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.
A proposed oil terminal in Vancouver, Wash. that would bring four oil trains daily on tracks through the Columbia River Gorge could impact endangered salmon, other wildlife, water quality and vegetation in the Columbia River basin, according to a draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the project released last week by the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council.
This year’s Columbia River basin salmon season ended with 2.3 million adult salmon passing Bonneville Dam on their up-river migration — making 2015 the second-strongest year for Columbia River salmon since the federal government built dams on the river nearly 80 years ago.
Despite a surge of opposition in recent weeks, legislation to adopt the Yakima Basin Plan has been passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a milestone for a concerted planning effort that has been underway since 2009.
Water temperatures in northwest streams will rise about half as much as the expected air temperatures will rise due to climate warming caused by greenhouse gases, challenging some fish species to shift their range to seek cool water refuges in order to survive.
A new study has found a link between abrupt ocean warming at the end of the last ice age and the sudden onset of low-oxygen, or hypoxic conditions that led to vast marine dead zones.
A new report by the University of Washington synthesizes all the relevant research about the future of the Puget Sound region to paint a picture of what to expect in the coming decades and how best to prepare for that future.
Some 953,706 fall chinook passed Bonneville Dam as of Thursday this week, the most fall chinook passing the dam since it was built 77 years ago. The previous record was set in 2013 when 953,222 fish passed the dam.
A warming ocean that began long before the most recent El Niño is causing a West Coast drought, first in California and now in the Northwest.
If American teens are unsure about climate change or its cause, some school textbooks aren’t helping, says teaching expert Diego Román, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, co-author of a new study on the subject.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA Fisheries have reached an agreement to work over the next three years on plans to locate, protect and restore zones of cold water habitat for fish in the Columbia and lower Willamette rivers.
The climate change debate has changed a lot over the past five years and this year appears to be a watershed year for conversations about adapting to the coming changes, not about whether our climate is changing or not.
A comprehensive report published by the U.S. Geological Survey provides new knowledge and tools to aid in the management of critical Columbia Plateau resources while coping with declines in groundwater levels and the uncertainties of climate change.
In recent years, wildfires have burned trees and homes to the ground across many states in the western U.S., but the ground itself has not gotten away unscathed.
Human activities, such as greenhouse gas emissions and land use, influenced specific extreme weather and climate events in 2014, including tropical cyclones in the central Pacific, heavy rainfall in Europe, drought in East Africa, and stifling heat waves in Australia, Asia, and South America, according to a new report released today.
NOAA Fisheries has ramped up its ongoing efforts for comprehensive salmon and steelhead recovery with the creation of a new Columbia Basin Partnership, a collaborative group representing multiple entities with common but sometimes divergent interests.
After making an exhausting migration from river to ocean and back to river — often multiple years in a row — one species of Alaskan trout decides to call it quits and retire from migrating once they are big enough to survive off their fat reserves.
Giants once roamed the earth. Oceans teemed with ninety-foot-long whales. Huge land animals–like truck-sized sloths and ten-ton mammoths–ate vast quantities of food, and, yes, deposited vast quantities of poop.
Since the 1870s, 114,050 acres of land in the lower Columbia River estuary have been converted to farm, industrial and urban uses, reducing native habitat for fish and wildlife. The good news is that about half of that is recoverable and could be restored.
The final summary report from a state-of-the-science forum on Columbia River eulachon, commonly known as smelt, is now available at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council website: http://www.nwcouncil.org/media/7149578/eulachon-science-policy-forum-report_final_october-2015.pdf.
Every two to seven years, an unusually warm pool of water — sometimes two to three degrees Celsius higher than normal develops across the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean to create a natural short-term climate change event. This warm condition, known as El Nino, affects the local aquatic environment, but also spurs extreme weather patterns around the world, from flooding in California to droughts in Australia.
An analysis of North Pacific ocean circulation over the past 1.2 million years has found that sea ice formation in coastal regions is a key driver of deep ocean circulation, influencing climate on regional and global scales.
Despite the die-off of 169 white sturgeon this summer – which is nearly 2 percent of the spawning population –in Columbia River reservoirs, the white sturgeon population in the Columbia River is healthy and holding steady.
