High levels of spill proposed to whisk migrating juvenile salmon safely down the lower Snake and Columbia rivers in springtime would also pose numerous potential risks to fish and aquatic life, according to a review of the proposal by the Independent Scientific Advisory Board.
The Bonneville Power Administration is circulating an analysis of a proposed spring spill test aimed at salmon recovery at Columbia/Snake River dams that suggests that if implemented for 10 years would lead to an annual loss of $110 million per year in power sales.
After a long dry spell, Pacific Northwest weather over the past two weeks or so has returned to something more like an average winter profile, and as a result lifted snowpack totals and spring-summer water runoff forecasts closer to normal.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking comments on a revised draft environmental assessment for the John Day Mitigation Project, which proposes to construct hatchery facilities to increase the production of fall chinook salmon, as required by the Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion for salmon and steelhead.
Culminating a 20-year partnership with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Army Corps of Engineers and private landowners, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday proposed to remove the Oregon chub from the list of endangered and threatened species designated under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Walla Walla District this week announced it has completed an environmental assessment for its Inland Avian Predation Management Plan – a strategy that contains management actions designed to reduce predatory birds’ impacts on salmon and steelhead species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, working with federal, state and other tribal partners, has developed what it feels is a reliable tool for assessing impacts to wildlife habitat along the Kootenai River caused by the operation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Libby Dam in northwest Montana and measure how well particular restoration actions might help ecosystem functions.
Annual lower Columbia River management of sport harvest of spring chinook salmon in 2014 will mirror recent strategies despite pleas from upriver interests, including treaty tribes and the state of Idaho, that early season catch be reined in to assure the escapement of more early season fish to seed spawning grounds and fuel hatcheries.
With less than half the anticipated harvest through the Jan. 20 closure date, Oregon and Washington fishery managers decided this week to reopen the Columbia River’s Bonneville Pool to white sturgeon sturgeon retention Feb. 1-17.
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.
If the chinook salmon returns for 2014 hold up to the early forecast, anglers could anticipate fisheries similar to those opened in 2008 and 2009, according to Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials.
NOAA Fisheries Service says that a new biological opinion issued today serves to confirm that its plan for improving salmon and steelhead survival through the Federal Columbia River Power System on the Columbia and Snake rivers is working, and that efforts to rehabilitate habitat for the fish will indeed help dodge extinction for species listed under the Endangered Species Act.
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.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released its final Bristol Bay Assessment describing potential impacts to salmon and ecological resources from proposed large-scale copper and gold mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
For the eighth year in a row, energy efficiency improvements in 2012 exceeded the annual target established by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the Council reported this week.
In a case study of dams on the upper Missouri River, USGS researchers have demonstrated that an upstream dam is still a major control of river dynamics where the backwater effects of a downstream reservoir begin.
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.
Salmon-chomping double-crested cormorants that have been nesting in greater numbers each spring and summer at the lower Columbia River estuary’s East Sand Island showed that they could be pushed by human dissuasion from one spot to another, but only a small fraction left the area altogether, according to preliminary results produced during 2013 monitoring.
Even as plans are being made to reduce the impact of Caspian terns on salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River plateau region, the predatory birds are continuing to be what researchers call “the single most significant (per capita) avian predator” on juvenile steelhead migrating from the Snake River basin and the upper Columbia.
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?
Water temperatures at Lower Granite Dam exceeded allowable limits twice this past summer, temporarily stopping the adult runs of both sockeye and fall chinook salmon through the Snake River dam’s fish ladder.
The benefit of transportation for smolt-to-adult survival for salmon and steelhead in the Lower Snake River is narrowing and in some seasons and among some adult returns SARs for in-river fish are nearly equal.
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.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council, in a split vote, decided Wednesday to ask for “independent” scientific advice on whether spill at Columbia and Snake river mainstem dams should be ramped up to see what kind of benefit such hydro operations might bring to migrating salmon and steelhead.
Environmental interests and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration are squaring off in federal court about just how much flexibility the federal agencies should have in the winter operations of Albeni Falls Dam, which controls the elevation of north Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille.
Infrastructure improvements and operational changes implemented at west-central Idaho’s Dworshak National Fish Hatchery have resulted in considerable energy savings, and earned the facility’s federal and tribal operators a Department of the Interior Environmental Achievement Award for 2013.
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.
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
Columbia River upriver spring and summer chinook salmon returns are expected to rebound a bit in 2014, coming in above the 10-year averages, according to preseason projections produced this week by the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory Team.
Naturally born steelhead trout of both “winter” and “summer” stocks from the Columbia/Snake river system that try a second run at spawning do much better than their hatchery origin peers, according to preliminary research results presented Tuesday at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Anadromous Fish Evaluation Program annual review in Walla Walla, Wash.
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.
Lt. Col. Glenn O. Pratt became district commander of the Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at a ceremony this week.
Tribal representatives from north and south of the border, as well as other resource managers, last week stressed their case that a new U.S.-Canada management agreement for the Columbia River hydropower system should include, for the first time, environmental initiatives.
A mix of utilities, non-profit organizations, municipalities and Northwest Native American tribes gathered last week to mark several recent land acquisitions in the Willamette River Basin and celebrate the agreement that continues to enable partnership between Bonneville Power Administration, the state of Oregon and other partners.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has fielded an estimated 197 comments over the past two months regarding how it should amend its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking public comment on two fish passage waiver requests at the Warmsprings and Mason dams in eastern Oregon.
A study of estuary rearing and overwintering of coho salmon refutes “the notion that estuaries function as only staging or transitional habitats in the early life history of coho salmon.”
