The allowed catch of white sturgeon in the lower Columbia River (from Bonneville Dam down to the mouth of the river) could be reduced by as much as 35 percent from recent years’ levels, Oregon and Washington department of fish and wildlife officials said during a meeting Thursday in Vancouver, Wash.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will add approximately 250,000 spring chinook smolts to Young’s Bay near Astoria next spring in an attempt to improve survival and catch rates of salmon throughout the Columbia River and its tributaries.
The 2009 season’s Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead runs are beginning to ebb but not before allowing fish counters to tally some remarkable numbers.
This year’s stellar Snake River steelhead spawning run includes a hatchery component that typically stalls at a dead-end along the Oregon-Idaho border that is called Hells Canyon Dam.
It isn’t exactly on the fish recovery front burner, yet a Kootenai Tribe of Idaho effort to rekindle populations of kokanee in Idaho Panhandle streams is showing signs of success.
Thousands of surplus coho are being processed at Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife fish hatcheries along the North Coast and Columbia River in preparation for distribution to the hungry through food banks around the state.
The steady stream of fish passing over the lower Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam this week bodes well for a doubling of the modern-day record return of fall chinook salmon.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday recommended more than $21 million in spending over the next four years to protect fish habitat, improve flows and reconnect tributary streams to eastern Idaho’s Lemhi River.
One of the considerations in planning for the reintroduction of salmon and steelhead above the three-dam Pelton Round Butte Hydroelectric Project on the Deschutes River in central Oregon was to determine the risk of introducing fish disease above dams.
The lower Columbia River commercial fleet got one last shot at spawning upriver fall chinook salmon this week, and anglers got a doubled bag limit in mainstem reaches between Portland and Bonneville Dam, with the goal of allowing each fishery’s full harvest allocation.
After three straight years of low sockeye returns, salmon runs in the Fraser River this year are exceeding expectations.
The latest estimate of 34 million returning sockeye is second only to the 1913 run of 39 million fish. Plus, for the first time in four years, the return has been sufficient to sustain regular commercial fisheries in Canada and the United States.
The Fish Passage Center on Aug. 31 offered for review its draft 2010 annual report on the long-running “Comparative Survival Study (CSS) of PIT-tagged Spring/Summer Chinook and Summer Steelhead.”
After more than seven years in development, a final habitat conservation plan for protected fish and wildlife species on state forest lands is being rolled out by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Success in the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program may well be measured by anglers’ declining ability to claim cash rewards for the removal of salmon-eating predators from the Columbia River.
With plenty of surplus hatchery origin coho salmon available for harvest, the states of Oregon and Washington this week approved additional commercial fisheries and liberalized daily bag limits for the Columbia River mainstem.
Some fine-tuning and a bolstering of supporting information should allow planning to move ahead on a proposed expansion of the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho’s white sturgeon hatchery facilities in northern Idaho, according to the Independent Scientific Review Panel’s assessment completed Oct. 13.
Global warming in the next century could cause a significant increase in the productivity of high-elevation forests of the Pacific Northwest, a new study suggests. However, forests at lower elevations — which in recent years have accounted for more than 80 percent of the region’s timber harvest — could face a decline in growth.
— From Tom Murtagh, ODFW district fish biologist, Clackamas:
RE: Fish Biologists Tagging Willamette Coho To Better Understand Surprisingly High Return https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/361279.aspx (CBB, Oct. 16)
Thanks for the good write-up. I did want to make a few clarifications, however.
Expectations for this year’s Columbia River upriver fall chinook salmon and summer steelhead runs were lowered this week, though not by much, based on fish counts thus far at Bonneville Dam.
Nearly half the young Snake River sockeye salmon being raised at the Oxbow Fish Hatchery near Cascade Locks, Ore., were killed late last month as a result of a damaged raceway valve.
Central Idaho’s Redfish Lake is teeming, in a comparative sense, with sockeye salmon once again after decades of relative dormancy.
Through Tuesday a total of 1,145 of the reddening spawners had been counted this year at either Sawtooth Hatchery or Redfish Lake Creek after completing a 900-mile freshwater journey up the Columbia, Snake and Salmon rivers to Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley.
The first of several 2010 hatchery steelhead fisheries in central Washington got under way Sept. 4 with the opening of the Hanford Reach section of the Columbia River, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A federal judge on Aug. 30 granted a preliminary injunction to “maintain the status quo” while litigants argue over whether Honolulu’s solid waste can be transported to the Northwest and put to rest in a south-central Washington landfill in the Columbia River gorge.
A draft revision to the 2008 Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan is available for a 60-day public review period, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week.
The notion of harvesting fish from the Columbia River basin with “selective” commercial gear is gaining attention, with central Washington’s Colville Tribes among those taking the lead.
A highly successful fishing season has raised concerns that the spawner escapement to the mid-Columbia River’s Hanford Reach will be less than desired to assure maintenance of the most heralded of the basin’s wild salmon populations.
The total 2009 steelhead count at the lower Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam has broken the record, and the so-called “wild” portion of the return is also the biggest on the books.
Sport, non-Indian commercial and tribal fishers this late summer and fall are sharing the wealth of strong returns of salmon and steelhead to the Columbia River basin.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Grande Ronde tribal biologists are busy these days tracking the whereabouts of an upper Willamette River coho salmon stock that has persisted beyond expectations.
A process of well over a year involving discussions with others in the region has resulted in the approval of three “easily understandable metrics” — high level indicators of success of projects funded through the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Three Kennewick men have been charged in Washington’s Franklin County District Court on several counts involving theft of salmon and steelhead from a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fish hatchery collection site on the Snake River in southeast Washington.