With climate change, demand for electricity will increase during warmer summers and it will decrease during rainier and warmer winters in the Pacific Northwest, but the power system itself will not need resources in addition to what is already anticipated.
Progress in the past decade has brought 1.6 percent of the world’s ocean to a category of “strongly protected,” researchers say in a new analysis, but the accomplishments are still far behind those that have been achieved on land, and those that are urgently needed.
Warming ocean temperatures a third of a mile below the surface, in a dark ocean in areas with little marine life, might attract scant attention. But this is precisely the depth where frozen pockets of methane ‘ice’ transition from a dormant solid to a powerful greenhouse gas.
While the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is the most important factor in determining how many salmon return from the ocean to streams in the Northwest, a series of other more regional environmental factors also influence that return, according to a recent study.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week declined to list the Sierra Nevada red fox under the Endangered Species Act due in part to research conducted in Oregon showing a significant extension of its range.
A final Bull Trout Recovery Plan for the Pacific Northwest was released Monday, Sept. 28, touting collaborative efforts as being the key to progress for the species, but the main litigants that have challenged bull trout recovery efforts continue to maintain those efforts are inadequate.
Oregon State University this fall will begin selecting graduate students for a new program to train cohorts of students that will tackle emerging issues in marine science.
The indications of climate change are all around us today but now researchers have revealed for the first time when and where the first clear signs of global warming appeared in the temperature record and where those signals are likely to be clearly seen in extreme rainfall events in the near future.
Snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada in 2015 was at the lowest level in the past 500 years, according to a new report led by University of Arizona researchers.
U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic technicians are currently taking measurements from hundreds of streams and rivers across the western United States as part of a low flow study.
Far above the wildfires raging in Washington’s forests, a less noticeable consequence of this dry year is taking place in mountain ponds. The minimal snowpack and long summer drought that have left the Pacific Northwest lowlands parched have also affected the region’s amphibians through loss of mountain pond habitat.
NOAA has announced the availability of approximately $10 million in competitive grants through the 2016 Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program. The program addresses the needs of fishing communities, and increases opportunities to keep working waterfronts viable by funding fisheries research and development projects.
Climate change has a direct impact on Native American communities through disruption to local economies and traditional cultures. To help address these impacts, members of tribes from across the United States will convene at the University of Idaho’s McCall Field Campus in June 2016 for the first-ever National Tribal Climate Boot Camp.
Eulachon, a forage fish that spends 95 percent of its life in the ocean, spawns in rivers along the West Coast from Alaska to Northern California.
Some five billion hatchery salmon and steelhead are released into the North Pacific each year, including fish from 155 salmon, steelhead and trout hatcheries in the Northwest. But it’s the natural populations of fish that biologists believe to be the most resilient to climate change, according to a series of oral presentations at the 145th American Fisheries Society conference in Portland.
Litigants in a long-running legal battle over a strategy for protecting and enhancing conditions for salmon and steelhead fisheries in the Columbia and Snake river basins have formally responded to questions from U.S. District Judge Michael Simon, who is expected to rule on requests for summary judgement in the near future.
Very few rivers are still intact enough to study the full life history diversity of resident fish, but at least one population of Snake River finespotted cutthroat trout in Grand Teton National Park is intact enough to give clues as to which patterns of diversity should be targets of conservation efforts, according to a study published this summer.
NOAA, saying ocean conditions continue to change, putting ocean ecosystems and the communities that rely upon them at risk, this week took what the agency says is a first step in providing regional fisheries managers and stakeholders with information they need to reduce the effects of climate change and build resilience.
A recalculation of the dates at which boulders were uncovered by melting glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age has conclusively shown that the glacial retreat was due to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as opposed to other types of forces.
The University of Washington is a partner in a new effort to understand how changes to the Bering Sea’s biophysical environment — such as temperature, salinity, currents, nutrients and plankton — may impact fish stocks and fishing practices as the climate warms.
Transmission lines that funnel power from hydroelectric dams and wind turbines across Eastern Washington affect greater sage grouse habitat by isolating fragile populations and limiting movement, a new study http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-015-0214-4
finds.
