British Columbia government officials say they worked closely with the Invasive Species Council of B.C., provincial and federal agencies, and international partners to respond decisively to a threat of invasive zebra and quagga mussels at Shuswap Lake this month.
The Yakama Nation today celebrated the 16th anniversary of operations at its Cle Elum Supplementation and Research Facility, a central Washington facility designed to rear hatchery fish that the tribes feel are better adapted to survive and reproduce in the wild.
“Resident Fish, Data Management and Regional Coordination” fish and wildlife project proponents, who had requested some $57 million in annual funding for next year, got the goal-ahead from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week.
A total of 15 spring chinook have been trapped this year and transported around the Pelton Round Butte hydro project for release into Lake Billy Chinook to become the first of the species to ply the central Oregon waters of the Crooked, Metolius and upper Deschutes rivers in 50 years.
Habitat conditions in the lower Willamette River Superfund site may be closer to restoration for salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Lt. Col. Andrew D. Kelly has assumed command of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District.
Sockeye salmon counts at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam on each of the first three days this week (Monday through Wednesday) totaled more than 11 of the annual counts – season totals – recorded since construction of the hydro project was completed in 1938.
In between summertime fishing seasons this year for chinook and sockeye salmon, steelhead and other fish stocks, tribal fishermen could well be setting their sights on American shad, a non-native species that also heads up the Columbia River system each year to spawn.
A wetter than normal springtime has served to wipe away most of the last remnants of snowpack above west-central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam but has also served to fill the valued reservoir of water well in advance of the annual launch of flow augmentation for migrating salmon and steelhead.
Increased flows, lower temperatures and “outright removal of barriers” like irrigation diversion dams would dramatically increase the passage and, thereby, the survival of Pacific lamprey in the Umatilla River, according to a paper published in June in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management.
The Boise River Wildlife Management Area just got bigger thanks to the $4.2 million purchase of Hammer Flat.
The City of Boise, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and the Bonneville Power Administration worked together to protect the nearly 705 acre Hammer Flat parcel, which is important habitat for big game.
The 2012 sockeye return to the Columbia River basin was forecast to be the best ever, and in the early going the run, mostly bound for the Okanogan River system of north-central Washington and southern British Columbia, is performing as expected.
Steve Wright — Bonneville Power Administration administrator and CEO for more than a decade — announced on Tuesday that he will retire at the end of January 2013.
The Bonneville Power Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers have scheduled a round of public listening sessions/workshops related to the future implementation of the 1964 Columbia River Treaty.
Juvenile salmon collected at dams and transported down through the Columbia-Snake hydro system aboard barges show no ill effects from that conveyance, according to a research paper published this week.
The Bonneville Power Administration calculates that it had expenditures of $650 million in fiscal year 2011 for fish and wildlife mitigation activities across the Columbia-Snake River basin, according to the “2011 Expenditures Report: Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Program.”
Idaho Power Company biologists have begun a three-year survey of white sturgeon in the Snake River below Hells Canyon Dam and a portion of the lower Salmon River.
Montana’s Libby Dam has been releasing water over its spillway this week to test possible benefits to white sturgeon spawning in the Kootenai River near Bonners Ferry, Idaho.
Over the past decade, both the number and size of dams removed on rivers across the United States has been increasing and those removals typically involves release of at least some of the sediment stored in the reservoir behind the former dam.
How to meet the water needs for eastern Washington’s communities, industry, crops and fisheries is the focus of a report recently finalized by the Washington Department of Ecology’s Office of Columbia River.
A first group of adult spring chinook salmon – likely about five fish — were scheduled to be released today above the Pelton Round Butte Hydro project on the Deschutes River in central Oregon on their way to spawning grounds on the Deschutes, Crooked and Metolius rivers, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Northwest’s only nuclear plant has been approved to operate for an additional 20 years.
A greater percent of Columbia River flows this week through Bonneville Dam have once again been steered southward, this time in anticipation of the arrival of a large portion of the ocean-bound juvenile sockeye salmon that originated in central Idaho’s Stanley basin.
Catherine Creek, a tributary to the Grande Ronde River in the northeast corner of Oregon, will open to fishing for hatchery spring chinook salmon Saturday, the first such opening in 34 years.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week announced that it intends to revise its stormwater regulations to specify that a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit is not required for stormwater discharge from logging roads.
California sea lions, which have throughout time plundered commercial fish nets and stole fish from anglers’ lines in the lower river, have expanded their range.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon on Tuesday heard contradictory testimony about the effect of California sea lion predation on Columbia River salmon runs, and about the “harm” sustained by humans because of that predation – and, on the other side, the harm to humans resulting from lethal removal of the big pinnipeds.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday opted for an operational change at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam intended to reduce what has been a high level of descaling of juvenile sockeye salmon passing via the hydro project’s Powerhouse No. 2.
NOAA Fisheries has released a proposed Endangered Species Act recovery plan for Lower Columbia River salmon and steelhead, and is requesting public review and comment.
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced this week that Pendleton’s Henry C. Lorenzen has been nominated to serve on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Human activities, such as industrial production, transportation, and day-to-day living, are sources of many contaminants that flow into the Columbia River.
A recently completed reconnaissance study detected hundreds of these contaminants in water samples collected from wastewater-treatment-plant effluent and storm runoff from roads and other urban environments in nine cities that line the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington.
Charlie Black has been named the new director of Power Planning at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho is in the second year of implementing a top-down approach to restoring and improving Kootenai River habitat for white sturgeon and other native species.
With salmon counts lagging at the Bonneville Dam, fish and hydro system managers have ventured into relatively new territory by holding back a share of the incoming for a four-hour period Thursday from a surging Columbia River in an attempt to entice movement of what was expected to be a bumper upriver run.
Of the thousands of fishing holes across the nation, 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 an April 24 release by B.A.S.S. Communications.
In a retrospective interview with Idaho Public Television previewed this week, the long-time presiding federal judge in the Columbia River basin’s salmon recovery debate said efforts may to this point have fallen short by assuming dam breaching is not an option.
