeon and climate change impacts. The Committee made the decision at its meeting Tuesday, November 15 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Calling it a “mature product,” the Independent Scientific Advisory Board completed its review of the latest draft of the Fish Passage Center’s Comparative Survival Study October 21.
The western-most region of the continental United States set records for low snowpack levels in 2015 and scientists, through a new study, point the finger at high temperatures, not the low precipitation characteristic of past “snow drought” years.
The U.S. Department of the Interior this week released a new science plan that will serve as an action-oriented blueprint for acquiring information needed to make science-based decisions to restore and conserve the imperiled ‘sagebrush sea,’ a roughly 500,000-square-mile-area of sagebrush steppe habitat across western North America.
A warming climate and rising ocean will push sea water farther upstream in the Columbia River estuary.
By the year 2100, the estuary will see enormous changes in the type and amount of habitat that is now used for salmon and, in the worst case scenario, it
NOAA Fisheries is inviting comments on a proposed blueprint for the recovery of the southern Distinct Population Segment (DPS) of eulachon, a smelt that spawns in coastal rivers such as the Columbia River Estuary and has long served as a staple for Northwest tribes and others.
Sockeye salmon for the fifth year are returning to Lake Cle Elum in the upper Yakima River Basin with nearly 4,000 fish returning to the lake this year to spawn.
New research published online in the journal Global Change Biology provides a glimpse of how salmon rivers might fare in a future with larger floods.
The Columbia River doesn’t recognize international borders and neither should its floodplains. That message was delivered to over 300 attendees at the 2016 Future of Our Salmon Conference where speakers challenged the region to combat climate change by restoring the critical connection between floods, floodplain habitat and a healthy river system.
Climate change is producing conditions ripe for wildfires across the American West. Temperatures are rising, snowpacks are shrinking, and summers are heating up, drying out forests earlier in the season, according to a recent report.
After identifying more than $650,000 in cost-savings available from five fish and wildlife projects, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee wants to identify projects on which to spend the remaining money in 2017.
The three agencies that operate 14 federal dams in the Columbia River Basin are seeking comments on the scope of what they should consider when preparing an environmental impact statement of the Federal Columbia River Power System.
A study led by researchers at the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration connects the unprecedented West Coast toxic algal bloom of 2015 that closed fisheries from southern California to northern British Columbia to the unusually warm ocean conditions — nicknamed “the blob” — in winter and spring of that year.
Washington State University researchers say the world’s reservoirs are an underappreciated source of greenhouse gases, producing the equivalent of roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year, or 1.3 percent of all greenhouse gases produced by humans.
A team led by Washington State University will study how to better coordinate and manage the food, water and energy needs of the Columbia River basin and make the region more resilient to a changing climate as part of a $3 million grant cosponsored between the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Clues from prehistoric droughts and arid periods in California show that today’s increasing greenhouse gas levels could lock the state into drought for centuries, according to a study led by UCLA professor Glen MacDonald.
A draft report produced by Washington’s Office of Columbia River forecasts the state’s water supply out to 2035. The paper evaluates and forecasts water supply for areas east of the Cascade Mountains in Washington surrounding the Columbia River Basin and downstream to Bonneville Dam.
A study that set out to identify the best way to assess sites in Glacier National Park for bull trout translocations has broader implications for moving bull trout and other species into areas where they may better survive a warming climate or are threatened by invasive species.
With climate change, Northwest rivers are warming earlier and staying warm longer and that sometimes causes adult salmon and steelhead migrating from the ocean to die in rivers before they can spawn, often before they can even reach their spawning grounds.
Five conservation groups gave notice last week that they will pursue a lawsuit against the federal Environmental Protection Agency if the agency fails to finalize a pollution budget under the Clean Water Act for the Columbia River and lower Snake River that it was near finalizing in 2003.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality this week released final guidance for federal agencies on how to consider the impacts of their actions on climate change in their National Environmental Policy Act reviews.
The effects of a naturally-occurring parasite in the Klamath River — Ceratonova shasta – decline when juvenile salmon move into areas of cooler water where exposure to the parasite is lower and where the effects of the disease declines in severity, according to a recent study.
El Niño exerted powerful effects around the globe in the last year, eroding California beaches; driving drought in northern South America, Africa and Asia; and bringing record rain to the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southern South America.
State wildlife managers are seeking public input on their recommendations to change the listing status for five protected wildlife species in Washington, including removing bald eagles form the state’s Endangered Species List.
Climate change is already affecting inland fish across North America — including some fish that are popular with anglers.
A team of scientists from NOAA Fisheries and the University of California San Diego (Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Department of Economics) has for the first time attached a dollar value to several of the leading “ecosystem services” — or natural benefits – provided by the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean, an immense region stretching west from the west coasts of North and South America.
Westslope cutthroat trout in the South Fork of the Clearwater River do not move into the upper reaches of the river when ambient and river temperatures become too hot, they instead stay in the middle region of the river or move into tributaries that provide cooler water and cover.
Even with this winter’s strong El Niño, the Sierra Nevada snowpack will likely take until 2019 to return to pre-drought levels, according to a new analysis led by UCLA hydrology researchers.
In rejecting much of NOAA Fisheries’ 2014 biological opinion for salmon and steelhead impacted by the Federal Columbia River Power System, U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon gave the agency two years – to March 1, 2018 – to return with a new recovery plan and National Environmental Policy Act documents.