After reviewing about a dozen potential fish and wildlife programs, the Bonneville Power Administration and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee have identified $183,000 in cost savings the Council can use in fiscal year 2016 to fund emerging fish and wildlife priorities, but the Council will need to act quickly to take advantage of the savings this coming year.
Continuing current carbon dioxide emission trends throughout this century and beyond would leave a legacy of heat and acidity in the deep ocean. These changes would linger even if the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration were to be restored to pre-industrial levels at some point in the future, according to a new Nature Climate Change paper from an international team.
Thousands of fisheries scientists from around the world will gather in Portland Aug. 16-20 for what is likely to be one of the largest-ever conferences of the American Fisheries Society, featuring hundreds of presentations and talks on the latest advances in fisheries research and conservation.
Marine species that already have large ranges are extending their territories fastest in response to climate change, according to new research from University of British Columbia biodiversity experts.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has curtailed fishing hours on most of Oregon’s rivers to avoid additional stress on native fish already suffering from high water temperatures and low stream flows from this year’s drought.
More than a quarter of the rain and snow that falls on continents reaches the oceans as runoff.
University of British Columbia research shows world’s monitored seabird populations have dropped 70 percent since the 1950s, a stark indication that marine ecosystems are not doing well, say researchers.
A huge mass of unusually warm water that scientists have dubbed “The Blob” has lurked off the West Coast for much of the past two years and speculation is growing that it may be connected in some way with the drought plaguing West Coast states.
Pink salmon that begin life in freshwater with high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which causes acidification, are smaller and may be less likely to survive, according to a new study from University of British Columbia.
The 74 “Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives” in NOAA Fisheries’ 2014 Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion for salmon and steelhead are producing results, according to government and tribal attorneys as they gave their oral arguments Tuesday in defense of the BiOp before Judge Michael H. Simon in U.S. District Court in Portland.
The State of Oregon opened commercial fishing at Blind Slough, one of the Select Area Fisheries that target hatchery salmon in the lower Columbia River.
Umatilla tribal leader N. Kathryn “Kat” Brigham was selected by leaders from the Warm Springs, Yakama, Nez Perce, and Umatilla tribes to lead the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission as its 2015-16 chair.
NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle has mobilized extra scientists to join a fisheries survey along the West Coast to chart an extensive harmful algal bloom that spans much of the West Coast and has triggered numerous closures of important shellfish fisheries in Washington, Oregon and California.
The U.S. State Department, in possible future negotiations with Canada over the Columbia River Treaty, has decided “to include flood risk mitigation, ecosystem-based function, and hydropower generation interests in the draft U.S. negotiating position,” according to a recent letter from the state department to the Northwest congressional delegation.
A new study published this week in the journal Science finds that the rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than that seen during the latter half of the 20th Century.
As snowpack levels decline with the warming climate, many streams will experience less water flow, especially during summer months, potentially exposing more fish to predation by birds and other animals.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army finalized the Clean Water Rule this week to protect from pollution and degradation the streams and wetlands that form the foundation of the nation’s water resources.
Fire and aquatic scientists gathered last week in Portland on the brink of an anticipated severe wildfire season to discuss how wildfires may help or hurt habitat for salmon, trout and other aquatic life and how restoration of fish habitat can improve its resiliency to fire and other influences such as climate change.
Scientists have discovered that the diversity of a threatened native trout species will likely decrease due to future climate change.
There was a flurry of activity this week related to litigation over a 2014 Biological Opinion for salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River system, as defendant agencies led by the National Marine Fisheries Service filed briefs to meet a Wednesday deadline for doing so.
The prevailing theory is that streams warm as they travel downstream, from their cool and bubbly mountain beginnings to the slower and warmer winding rivers in flatlands. While that may be true for some rivers, many will actually have cooler sections where tributaries or underground springs join the main river, and coastal streams can be cooler where they empty into the ocean due to a prevalence of cooling fog.
The one common element in recent weather has been oddness.
The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under.
Seventy per cent of glacier ice in British Columbia and Alberta could disappear by the end of the 21st century, creating major problems for local ecosystems, power supplies, and water quality, according to a new study by University of British Columbia researchers.