NOAA Fisheries “provided reasoned interpretations” of Marine Mammal Protection Act provisions earlier this year in granting the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington authority to kill California sea lions that are known to be preying on wild salmon stocks in the lower Columbia River, according to recent federal court filings.
Since April 13, national fish hatcheries in the Columbia River Gorge have released more than 10 million juvenile chinook salmon into the lower Columbia River and its tributaries, continuing a 70-year program that supports tribal and sport fish harvests worth millions of dollars.
Inside the National Guard Armory at Okanogan, Wash., Leroy and Mylan Williams teach a small crowd of onlookers the nearly lost art of building fish nets by hand. The father and son are part of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation and are teaching other tribal members how to build and use traditional fishing gear.
The Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee’s “Northwest Regional Forecast” released this week, tells the story of how the region’s electric utilities plan to keep the lights on over the coming decade.
On Bridge Creek, a tributary to the John Day River in eastern Oregon, scientists with NOAA Fisheries’ National Marine Fisheries Service are installing a series of structures as part of a unique, low-cost approach to stream restoration.
A total of as many as 900 test steel and concrete test panels, held in specially designed frames, are hanging in the boisterous waters of the lower Columbia to test the resilience over time of three silicon-based coatings.
The Bonneville Power Administration and the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority have signed a new long-term agreement to use additional reservoir flow shaping capability on the upper Columbia River in Canada to provide safer flows for protected fish and support power generation. The term of the new Non-Treaty Storage Agreement will extend to September of 2024.
The confrontations between those who want the California sea lion presence lessened in the lower Columbia River and those who do not continued this week both on the river and in the courtroom.
The surf’s up as Columbia and lower Snake rivers and tributaries flow with rains and runoff from bountiful snowpacks — water that is pouring down through the system earlier and at a higher level than normal.
They are among the smallest, least understood, and yet most important fish in the Columbia River and its tributaries.
Eulachons, better known as smelt, appear to be returning in stronger numbers the last two years than in the recent past, although they are still listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and, as such, are off limits to fishing.
The Independent Scientific Review Panel’s recently completed final review of 71 “Resident Fish, Data Management, and Regional Coordination” proposals includes a thumbs up for 14 projects submitted for funding through the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Program.
As part of President Obama’s “all-of-the-above” strategy for American energy, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Anne Castle announced this week that 373 existing Bureau of Reclamation canals and conduits have the combined potential of generating an additional 365,219 megawatt-hours of hydropower annually.
Removals of salmon-eating California sea lions resumed this week when two of the big marine mammals were the captured below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam by state officials and chemically euthanized.
Oregon’s Deschutes River basin is buzzing with the knowledge of good works completed, and more to come, in the effort to boost existing wild and hatchery produced salmon and steelhead populations, and create new ones.
Columbia Land Trust and the Bonneville Power Administration on Wednesday announced the purchase of 560 acres near the mouth of the Columbia River to permanently protect riverside habitat for Northwest fish and wildlife, including threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.
David J. Ponganis has been named Programs Director for the Northwestern Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, headquartered in Portland.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced Monday that, after considering the “best scientific and commercial data available, it has decided that chinook salmon stocks in the Upper Klamath and Trinity rivers basin of southern Oregon and northern California do not warrant listing as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
For 28 years the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has been responsible for counting adult salmon, steelhead and other fish that pass upstream through Columbia and Snake River hydro projects each year. But a change could be in the offing.
A recent surge of precipitation, and a forecast of more to come, the Snake River basin’s water supply forecast has become rosier, with the predicted April-August outflow pushing above 100 percent of average for the first time this season.
Research on northeast Oregon’s Catherine Creek is helping to focus habitat restoration efforts needed to recover the creek’s spring chinook, steelhead and bull trout populations, which are all listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The Washington Department of Ecology has issued a permit that means the Mill Pond Dam in Pend Oreille County can come down, restoring Sullivan Creek to the mountain stream it once was.
A federal judge on Thursday denied a request that sea lion trapping below the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam be forestalled while newly filed litigation plays out.
After a relatively slow start to the 2011-2012 wintertime snow-water collection period, Mother Nature has served up enough precipitation over the past few weeks to prompt evacuations of water behind hydro projects to assure there’s space to handle the spring meltdown that’s ahead.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday announced that those involved in a budding bull trout reintroduction program in northwest Oregon’s Clackamas River are among the recipients of 2011 Recovery Champion awards, which honors agency employees and partners for outstanding efforts to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species of fish, wildlife and plants.
Idaho Power’s trout-stocking program can bring some thrills to a lot of anglers, and none bigger than the one Marvin Channer of Boise got when he recently won $1,000 in the twice-annual jaw-tag drawing.
State officials are hoping that the third time is the charm as regards to their desire to remove salmon-munching California sea lions from the lower Columbia River.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has launched a process aimed at determining what management actions might be undertaken to reduce avian predators’ impacts on protected Columbia and Snake River salmon and steelhead in the mid-Columbia plateau region.
The complete elimination of the West Coast’s largest double-crested cormorant colony, located each spring and summer just inside the mouth of the Columbia River at East Sand Island, could, as a result of reduced predation on juvenile fish, boost populations of upriver steelhead by as much as 2.5 percent, according to a recent research report.
How would Flathead Lake’s complex food web and ecology change if an aggressive netting project started removing 140,000 lake trout every year?
Efforts already under way this spring at the Berggren Watershed Conservation Area continue to improve habitats for fish and wildlife on the lower McKenzie River. They are also helping to protect the river’s water quality.
Between now and May the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and staff will mull independent scientific assessments and testimony from an international group of proponents and others regarding the potential value Pacific Ocean research might provide in efforts to recover imperiled Columbia River basin salmon stocks.
The Bonneville Power Administration on Tuesday announced a proposed new approach to addressing situations when too much energy is available for delivery to power customers through a Pacific Northwest transmission system that the federal power marketing agency largely controls.
The Pacific Northwest is likely to continue producing more electricity than it needs in the spring and early summer, a time when demand for power usually is low and the supply of hydropower and wind power can be high because of seasonal storms and the annual snowmelt runoff in the region’s rivers, says an analysis by Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff.