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.
Steller sea lion consumption of spawning salmon and steelhead in the waters below the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam continued its upward trend during the late winter-spring of 2013, according to a year-end report prepared by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers research team.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week recommended 75 projects — out of 83 salmon and steelhead habitat restoration proposals — be funded through the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program during fiscal 2014 and beyond.
Central Washington’s Grant County Public Utility District this week celebrated the completion of an 11-year turbine replacement project at Wanapum Dam that will improve the survival of salmon and steelhead passing the hydro project and increase its power production.
Efforts to restore an “almost” extinct species of Northwest salmon – one that showed no reproductive capability in the early 1990s — are reaching a turning point that is expected to leave extinction fears in the past.
All U.S. lawmakers representing Washington, Oregon, and Idaho — in a bipartisan letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz – are urging the U.S. Energy Department to maintain an independent Bonneville Power Administration.
Preliminary data compiled by NOAA Fisheries Service researchers indicates that Snake River yearling spring chinook salmon survival in 2013 from Lower Granite Dam’s tailrace down to Bonneville Dam’s tailrace was 61.9 percent, which is the third highest during the 1999-2013 timeframe, with higher survival recorded only in 2006 and 2012.
It’s back to the past for operations at northern Idaho’s Albeni Falls Dam, which has over the past decade been manipulated on the assumption that maintaining a higher wintertime elevation of Lake Pend Oreille would enhance shoreline spawning of prized kokanee salmon.
The British Columbia provincial government recently released draft recommendations for a modified Columbia River Treaty, with clear differences with the United States over compensation for flood control and a specific call for adjusted operations at Libby Dam.
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 National Marine Fisheries Service is proposing, under the Endangered Species Act, a rule to designate and authorize the release of a “nonessential experimental population” of Upper Columbia River spring chinook salmon in the Okanogan River subbasin, and to establish a limited set of take prohibitions.
A relatively high crop of sockeye salmon spawners returning to central Idaho will soon be sharing the task of recovering a species that 20 years ago was all but extinct.
As of Sunday, a total of 23,332 adult fall chinook salmon, and 2,588 jacks, have been harvested this year in the mid-Columbia River’s Hanford Reach, which stretches from Richland, Wash., up to central Washington’s Priest Rapids Dam.
The eggs of endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon are less likely to hatch on some of the surfaces that have been made more common by human, or anthropogenic, changes on the river, a new U.S. Geological Survey report has found.
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’s four-member Fish and Wildlife Committee on Oct. 8 moved forward consideration of a package of Columbia-Snake river basin salmon habitat restoration projects that could cost in excess of $80 million dollars in each of the next five years.
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.
The Bonneville Power Administration will not pay for gill netting lake trout on Flathead Lake unless there is management consensus between the state of Montana and the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, and talks have been under way on developing a new co-management plan for the lake.
It’s taken more than two decades to set the stage — via habitat restoration and river flow guarantees — for a planned reintroduction of spring chinook salmon, a species extirpated 75 years ago, in northwest Oregon’s Walla Walla River.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday moved forward a proposal from the Yakama Nation that would ultimately involve the spending of nearly $9 million to build hatchery facilities aimed at advancing efforts to rebuild coho salmon returns in central Washington’s upper Yakima River basin.
Work done to reintroduce salmon and steelhead to the upper reaches of central Oregon’s Deschutes River basin has shown progress, with the first adult returns in more than 40 y ears showing up at the bottom of the Pelton-Round Butte three-dam complex in 2011 and again in 2012.
The 2013 return of fall chinook salmon to the Columbia River has continued at overwhelming, record numbers but, for whatever reason, steelhead and coho salmon numbers remain well below recent averages.
A federal appeals court last week ruled that a five-year plan to remove salmon-eating California sea lions from the Columbia River abides by federal laws aimed at protecting both fish and the big marine mammals.
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.
Oregon and Washington health officials this week issued fish consumption advisories for certain species from two sections of the Columbia River due to elevated levels of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) found in fish tissue.
Updates created his week based on actual dam counts and other information peg the 2013 forecast for the fall chinook return to the mouth of the Columbia River at 1.2 million fish, which would be a record dating back to at least the early 1940s, and likely beyond.
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.
About 480 recommendations are in hand and due for consideration by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council as it works toward the amendment of its fish and wildlife program for the Columbia-Snake river basin.
NOAA Fisheries has decided that it will largely stay the course with its plan to assure Columbia/Snake River salmon and steelhead stocks are not jeopardized by the existence and operation of the federal Columbia River Power system.
Soaring fish ladder counts of spawners and near-record sport catches prompted federal, state and tribal fisheries officials Tuesday to raise return forecasts for 2013 adult fall chinook salmon well beyond the best of modern-day levels.
About 150 state, federal and tribal officials and several local neighbors, gathered Friday, Sept. 6, to mark the completion of the new Springfield Hatchery.
The $13.5 million facility will be capable of producing up to 1 million juvenile Snake River sockeye salmon annually for release in the Sawtooth Basin of central Idaho, the headwaters of the Salmon River.
An unusually lengthy warm season in the interior Columbia Basin, combined with low water volumes, has apparently given, first sockeye salmon and then fall chinook salmon, reason to pause before they jump an eighth and final hydro hurdle — the lower Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam– on their spawning journey.
Fishery officials are not quite ready to declare that this year’s upriver fall chinook salmon return to the Columbia River is early arriving, or if it is even bigger than predicted in a preseason forecast.
But… the stocks’ presence this far into the season is large.