The historical range of interior redband trout that inhabit the streams in Western States has declined by 42 percent from the trout’s presumed historical levels (circa 1800), according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey report.
The U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of the Army for Civil Works announced this week that the three agencies have extended their partnership to advance hydropower development for an additional five years.
The long-anticipated El Niño has finally arrived, according to forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. In their updated monthly outlook released March 5, forecasters issued an El Niño Advisory to declare the arrival of the ocean-atmospheric phenomenon marked by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean near the equator.
Interior Columbia River basin researchers bring at least some good news to an ever darkening picture of potential impacts to fish and wildlife from global warming.
Fishery managers and researchers engaged in salmon and steelhead recovery efforts need to better understand, and address, issues related to what has become a smaller and less hospitable Columbia River basin world, according to a Feb.25 report issued by the region’s Independent Scientific Advisory Board.
Threatened bull trout populations in the Columbia River basin that likely have the least ability to adapt are typically found in locations that are most susceptible to climate change, according to a research paper published early this month.
A long-running legal battle has entered a new phase with conservation groups and the Nez Perce Tribe challenging a federal plan that describes river bottom dredging as the only currently useable tool for maintaining Snake River portions of a commercial navigation channel for shipping goods in and out of the inland Columbia River basin.
The timing of spring phytoplankton blooms in southern Alaska and coastal British Columbia has been correlated to the productivity of pink salmon in a recent study.
Many salmon rivers around Puget Sound have experienced increasing fluctuations in flow over the past 60 years, just as climate change projections predict, and that’s unfortunate news for threatened chinook salmon, according to a new analysis of salmon survival and river flow.
Amy Snover, director of the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington’s College of the Environment, has been named a White House Champion of Change.
For millions of years, large parts of the marine biotas of the North Atlantic and North Pacific have been separated by harsh climate conditions in the Arctic.
The year 2014 was the hottest on Earth in 134 years of record-keeping, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week, continuing a pattern of global warming that is attributed primarily to rising levels of greenhouse gases.
A normal water supply is predicted for much of the West this year, while the Southwest, Sierra Nevada region and Pacific Northwest are beginning the year drier than normal, according to data from the first 2015 forecast of USDA’s National Water and Climate Center.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week elected Washington and Idaho members to lead the four-state energy and fish and wildlife planning agency in 2015.
The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880, according to two separate analyses by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists.
An accelerated lower Snake River dredging schedule is expected to begin next week as a result of a federal court decision finalized Wednesday that turns back challenges to a plan to restore the desired depth and width of a navigation channel maintained for commercial barging traffic.
The 2014 Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion “continues to rely on a suite of hoped-for mitigation actions in estuary and tributary habitat, as well as uncertain actions to address other sources of salmon mortality, without specifically identifying many of these actions or rationally addressing their risks.”
An unchecked warming climate could trigger heart problems in Pacific juvenile salmon, prompting significant losses of chinook salmon stocks in less than a hundred years, according to a new study.
Not all species may suffer from climate change. A new analysis shows that Dolly Varden, a species of char common in southeast Alaska, adjust their migrations so they can keep feasting on a key food source — salmon eggs — even as shifts in climate altered the timing of salmon spawning.
It’s a theory that has worked with other parasites: expose fish to a less virulent strain of parasite that will not kill the host, but instead will build resistance to a strain that could kill.
Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell this week announced that Interior’s Northwest Climate Science Center is awarding more than $1 million to universities and other partners for research to guide managers of parks, refuges and other cultural and natural resources in planning how to help species and ecosystems adapt to climate change.
Anticipated changes in climate will push West Coast marine species from sharks to salmon northward an average of nearly 19 miles per decade, shaking up fish communities and shifting fishing grounds, according to a new study published in Progress in Oceanography.
According to a new NOAA-sponsored study, natural oceanic and atmospheric patterns are the primary drivers behind California’s ongoing drought.
Off the West Coast of the United States, methane gas is trapped in frozen layers below the seafloor. New research from the University of Washington shows that water at intermediate depths is warming enough to cause these carbon deposits to melt, releasing methane into the sediments and surrounding water.