Adult salmon and steelhead, with a little boost from their human friends, may spawn this year in the upper Deschutes, Metolius and Crooked river basins for the first time in more than 50 years.
A total of 8,097 naturally produced Snake River adult fall chinook salmon in 2011 made their way back from the Pacific and up through eight Columbia and Snake river hydro projects, according preliminary estimates produced by federal, state and tribal fishery experts.
The Grant County Public Utility District commissioners announced Thursday that they planned to plunge ahead with construction of juvenile salmon rearing facilities along central Washington’s White River despite last week’s rejection of requests for state and local building permits.
Northwest states and Canadian provinces have launched a letter-writing and lobbying campaign to assure that a $1 million appropriation line item in the Department of Interior’s fiscal year 2012 budget is spent to help cut off the spread of invasive quagga-mussels from a main source – the Park Service’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
According to a preliminary report released this week a total of 5,010 fall chinook salmon redds – supposed egg-filled nests that will produce a new generation — were observed in the lower Snake River and its tributaries this past fall, which is the second highest count since inception of intensive surveys in 1988.
The Bonneville Power Administration on Tuesday announced a proposal for compensating wind energy producers that are served by the federal power marketing agency’s transmission grid for periodically reducing their output when necessary to keep the electricity supply from exceeding demand during high river flows.
Scientific discussion continues regarding the existence, extent and/or causes of delayed or latent mortality in salmon and steelhead that must negotiate, particularly, the Columbia-Snake river hydro system.
This week consumer groups Food & Water Watch, Consumers Union, and the Center for Food Safety submitted a formal petition asking the Food and Drug Administration to classify and evaluate AquaBounty’s “AquAdvantage” genetically engineered salmon and all of its components as a food additive.
Researchers from NOAA’s Fisheries Service, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the private Kintama Research Services, Ltd., and Oregon State University have teamed up to explain why their ocean research benefits a program aimed at mitigating effects on fish and wildlife in freshwater.
The Walla Walla District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently identified metal tubing failures as the likely source of several inadvertent oil leaks from power transformer heat exchangers or “cooling units” at Ice Harbor Lock and Dam on the Snake River.
The Columbia Land Trust, Bonneville Power Administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday announced what they say is the largest purchase of fish and wildlife riverside habitat in the Columbia River estuary in nearly 40 years.
The federal process for removing four hydroelectric dams in the Klamath Basin advanced Tuesday with the release of draft report from the U.S. Department of Interior indicating benefits such as salmon recovery, more dependable irrigation water deliveries and job creation could outweigh disadvantages of removing the dams, including the projected $291 million cost, lost electrical production and increased flooding risks.
Projects aimed at satisfying the goals of the Willamette Project biological opinion will take a large share, about $40 million, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 2012 Columbia River Fish Mitigation budget, which is expected to total about $125.8 million.
Water supply forecasts, ski hill snow totals and backcountry snowpack have nudged up over the past week with sudden downpouring, after what has been a slow start to the wintertime water accumulation period.
In the space of a few days, many rivers in the Pacific Northwest have gone from near-record low levels to flood stage, jeopardizing riverside homes, causing flooding and challenging chinook salmon, steelhead and other native fishes.
What a difference a day makes.
On Monday the Northwest River Forecast Center issued a 2012 water volume runoff forecast for April-September as measured at the lower Columbia River’s The Dalles Dam that figured to be 86 percent of average due to relatively paltry precipitation totals across the basin, and particularly in the south.
On Tuesday,
“Our task is to find the sweet spot,” NOAA Fisheries’ Rob Jones said Tuesday of Columbia River basin fish managers’ ongoing quest to minimize the risk posed by hatchery production to remnant salmon and steelhead populations that continue to spawn in the wild.
The Bonneville Power Administration, and a host of organizations representing utility interests, late last week asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reconsider a Dec. 7 decision that declared a new BPA “redispatch and negative pricing” policy contrary to the law.
Four Columbia River treaty tribes last week released what they say is the most comprehensive restoration plan for Pacific lamprey in the basin.
A recently completed draft “Research, Monitoring and Evaluation” plan represents a “significant step” toward the development of a framework to guide efforts to revive salmon populations and other fish stocks in Oregon’s Willamette River valley, according to a report issued by the Independent Scientific Review Panel.
Flows from Mid-Columbia River basin hydroelectric projects are now being managed to protect thousands of nests left by more than 60,000 fall chinook salmon that returned to spawn in the Vernita Bar area of the Columbia’s Hanford Reach this fall.
Greenbelt Land Trust last week announced the acquisition of conservation easements on more than 300 acres of Willamette River frontage property in western Oregon’s Benton County that will benefit chinook salmon, cutthroat trout, Oregon chub, Pacific lamprey, western pond turtles and red-legged frogs.
On the 15th anniversary of the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, a quiet but steady picture of ecosystem health is emerging, scientists conclude in a new report.
The 2011 steelhead return was 11-fish strong as of Monday with more fish expected to trickle in, and completed sockeye and spring chinook salmon runs were small too. All, however, are encouraging signs for those involved in an effort to restore those fish stocks in central Oregon’s Metolius, Crooked and upper Deschutes rivers.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sided with wind generating companies in a Wednesday order giving the Bonneville Power Administration 90 days to correct what the commission called an “unduly discriminatory” policy limiting transmission of wind, thermal and other non-hydro power during high water flows in the Columbia River basin.
Plaintiffs have asked for another shot at convincing a new presiding judge to add two new processes to a court-ordered remand intended to rebuild the federal government’s Columbia/Snake river salmon protection plan.
NOAA Fisheries Service will hold a public meeting Monday (Dec. 5) in Omak, Wash., to continue its discussion of whether it is appropriate to reintroduce Upper Columbia spring-run chinook salmon to the Okanogan River basin as an “experimental” population.
Judge James A. Redden in a recent e-mail invited the federal government to respond to an Oct. 25 request that a court-appointed panel of independent scientist and a settlement judge be added to an ongoing process aimed at shoring up the strategy for protecting Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
He got more than he asked for.