The October 10, 2009 CBB article, “Idaho Wants New Hatchery To Increase Snake River Sockeye Smolt Production Up To One Million” https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/360326.aspx had a section describing the demise of the sockeye that was incomplete. It starts with the discussion of the Sunbeam Dam and ends mentioning the four Lower Snake River dams. There are several important facts missing in this description.
Warmer water conditions are likely contributing to the bumper crop of pikeminnow that has been caught so far this year in the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program in the lower Columbia and Snake rivers.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed a fish collection and sorting facility on the South Fork McKenzie River just below Cougar Dam to support the recovery of endangered salmon and bull trout populations in the Willamette River basin.
Barnard Construction Company of Bozeman, Montana has been selected as the contractor to remove the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Olympic Peninsula’s Elwha River in Washington.
The Yakama Nation and conservation groups continue to press legal action to prevent the import of Hawaiian garbage for storage at a Columbia River gorge landfill even though the waste transfer plan has been stalled for now.
The Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama tribes opened the first of three commercial fishing periods for the 2010 fall commercial season Tuesday.
With removal of Condit Dam set to begin next fall, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will hold a public meeting Aug. 31 in Underwood to discuss the future of sport fisheries on the White Salmon River.
Federal officials this week told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council that a good plan for protecting Columbia River basin salmon just got better.
The state of Idaho hopes to soon take a huge step forward in its effort to rebuild a Snake River sockeye salmon stock that nearly winked out during the 1980s and 1990s.
A recent study on the effects of PIT tags on the survival, growth and behavior of hatchery spring chinook salmon indicates that tag-induced mortality and tag loss is substantial.
A University of Idaho fisheries research group says some Columbia/Snake upriver steelhead populations are at risk as anglers cash in on the high numbers of steelhead concentrating in cool tributaries in western Oregon and Washington.
For the first time in recent history, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will open the upper Snake River for fall chinook harvest on Sept. 1.
The state of Oregon and Bonneville Power Administration are closing in on a 15-year, $103.5 million agreement that aims to protect and/or restore at least an additional 16,880 acres to fulfill the federal agency’s obligation to mitigate for wildlife habitat losses resulting from the construction of Willamette River basin dams.
Sockeye salmon returns to Idaho’s Sawtooth Basin have risen to the highest levels since 1955 when 4,361 wild fish were trapped as they headed up Redfish Lake Creek to spawn.
The opening late last week of a first-in-recent-memory sport fishery for sockeye salmon in British Columbia’s Lake Osoyoos has raised the ire of First Nations groups.
Both treaty and non-treaty commercial fisheries on the Columbia River mainstem were approved Tuesday by the Columbia River Compact.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week announced the selection of Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration projects in nine states, including million-dollar projects in the Northwest.
River conditions were, for the most part, “normal,” this year; as were reach-by-reach survival rates for yearling chinook salmon during their migration down the lower Snake/Columbia River federal hydro system, according to preliminary data discussed in a Sept. 14 memo from NOAA’s Northwest Fishery Science Center.
A 2009 Snake River summer steelhead run that could well break the existing record has allowed the Idaho Fish and Game Commission to expand harvest opportunities in the Snake, Salmon and Little Salmon rivers by nearly doubling bag limits on a portion of the big trout returning from the ocean.
Starting Tuesday, hatchery steelhead fisheries will open on the upper Columbia, Wenatchee, Icicle, Entiat, Methow and Okanogan rivers with a new inflated bag limit, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service this week released its recovery plan for Middle Columbia River steelhead, a fish that was first given protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1999.
Spawning space for kokanee will be kept at a minimum this fall in northern Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille because little space is needed; only 40,000 mature females are expected to deposit eggs in the lake bottom gravels this year.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will be placing radio tags in coho salmon bound for the upper Willamette River and its tributaries over the next three weeks in an attempt to better understand the movements of fish returning to the basin.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden has called for a round of legal arguments regarding the federal government’s recently released “insurance policy for fish” – a new chapter added to NOAA Fisheries Service’s Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion on the status of protected salmon and steelhead stocks.
While West Coast fishery managers struggle to reverse the fortunes of numerous imperiled salmon and steelhead stocks the Willamette River’s coho population is doing fine with little help from humans.
Washington anglers have been called on to help boost the recovery of wild steelhead stocks by catching as many hatchery-reared fish as they can along the mid-Columbia River’s Hanford Reach.
The modern-day record return of sockeye salmon to central Idaho’s Sawtooth Basin continues to mount, though the appearance of spawners has slowed to a trickle.
The 2009 upriver fall chinook salmon return to the Columbia River basin has turned out to be smaller than expected though its Snake River component appears strong.
(Revised from Sept. 15 version)
NOAA Fisheries Tuesday filed in federal court a “strengthened plan” for protecting salmon and steelhead that swim up and down the federal government’s Columbia-Snake river hydropower system.
A peculiar trend continues at southeast Washington’s Lower Granite Dam where so-called “jack” fall chinook salmon counts during September have been higher than counts of adult chinook.
NOAA Fisheries today filed in federal court a “strengthened plan” for protecting salmon and steelhead that swim up and down the federal government’s Columbia-Snake river hydropower system.
With the 2010 Snake River sockeye salmon return to Sawtooth Valley headed for a record, Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists started this week passing fish through the adult trap on Redfish Fish Lake Creek to continue their spawning journey.
This year’s sockeye salmon “good news” extends to central Washington’s Lake Wenatchee where sport fishers are taking aim at returning spawners for the third year in a row, which is an unprecedented streak.