As the Earth warmed coming out of the last ice age, the rate of plankton production off the Pacific Northwest coast decreased, a new study has found, though the amount of organic material making its way to the deep ocean actually increased.
The University of Washington Climate Impacts Group released information on several new publications involving CIG authors. These papers address issues in the following areas:
— Climate change and biodiversity
— Trends in coastal upwelling
— Climate change impacts on flooding
— Climate change impacts on U.S. dairy production
— Climate change adaptation in forested ecosystems of the North Cascades
— Climate change and very large wildfires
Crop producers and scientists hold deeply different views on climate change and its possible causes, a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities shows.
A new report released this week identifies natural resources that will be sensitive to a warmer climate in the North Cascades and offers management responses that will minimize adverse impacts on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
Eureka!
Trials this summer trimming shrimp trawl lines with LED lights produced dramatic results in the reduction of the bycatch off the Oregon coast of Endangered Species Act-listed eulachon/Columbia River smelt.
Restoring ecosystems and wild fish are major themes spelled out in the latest version of the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, a set of strategies developed by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council over the past year and approved Wednesday during the panel’s meeting in Pendleton, Ore.
Findings from tests of five Columbia River fish species “intended for the dinner table” show alarming levels of heavy metals, toxic flame retardants, cancer-causing PCBs, and endocrine disrupting chemicals, according to results of a Phase 2 study, “Is Your Fish Toxic?”
Stream temperatures are expected to rise in the future as a result of climate change, but a new study has found that the correlation between air temperature and stream temperature is surprisingly tenuous.
Religious and indigenous leaders this week transmitted to U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper a “Declaration of Ethics and Modernizing the Columbia River Treaty,” which they say should serve as the foundation for international negotiations regarding renewal of the Columbia River Treaty.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation and the state of Washington’s Department of Ecology this week released for public comment a draft environmental impact statement for the “Cle Elum Pool Raise Project,” which is part of a larger plan to boost water storage for use by fish and humans.
Since 1900, sea surface and land-based surface temperatures in the northeastern Pacific Ocean have risen up to 1 degree Centigrade with most of that temperature rise occurring by 1940.
In findings of relevance to both conservationists and the fishing industry, new research links short-term reductions in growth and reproduction of marine animals off the California Coast to increasing variability in the strength of coastal upwelling currents — currents which historically supply nutrients to the region’s diverse ecosystem.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is taking public input on state status reports and listing recommendations for tufted puffins and Steller sea lions.
The annual mean temperature in the Pacific Northwest has warmed by about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit since the early 20th century – a gradual warming trend that has been accelerating over the past 3-4 decades and is attributed to anthropogenic, or human, causes.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced last week that it is withdrawing a proposal to list the North American wolverine in the contiguous United States as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
Menacing “El Nino” signs have eased — though not disappeared.
But another potential salmon nemesis – an apparent warm phase Pacific Decadal Oscillation – has made an appearance with warmer than average sea surface water conditions from the Gulf of Alaska and the eastern Bering Sea down to the so-called California Current off the coast of Oregon and Washington.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission has approved the state’s first-ever wolverine management plan, charting a course toward the long-term sustainability of Idaho’s wolverine population.
People spoke pro and con regarding Columbia River salmon hatchery practices and about the viability of restoring fish passage to the upper river, about the need to keep certain areas hydro free, and about controlling costs for a fish and wildlife program that is believed to be one of the most extensive and expensive in the world.
A warming climate and the presence of non-native rainbow trout results in interbreeding with native westslope cutthroat trout in Montana rivers, but a conscious policy and program to remove non-native fish is showing promise in preserving the native fish.
A new model analyzing how birds in western North America will respond to climate change suggests that for most species, regional warming is not as likely to influence population trends as will precipitation changes.
Using new data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Bonneville Power Administration is funding two new studies to improve its understanding of the effects climate change could have on the Northwest.
Surface bypass systems at Columbia River and Snake River dams provide a safe passage for juvenile salmon and steelhead using a relatively small amount of water, according to a recent article that studied juvenile steelhead using a type of surface bypass system at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River.