The federal government on Wednesday reiterated its intent to work with the region’s tribes and states to respond to U.S. District Court Judge James Redden’s Aug. 2 order requiring a bolstering of habitat actions in the federal plan to restore Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Fishery managers are hoping for high chum salmon numbers and high flows (precipitation plus) this late fall and winter to enable Columbia River dam operators to create an expanded spawning area for the threatened species below Bonneville Dam.
With a fish and wildlife spending ramp up expected to continue in 2012 and beyond, the Bonneville Power Administration has said it must go slow in deciding whether to fund a $575,000 irrigation diversion improvement project in central Washington that is intended to benefit threatened Mid-Columbia River steelhead.
Each used a different combination of tools, climate indices and calculations, but all five meteorologists offering forecasts during a conference Oct. 29 in Portland agreed that “La Nina” could well influence what sort of upcoming winter the Northwest and other parts of the globe will experience.
Anglers participating in a special reward program this year hauled more than 155,000 northern pikeminnow from the Columbia and Snake rivers, thus saving an estimated 4 million young salmon and steelhead from getting eaten by the hungry predators.
A muffled roar and a puff of pulverized concrete preceded a rush of silt-laden water Wednesday as contractors set free southeast Washington’s White Salmon River by blasting a hole through the base of PacifiCorp’s Condit Dam.
Some fracturing of support for the lethal removal of predatory California sea lions from the lower Columbia emerged this week during a discussion by the Pinniped-Salmon Interaction Task Force in Portland.
Legal foes this week filed comments that say the federal government’s Columbia River basin salmon protection effort “fails to actually provide a meaningful or transparent” report on progress to-date and asks the judge presiding in the case to appoint a panel of independent scientific experts to ride herd on the process.
The Bureau of Reclamation has selected the construction of a third hydropower generating unit at Black Canyon Dam as the preferred alternative outlined in a Final Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact.
Pink salmon returns throughout the north Pacific Ocean rim have in recent years been extraordinarily large, so much so that fishery experts are gathering at month’s end in Vancouver, British Columbia, to ponder recent production trends and to identify future research needs.
Survival of hatchery spring chinook salmon released this past spring below central Washington’s Lake Wenatchee was substantially higher (approximately 45 percent) than for those released above the lake (approximately 10 percent).
Through September, an estimated 26,591 adult fall chinook salmon have been caught and kept during 2011’s fall lower Columbia River.
That catch eclipses the previous record, 26,195 fish caught in 2003, according to data compiled by the Oregon and Washington departments of fish and wildlife. The record will increase after the October catch is added to August-September totals. The records began in 1969.
Recent technical memorandums issued by the Fish Passage Center served as warnings, though not the final word, that latent/delayed mortality caused by passage down through the mainstem Columbia-Snake river hydro system may occur in salmon and steelhead, according to an Oct. 13 FPC memo responding to a critique from the Independent Scientific Advisory Board.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has selected Oregon State University to administer a collaborative marine research program in Newport called the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, or CIMRS.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday recommended, with qualifications, that an ambitious and expensive habitat restoration project be funded in the Tucannon River basin to make the southeast Washington stream more hospitable for threatened Snake River spring/summer chinook salmon and steelhead.
Idaho Power began its annual Fall Chinook Program early this week by reducing outflow from Hells Canyon Dam on the Snake River to 14,000 cubic feet per second to provide steady flows for chinook salmon during their spawning season.
Increased conservation during 2010 by Pacific Northwest electricity users saved 254 average megawatts, the equivalent annual power use of 153,900 homes, according to the annual “Utility Conservation Achievements Report” released this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and Regional Technical Forum.
Scientists last week observed bull trout spawning in the Clackamas River basin for the first time in more than 50 years.
The Bonneville Power Administration made a scheduled payment of $830 million for fiscal year 2011 to the U.S. Treasury on Oct. 5, 2011. This marks the 28th consecutive year BPA has made the payment on time and in full.
The federal government on Sept. 30 filed what it calls a “protective” notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit regarding U.S. District Court Judge James A Redden’s Aug. 2 ruling declaring illegal the 2010 biological opinion for the Federal Columbia River Power System.
“Major dam improvements occurred, acres of habitat were improved, predators were controlled, and fish status overall was good,” according the conclusion of the annual report summarizing a third year of implementation of the 10-year Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion.
Non-native American shad seemed to have adapted well to West Coast life over the past 100 years in a life cycle that includes Pacific Ocean sojourns and spawning and rearing in the Columbia River and Sacramento River systems.
Coho salmon fisheries opened Wednesday on the Wenatchee and Methow rivers and Icicle Creek (a tributary to the Wenatchee in central Washington), providing another target for anglers already chasing hatchery chinook salmon and steelhead.
The 2011 spring season’s high, cool flows down through the Columbia-Snake river hydro system may have been both a blessing and a curse, with overall survival of juvenile steelhead and yearling spring chinook above and near, respectively, long-term averages but lagging behind the past two years’ rates.
Federal, state and tribal officials on Wednesday approved, though with qualifications, a plan to draw down north Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille to a minimum control elevation of 2,051 this winter and, potentially, hold the reservoir at 2,055 during the winter of 2012-2013 to provide more spawning gravel for wild kokanee.
The overall forecast for this year’s Columbia River basin upriver fall chinook return has shrunk a bit since the preseason given lower than expected counts at hydro project fish ladders. But the Snake River portion of that run is meeting expectations.
The Okanogan County Public Utility District in a letter dated Monday, Sept. 26 asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to accept the district’s offer to voluntarily surrender its preliminary permit to build the Shankers Bend Dam on the Similkameen River in north-central Washington.
The Fish Passage Center has added another level of detail to its analysis of how Snake River salmon and steelhead, primarily, fare that migrate down through the Columbia/Snake River hydro system as juveniles or, alternatively, ride past the dams aboard barges.
It was smiles all around Wednesday for those watching the capture of tule fall chinook salmon in southwest Washington’s lower White Salmon River and the fishes’ release upstream, above the soon-to-be-removed Condit Dam.
The Sept. 15 updated forecast for Hanford upriver fall chinook salmon, like in-season forecasts for points downriver, downsizes expectations but still includes a good number of fish.