Ocean acidification expected to accompany climate change may slow development and reduce survival of the larval stages of Dungeness crab, a key component of the Northwest marine ecosystem and the largest fishery by revenue on the West Coast, a new study has found.
If historical trends of land use changes to or from urban, agricultural or other uses continue, the result will be increased water-use demand by 2062 that is beyond what existing water supplies can provide.
A federal court this week rejected much of the federal government’s recovery plan for Columbia River salmon and steelhead — the 2014 NOAA Fisheries biological opinion for the Federal Columbia River Power System — and gave federal agencies almost two years to come back with a new and improved version that complies with federal environmental laws.
Egg-to-fry survival for chinook salmon appears not to be a major factor limiting survival in much of the upper Yakima River system, according to a recent study that looked at four years of data.
Two Montana conservation groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Portland’s federal district court challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s bull trout recovery plan.
The U.S. Senate passed legislation this week advancing the Yakima Basin Plan as part of an Energy Bill, a milestone for a long running effort to establish a comprehensive approach toward water and conservation as well as the needs of irrigators and other water users.
A federal judge has ruled on behalf of environmental plaintiffs, ordering the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider a controversial 2014 decision to withdraw a proposal to list wolverines for protection under the Endangered Species Act due to habitat threats from climate change.
A new study offers hope for cold-water species in the face of climate change.
Global carbon dioxide emissions are triggering permanent and alarming changes to ocean chemistry along the North American West Coast that require immediate, decisive action to combat, including development of a coordinated regional management strategy, a panel of scientific experts has unanimously concluded.
The Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Grand Coulee and Hungry Horse dams among others in the Northwest, released its Columbia River Basin Climate Impact Assessment last week. The report projects climate change impacts on water resources in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
Unusually warm oceans can have widespread effects on marine ecosystems. Warm patches off the Pacific Northwest from 2013 to 2015, and a couple of years earlier in the Atlantic Ocean, affected everything from sea lions to fish migrations to coastal weather.
Juvenile sockeye salmon that enter the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia soon after emerging from the gravel of the Harrison River, a tributary of the Fraser River, are contributing a larger proportion of adults returning to the Fraser River basin than they did more than ten years ago.
It is now possible to estimate the influence of climate change on some types of extreme events, such as heat waves, drought, and heavy precipitation, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
On a three-to-one vote, a study assessing habitat conditions in reaches of the Columbia River and tributaries upstream of Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams was given the go-ahead Tuesday by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee.
On Wednesday, the first day of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to the United States, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) sent a letter to Trudeau urging modernization of the Columbia River Treaty as an opportunity to “demonstrate global leadership and cooperation on climate change and energy.”
A review of a strategy to restore the John Day River watershed in Oregon has found the strategy insufficient in public partnering, monitoring and adaptive management strategies, and the incorporation of climate change.
Forests nationwide are feeling the heat from increasing drought and climate change, according to a new study by scientists from 14 research institutions.
In response to the harmful impacts invasive species have on natural and cultural resources, the Department of the Interior last week released an interdepartmental report, “Safeguarding America’s Lands and Waters from Invasive Species: A National Framework for Early Detection and Rapid Response.”
In adopting its Seventh Power Plan this week at a meeting in Portland, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council said the region can meet most of a 36 percent increase in power demand over the next 20 years with energy efficiency and demand response.
A cross-border coalition from a broad group of 51 organization and associations are urging the U.S. and Canadian governments to modernize the 52-year old U.S.-Canada Columbia River Treaty in order to protect the environmental values of the river.
At the rate humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere, the Earth may suffer irreparable damage that could last tens of thousands of years, according to a new analysis published this week.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Columbia Basin 2014 Fish and Wildlife Program calls for the Council to review ongoing research and revise the program’s research plan.
A modest warming of coastal waters can have a significant impact on juvenile fish assemblages in a period of just a few years, a newly published study has found, raising concern about the potential effects of climate change.
Earth’s 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Last year was “by far” Washington State’s warmest ever recorded, according to meteorologist Nic Loyd of Washington State University.
First Nations fisheries’ catch could decline by nearly 50 per cent by 2050, according to a new study examining the threat of climate change to the food and economic security of indigenous communities along coastal British Columbia, Canada.
The Endangered Species Act passed its 42nd birthday last week.
In a report released by the Ecological Society of America this week, 18 conservation researchers and practitioners propose six broad strategies to raise the effectiveness of the ESA for endangered species recovery, based on a review of the scientific literature on the status and performance of the law.
To stay ahead of the curve on changing climate and water conditions, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the mid-Columbia River PUDs to complete water temperature modeling in the mid-Columbia River.
The so-called “blob” of infamous warm ocean waters that has gripped the West Coast and shaken up its marine ecosystems in the past two years is battered, but not dead yet, NOAA scientists report.
During the next 85 years, temperatures in Oregon’s Willamette River basin are expected to rise significantly, mountain snowpack levels will shrink dramatically, and the population of the region and urban water use may double – but there should be enough water to meet human needs, a new report concludes.
Rising temperatures and late summer dryness are teaming up to push some types of forests beyond their ability to cope with stress, according to a new analysis of forest response to climate change across the Pacific Northwest.
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