The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and its member tribes (Umatilla, Yakama, Warm Springs and Nez Perce) this week announced the release of the first update to their comprehensive, gravel-to-gravel, fisheries restoration plan, Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit (Spirit of the Salmon).
The Department of the Interior announced Monday that the Bureau of Reclamation will make $1.8 million available for comprehensive water studies addressing climate change options to three western river basins, with the largest grant going to the upper Deschutes River basin in central Oregon.
Recent research in western Montana adds to evidence that global warming is likely driving cold-water-loving species such as threatened bull trout into smaller and smaller spaces, according to “Evidence of Climate-Induced Range Contractions in Bull Trout in a Rocky Mountain Watershed, U.S.A.”
A new article by researchers from the University of Montana, the U.S. Geological Survey and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks asserts that climate warming is increasing the hybridization of trout – interbreeding between native and non-native species – in the interior western United States.
A conference held Tuesday at Gonzaga University in Spokane resulted in a declaration from religious groups and tribes from north and south of the border calling on Canada and the United States for specific actions to “right historic wrongs and achieve stewardship in managing the Columbia River” during expected negotiations over the Columbia River Treaty.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week made available for public comment draft amendments to the panel’s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Just like the rivers he spent a lifetime working to protect, tributes continue to flow in for Billy Frank Jr., the Nisqually tribal leader who died unexpectedly on Monday at the age of 83.
The Obama Administration this week unveiled the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment. This report, says the White House, confirms that climate change is affecting Americans in every region of the United States and key sectors of the national economy.
The Center for Biological Diversity this week filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to determine whether five increasingly rare amphibians in the Pacific Northwest warrant consideration for Endangered Species Act protection.
Invasive species, warming and changes to the natural flow of the Columbia River are impacting the timing and presence of zooplankton and phytoplankton, a basic food supply, in the Columbia River estuary, according to a recent study.
The quality of juvenile salmon rearing habitat in streams is determined by a complex mixture of temperature, food quality and availability, competition and predation.
In a report completed late last month, members of the Independent Economic Analysis Board “suggest that, with better information, economics could be applied to achieve more at less cost” through the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Six fishing and conservation groups – all involved in long-running litigation in the past that has challenged the federal salmon protection plans for the Columbia River basin – on March 24 mailed a 60-day notice of their intent to sue the Bonneville Power Administration’s official adoption of the latest government strategy.
The second of three major reports associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report series is now available for download at http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/.
British Columbia’s Minister of Energy and Mines and Minister Responsible for Core Review Bill Bennett announced last week that the Canadian government has decided that it wants continue the long-running Columbia River Treaty with the United States while seeking “improvements” within pact’s existing framework.
Results of a study of two stocks of wild steelhead in the Hood Canal in Puget Sound show the potential for young salmonids to adapt to warmer water temperature.
Fishery experts’ calculations of threatened eulachon (smelt) spawner returns to the Columbia River and lower river tributaries in 2014 are very much works in progress with test fishery sampling mostly completed.
Computer modeling of five migration behavior patterns for 10,000 “virtual” juvenile chinook salmon, when compared with actual fish, determined that salmon actively migrate from the Columbia River northward along the Washington Coast by active horizontal swimming.
Smelt dippers in southwest Washington’s Cowlitz River have so far come up dry during what is an experimental fishery aimed at helping assess the status of the small fish, a species officially named Columbia River eulachon, that was listed in 2010 under the federal Endangered Species Act as threatened.
The states of Oregon and Washington, with a head nod from the federal government, this week approved limited fisheries this winter for Columbia River eulachon (smelt), a species that in 2010 was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of extremely low population levels.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced this week the creation of the first ever Regional Hubs for Risk Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change at seven locations around the country.
The key to clean water and sustainable fisheries is to follow nine guiding principles of water management, says a team of Canadian biologists.
Longstanding disagreements remain, as Columbia River basin stakeholders – power users, salmon protectors, irrigators, navigators and others – consider the latest plan for assuring federal hydro projects on the Columbia and Snake rivers avoid jeopardizing protected salmon and steelhead populations.
The Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington this week released its “state of knowledge report,” which chronicles observed climate change, future scenarios and effects on flora and fauna, including human activities, across the state of Washington.