Tribal commercial fishers have at least one more week of fishing for salmon in Columbia River mainstem reservoirs above Bonneville Dam this season despite shrinking overall harvest allocations, but the non-Indian gill-net fleet has been put on hold pending a clearer understanding of the size of the 2011 upriver bright fall chinook run.
Last Wednesday anglers got their first chance to catch summer chinook salmon in the tailrace of the hydroelectric powerhouse operated by the Chelan County Public Utility District in Chelan.
The federal government has completed peer-reviewed scientific and technical studies providing new, detailed information about the environmental and economic impacts of removing four Klamath River hydroelectric dams — fulfilling a major condition of the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement.
NOAA Fisheries Service on Monday announced it has accepted the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington’s application for renewed authorization under Marine Mammal Protection Act to lethally remove individually identifiable California sea lions that are preying on protected salmon in the lower Columbia River.
A total of 1,071 Snake River sockeye salmon spawners have completed their journey from the Pacific Ocean to central Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley, making it the second largest return since at least the 1950s.
A draft annual report offered this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council for public takes a look back at everything from the effectiveness of its fish and wildlife program to power system happenings during fiscal year 2011, which ends at the end of the month.
The Department of Energy has awarded the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory nearly $300,000 to develop the next generation of PNNL’s “Sensor Fish,” which measure the hydraulic forces and physical contacts with structures that fish may experience as they pass through hydropower dam turbines.
Pink salmon, known as humpbacks or humpies, are known to have a relatively high incidence of straying — i.e. spawning someplace other than their natal stream.
And they are outdoing themselves this year with record numbers of the salmon being counted at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
The lower portion of the White Salmon River in southwast Washington will be closed to fishing for 12 hours Sept. 17 to allow an interagency clean-up team to remove derelict boats, camping gear and other debris before Condit Dam is breached in late October.
The U.S. Geological Survey has released an online, interactive “decision support system” that provides easy access to six newly-developed regional models describing how rivers receive and transport nutrients from natural and human sources to sensitive waters, such as the Gulf of Mexico.
Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this week announced nearly $17 million in funding over the next three years for research and development projects to advance hydropower technology.
The pulse of the Snake River sockeye salmon recovery effort remains strong this year with a total of 738 sockeye salmon spawners — so far — having found their way up 900 miles of the Columbia, Snake and Salmon rivers to central Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley.
Warming streams could spell the end of spring-run chinook salmon in California by the end of the century, according to a study by scientists at University of California Davis, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Idaho Water Resource Board have signed two partnering agreements to conduct geological and operational studies of Idaho’s Weiser River as part of an effort of possibly creating additional water storage in southwest Idaho.
Northeast Washington’s Kalispel Tribe has mounted an effort to turn back a wave of invasive northern pike that has devastated local fish populations and warns that other areas of the Columbia River basin could suffer the same consequence.
Anglers intent on filling their freezer with salmon might be advised, strangely enough, to head for a place that not long ago was largely barren of fall chinook.
Beginning Sept. 1 people fishing the strip of lower Snake River from where it hits the Idaho-Washington border upstream along state lines to the Hells Canyon Dam can take home up to six adipose fin clipped adult fall chinook salmon daily.
The states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington late last week submitted an application to NOAA Fisheries requesting a new authorization under Section 120 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act to lethally remove California sea lions known to prey on imperiled salmon stocks below the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
With a recent $475,000 federal grant, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are ramping up for a long-awaited 2015 acquisition of Kerr Dam in northwest Montana.
How much water will be needed to support communities, farms and fish in the Columbia Basin and where it will come from is the focus of a near-final report from the Washington Department of Ecology’s Office of Columbia River.
Based on a recently completed review, NOAA Fisheries Service has determined that all 13 Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead stocks now listed under the Endangered Species Act will retain their listing classification as either threatened or endangered.
The state of Oregon late last week released a conservation plan for Upper Willamette chinook salmon and steelhead, fish that have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1999.
In a pilot test planned in early September, some 100,000 pounds of chinook salmon will be processed at the East White Salmon fish facility built in 2006 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for Columbia River treaty-fishing tribes.
The Idaho Water Resources Board on July 29 approved the spending of up to $2 million for geologic and operational investigations and analysis that could build momentum toward a long-held goal of boosting water supplies by building a dam in the Weiser River canyon.
(Revised From Aug. 3 Version)
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden on Tuesday found wanting a federal plan to mitigate for hydro system impacts to Columbia-Snake river salmon and steelhead, but he gave NOAA Fisheries 2½ years to correct “a reliance on mitigation measures that are unidentified and not reasonably certain to occur.”
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation fishermen continued their investigation into the use of “selective” commercial-type fishing gear with a venture north of the border this week to snare sockeye salmon from the depths of Lake Osoyoos.
Three federal agencies have been collaborating on a climate change initiative launched in 2008 that called for the development of common and consistent climate change data for use in the three agencies’ longer-term planning activities for operation of Columbia-Snake hydro system for power production, and to assure safe passage up and downstream for salmon and steelhead.
Libby Dam releases are being ramped up to prepare for running the Kootenai River at low flows this fall to allow for the start of a long-planned white sturgeon habitat restoration project.
An international team of scientists has amassed the largest data set to date on greenhouse gas emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs.
Their analysis, published this week in the online version of Nature Geoscience, posits that these human-made systems emit about one-sixth of the carbon dioxide and methane previously attributed to them.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden on Tuesday found wanting a federal plan to mitigate for hydro system impacts to Columbia-Snake river salmon and steelhead, but he gave the agency in charge 2 ½ years to determine whether its approach is legally and/or biologically valid.
The states of Oregon and Washington are ready to retrench after hearing late last week that the federal government has revoked their authorization to remove, lethally or otherwise, salmon-chomping California sea lions that feed in the Columbia River.
A return of seven spring chinook and three kokanee-turned-sockeye may seem puny to some, but when you consider the fact they are the first anadromous returns from the Metolius River since 1968, it’s huge.