An Independent Economic Advisory Board “update” released this week indicates that the money spent – an estimated $5 million per year from a variety of sources — in attempts to ward off an invasion of non-native zebra and quagga mussels into the Columbia River basin is money well spent.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week proposed to protect the Oregon spotted frog as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
Federal “action” agencies Friday afternoon (Aug. 23) made public a 300-page document that outlines hundreds of actions, most focused on habitat restoration, that they say will be implemented over the next five years to avoid jeopardizing the survival of 13 salmon and steelhead stocks native to the Columbia-Snake river basin that are now listed for protections under the Endangered Species Act.
Fishermen from the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama tribes took to the Columbia River this week for the first gill-net fishery of the 2013 fall commercial season, targeting a budding run of fall chinook salmon run, steelhead and the early parts of the coho salmon run.
The Walla Walla District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Aug. 16 that it is delaying completion of the lower Snake River Programmatic Sediment Management Plan Environmental Impact Statement and proposed dredging of the lower Snake River in Lewiston-Clarkston and near Ice Harbor Lock and Dam in Burbank, Wash.
Officials will gather just outside Springfield on the morning of Sept. 6 to mark the completion of a new hatchery that is intended to boost recovery of Snake River sockeye.
The Independent Scientific Review Panel in its “final” recommendations released Aug. 15 says that 24 percent (20 projects) of the 83 fish and wildlife proposals submitted as part of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s geographic review meet scientific criteria necessary to be eligible for funding.
A total of 90 Snake River sockeye salmon spawners have been trapped as of Wednesday in central Idaho as part of the long-running program to boost production of a species that has since 1991 been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and, during that time period, came close to extinction.
Spending through the Columbia River basin fish and wildlife program, after breaking through the budget ceiling in fiscal year 2012, is “on a trajectory to come within budget this year,” the Bonneville Power Administration’s Bill Maslen told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week recommended funding and implementation of two projects aimed at answering, in one case, a demand of the Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion and, in the other, moving forward a project aimed at restoring more normal river conditions for salmon and other species in the Yankee Fork Salmon River in central Idaho.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun removing an 8-foot high dam across the east channel of the Sandy River as part of a multi-agency habitat restoration project.
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.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Dworshak National Fish Hatchery recently received the Department of Interior’s “Hatchery of the Year” Award as well as the Regional ‘Environmental Leadership Award’ for Green Innovation of projects implemented through the BPA Energy Efficiency Program in 2012.
President Obama has signed into law two bills aimed at boosting development of small U.S. hydropower projects.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday voted 6-2 to recommend that the Bonneville Power Administration continue its full contribution – about $7.5 million annually – to a program aimed at monitoring the fate of Columbia River salmon via coded wire tag technology.
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.
An early August uptick at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam has both upriver fall chinook salmon and steelhead counts to-date at unexpectedly high levels for what is the very early part of the fall return season.
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.
The debate continues over whether changes to the flow regime down central Oregon’s lower Deschutes River have had the intended positive effects or, as many outfitters and anglers claim, have negatively impacted steelhead and the aquatic insects on which they prey.
Sockeye salmon returns this year have been slightly stronger than expected overall for the Columbia River basin, though the endangered Snake River fish have passed upstream with fits and starts because of low flows and warmer than normal water temperatures.
A lawsuit filed this week in federal court by Columbia Riverkeeper accuses the U.S. government, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in particular, of allowing chronic oil pollution into the Columbia River system that negatively affects salmon and steelhead, humans and other species.
Endangered Snake River sockeye are moving again toward their central Idaho home, some in-river and some potentially by truck, after stalling for much of this past week , apparently shying from warm water flushing down through the fish ladder at southeast Washington’s Lower Granite Dam.
Right on time, the first endangered Snake River sockeye of the 2013 completed its 900-mile journey up the Columbia, Snake and Salmon rivers this week in warm conditions, only to be welcomed by wildfire smoldering around the central Idaho hatchery where many of the fish spend their extreme youth.
A new report http://bit.ly/13ZLzl1 projects that by the middle of this century there will be an average 56 percent drop in the amount of water stored in peak snowpack in the McKenzie River watershed of the Oregon Cascade Range – and that similar impacts may be found on low-elevation maritime snow packs around the world.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week adopted a 9 percent average wholesale power rate increase and an 11 percent average transmission rate increase.
A positively persistent stream of sockeye spawners passing up and over the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam has allowed sport fishing to continue (though not for “summer” chinook) on the lower river as well as tribal fishing in reservoirs upstream of the dam.
The U.S. Department of Energy released a new report which assesses how America’s critical energy and electricity infrastructure is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Federal “action” agencies this week gave themselves, and their partners, good marks in implementing the first five years of a 10-year plan aimed at countering impacts of Columbia-Snake River dams on salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Fishery and hydro managers were put on notice this week that maintaining fish-friendly water temperatures in the lower Snake River as measured at Lower Granite Dam will likely require some tough decisions as the inland region’s summer season hits full stride.
NOAA Fisheries this week published a “recovery plan” produced with the help of federal, state, tribal and local partners with the hope its prescribed actions will lift threatened coho, chinook and chum salmon and steelhead in the Lower Columbia River to sustainable levels that allow the stocks to be removed from the Endangered Species Act list.
