The U.S. Geological Survey released a new machine learning tool that forecasts droughts up to 90 days ahead nationwide. The tool may provide communities extra time to prepare for water shortages that could impact agriculture, municipal supplies, recreation and ecosystems.
A massive marine heatwave warmed the eastern Pacific Ocean through much of 2025, but the wind-driven upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that drives the rich marine productivity of the West Coast kept the ecosystem healthy.
Mainstem Columbia River basin water supply forecasts remained mostly steady or rose just slightly over the last month, with the March forecast at The Dalles Dam at 95 percent of the 30-year average, up 2 percentage points from February.
A massive marine heatwave has dominated waters off the West Coast since last summer. This marks only the third time on record that such a large section of the coastal ocean has remained so warm for so long—particularly into winter months—without it being an El Niño, NOAA scientists report.
As climate change nudges weather in the eastern Cascades in extreme and volatile directions, forest managers in the region have a lot to juggle.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council has adopted three options for 2026 ocean salmon fisheries off Washington, Oregon, and California, which are available for public review.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency that regulates dams and power plants across the U.S., is seeking comments from the public on a draft supplemental environmental impact statement for Idaho Power’s Hells Canyon complex of dams on the Snake River.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is investigating the illegal introduction of a northern pike into Pine Grove Pond, a popular family fishing site in Kalispell.
Climate change is skewing the North Pacific storm track northwards quicker than current weather predictions have estimated, moving winds and rains closer to the arctic and leaving cooler and drier conditions in the Northwest, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature.
Northern pike are moving through salt water to invade freshwater habitats in Southcentral Alaska, according to a new study.
Responding to a years-long Supreme Court injunction over fish culverts, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking public input on a draft statewide strategy to prioritize the removal of small-scale barriers that prevent salmon and steelhead from swimming upstream.
Warm water in the upper Salmon River is leading biologists to trap the sockeye at Lower Granite Dam and haul them to the Eagle Hatchery near Boise, ID.
A pilot project proposed in Port Angeles, Washington is designed to test whether seawater can be used to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air. “Project Macoma,” as the proposed pilot is named, is an effort by a company called Ebb Carbon. It is a first-of-its-kind pilot project that has the potential to remove…
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife this week successfully completed the release of more than 2 million fall-run Chinook salmon smolts into the Klamath River.
The Columbia River basin began the new year with below average snowpack and below average water supply forecasts
The ocean indicators that NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center researchers track off Newport, on the Central Oregon Coast, are decidedly mixed for juvenile salmon the coming year. El Niño is still developing at the equator and there are both positive and negative indicators in local waters for emerging salmon.
Oregon’s Energy Facility Siting Council on Tuesday approved a permit to build the Boardman to Hemingway transmission line across five eastern Oregon counties. The line will move power between the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West, helping meet customer needs during peak seasons. Construction is expected to start in 2023.
The Washington Department of Ecology is seeking comment on a draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Goldendale Energy Storage Project adjacent to the Columbia River near the John Day Dam. The document details the project’s negative impacts to tribal cultural areas.
Two recreational boaters illegally approached endangered Southern Resident killer whales in rented boats last fall. They have agreed to pay fines for violating regulations that protect the whales from vessel traffic and noise.
Army planners and Columbia River sponsor ports are hosting five virtual information sessions April 26-28 to update the public on their 20-year plan for managing dredged material from the Lower Columbia River. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ policy requires all federally maintained navigation projects demonstrate there is sufficient dredged material placement capacity for a minimum of 20 years.
In January NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center reported that 2021 had the best ocean conditions off the coasts of Oregon and Washington in 24 years and that those conditions could continue into 2022.
The four Northwest state representatives leading the Columbia Basin Collaborative told a new group it recently formed that it should not consider breaching lower Snake River dams as a way to recover salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin, nor should it consider reintroducing fish into areas blocked by dams until other forums already looking at those topics complete their work next year.
The White House this week announced the intent to nominate Martha Williams as Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Williams has been serving as Principal Deputy Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service since January 20, 2021, exercising the delegable authority of the Director. The nomination will now be considered by the U.S. Senate.
The Columbia Basin Collaborative, a new effort to bring parties together to rebuild threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead stocks while addressing the needs of the regional economy, will hold an organizational workshop next month.
Approval of the Yakama Nation Hatchery Master Plan by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council on December 6th was a long-awaited step towards restoring wild salmon runs above Bonneville Dam. . . 38 years to be exact. Why did it take so long?