Starting this week, fishery managers from Washington and Oregon began testing the feasibility of five types of alternative commercial fishing gears on the lower Columbia River.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service this week approved a Pacific Fishery Management Council proposal that for the first time will make a major shift in how certain West Coast fish harvests are managed.
In the midst of a building storm, Joseph Blackburn checked on the chinook salmon in the Powell trap with a flashlight about 1 a.m., Aug. 6 and did not see any dead fish.
A total of 556 anadromous sockeye salmon were released into central Idaho’s Redfish Lake Tuesday and Wednesday with the task of rekindling a salmon population that had in the 1990s shrunk to zero naturally spawning fish.
The 2009 season’s string of peculiar, and for the most part unexplainable, Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead return numbers has continued into the fall with steelhead counts at Bonneville Dam mounting toward a potential record and fall chinook “jack” totals already in record territory.
Anglers who catch a salmon bearing a jaw tag or a colored “spaghetti” tag near its dorsal fin can play an important role in a new study of experimental fishing gear now under way in the lower Columbia River.
What are the long-term evolutionary implications of prolonged fishing for the fish that humans and, perhaps more importantly, diverse ecosystems depend on?
Aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will host a public stakeholder meeting Sept. 29 on its Hatchery Review Team’s draft report of a review of the Washington Lower Snake River Compensation Plan (LSRCP) Fish Hatcheries — Lyons Ferry and Tucannon — and their satellite juvenile acclimation and adult recapture facilities.
CBB Shorts: Coeur d’Alene Kokanee Fishing; Wolves Killed In Oregon; Conservation Grants; Lake Pend Oreille Levels; Columbia Water Levels For Spillwall Construction
NOAA Fisheries today (Friday) released a draft environmental impact statement that will help the agency guide federal hatchery operations in the Columbia River basin and determine how best to distribute federal Mitchell Act funds.
The sockeye salmon trapping season in central Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley has gotten off to a strong start with Thursday’s haul of 62 fish – which is larger than any daily capture during 2009’s record return.
Based on the in-season projection through July 31, last month’s steelhead catch in the lower Columbia River fell just short of last year’s record July harvest (dating back to at least the early 1970s).
U.S. District Court Judge Edward Shea on July 29 issued a temporary restraining order barring the shipment Hawaiian garbage up the Columbia River Gorge to Roosevelt Regional Landfill for at least 30 days.
For a second year, the Colville Confederated Tribes are funding fish production at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Colville Fish Hatchery, a state facility in northeast Washington that was slated for closure under last year’s budget cuts.
The Columbia River basin’s 2009 “upriver” summer steelhead run is muscling its way toward elite status as the count of the silvery spawners climbing Bonneville Dam’s fish ladders approaches 400,000.
Three tribal commercial fishing periods on the Columbia River mainstem above Bonneville Dam were approved Tuesday in anticipation of building fall chinook and coho salmon returns.
The number of invasive American shad counted passing over Bonneville Dam’s fish ladders this year is the lowest since 2000 and continues a downward trend that started following 2004’s record count of nearly 5.4 million fish.
The preseason forecast envisioned that 278,900 “Group A” summer steelhead would cross the lower Columbia’s Bonneville Dam this year, but a series of high daily counts at the dam convinced the Technical Advisory Team last Friday (Aug. 21) to boost that estimate to 425,000.
But the forecast is likely to rise again.
The early catch success of the non-tribal gill-net fleet in early-fall outings on the lower Columbia River mainstem resulted in the boats being docked to prevent additional “impacts” in the near term on Endangered Species Act-listed salmon.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week unveiled a fiscal year 2010 “start of year” fish and wildlife budget that reflects increased spending called for in the federal government’s Columbia River basin salmon protection plan and in so-called “Columbia River Fish Accords” signed with states and tribes.
The fall chinook salmon harvest season on the Snake River between Lewiston and Hells Canyon Dam opens Tuesday, Sept. 1, the same day Snake River steelhead harvest season opens.
Sport fishing for salmon in the ocean between Leadbetter Point, Wash., and Cape Falcon, Ore., will close Monday, Aug. 31, at 11:59 p.m.
But fishing opportunity remains at the mouth of the Columbia River at Buoy 10 where the coho bag limit was increased this week.
CBB Shorts: Reducing Wenatchee River Pollution; Yakima Flow Ops For Chinook; Reducing Puget Sound Sewer Overflows; Willamette Coho Bag Limits Raised; ODFW Fish Conference; Lubchenco Leads Delegation To Climate Conference
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula has granted a request for a hearing to consider a preliminary injunction that would halt pending wolf hunts in Montana and Idaho. The hearing is set for Monday, the day before the Idaho hunting season is scheduled to start.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission this week set harvest limits for Idaho’s first public wolf hunting season this fall.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has named the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery Complex in eastern Washington Hatchery of the Year for its innovative achievements in environmental leadership.
Folks that monitor the fish counts at Columbia-Snake river hydro projects did a double take Wednesday when the Tuesday steelhead tally at Bonneville Dam was displayed online by the hydro project’s operators, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Fishery managers predict this year will see the largest Snake River fall chinook salmon run in four decades with as many as 28,000 adults expected to cross Lower Granite Dam on their way back to Idaho.
Lower Columbia River chum salmon, not iconic chinook, this week moved to the front of the line of new Endangered Species Act projects that must pass muster with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and its Independent Scientific Review Panel.