With more and more adult fish landing in central Idaho’s Redfish Lake to spawn, researchers involved in the long-running Snake River sockeye salmon revival program are beginning to see, as expected, a stronger contribution to the annual juvenile outmigration from naturally produced smolts.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week adopted a 7.8 percent average wholesale power rate increase.
The Bonneville Power Administration on Tuesday adopted a landmark settlement of the Residential Exchange Program, with the hope it will lead to the end of years of dispute over the way consumers share the benefits of low-cost hydroelectric power from the Columbia River system.
NOAA Fisheries on Tuesday published in the Federal Register a proposal to allow the reintroduction of upper Columbia spring chinook salmon in the Okanogan River basin in north-central Washington as an experimental population under Endangered Species Act regulations.
It’s a time for celebration of a sort when the first Snake River sockeye salmon each year reaches its home in the central Idaho high country… and that time has arrived.
Fishery managers from Oregon and Washington on July 15 announced that the sockeye salmon season on the Columbia River between the Astoria-Megler Bridge near the river mouth and Highway 395 Bridge near Pasco, Wash., as well as the retention of adult chinook downstream from Bonneville Dam, would be closed Monday, July 18 through July 31.
A complaint filed in mid-June with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that challenges the Bonneville Power Administration’s new “Environmental Redispatch and Negative Pricing” policies is misdirected, and legally misguided, according to a rebuttal filed Tuesday by the federal power marketing agency.
— From Babtist Paul Lumley, Executive Director, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
The response from Mr. Bryan Irwin to the July 8, 2011. CBB article “Another Tribal Fishery Aims At Summer Chinook While Allowing Sockeye Escapement” is laden with misleading information, demonstrates a lack of understanding about gill nets, unfairly describes how gill nets impact fish, and shows a general animosity for the tribal fishery.
Three long-running ocean research projects that are drawing more than $4.7 million in funding during the current fiscal year were recommended for at least one more of funding with the proviso that they produce a synthesis explaining how their work is helping the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Expectations are that Bonneville Power Administration spending on fish and wildlife projects will continue to climb in fiscal year 2012 as the federal power marketing agency works to satisfy long-held obligations, as well as relatively newborn commitments made through the so-called “Fish Accords” and a federal “biological opinion.”
After being turned down earlier by the Washington Department of Ecology and in state Superior Court, a coalition of fishing and salmon conservation groups on Wednesday requested that a state appeals court require the easing of a state water quality standard so more water can be spilled for salmon passage at mainstem Columbia-Snake hydro projects.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council unanimously elected Joan Dukes, an Oregon member of the Council, vice chair this week for the remainder of 2011. Dukes replaces Dick Wallace, a Washington member, in the position. Wallace resigned from the Council in June.
The tiny adipose fin mounted atop many salmon and trout species may have a function after all, according to a research paper published online Monday in the research journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“…if society-at-large wishes to restore Snake River salmon, steelhead, Pacific lamprey, and white sturgeon to sustainable, fishable levels, then a significant portion of the lower Snake River must be returned to a free-flowing condition by breaching the four lower Snake River dams,” according to a resolution approved recently by 86.4 percent of the Western Division of American Fisheries Society’s members.
Wind energy projects in the Bonneville Power Administration system have curtailed 6.2 percent of their scheduled output since BPA began intermittent limits on coal, natural gas and other thermal and wind generation to help manage an oversupply of electricity during the highest Columbia River runoff in more than a decade.
The Bureau of Reclamation is requesting public comment to help identify issues to be addressed in an environmental assessment for the proposed John W. Keys, III Pump-Generating Plant Modernization Project. The pump-generating plant is located at Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River about 90 miles west of Spokane.
The Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, held a change of command ceremony Thursday, June 30.
During the ceremony, Col. Steven R. Miles transferred command to Col. John W. Eisenhauer. Brig. Gen. John R. McMahon, commander and division engineer of the Corps’ Northwestern Division, presided over the ceremony.
Bioenergetics modeling tests done as part of 2007-2010 research indicates that the presence of non-native American shad in the Columbia-Snake river could provide fuel for young fall chinook salmon as they motor each year toward the Pacific Ocean.
Bull trout will soon return to Oregon’s Clackamas River, one of their home waters from which they were completely wiped out nearly 50 years ago.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will reintroduce the native fish to this major tributary of the Willamette River near Portland over the next month.
After nearly a century of serving PacifiCorp customers, Condit Dam on the White Salmon River in south central Washington will start to be removed this fall, fulfilling a multi-party settlement agreement signed in 1999, and providing access to about 32 miles of relatively pristine habitat for salmon, steelhead and other fish.
Conservation objectives spawned in the 1990s because of diminished Snake River spring/summer chinook numbers can help ward off species extinction.
But using the tool of hatchery supplementation might not work in the long run to rebuild populations, warns the Independent Scientific Review Panel in a May 27 “retrospective report.”
A coalition of leading Pacific Northwest energy companies on Monday filed a complaint against the Bonneville Power Administration that accuses the agency of using its near monopoly control of the region’s electrical grid to break its contracts to transmit scheduled power from wind farms and thermal generation plants.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plan for shepherding juvenile salmon and steelhead down through the Columbia-Snake river hydro to the Pacific Ocean this summer includes a strong dose of spill as it has in recent years.
Columbia-Snake river water supply forecasts, and reservoirs, continue to rise as a result of continued above-average precipitation and enormous mountain snowpacks that continue their slow meltdown.
During a wet and cool April and May – a time when the Columbia River basin’s water stores usually begin to drain – estimated runoff volumes were boosted by more than 23 million acre feet of water, according to Bonneville Power Administration officials.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday recommended more than $30 million in limited, short-term funding for 40 research and monitoring projects aimed at improving knowledge about the status of fish and wildlife in the Columbia River basin.
The Bonneville Power Administration’s fish and wildlife expenditures during 2010 came in at $802.3 million with more than half of that total for foregone revenues and power purchases, according to a draft report prepared by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Although adding gravel to a river to replace lost sediments won’t likely cool the whole river channel, it can create cool water refuges that protect fish from thermal pollution, according to a U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station study.
A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates the infestation of trees by mountain pine beetles in the high country across the West could potentially trigger earlier snowmelt and increase water yields from snowpack that accumulates beneath affected trees.