Congress, in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, says that California sea lions “cannot be killed simply because they eat a few salmon,” according to a brief filed Wednesday by the Humane Society of the United States in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The U.S. “Entity” — the Bonneville Power Administration administrator and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Northwest Division commander/division engineer — announced Thursday the release of a draft recommendation for renewal of the Columbia River Treaty with Canada regarding flood control, hydro power, fish and wildlife and other issues that span the Columbia River basin the two countries share.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council voted June 21 to extend by two months the time allowed for Indian tribes and state and federal fish and wildlife agencies to recommend actions and objectives for reshaping the Council’s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation on Thursday served as hosts for the “First Salmon and Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony” in celebration of the opening of a new state-of-the-art hatchery at central Washington’s Chief Joseph Dam on the mid-Columbia River.
One size definitely does not fit all when it comes to assessing how to spend a limited pot of money for the marking and tagging of Columbia River basin fish for research to determine how various stocks might be better managed.
Non-native American shad are experiencing a revival of sorts to the Columbia River basin, it would appear, with counts at Bonneville Dam fish ladders spiking recently.
The U.S. Corps of Engineers is set to reestablish the long-clogged main channel of northwest Oregon’s Sandy River near its confluence with the Columbia River, thus restoring historic conditions that are expected to provide more habitat benefits for protected salmon and steelhead as well as other fish and wildlife species.
A legal brief filed Wednesday by the federal government insists that NOAA Fisheries “exercised sound scientific judgment in finding that certain individually identifiable California sea lions have a ‘significant negative impact on the decline or recovery’ of at-risk salmon.”
A total of 13 proposals passed muster; and another 33 got qualified support in a recently completed review by the Independent Scientific Review Panel of 83 habitat projects proposed for funding from the Bonn
Differing views on the interpretation of “due consideration” dominated legal arguments, and judicial feedback, during a June 7 federal appeals court hearing.
Researchers conclude in a new report that a global push for small hydropower projects, supported by various nations and also the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may cause unanticipated and potentially significant losses of habitat and biodiversity.
A relatively early meltdown of snow from the mountains upstream has served to push west-central Idaho’s Dworshak Reservoir to full pool much earlier than normal, thus guaranteeing a lengthy recreation season, and a supply of cool water to tap in summer to improve lower Snake River conditions for salmon and steelhead.
Idaho Power Company announced this week that it plans to decrease daily minimum flows from the Hells Canyon Complex, which is located on the lower Snake River along the Idaho-Oregon border, to below 8,500 cubic feet per second beginning Sunday evening, June 9 because of a rapid decline in inflows into the uppermost reservoir in the system.
A healthy future for what is “perhaps the finest relic of fish and wildlife habitat in the entire Willamette” river valley was guaranteed this week with the acquisition of 338 acres of land, and conveyance of that land to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde for management and protection.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced this week the receipt of a joint, coordinated biological opinion delivered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that analyzes the effects of the ongoing operations of Reclamation’s Klamath Project through March 2023.
One and a half years after the breaching of Condit Dam on southwest Washington’s White Salmon River the future appears bright for salmon and other fish stocks restricted for more than 100 years to a relatively short strip of habitat between the hydro project and the confluence with the Columbia River.
A mid- to late-May batch of storms strafed, particularly, the upper end of the Columbia River basin to help lift water supply predictions for the spring and summer to near normal, according to the forecast posted online late Wednesday by NOAA’s Northwest River Forecast Center.
The 2013 spring chinook salmon return to the Columbia-Snake river basin has lagged behind expectations, but fishing opportunities persist, targeting hatchery produced fish while attempting to hold down impacts on naturally produced segments of the stock bound for spawning areas upstream of Bonneville Dam.
Lookingglass Creek, a tributary to the Grande Ronde River at Palmer Junction in northeast Oregon, will open to fishing for hatchery spring chinook salmon “jacks,” young fish that are showing up in higher than average numbers this year in contrast to relatively low returns for their older brethren.
Representatives of state and federal agencies, utilities, local governments, academic institutions and others gathered Wednesday in Vancouver to enhance the passions, and strategic plans, for heading off an invasion of non-native zebra and/or quagga mussels.
Streamflow forecasts for the Snake River continue to decline as the window of opportunity for much-needed spring rainfall narrows, and that lack of water will have an impact on power production.
The Army Corps of Engineers said this week it would agree to a request by federal, state and tribal “salmon managers” to end summer salmon transportation – barging and trucking—at McNary Dam.
Warmer spring temperatures since 1980 are causing an estimated 20 percent loss of snow cover across the Rocky Mountains of western North America, according to new research from the U.S. Geological Survey.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week announced it is asking for public comments on a project it is proposing, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to restore tidal connection and fish access to 68 acres of long-blocked tidal wetlands on the mainstem of the lower Columbia River.
Eighteen months of discussions — including 15 face-to-face meetings and many more conference calls — among subject matter experts and policy makers produced 16 consensus recommendations for how the tagging and marking of salmon and other fish from the Columbia River basin might be made more efficient and cost-effective.
A recent experiment – the deployment of two so-called “Crittercams” — could potentially lead to insights on the behavior of Steller sea lions that venture into the lower Columbia to feed on white sturgeon, salmon and other fish species.
Flows sent down from northwest Montana’s Libby Dam with the intent of benefiting endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon will take a new shape this year in an ongoing attempt to lure the big beasts away from badly functioning spawning areas and onto gravelly river bottoms believed to be prime habitat for reproduction.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week released for public comments its annual report on costs incurred by the Bonneville Power Administration for the implementation of Columbia River basin fish and wildlife actions.
They are about the size of a dime, reproduce rapidly and can attach to any hard surface. If they become established in Washington, they could cause hundreds of millions of dollars a year in damage.
USGS hydrologic researchers have found that the movement of nitrate through groundwater to streams can take decades to occur.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission Tuesday (April 30) approved a spring chinook salmon fishing season to start Saturday (May 4) on parts of the Clearwater, Salmon and Snake rivers.