In early August, 239 spring chinook died in the Grande Ronde River as a result of high water temperatures, said Gary James, fisheries manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
The flow of endangered Snake River sockeye salmon into central Idaho’s Stanley Basin continues to outpace last year’s landmark return.
THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN:
Weekly Fish and Wildlife News
www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org
August 7, 2009
Issue No. 495
This year’s sockeye salmon return to central Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley already ranks as the third highest since 1999, and fishery officials there know they’ve just seen the tip of the 2009 iceberg.
Columbia River mainstem officials managed this spring to hold harvest impacts on protected salmon and steelhead below agreed-upon caps through early season limits and a series of season-ending closures that helped hold down the catch total.
Anglers can look forward to large numbers of coho and improved returns of chinook salmon this year during the fall fishing season on the Columbia River, which kicked off Aug. 1.
THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN:
Weekly Fish and Wildlife News
www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org
July 31, 2009
Issue No. 494
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this month unveiled its 10-year plan for improving both juvenile and adult Pacific lamprey passage and survival through the federal Columbia-Snake river hydro system.
Migrating adult Pacific lamprey forced to navigate through an old fish ladder or climb over the concrete face of Three Mile Falls diversion dam on the Umatilla River in eastern Oregon now have a significantly more convenient route to reach spawning grounds in the upper river.
Anglers planning to fish for salmon on any of the eight Washington tributaries that flow into the Columbia River below Bonneville Dam can expect good fishing for hatchery coho.
The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho this week released its framework for deciding how the long-disturbed Kootenai River’s basic ecosystem functions can be restored for native fish without disturbing manmade infrastructure that has altered the environment.
The Columbia River Compact on Thursday approved a schedule of mainstem commercial fisheries for the early fall season that are expected to net nearly 15,000 fall chinook salmon and as many as 2,100 white sturgeon before the end of August.
CBB Shorts: Leadership Changes At USFWS; Clearwater Steelhead Harvest; Warmer Water Impacts On Catch-And-Release
The settling in of this summer’s heat has forced salmon and hydro system managers to sprint through the steps of their plan for holding down water temperatures in the lower Snake River for migrating salmon and steelhead.
The first two spawners of the year have arrived home Thursday in central Idaho’s Stanley Basin to lead what is expected to be a bumper crop of Snake River sockeye salmon.
It’s almost time for a changing of the fishing seasons on the Columbia-Snake river mainstem, and in the ocean and tributaries as well.
Regional officials say momentum is building towards the development of a long-needed plan to better coordinate the Columbia-Snake River basin’s widespread and expensive salmon monitoring and evaluation activities.
Last year’s huge adult Snake River sockeye salmon run sent Columbia River fishery scientists scurrying for some answers — what could have boosted spawner returns to the Sawtooth Hatchery and Redfish Lake Creek to 650 adult fish after the run had averaged fewer than 40 annually over the previous nine years?
The implementation of a revamped project selection process reached an initial milestone Thursday with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s recommendation that 34 wildlife projects be funded in the coming years under its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Four Columbia River treaty tribes this week launched what will likely be their last chance of the summer season to net and sell summer chinook and sockeye salmon on the mainstem Columbia River reservoirs above Bonneville Dam.
Saying the Bush Administration failed to follow established administrative procedure before leaving office, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Thursday announced that a plan to intensify logging in western Oregon — known as the Western Oregon Plan Revisions — is legally indefensible and must be withdrawn.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week published a final rule in the Federal Register prohibiting the harvesting of krill in the Exclusive Economic Zone off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. The rule goes into effect on Aug. 12.
A first-ever sampling of juvenile salmon survival during the initial leg of their ocean journey would indicate they do not suffer negative after-effects from their journey down through the Columbia-Snake river hydro projects, according to a research paper published in the peer-reviewed Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
The Yakama Nation on Tuesday took a historic step toward restoration of sockeye salmon to the Yakima basin by reintroducing adult sockeye into Lake Cle Elum near Roslyn, Wash.
Efforts to revitalize wild Willamette River steelhead and spring chinook stocks are starting to build with tests and construction this spring and summer at multi-purpose dams in the basin’s upper reaches.
Restoration of a one-half mile stretch of Trout Creek and the removal of a 1930s-era dam began July 1 on a $2 million project on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest near the former Wind River Nursery north of Carson in southwestern Washington.
A repeat of last year’s booming sockeye salmon return to the Columbia and Snake river basins has materialized with counts at hydro project fish ladders continuing to mount.
A federal authorization that allows the lethal removal of sea lions from the Columbia River is an “executive decision-making failure of the worst kind, and an example of governance by fiat rather than logic and principle,” according to the Humane Society of the United States.
The states of Oregon and Washington on Tuesday decided to extend the popular recreational white sturgeon season in the lower Columbia River to allow anglers more time to, potentially, achieve their harvest allocation.
The Colville Confederated Tribes have agreed to cover fish production costs at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Colville Fish Hatchery, a state facility in northeast Washington slated for closure under recent budget cuts.
Treaty tribes plan to execute their third lower Columbia River mainstem commercial fishery of the summer season next week, but the effort will be scaled back as compared to previous outings due to concerns that the 2009 summer chinook salmon run may not be as strong as anticipated.
Genny Hoyle and Kevin James took the first shifts at gently and patiently stirring eggs and milt with feathers, the culmination of an annual, labor-intensive effort to save the endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon.