A massive and continued outpouring down through the Columbia-Snake River system over the past couple of weeks has pushed water over the banks in many places and complicated the tasks of dam operators trying both to minimize flow damage and hold down “total dissolved gas” levels that could ultimately harm migrating salmon and other aquatic life.
A net pen trout rearing operation on the mid-Columbia has taken a devastating hit from heightened total dissolved gas levels in the river as Columbia-Snake dam operators struggle to manage brimful rivers for flood control and to protect fish.
For the first time since the 1960s spring chinook salmon – two so far – have made the round trip from central Oregon’s upper Deschutes River to the Pacific Ocean and back again to become the initial fruits of reintroduction efforts.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has appointed state Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island, to represent the state on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. His appointment is effective July 1.
The Bonneville Power Administration and BC Hydro are pursuing a new long-term agreement to use additional reservoir storage on the upper Columbia River in Canada to provide flows for protected fish and support power generation.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Region Fisheries Program is releasing an informational video on the dangers of quagga mussels and zebra mussels spreading to Northwest waters via boats.
With high Columbia-Snake river flows generating an oversupply of hydroelectricity in the middle of the night Tuesday-Wednesday, the Bonneville Power Administration partially and temporarily limited the production of non-hydro energy, including fossil-fuel and other thermal generation and wind energy that was entering its transmission system.
With near-record runoff potential as a result of late season heavy snowpack throughout the Columbia Basin, river managers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation are using the region’s major storage dams to protect life and property and minimize impacts to fish, navigation, power generation, and irrigation.
High water has started to cause some problems at the outset of a flood season that is expected to last for weeks in the Upper Columbia River Basin.
California sea lions haunting the lower Columbia River below Bonneville Dam apparently got the memo.
Within a few days of NOAA Fisheries’ notice that the states of Oregon and Washington would once again be allowed to trap and remove big pinnipeds that are known to prey on salmon, the sea lions began their annual exodus from the river.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service this week proposed designating a population of hatchery-raised steelhead salmon in Oregon’s Deschutes River as “experimental,” which would provide legal protection to anyone who harmed the fish while otherwise acting lawfully.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced today that it will close The Dalles navigation lock on Tuesday, May 24 at 6 a.m. to repair a gearbox that operates the mechanism for opening and closing the north leaf of the downstream gate. The lock is expected to reopen Saturday, May 28 at 6 a.m.
Chinook salmon reared in the upper stretches of the Columbia River watershed 250 to 500 years ago used to leave their freshwater habitat and enter the estuary – and possibly even the Pacific Ocean – when they were smaller and younger than most of their contemporary counterparts.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service said today it is re-authorizing the states of Washington and Oregon to lethally remove specific California sea lions that congregate 140 miles from the Pacific Ocean just below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam to eat adult salmon and steelhead swimming upriver to spawn.
American shad are not native to the Columbia River basin, but they have largely flourished since being introduced to the West Coast from Pennsylvania in the late 19th century.
Improving the lot of wild Snake River steelhead is the primary focus of two west-central Idaho habitat restoration projects recommended by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council Tuesday for $3.8 million in funding during the fiscal year 2011-2014 period.
A total of up to $2.25 million will be spent this year to trigger a Kootenai River habitat restoration project in Idaho’s panhandle that is intended to improve spawning conditions and survival for endangered white sturgeon.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced this week that the Bureau of Reclamation has awarded a $102 million construction contract as part of the project to overhaul the generators in the Third Power Plant at Grand Coulee Dam.
Michael Carrier has been appointed assistant regional director for Fishery Resources in the Pacific Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Regional Director Robyn Thorson announced this week.
Litigants took turns Monday (May 9) both praising and tearing down NOAA Fisheries’ plan for rejuvenating Columbia-Snake river salmon runs in their responses to questions posed by U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden about the strategy’s scientific underpinnings and assumptions.
A letter to counsel sent by U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden aims to focus discussions Monday on a list of six “issues” he identified regarding NOAA Fisheries Service’s 2010 Supplemental Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion.
Thanks to a big burst of salmon swimming up and over Bonneville Dam in recent days, Columbia River anglers will have at least additional four days to catch spring chinook on the mainstem from the hydro project up to the Oregon/Washington border under a re-opened season adopted Wednesday by fishery managers from Oregon and Washington.
A still-wet spring has served to push up forecasts of how much water will be on tap this spring and summer for fish, irrigators, power generators and others depending on the Columbia-Snake river system.
Recharging the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie aquifer and the Spokane River with groundwater from near the southern portion of Lake Pend Oreille is technically feasible, according to a study just released.
The reservoirs behind Priest Rapids, Wanapum and Rocky Reach dams in central Washington got an infusion last week with the release about 15,500 hatchery-raised juvenile white sturgeon that it is hoped will form the foundation for habitat-filling, self-sustaining populations.
Researchers from the Columbia River basin, British Columbia, Finland and Japan gathered in Portland to discuss a common theme – that populations of lamprey have slumped to all-time lows and something needs to be done about it.
The Columbia River system could see more runoff this spring than it has in a decade. It will also likely see more wind generation than it has ever seen before.
Bonneville Power Administration officials say such a situation could pose unique challenges for dam operators, whose goal is to operate the hydro system reliably and keep water conditions safe for fish.
The Interior Department this week released a report that assesses climate change risks and how these risks could impact water operations, hydropower, flood control, and fish and wildlife in the western United States.
Three Columbia River Gorge national fish hatcheries recently released more than two million juvenile spring chinook salmon, continuing a 70-year program.
The National Hydropower Association early this month honored seven hydropower organizations, including central Washington’s Grant County Public Utility District and Portland General Electric Company, with Outstanding Stewards of America’s Waters Awards in recognition of significant, innovative projects that serve as models for the industry.