For the second year in a row, two locations managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Walla Walla District made the Bassmaster Magazine Top-100 list of best places to fish for bass, according to information released April 29 by B.A.S.S. Communications. (www.bassmaster.com/news/100-best-bass-lakes-announced.)
The Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee’s 2013 Northwest Regional Forecast, released this week, provides a look at the Pacific Northwest’s electric power landscape for the next decade, compiling utility information on loads and resources to frame our energy future picture.
A newly, and greatly, improved Minto Fish Collection Facility on western Oregon’s North Santiam River went online April 1 and fish were, more or less, standing in line for a lift into the wild fish sanctuary that awaits just upstream.
The long-held practice of sweeping in migrating subyearling fall chinook salmon at McNary Dam and barging and/or trucking them downstream past three other lower Columbia River dams during the heat of summer should be discontinued, according to a “system operational request” offered this week by federal, state and tribal “salmon managers.”
NOAA Fisheries “ignored” prior court directives last year in a making a decision that once again authorized the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington to lethally remove California sea lions that gobble up salmon in the Columbia River, according to an opening legal brief filed April 22 federal court by plaintiff Humane Society of the United States.
Sport fishing on the lower Columbia River remains closed as Oregon and Washington fishery managers await a swell of upriver spring chinook salmon that would at least give hope that the preseason forecast return of 141,400 adult fish to the mouth of the river can be achieved.
Lower Columbia River spring harvest impacts on protected “upriver” spring chinook salmon are fewer than initially calculated, though not quite enough to allow sport or commercial fishers back on the water until at least next week.
In consideration of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s December 2012 ruling in which the Commission offered guidance on cost allocation, the Bonneville Power Administration has refined its oversupply rate proposal.
To allow for wider public input, the Walla Walla District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is extending the public comment period regarding Clean Water Act compliance for a proposed sediment management — dredging – to re-establish congressionally mandated depth of the lower Snake River navigation channel.
“We’re making the basin better,” Lorri Bodi, the Bonneville Power Administration’s vice president for Environment, Fish and Wildlife, said Tuesday during a look back, and a look forward, at the work being done throughout the Columbia-Snake river system at the direction of the 1980 Northwest Power Act.
A number of Pacific lamprey passage improvements are expected to come online for this year’s spawning run with the hope of boosting survival through the Columbia-Snake river hydro system so the eel-like fish can rebuild populations in upstream habitat.
In a paper published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, researchers, using acoustic tagging and tracking technology, say they have learned that survival during the first month of life at-sea of juvenile Snake River spring chinook salmon was the same as that of a downstream population which did not first migrate through the Snake River dams.
A “very large storm” pushing into the Northwest at week’s end was expected bring rain, and snow in high places, through at least the weekend, particularly on the west side of the Cascade Mountains but to the east side of the Cascades and Columbia River basin as well.
The Department of the Interior Thursday released the Final Environmental Impact Statement evaluating the potential removal of four privately owned hydroelectric facilities on the Klamath River — identifying the preferred alternative as full removal of all four facilities.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday directed to more than 3,000 mail boxes an invitation to provide recommendations on how its Columbia River Fish and Wildlife “Program” might be amended to better mitigate for impacts caused by the basin’s hydro system.
NOAA chief Kathryn D. Sullivan in a March 18 letter provides assurances to Washington Congressman Doc Hastings that one path towards rebuilding populations of imperiled Columbia River salmon and steelhead stocks will not block, or sidetrack, another.
Researchers at Washington State University are preparing for a Northwest invasion of the zebra mussel — a small, distinctly striped and rather tenacious freshwater mollusk that can quickly encrust underwater surfaces.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks will be continuing efforts to suppress rainbow trout and hybrid trout populations in the upper Flathead River system.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council in mid-February opened what is expected to be a continuing discussion about how, or even if, evaluations of ocean conditions can ultimately help managers in the Columbia-Snake river basin make decisions that help fish and wildlife, and salmon in particular, prosper.
Low winter snowpack in key Idaho Snake River drainages, combined with lower-than-normal carryover from upstream reservoirs, should allow Idaho Power Company to maintain Brownlee Dam’s reservoir at a higher-than-normal elevation during the spring flood control period.
An assessment by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff shows that the efficiency of electricity use continues to improve and that the region is on track to meet the Council’s goal to improve efficiency by 1,200 average megawatts in the five years between 2010 and 2014.
On the heels of its 75th anniversary, the Bonneville Power Administration offers a look at the past 30 years in the power industry in the Pacific Northwest with a new, full-color book of “little-known stories and behind-the-scenes intrigue,” according to a press release.
Most anglers would agree that a successful fishing trip involves a certain amount of luck. One Hagerman fisherman had plenty of that when an outing to Lower Salmon Falls Reservoir resulted in a $1,000 payday from Idaho Power.
The upper Columbia River basin in British Columbia and northern reaches in Idaho and Montana have held their own over the past month, suffering dry stretches but enjoying a few wet, snowy storms in recent days that have helped hold the basin’s water runoff volume expectations near, though slightly below, average for the spring and summer.
A town hall meeting is scheduled at Portland State University next Tuesday to discuss findings of the “Draft Third National Climate Assessment,” and potential refinements to a document that attempts to assess the possible consequences of global warming across the United States.
The world has changed for salmon as a result of human development.
But, perhaps even more so, it has changed for the large, long-lived white sturgeon that historically ventured up the Columbia River system as far as British Columbia’s Windermere Lake, and branched off up into the Snake River basin until being blocked by Shoshone Falls in southern Idaho.