University of Washington environmental engineers are launching a new study to try to understand how climate change will affect streamflow patterns in the Columbia River Basin.
Members of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday elected Bill Bradbury, one of Oregon’s two members, to a second term as chair of the regional energy planning agency. Bradbury also was chair in 2013, and vice chair in 2012.
Modifications that could improve fish passage at Snake River hydro projects such as Lower Granite Dam will be necessary as apparent global warming moves the interior Pacific Northwest toward a future with higher summer temperatures, lower winter snowpack, longer, warmer summers with reduced river discharge, and stressful thermal conditions that stall spawning salmon and add unhealthy stress.
Long-time natural resources manager Michael Carrier has been appointed sSupervisor for the Idaho Fish and Wildlife Office, in the Pacific Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Carrier succeeds Brian T. Kelly, who retired from federal service on Dec. 31.
Although few people live in the western tropical Pacific Ocean region, the remote waters there affect billions of people by shaping climate and air chemistry worldwide.
The “U.S. Entity” – comprised of top officials of the Bonneville Power Administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials – has sent a final regional recommendation concerning the future of the Columbia River Treaty to the U.S. Department of State.
Do Columbia/Snake river basin salmon recovery efforts need a “champion”? And could that champion be the Northwest Power and Conservation Council?
A late summer deluge soaked the Pacific Northwest but precipitation has been considerably less than recent decades’ average ever since as the region heads into what is its all-important wintertime snow/water supply accumulation period, according to latest issue of the PNW Climate Impacts and Outlook produced by the Climate Impacts Resource Consortium.
Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced this week that Interior’s Northwest Climate Science Center http://www.doi.gov/csc/northwest/index.cfm is awarding nearly $1.3 million to universities and other partners for research to assist Native Americans and federal and state land managers plan for and adapt to climate change.
Reindeer, from Northern Europe or Asia, are often thought of as a domesticated animal, one that may pull Santa’s sled.
Speakers representing interests north and south of the Canadian border who expressed views at a congressional hearing held in Pasco, Wash., early this week agreed on at least one thing – that talks should begin soon on how the long-running Columbia River Treaty might be revised to balance benefits between Americans and Canadians.
For the first time, maps and summaries of historical and projected temperature and precipitation changes for the 21st century for the continental U.S. are accessible at a county-by-county level on a website http://www.usgs.gov/climate_landuse/clu_rd/nex-dcp30.asp developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in collaboration with the College of Earth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University.
How should climate change be incorporated into decision-making under the Endangered Species Act?
A new assessment of shoreline change along the Pacific Northwest coast from the late 1800s to present found that while the majority of beaches are stable or slightly accreting (adding sand), many Oregon beaches have experienced an increase in erosion hazards in recent decades.
THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN:
Weekly Fish and Wildlife News
www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org
December 12, 2013
Issue No. 688
THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN:
Weekly Fish and Wildlife News
www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org
December 6, 2013
Issue No. 687
A special issue of the journal Conservation Biology released this week includes a paper written by a team of authors from the University of Washington-based Climate Impacts Group, the U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA, and Stony Brook University on strategies for choosing and using climate change scenarios for ecological impacts assessments and conservation decisions.
Climate change has increased concern over possible large and rapid changes in the physical climate system, which includes the Earth’s atmosphere, land surfaces, and oceans. Some of these changes could occur within a few decades or even years, leaving little time for society and ecosystems to adapt.
Recent Forest Service studies on high-elevation climate trends in the Pacific Northwest United States show that streamflow declines tie directly to decreases and changes in winter winds that bring precipitation across the region.
As part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the Obama Administration has announced an interagency National Drought Resilience Partnership http://www.drought.gov/drought/ to help communities better prepare for future droughts and reduce the impact of drought events on livelihoods and the economy.
Changes are already happening to Earth’s climate due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and large-scale agriculture. As changes get more pronounced, people everywhere will have to adjust.
Maximizing returns on financial investments depends on accurately understanding and effectively accounting for weather and climate risks, according to a new study by the American Meteorological Society Policy Program.