Feedback: The Science Of Supplementation
— From Bill Bosch, Yakama Nation Fisheries, Yakima-Klickitat Fisheries Project Research Office
Re: June 12 CBB Story “Hood River Study Looks At Reproduction Fitness Of Wild-Born Offspring Of Hatchery Fish”
Dam operators agreed to hold lower Columbia River reservoir elevations relatively steady this week and next week to avoid raising havoc with tribal nets deployed to sweep in returning summer chinook and sockeye salmon, steelhead and other fish.
In updating its fish and wildlife “program,” the Northwest Power and Conservation Council contemplated thousands of pages of recommendations, comments on those recommendations and comments on draft amendments.
An improving upriver spring chinook forecast translates to fewer Endangered Species Act “impacts” and thus allowed the opening this morning of a Columbia River mainstem sport fishery for steelhead and sockeye from Portland’s Interstate 5 bridge down to Tongue Point-Rocky Point near the river mouth.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday gave conditional approval to a pair of “accord” research projects that together will claim more than $10.5 million in fish and wildlife funding over the next nine years.
Steelhead trout that are originally bred in hatcheries are so genetically impaired that, even if they survive and reproduce in the wild, their offspring will also be significantly less successful at reproducing, according to a new study published this week by researchers from Oregon State University.
Things are looking up in northeast Oregon where the anticipated strength of both wild-born and hatchery produced fish will allow a spring chinook fishing season in a section of the Wallowa River for only the second time since the 1970s.
CBB Shorts: Testing Water Travel Time; Powder River Spring Chinook; WDFW Ballast Rules For Invasive Species; McNary- John Day Transmission Line
Congress created the Marine Mammal Protection Act’s Section 120 “specifically” “to address the type of situation” that now prevails at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam, according to a federal brief filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
No, Idaho’s senior U.S. senator, Mike Crapo, is not a born-again dam breaching advocate.
NOAA Fisheries released its final biological opinion Thursday that finds the water pumping operations in California’s Central Valley by the federal Bureau of Reclamation jeopardize the continued existence of salmon, steelhead and sturgeon listed under the Endangered Species Act.
CBB Shorts: Ocean Acidification; Geological Sites For Carbon Capture; Columbia National Wildlife Refuge; Lower Clearwater Chinook Fishing; Bonneville Pool Sturgeon Fishing; Imnaha, Wallowa Chinook Fishing
The latest forecast of 2009’s adult upriver spring chinook salmon return has brightened slightly, raising hope that the mainstem Columbia River’s recreational steelhead fishery can be opened sooner than June 15.
NOAA’s Fishery Service is seeking public comment on a proposed rule that generally prohibits acts that would kill or harm a distinct group of North American green sturgeon that spawn in the Sacramento River.
Due to relatively strong returns of spring chinook in the Snake River, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game are opening a spring chinook fishery below Hells Canyon Dam from May 30 until a closure is announced.
A federal judge says more funding commitments, higher guaranteed river flows, additional scientific analysis and another look at the breaching of four dams on the lower Snake River may be needed to shore up, and make legal, the federal government’s Columbia River basin salmon protection plan.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation got the go-ahead Wednesday to complete final design for the construction of a salmon hatchery below central Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam.
For the second year in a row Oregon and Washington officials have been forced to stop, limit or not open fisheries because upriver spring chinook salmon returns to the Columbia River are much lower than expected.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) led a delegation of West Coast congressional members in sending a letter to key Obama administration officials urging them to restore funding for the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund.
The Columbia River Compact on Thursday approved the commercial sale of salmon caught by tribal members with hoop nets, dip nets and hook and line in the mainstem reservoirs between Bonneville and McNary dams.
A $21 million reduction in state and other funding over the next two years will require the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to lay off 76 employees and curtail some public services.
Parties to long-running litigation over the federal government’s Columbia River hydro system biological opinion now have an extra 30 to 60 days to “explore whether further discussions regarding the BiOp might be productive.”
An under-performing upriver spring chinook salmon run has exposed a flaw in a 10-year catch sharing agreement that tilts benefits heavily in favor of non-Indian sport fishers, according to four Columbia River basin treaty tribes.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke says he is extending the 2008 West Coast salmon disaster declaration for California and Oregon in response to expected poor salmon returns to the Sacramento River.
A new U.S. Geological Survey study published this week documents for the first time the process in which increased mercury emissions from human sources across the globe, and in particular from Asia, make their way into the North Pacific Ocean and as a result contaminate tuna and other seafood.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week that it will undertake 94 construction, energy efficiency, habitat restoration and other improvement projects in the coming months to create jobs.
Fishery managers up and down the Columbia River are keeping a close eye on spring chinook salmon counts at Bonneville Dam to determine what type of harvest opportunities might be available in the weeks ahead.
NOAA Fisheries Service announced Tuesday that it is starting a biological review of the status of Oregon coast coho salmon, a population of salmon that has been the subject of litigation under the Endangered Species Act for more than a decade.
This fall, Oregon State University will launch what educators say may be the first comprehensive online graduate certificate program in fisheries management in the world.
The public is invited to weigh in next week on budding plans to provide access for salmon to the upper reaches of central Washington’s Cle Elum River, a tributary to the Yakima River.
The Columbia River basin’s 2009 upriver spring chinook run is finally starting to build, and fishers, now shutdown on the mainstem, are hoping the trend grows and grows.
The first chinook salmon of spring have arrived at the lower Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam, the last hurdle on their way back to Idaho and northeast Oregon.
The potential “interactions” between fish and wildlife project implementation and Columbia River basin power system economics needs to be better analyzed as the Northwest Power and Conservation Council prepares its Sixth Power Plan, according to a new report by the Independent Economic Analysis Board.