A decade of working together with state and federal fish agencies and two Northwest tribes under Habitat Conservation Plans for Rocky Reach and Rock Island dams has achieved the goal that these dams have no net impact on the salmon and steelhead migrating past them, said Chelan PUD this week in a press release.
The Bonneville Power Administration says it has refined its process for ensuring transmission system reliability and protecting fish when there is too much power for the region to consume.
Thanks to tagging and marking, the behavior, fate and other facts of fish life are charted in the Columbia/Snake river basin, and Pacific Ocean, exhaustively — perhaps more so than anywhere else.
At its conclusion, Northwest Power and Conservation Council member Phil Rockefeller said a recent daylong discussion “has stretched my thinking” about how information gleaned from the ocean might be used to benefit salmon recovery/management in the freshwater Columbia River system.
Beginning today (March 1), Washington anglers will for the second year in a row get a late-winter shot at harvesting fin-clipped steelhead in the Methow River and, as a result, help weed out hatchery fish that might ultimately stray onto spawning grounds where wild, protected fish are completing their life cycle.
The prospects for late summer fishing on the mainstem Columbia River look great with a forecast return of fall chinook salmon projected to be the highest since 2004, and the “upriver bright” portion of that run expected to be the biggest ever.
An air, ground and underwater effort this past fall produced the third largest count yet of fall chinook salmon redds (nests) in what is a 25-year record of intensive surveys conducted in the Snake River drainage and most tributaries above Lower Granite Dam and downstream of the Hells Canyon Complex.
Initial tests conducted in 2011 and 2011 at the Southwest’s Lake Mead by Portland State University researchers indicate the invasive quagga mussels could well survive and grow in Columbia River waters.
With the Columbia River system’s water supply forecasts shrinking with nearly every passing day of the New Year, hydro and fishery managers this week agreed to back off, for at least the near future, the river flow levels intended to maintain higher elevation spawning areas for chum salmon.
A new analysis of river basins in the western United States suggests that climate change will have the greatest impact on summer stream flows in those waterways that might seem less vulnerable – the large, snow-fed rivers that originate in the high Cascades and other mountain ranges.
A study expected to be published in the spring 2013 science journal Climatic Change reveals that over the last 100 years linear trends of stream flow have changed dramatically on Columbia River Basin tribal reservations and historical tribal lands.
A study of the Umpqua River basin in the Oregon Coast Range helps explain natural processes behind the width of valleys and provides potentially useful details for river restoration efforts designed to improve habitats for coho salmon.
Congressman Doc Hastings in a Feb. 4 letter to the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco, expresses concerns over a contract the agency has signed with entities to conduct “closed interviews” with individuals about their opinions of ongoing salmon recovery activities in the Columbia River basin.
Montana’s new governor, Democrat Steve Bullock, has completed his two appointments to represent the state on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
A recently published research article backs up previous work in suggesting that avian predators such as Caspian terns and double-crested cormorants prey particularly on weak juvenile steelhead, and salmon, migrating downstream in the Snake and Columbia rivers.
With little recent precipitation across the region, Pacific Northwest snowpack building has been slowed during the New Year.
Frozen deposits needed to provide runoff down through the Columbia-Snake river system in spring and summer now are almost universally lingering in the slightly-below-average range. And little precipitation is forecast in the near term.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has two assigned tasks under the Northwest Power Act, and they must be completed in synchrony, not as independent products, according to petitioners asking a federal appeals court to order a reconsideration of the NPCC’s “Sixth Power Plan” and Columbia River basin fish and wildlife restoration goals encased in it.
According to a new technical report, the effects of climate change will continue to threaten the health and vitality of U.S. coastal communities’ social, economic and natural systems.
“Evidence for climate change abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans. This evidence has been compiled by scientists and engineers from around the world, using satellites, weather balloons, thermometers, buoys, and other observing systems,” according to a new report prepared for the U.S. government with the contributions of more than 1,000 individuals.
The bad news is that, after a mostly dry late December and first three weeks of January, forecasts of available water runoff volumes during this coming spring and summer in the Columbia River basin have been trending downward.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced this week that it has chosen longtime Northwest power industry official Bill Drummond to be the new Bonneville Power Administration administrator. He is currently the deputy administrator.
The announcement of the pending change of command at the Portland-based Bonneville Power Administration drew considerable praise, and considerable advice, from energy industry officials, conservation groups, tribes and others with vested interest in the federal power marketing agency’s responsibilities regarding energy distribution and fish and wildlife mitigation.
In just seven years, one of the two coal-fired power plants in the Northwest and one unit at the other will shut down, reducing the region’s power supply by an amount equal to about twice the power demand of Seattle.
Members of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council have elected Bill Bradbury, one of Oregon’s two members, to chair the regional energy planning agency in 2013. Bradbury was vice chair in 2012; the Council elects officers annually.
“Just about anything can happen in this type of climate regime,” the Northwest River Forecast Center’s Steve King said Thursday during a web-based presentation regarding Columbia River water supply for the coming year.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced Thursday that under Endangered Species Act rules it is recognizing as “nonessential experimental” steelhead stocks that have in recent years been reintroduced to historic spawning grounds in the upper reaches of central Oregon’s Deschutes River.
A 750-foot long, 45-foot wide, 8-foot high dam built in the 1930s would be removed next summer under a proposal aimed at restoring habitat in southwest Oregon’s lower Sandy for the benefit of, particularly, young salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Adapting to future climate change impacts requires capabilities in hydroclimate monitoring, short-term prediction and application of such information to support contemporary water management decisions.