The Northwest is facing increased risks from the decline of forest health, earlier snowmelt leading to low summer stream flows, and an array of issues facing the coastal region, according to a new climate assessment report.
A new Independent Scientific Advisory Board review of the Fish Passage Center’s long-running Comparative Survival Study has shown trends in the survival of salmon and steelhead that navigate the Columbia-Snake river hydro system.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that it is reopening the comment period regarding the proposed listing under the Endangered Species Act of the North American wolverine.
The leaders of British Columbia, California, Oregon and Washington signed the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy this week, committing their governments to a strategic alignment to combat climate change and promote clean energy.
Plastic litter is one of the most significant problems facing the world’s marine environments. Yet in the absence of a coordinated global strategy, an estimated 20 million tons of plastic litter enter the ocean each year.
Nutrient enrichment and climate change are posing yet another concern of growing importance: an apparent increase in the toxicity of some algal blooms in freshwater lakes and estuaries around the world, which threatens aquatic organisms, ecosystem health and human drinking water safety.
Canada’s British Columbia Province this week released draft recommendations for a new Columbia River Treaty, saying the current treaty “does not account for the full range of benefits in the United States or the impacts in British Columbia,” and that salmon migration above Grand Coulee is not a treaty issue.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council and staff earlier this month began discussions on how the organization’s fish and wildlife “program” might be amended while taking into account disparate views on topics ranging from hydro system spill for salmon passage to the role of hatcheries in fish recovery schemes to climate change and invasive species to providing upstream passage at dams that have long blocked access to historic habitat.
A new study looking at the impacts of climate change on the world’s ocean systems concludes that by the year 2100, about 98 percent of the oceans will be affected by acidification, warming temperatures, low oxygen, or lack of biological productivity – and most areas will be stricken by a multitude of these stressors.
Prioritizing habitat restoration work will become more important, more so than cherry picking available projects, in the years ahead as managers of native fish stocks such as spring chinook salmon try to ward off the effects of climate warming.
The Washington State Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Forterra this week announced the purchase of 50,272 acres in the headwaters of the Yakima River watershed that are being designated as the Teanaway Community Forest.
A collaborative effort by more than 50 authors representing tribal communities, academia, government agencies and special interest groups has helped produce a special issue of the scientific journal, Climatic Change.
The “U.S. Entity” on Sept. 20 released for public review and comment its draft Regional Recommendation for public review and comment on how the Northwest’s system of dams in the United States and Canada might be operated from 2024 and beyond for power generation, flood control as well as for fish benefit and other uses.
Dams have been vilified for detrimental effects to water quality and fish passage, but a new study suggests that these structures provide “ecological and engineering resilience” to climate change in the Columbia River basin.
When a major wildfire destroys a large forested area in the seasonal snow zone, snow tends to accumulate at a greater level in the burned area than in adjacent forests. But a new study found that the snowpack melts much quicker in these charred areas, potentially changing the seasonal runoff pattern of rivers and streams.
Scientists expect climate change and warmer oceans to push the fish that people rely on for food and income into new territory.
A team of scientists and other experts is investigating the mechanics of sudden, dramatic changes in our oceans. That should help us to avoid these tipping points—or to recover once they’ve been crossed.
NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) this week announced $3.73 million in funding for habitat restoration projects in Oregon and Washington to restore more than 1,800 acres of habitat to benefit threatened species including steelhead, chinook and coho salmon.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality received as many as 20,000 comments, pro and con, about the potential consequences if a proposal to build and operate a coal export terminal at Port of Morrow on the Columbia River gets approval.
Environmentalists are weighing in on the Columbia River Treaty, calling on the United States to prioritize salmon and river health as preparations are made to re-negotiate the treaty with Canada.
Spatial diversity in the first year of life can protect an entire salmon species from the effects of large-scale forces such as climate change and the operation of hydroelectric dams, according to a new NOAA Fisheries research article published this week.
Utilities across the Pacific Northwest are sounding off against draft recommendations for the future of the Columbia River Treaty, saying they haven’t been adequately represented in a process that could result in economic impacts for rate payers and the region.
Climate change is having a significant and measurable impact on California’s environment, according to a new state report that tracks 36 indicators of climate change and its effects.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