CBB Shorts: USFWS Grants For Basin Habitat; Proposed Rockfish Listings; Developing Offshore Wind Power
— USFWS Grants Fund Upper Columbia Basin Habitat Land Acquisitions
A key piece of the upper Deschutes River’s salmon restoration effort — a 573,000-pound, 140-foot-long steel conduit — separated Saturday evening with roughly half sinking to the bottom of central Oregon’s Lake Billy Chinook.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday recommended that the next steps – ranging from further explorations to actual construction — be funded for four “accord” fish and wildlife projects.
A $1 billion economic “stimulus” package announced Wednesday aims to help repair the West’s water infrastructure and help address long-term water supply challenges.
For the second year in a row, the Pacific Fishery Management Council has decided to close commercial and most recreational salmon fisheries off the coast of California and southern Oregon in response to the continued feeble status of the Sacramento River fall chinook run.
Salmon anglers will have increased fishing opportunities off the coast “north of Cape Falcon” and in the Columbia River this summer, while most recreational fisheries in Puget Sound will be similar to seasons adopted last year, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Columbia Land Trust announced Monday the acquisition of what it says is one of the most significant chum salmon spawning sites in the entire Columbia River basin — 305 acres at the confluence of the Grays River and Crazy Johnson Creek in Wahkiakum County, Wash.
— From Matthew L. Keefer, Fish Ecology Research Lab, University of Idaho
Re: Spring Chinook Return Over Bonneville Again Later Than Usual: Is It The Sea Lions?(April 3 CBB) https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/328355.aspx
As in several of the last few years, there has been considerable speculation in 2009 about the timing of the upriver Columbia River spring chinook run.
Apparently for the fifth year in a row spawning upriver spring chinook salmon are biding their time before launching themselves up and over the fish ladders at Bonneville Dam, the first hydro project they encounter on the Columbia River.
The states of Oregon and Washington set season closure dates for white sturgeon retention in the Columbia River above The Dalles and John Day dams.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game this week announced that the abundance-based management system of the Pacific Salmon Treaty provides an all-gear Southeast Alaska chinook salmon harvest quota of 218,800 fish for 2009.
In order to achieve both harvest goals and the goal of conserving imperiled Columbia River basin salmon, harvest and hatchery reforms are needed, according to a 1,000-page scientific report released to the public today.
A recently completed Columbia River basin hatchery-harvest reform report includes detailed “solutions” ranging from the number and type of salmon or steelhead that should be reared and released from artificial production facilities to what kind of gear should be used to pull adult hatchery fish from the river.
Forecasts of 2009 salmon returns to the Snake River basin, including endangered sockeye, are expected to continue a recent upward trend, state officials told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council earlier this month during its meeting in Boise.
CBB Shorts: Idaho Chinook Fishing; NOAA Seeks Habitat Proposals; Wild Salmon Hall of Fame Nominations; Upper Columbia Steelhead Fishing Closures; Lake Pend Oreille Rising
“What caused the Sacramento River fall Chinook stock collapse?”
Recent years’ severe dropoff in adult returns was likely the result of an inhospitable ocean pushing a chronically vulnerable fish population nearly off the edge, according to a report/analysis released this week by NOAA Fisheries Service’s Southwest Region.
An exhaustive, comparative independent science review of fish tagging technologies used in the Columbia River basin was completed this week along with recommendations for making tagging programs more productive and efficient.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game this week announced that the statewide commercial salmon harvest in 2009 is projected to total 174.8 million salmon of all species. This is an increase compared to 2008, with nearly all of this increase expected to come from improved pink salmon catches.
The Washington Department of Ecology is preparing to issue up to 90 new water use permits for the Quincy Basin near the cities of Quincy and Moses Lake, stimulating the economy of eastern Washington.
Federal appeals court edicts issued Monday preserve decisions to list 16 West Coast salmon stocks, and Upper Columbia steelhead, under the Endangered Species Act.
(Revised version of “BiOp Court Hearing: Redden Says ‘I Think It Is Very Close’ To Being Legal” https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/324249.aspx , posted Monday, March 9.)
Salmon fisheries opportunities to the north should be improved this summer, but waters in the Pacific Ocean south of Oregon’s Cape Falcon will again be extremely limited under any of the management strategies being considered.
There had been uncertainty about how the Obama administration would proceed, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Friday the decision to remove gray wolves from the list of threatened and endangered species.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden entered his courtroom Friday (March 6) with three major areas of concern about the federal plan intended to boost survival for protected salmon that traverse the Columbia-Snake river hydropower system.
Non-native, predatory species such as bass and channel catfish may pose as great a threat to imperiled Columbia River salmon and steelhead as do such factors as harvest and the hydro system, yet invasive fish have largely been ignored, according to Northwest Fisheries Science Center research published this week.
The annual Columbia River rite of spring has begun with anglers anxiously awaiting the arrival of spring chinook salmon.
Wildlife viewers last year offered the biggest chunk — more than $1 billion — of the contribution that hunters, fishers or shellfish gatherers bring to Oregon’s state and local economies, according to preliminary results of a survey developed for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in collaboration with Travel Oregon.
“Undesirable” evolution in fish — which makes their bodies grow smaller and fishery catches dwindle — can actually be reversed in a few decades’ time by changing our “take-the-biggest-fish” approach to commercial fishing, according to groundbreaking new research published this week by Stony Brook University scientists in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon State University announced this week that they are seeking candidates for the Oregon Hatchery Research Center Advisory Committee. The committee meets quarterly, with meetings scheduled for April 27, July 27, and October 26.