Declining Pacific lamprey returns to the Columbia River system have mirrored the population status of the fish species the so-called “eels” rely on as their host during an ocean sojourn, according to research results published last month in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.
A legal challenge to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s “Sixth Power Plan” is misdirected, and should be rejected, say intervenors in a consideration process now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The 42 parties that originally signed the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement early this week approved a first amendment to the settlement that, among other things, extends by two years the time allowed to gain congressional authorization, and funding to implement restoration actions.
Pleasing results have been unveiled from an elaborate, expensive experiment to measure whether passage improvements are helping to lift salmon survival at Columbia-Snake river dams above targets set out in the federal fish protection plan.
A Montana district judge has issued an order that puts a planned vote on a Flathead Reservation water rights compact on hold.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this week denied a request for a rehearing on its Dec. 7, 2011, determination that the Bonneville Power Administration’s environmental redispatch policy first implemented earlier that year “resulted in noncomparable transmission service for certain resources connected to Bonneville’s transmission system.”
Planning and implementation is going well, yet a “more robust discussion is needed” to cement efforts to recover depleted Columbia River salmon and steelhead populations that are now protected under the Endangered Species Act, according to Barry Thom, deputy administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Region.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week offered for public review its preferred plan for managing – in large part through dredging – sediment buildup on the lower Snake River that it says interferes with navigation and other federally authorized purposes of four dams on the river.
Last month’s 2012 Anadromous Fish Evaluation Program presentations are now available at http://www.nwd-wc.usace.army.mil/tmt/documents/AFEP/
Lower Columbia River chum salmon are riding high this late fall season as a series of wet storms continue to pelt the region, filling up rivers and forcing dam managers to flush water downstream in unseasonably large volumes.
A research paper published this month urges both a consolidation and an expansion of the scientific understanding of a warming climate’s potential effects on trout in the western United States, and makes a call to on-the-ground action.
Food webs needed by young salmon in the Columbia River basin are likely compromised in places, something that should be considered when prioritizing expensive restoration activities aimed at rebuilding endangered runs.
Arguments that its “Sixth Power Plan” failed to prescribe adequate fish and wildlife mitigation for Columbia River hydro system impacts are “outside the pale” of Congress’ intent in creating the Northwest Power Act, according to a legal brief filed Nov. 21 by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
A contract was awarded Nov. 8 to Normandeau Associates Inc. to conduct adult fish counting services at eight mainstem Columbia and Snake river dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Anglers on north Idaho’s vast Lake Pend Oreille will next year likely get to target kokanee for the first time since 2000 when fisheries for the land-locked sockeye salmon were closed because of plummeting populations.
Critiques of the process are well taken and are helping move toward the goal of satisfying requirements that the federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system avoid jeopardizing the survival of salmon and steelhead stocks that are protected under the Endangered Species Act, notes a brief filed Nov. 9 by the U.S. Department of Justice in Oregon’s U.S. District Court.
A new report suggests that climate change is causing additional stress to many western rangelands, and as a result land managers should consider a significant reduction, or in some places elimination of livestock and other large animals from public lands.
The Bonneville Power Administration has proposed a 9.6 percent average wholesale power rate increase to compensate for reduced revenue expectations from surplus power sales and to continue funding needed investments in the Federal Columbia River Power System.
The Bonneville Power Administration asked for help this summer in reining in Columbia River basin fish and wildlife spending, and got it to the tune of an estimated $15 million in projected project deferrals and efficiencies for fiscal years 2012 and 2013.
One effort to end commercial gill-net fishing on the lower Columbia River came to an end during Tuesday’s general election with two-thirds of Oregon’s voters saying no on Ballot Initiative 81.
To facilitate fish passage, NOAA Fisheries engineers, working closely with Puget Sound Energy, have designed an innovative fish passage system, known as the floating surface collector.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has kicked off a public scoping process to determine how to best manage a large salmon-munching colony of double-crested cormorants nesting on East Sand Island in the Columbia River estuary.
Legal adversaries say that implementation of a federal Columbia/Snake river salmon protection plan is lagging, not producing the intended benefits and that the agencies are plunging ahead without acknowledging that significant changes are needed to meet the requirements of both fish and the law.
Gill-net opponents and the Oregon governor say their plans for banning the use of commercial gill-nets on the lower Columbia River doesn’t affect treaty tribes.
But the tribes dependent on salmon and steelhead returns to feed their members are wary.
A newly published study by researchers at Oregon State University and two federal agencies concludes that high temperatures coupled with lower flows in many Northwest streams is creating increasingly extreme conditions that could negatively affect fish and other organisms.
Snake River yearling spring chinook salmon did well this year, surviving their run down the Federal Columbia River Power System gauntlet toward the Pacific Ocean at a rate exceeded only by the 2006 migration, according to preliminary data compiled in a memo from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center to the agency’s Bruce Suzumoto, Northwest Region assistant regional administrator, Hydropower Division.
A recently completed independent scientific review gave high marks to the most recent annual report on the long-running Comparative Survival Study, saying it is “well organized and well written” and presents data that is “valuable” for managers attempting to improve Columbia River conditions for imperiled salmon and steelhead.
Tribal and federal leaders challenged participants at the Future of Our Salmon Conference to work together and develop a Northwest hatchery strategy for Columbia Basin salmon populations that both provides fish for Indian and non-Indian fisheries and restores depleted stocks.