A new “synthesis” of research data points to three bird colonies, out of nine total, in the mid-Columbia/lower Snake River region that might be the best targets for management actions to reduce predation on migrating wild juvenile salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Two conservation groups on April 15 filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the state Oregon and the federal government in order to stop hatchery operations on northeast Oregon’s Sandy River they say are causing harm to wild salmon and steelhead and violating the Endangered Species Act.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on April 12 approved the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s “Springfield Sockeye Hatchery Master Plan for the Snake River Sockeye Program,” which gives the state agency the go-ahead to begin more in-depth planning with an ultimate goal of building the facility.
At the request of federal, state and tribal salmon managers, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week throttled up discharges from east-central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam as a hedge against what’s to come and to increase flows for juvenile salmon swimming toward the Pacific Ocean.
This week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Region Fisheries Program began an eight- week “Sammie the Salmon” social media campaign, which follows a spring chinook released from Winthrop National Fish Hatchery, near the Canadian border, as she travels 600 miles and passes nine dams on her two-month journey to the Pacific Ocean.
If continued testing this year and next proves favorable, the states of Oregon and Washington could launch a full-fleet commercial salmon fishery on the lower Columbia River in late summer-fall of 2013 employing “selective” fishing gear.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week recommended 100 projects, some new and some ongoing, to improve scientific knowledge about fish and wildlife throughout the Columbia River Basin.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last week developed an interim operations plan it feels will provide a safe navigation route through Lower Granite Dam’s reservoir while still attending to the needs of juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating toward the Pacific Ocean.
A decision nearly a year in the making is expected next week when the Northwest Power and Conservation Council passes judgment on a set of 100 fish and wildlife project proposals that are projected to draw an estimated $78 million in funding during fiscal year 2012.
The firm that designed and provided construction oversight for central Oregon’s Pelton Round Butte Selective Water Withdrawal Project was honored late last week with a “Grand Award” from the American Council of Engineering Companies.
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this week announced $26.6 million in funding for research and development projects to advance hydropower technology, including pumped storage hydropower.
The Department of the Interior this week released the results of an internal study that shows the department could generate up to one million megawatt hours of electricity annually and create jobs by adding hydropower capacity at 70 of its existing facilities, including those in the Northwest.
The reintroduction of spring chinook salmon and summer steelhead to habitat above the Pelton-Round Butte hydroelectric project on central Oregon’s Deschutes River is becoming a rite of spring for stakeholders, including school children and other local residents.
Preliminary data suggests the new fish facility at central Oregon’s Round Butte Dam can sweep in significant numbers of salmonid smolts so that the young fish can be given a ride around the hydro project and two other dams to be released downstream.
After making a few adjustments, federal agencies this week submitted to U.S. District Court a spring 2011 “fish operations plan” for mainstem Columbia-Snake river hydro projects that has been accepted by legal allies and foes.
Columbia Basin Trust and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council have renewed their agreement to collaborate on projects “that promote an understanding and appreciation of the international Columbia River Basin.”
An effort to build a new, “local” coho salmon broodstock in central Idaho’s Clearwater River drainage reached an important milestone last week with the release of 550,000 hatchery reared juvenile fish that are the offspring of adults that returned to the basin in 2009.
A statistical “chum emergence model” that has proved out in recent years’ testing is giving hydro and salmon managers another tool for assessing conditions experienced by the threatened species in the often roiled water below Bonneville Dam.
The Estuary Partnership is requesting proposals for habitat restoration projects in the lower Columbia River and estuary. Projects that address salmonid restoration and protection are the priority of this request. Applications for the first round of funding are due on April 22.
Fish in Montana’s Flathead River below Hungry Horse Dam have had the best conditions possible in recent years as the dam has been operated to mimic natural flows, according to a comprehensive study recently published in a prestigious science journal.
A hatchery program that has since 1991 focused, primarily, on preserving genetic materials and avoiding extinction of a species is poised to take the next steps toward recolonizing three high country lakes, two of which that have long been empty, with anadromous, naturally produced Snake River sockeye salmon.
The sluiceway at Bonneville Dam’s Powerhouse 1 (nearest the Oregon shore) passed with flying colors tests evaluating whether it would be a suitable passage route for spawned out steelhead, or kelt.
The kelt are headed downstream toward saltwater and thus have the potential to turn around and return later in the year to spawn again.
Wheat farmers in eastern Oregon and Washington who use no-till production systems can substantially stem soil erosion and enhance efforts to protect water quality, according to research by U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists.
Steller sea lion predation on white sturgeon in the waters below Bonneville Dam this year has continued its rapid growth and in the process left fish and wildlife managers with a problem for which there are really few answers.
It’s a whole new world in central Oregon’s Lake Billy Chinook where a new water withdrawal-juvenile salmon collection “tower” is stirring the reservoir’s temperature-stratified waters and recreating historic seasonal temperature conditions below the Round Butte-Pelton dam hydro project in the Deschutes River.
Run-size forecasts completed this week include an expected return this year to the mouth of the Columbia of 17,500 Snake River “wild” fall chinook salmon, a stock that is protected under the Endangered Species Act.
“The federal salmon plan is based in sound science, is action oriented, has a vast partnership as an implementation team and should be given a chance to succeed,” according to a legal brief filed jointly Feb. 11 by the Warm Springs, Umatilla and Yakama tribes.
Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Northwest Fisheries Science Center’s Watershed Program have completed a study demonstrating that a larger, more concentrated effort is required to produce measurable changes in fish abundance at a watershed scale.
Lorri Bodi has been named the Bonneville Power Administration’s vice president for Environment, Fish and Wildlife, the federal power marketing agency announced today.
U.S. Rep. Don Young of Alaska earlier this month introduced one piece of legislation that would require the labeling of genetically engineered fish and another that would impose an outright ban such fish in the United States.
Citing the lack of a science review for the proposed project, and the fact that the sea lion removal program has been, at least for now, derailed, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council opted this week to not support a request for the funding to build three floating traps to snare the big marine mammals below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council added a fish and wildlife protection plan for the Blackfoot River in western Montana to its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program this week, paving the way for potential funding to improve fish and wildlife habitat and production.
Oregon State University oceanographers deployed their first undersea glider in 2005 and in the past five years, their small fleet of data-gathering autonomous vehicles has logged more than 43,000 kilometers — a distance that would more than circumnavigate the globe.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