A federal appeals panel on Thursday refused to block the states of Oregon and Washington from removing, by lethal means or otherwise, California sea lions that prey on salmon below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
What enabled the quantum rise in sockeye salmon adult returns to the Columbia River basin in 2008?
It depends on who you ask.
Officials that set ocean commercial and recreational fisheries face a bad news-good news scenario this spring with Sacramento River fall chinook salmon numbers expected to be at near-record lows while chinook and coho forecasts further north, including fish headed for the Columbia River, are improved.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week gave the go-ahead for a $7 million overhaul of an outdated fish ladder on the Klickitat River in south-central Washington that is expected to help boost populations of salmon returning to the basin.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden, in a letter sent this week, set the stage for March 6 oral arguments over the legal validity of the federal government’s Columbia River hydro system’s salmon protection plan.
A legal attempt by the Humane Society to stall a sea lion control effort at the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam is “based on nothing more than its distaste for the lethal removal program,” and not on sound legal arguments, according to a legal brief filed Feb. 13 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A campaign to win a prohibition on commercial gill-net salmon fishing on the lower Columbia River mainstem has gained a foothold in the Oregon Legislature.
A strong spring chinook salmon return to the Columbia River basin, if it indeed materializes, is expected to be followed by improved coho and fall chinook runs this year, according to preseason forecasts.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Salmon Technical Team has prepared a post-season review of the 2008 ocean salmon fisheries off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California to help assess Council salmon management for this year.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has scheduled a “State of the Lake Meeting” to discuss the status of the Lake Pend Oreille fishery.
A huge and unexpected return of sockeye salmon to the Columbia River basin last year was most likely caused by variables in the Pacific Ocean that foster sockeye growth and survival, according to an analysis completed last week by the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week adopted amendments to its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program — the nation’s largest regional effort to protect and enhance fish and wildlife.
A new regional “forum” taking shape will allow state and tribal sovereigns to direct policy level input over the next 10 years as federal agencies implement new strategies aimed at improving the survival of protected Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead stocks.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers on Wednesday set Columbia River mainstem sport and commercial spring chinook salmon fisheries through April but the states remain divided on the ground rules for any fishing that might take place in May.
A study on the overall economic benefits of Washington State’s non-treaty commercial and recreational fisheries for 2006 showed the fisheries generating $540 million in personal income.
Seafood lovers who prefer eating local products will soon have another tool at their disposal – a bar-coding system that traces the history of their fish from ocean to market and introduces the buyer to the fishermen who supplied their meal.
CBB Shorts: Avista, Spokane River Settlement; Corps’ Sediment Evaluation Framework; Odessa Subarea Wildlife, Habitat Survey; Idaho Expects Good Spring Chinook Season; ODFW Says No Spring Chinook Fishing On Deschutes
Central Washington’s Colville Tribes have seen early successes in tests of selective fishing gear that they say can increase the viability of wild salmon populations by allowing increased spawner escapement and lessening the straying of hatchery fish on to spawning grounds.
Saying its members and other plaintiffs would be irreparably harmed, the Humane Society of the United States this week asked a federal appeals court to block the planned removal of California sea lions from waters below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
A modern-day record total of 3,322 fall chinook salmon redds were observed during 2008 late fall-early winter surveys in the Snake River basin.
A federal court judge on Thursday denied a request that he put on hold state plans to begin in March trapping and removing salmon-eating California sea lions from below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
One Columbia River mainstem rite of spring — the spring chinook salmon return — has yet to begin.
Another — the fight over spring chinook harvests — started early and continues.
Columbia River fisheries managers are projecting a large return of spring chinook salmon to northeast Oregon streams in 2009, and anglers should experience the best opportunity to catch a spring chinook from the Imnaha and Wallowa rivers in many years.
CBB Shorts: Post Falls Dam Study; Toxic Algal Blooms; Oregon PFMC Seat; Alaska Sportfishing Study; Northern Idaho Ground Squirrel
NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center is seeking funding, and regional approval, for a pilot study that could lead to a better understanding of the impact predatory seals and sea lions have on spawning spring chinook salmon in the lower Columbia River.
The division of the 2009 allowed harvest of Columbia River basin upriver spring chinook salmon between sport and commercial fisheries remains in limbo as the season approaches, but a resolution could come as soon as today (Jan. 23).
A $9.4 million genetic sampling project designed to better chart Columbia River basin salmon genetic diversity, stock composition, and stock specific run timing won the favor of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council Thursday.
A study published in the January edition of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry says that nearly 100 percent of pollutants found in chinook salmon were acquired while the fish were growing to adulthood in the Pacific Ocean.
A novel genetics technology being field tested by Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission researchers is envisioned as a new tool that could enable fishery managers to make sounder decisions, and make them more quickly than ever before.
Fishing and hunting are having broad, swift impacts on the body size and reproductive abilities of fish and other commercially harvested species, potentially jeopardizing the ability of entire populations to recover, according to the results of a new study that will appeared in the Jan. 12, online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission, meeting via conference call Jan. 9, authorized continued negotiations with Oregon fisheries officials on a joint catch-sharing plan for spring chinook salmon fisheries on the lower Columbia River.
Reach-by-reach survival was above average for migrating Snake River yearling chinook salmon in 2008 through the Lower Granite reservoir and the first five hydro projects they encountered, then spiked for the McNary Dam-to-John Day Dam reach and plummeted on the home stretch.
A newly devised U.S.-Canadian agreement that would change fishing regimes from southeast Alaska down to the Oregon-California coast got the stamp of approval just before Christmas from the NOAA Fisheries Service.