A petition now being debated in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asks the court to “reverse” the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Sixth Power Plan and “issue a tailored remand of the Power Plan to the Council to bring the Plan into compliance with the requirements of the Power Act.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling Monday that says the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated federal law — both the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act — in sanctioning the construction of the 700-mile Ruby pipeline from natural gas fields in Wyoming to southern Oregon.
Wild tule fall chinook salmon are spreading out in southeast Washington’s White Salmon River, building redds (gravelly nests) and planting eggs in a part of the river that has been closed off to them for 100 years.
The 2012 observation season – predominately from Jan. 1 through May 31 – marked “the first time adult salmonids were not the most preyed upon species by number” in the area immediately below the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam, according to a research report released this week.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers faces an “unsustainable situation” in maintaining its national water projects at acceptable levels of performance, according to a new report from the National Research Council.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council is seeking comments on a recent Independent Scientific Advisory Board review of three draft documents that will help guide future work under the Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program.
“Performance standard testing” at The Dalles, McNary and Bonneville dams on the lower Columbia River showed marked improvements in survival of outmigrating juvenile spring chinook and steelhead during 2011, according to the annual progress report released Sept. 28 by federal agencies engaged in efforts to boost the status of 13 salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Hatcheries can be an effective tool for rebuilding abundance and productivity of chinook salmon without impacting wild fish depending on the species, perhaps, and the protocols involved, according to research published Monday in the journal Molecular Ecology.
On Thursday, Sept 27 a fish biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed the first observed spawning sockeye salmon in the Metolius River in more than 45 years.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will accept public comments through Dec. 15 on a variety of proposed changes to the state’s fishing regulations, including one that would remove daily bag limits on nonnative fish species such as smallmouth bass and walleye that prey on imperiled native salmon and steelhead.
The 2012 upriver bright fall chinook return looks to be somewhat below the preseason expectations but still well above recent 10-year average.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week, in a continuing saga, pressed forward with its call for frugality amidst unexpectedly high invoice totals for fish and wildlife work and, by its projections, lower than expected returns from the hydro power generated in the Federal Columbia River Power System.
New programs to develop methods for the hatchery culture of Pacific lamprey are under way in on either side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington with the goal of creating a tool for restoring depleted stocks of a fish of great cultural and environmental importance in the Columbia River basin.
“Costs” in several instances replaced the word “expenditures” in a document, “Annual Report to Northwest Governors on Fish and Wildlife Expenditures of the Bonneville Power Administration” in the Columbia River basin, stamped for mailing Wednesday by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Record sockeye salmon returns flooding the upper Columbia River region this year have allowed Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fishery managers to extend fishing opportunity in Lake Wenatchee sockeye through Labor Day and increase the daily bag limit.
The federal government says that Congress, in amending the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1994, left federal agencies to decide whether or not lethal removal action might be necessary to control sea lion predation on protected fish stocks.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District will soon start a major construction project at Foster Dam near Sweet Home, Ore., to upgrade parts of the dam’s existing adult fish collection facility, which will be a next step in an ongoing process to resurrect salmon populations long cut off from the Willamette River headwaters.
The Bureau of Reclamation has found that silicone foul release coatings may be an important tool for mitigating invasive quagga and zebra mussels’ impacts to water and hydropower infrastructure.
With fast-warming water conditions, federal, state and tribal salmon managers this week protested U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to shift juvenile salmon “transportation” from barges to trucks.
A bill that would “protect America’s dams and promote new clean, low-cost hydropower to help create jobs and grow the economy” was the focus of a federal legislative field hearing Wednesday in Pasco, Wash.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has announced that Montana Council member Rhonda Whiting will serve out the remaining term as Council chair, replacing for Oregon member Joan Dukes.
Northwest States Receive USFWS Grants Through Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund
A recently published scientific research paper says the ongoing broodstock mixing system, which started with just a handful of fish, has managed quite well to preserve the genetic diversity of a Snake River sockeye salmon population that teetered on the brink of extinction in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Hoping to avoid “opening a can of worms,” the Northwest Power and Conservation Council declined support for a request from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for $150,780 in expense funds to purchase a 143.6 acre easement in Joseph Creek, a tributary to the Grande Ronde River in northeast Oregon.
The Snake River sockeye salmon return this year to central Idaho pales, in a relative sense, to the last four years’ runs.
But at 429 and counting at the lower Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam, the number of spawners is still the fifth best since 1977 for a beleaguered stock that came very close to winking out in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Oregon politicians and others announced this week a legislative agreement on water allocation from the Crooked River in Central Oregon has been made among a broad coalition of stakeholders in the region.
The chronic drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 left dying forests and depleted river basins in its wake and was the strongest in 800 years, scientists have concluded, but they say those conditions will become the “new normal” for most of the coming century.
The House Natural Resources Committee on Aug. 15 will hold a legislative field hearing in Pasco, Washington on H.R. 6247, the “Saving Our Dams and New Hydropower Development and Jobs Act.”
Northwest Indian tribes sharing of any given year’s bounty has precedent. But 2012 might be unique – the Colville tribes of central Washington in one outreach traded a small portion of an overflow harvest of sockeye salmon for buffalo meat provided by the Shoshone-Bannock tribes of central and southeast Idaho.
It’s back to the drawing board… maybe… for a plan to employ small, remote-controlled aircraft – drones — as tools to battle the winds of the lower Hells Canyon, and, at the same time, produce accurate accounts of how many Snake River fall chinook salmon are seeding spawning grounds.
The specter of a potential invasion of non-native quagga, or zebra, mussels has the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and staff, as well as the four Northwest states they represent, working on at least two fronts.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