Flooding, heavy rainfall and high winds prompted evacuation of staff from one hatchery and have damaged other Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife facilities throughout the state.
U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $185 billion in sales and supported more than two million jobs in 2006, according to a new economic report released by NOAA’s Fisheries Service.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden said this week he’ll need more time to review an avalanche of documents that debate the legality of the federal government’s strategy for assuring the Columbia/Snake river basin hydro system doesn’t jeopardize protected salmon stocks.
Ten of 11 “Accord” fish and wildlife projects submitted last month for review failed to make the grade, according to a preliminary memorandum released Dec. 12 by the Independent Scientific Review Panel.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on Saturday deferred action on the allocation of Columbia River spring chinook salmon between sport and commercial fisheries pending further discussions with Oregon officials.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 10 on Dec. 9 began soliciting watershed protection proposals through its West Coast Estuaries Initiative to support the protection and restoration of high valued aquatic resources in coastal areas threatened by growth pressure.
Northwest Fisheries Science Center scientists and their collaborators recently published the full “genome sequence” for the bacterium that causes BKD in salmon — a scientific milestone that will provide researchers worldwide with the best available information and potentially incite new discoveries for a cure.
Fishery managers from Oregon and Washington today adopted new regulations for white sturgeon fishing in the Columbia River and its tributaries throughout 2009.
The Columbia/Snake river basin’s waterways should be brimming with fish next year if preseason forecasts of salmon returns come true.
The NOAA Fisheries Service next month will launch a review of some 100 federally funded salmon and steelhead hatchery programs in the Columbia River basin to assure they don’t hinder efforts to recover protected species.
Preliminary analysis of 2008 data shows that the world’s largest colony of nesting Caspian terns grew ever so slightly from last year while the world’s largest colony of double-crested cormorants shrunk dramatically, by 20 percent, from one year to the next.
Juvenile salmon transported downstream on barges can lose the ability to migrate back to their breeding grounds, reducing their survivorship and altering adaptations in the wild, according to a study by University of Idaho researchers that appeared in the November issue of Ecological Applications.
A U.S. District Court judge last week ruled that the federal government complied with the law earlier this year in granting permission for the removal, lethal or otherwise, of California sea lions that gather below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam to prey on imperiled salmon and steelhead.
Biologists are hoping that a jump in kokanee spawning this year in north Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille, and the removal of another large chunk of the lake trout population, are signs that years of efforts to rebuild the landlocked salmon’s numbers can eventually pay off.
In a special meeting this week, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to accept the resignation of Jeffrey P. Koenings from his position as director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, effective Dec. 11, and appointed Phil Anderson as interim department director.
Oregon and Washington’s fish and wildlife commissions next week will consider adopting a catch-sharing plan for sport and commercial fisheries on the lower Columbia River.
University of Chicago scientists have documented that the ocean is growing more acidic faster than previously thought. In addition, they have found that the increasing acidity correlates with increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a paper published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 24.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service last week announced it is making an additional $70 million in disaster-relief aid available to West Coast salmon fishermen, completing a financial-assistance package announced in September, when the agency released $100 million in disaster assistance.
Commercial fishermen left a Vancouver, Wash., meeting room Monday embittered about their prospects for harvesting upriver Columbia/Snake spring chinook salmon next year.
A new federal salmon plan that agencies say will boost beleaguered wild populations instead “seeks to shrink the magnitude of the problem salmon face” and continues a “pattern of matching an analysis to an outcome, rather than allowing the analysis to inform the outcome…,” according to a legal brief filed Tuesday by Earthjustice.
Help for Oregon fish screening work remains in limbo, but the Northwest Power and Conservation Council did act Wednesday to move forward more than $1.2 million in within-year funding requests for eight other fish and wildlife projects.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s preliminary estimates for the 2008 commercial salmon harvest show the 16th largest harvest since Alaska became a state 49 years ago.
CBB Shorts: Indicators Measuring Council Program Success; California Native Fish Crisis; Electric Car Impacts On NW Power System; Puget Sound Sockeye Fishery Disaster Funds; Boise River Steelhead; Nominations Sought For Columbia Fishery Committees; New WDOE Director For Central Wash.; WDFW Sport Salmon Season Workshop
— Council Moves Forward On ‘Indicators’ Measuring Salmon Recovery Progress
Can the Columbia/Snake river basin “have its cake and eat it too,” — i.e., enjoy sustainable harvests of salmon and steelhead while also lifting beleaguered wild, naturally spawning populations toward recovery?
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes on Nov. 7 signed an agreement with federal agencies that makes available approximately $61 million over 10 years to help rebuild populations of Snake River spring/summer chinook and Snake River steelhead in Idaho’s Salmon River basin and Snake River sockeye and native Yellowstone cutthroat in the upper Snake River.
University of British Columbia researchers say they have found a way to accurately predict the impact of climate change on imperiled Pacific salmon stocks that could result in better management strategies.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez today (Nov. 14) determined that there has been a commercial fishery failure due to a continued fisheries resource disaster in the sockeye salmon fisheries in Puget Sound and the northern Pacific coast of Washington.
A bi-state fisheries advisory group will meet Monday, Nov. 17 in Vancouver, Wash., to develop a recommendation on a catch-sharing plan for sport and commercial fisheries on the lower Columbia River.
Calling a new Columbia River basin salmon protection plan a worsening of the status quo “reflects a stubborn and dogmatic refusal to look honestly at the effect of past mitigation, current data, and recent fish counts,” according documents filed by federal attorneys late last week in U.S. District Court.
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