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife last week announced new rules for commercial viewing of Southern Resident killer whales to reduce the impacts of vessel noise and disturbance on the whales’ ability to forage, rest, and socialize while, the agency says, enabling sustainable whale watching.
There is a lot of talk now about finding a new way to coordinate and improve Columbia Basin salmon recovery. A diverse group of river users, utilities and environmentalists is calling on Northwest governors to lead the way in finding collaborative solutions to recover Columbia/Snake River Basin salmon and steelhead populations listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Montana watercraft inspection stations have intercepted 13 boats carrying invasive mollusks into the state this year. As of May 30, inspectors have caught 12 boats with invasive zebra or quagga mussels and one boat with red rim melania snails attached to watercraft.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) joined 20 colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus in sending a letter to Acting Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought calling on OMB to indefinitely extend existing public comment periods and hearings until the public can safely gather after the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic have passed.
With Covid-19 halting public meetings, The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife last week instead conducted a livestream to explain and gather public input on the potential for “thermal angling sanctuaries” in select Oregon tributaries upstream of Bonneville Dam.
Willamette Valley landowners interested in permanently protecting their lands for fish and wildlife habitat conservation can apply by April 10 for funding through ODFW’s Willamette Wildlife Mitigation Program.
Breaching all four lower Snake River dams – Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams – would result in the highest benefits for Snake River salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to an assessment by federal dam operating agencies released last week.
With a December 20 court order to develop Columbia and Snake River temperature limits, known as a Total Maximum Daily Load, it is still uncertain what the federal Environmental Protection Agency will do.
NOAA Fisheries this week released the final recovery plan for threatened Puget Sound steelhead, with an emphasis on addressing impassable culverts. The plan says recovery could take up to 100 years.
Oregon State University researchers will use a $3.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study tiny plastics and their potential impacts on aquatic life.
The Joint-State Columbia River Policy Review Committee, made up of members of the Washington and Oregon fish and wildlife commissions, announced this week that it would postpone a planned Nov. 18 public meeting in Ridgefield, with the intent to schedule additional meetings beginning in early 2020.
By Joseph E. Taylor III
Although most Northwesterners recognize that the salmon crisis is also a human crisis, you would never know it when they start arguing about solutions. They can’t seem to hold both in their mind at once.
Recreational anglers this year over-harvested upriver bright fall chinook, the stock of fish that can constrain recreational and commercial fishing times and locations throughout the Columbia River where it borders Oregon and Washington.
Each year the Northwest Power and Conservation Council delivers a report to Congress on its fiscal year activities and progress for both power and its fish and wildlife program.
Earlier this year, the Washington Legislature passed Second Substitute House Bill 1579, which directed the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to “adopt rules to liberalize bag limits for bass, walleye, and channel catfish in all anadromous waters of the state in order to reduce the predation risk to salmon smolts.”
July turned out to be the warmest month on record for the planet, and Washington continues to be a hot spot for drought in the contiguous United States, but the state has gotten some recent relief with cooler and wetter weather.
A panel of scientists completed their review of 48 Columbia River basin programs and research projects, some of which had not been reviewed since 2010, finding 27 of those projects meet the scientists’ criteria.
Osoyoos Lake, which straddles Washington state and British Columbia, is set to rise a month earlier than normal and the Washington Department of Ecology wants residents to be aware.
Off the coast of Washington, columns of bubbles rise from the seafloor, as if evidence of a sleeping dragon lying below. But these bubbles are methane that is squeezed out of sediment and rises up through the water. The locations where they emerge provide important clues to what will happen during a major offshore earthquake.
A February wave of cold and snow, breaking records in some places, gave the water supply outlook a striking boost through much of the Columbia Basin, but all places were not equal.
The number of sea lions at Bonneville Dam is below average and most are the larger steller sea lions, not the California sea lions that have been showing up at the dam each spring to feast on salmon and steelhead.
Salmon spawning in their home river have the edge in mating over would-be lovers born in other streams. This was the discovery of a new study examining the sex lives of Atlantic salmon in northern Finland.
On the heels of Oregon’s most expensive wildfire season ever in 2018, researchers at Oregon State University are ramping up efforts to better predict how the blazes behave, including how they generate fire-spreading embers.
Deadly severe wildfires in California have scientists scrutinizing the underlying factors that could influence future extreme events. Using climate simulations and paleoclimate data dating back to the 16th century, a recent study looks closely at long-term upper-level wind and related moisture patterns to find clues.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this month will conduct routine annual inspections, preventative maintenance and repairs at all navigation locks on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
An international team of biologists is setting out into some of the roughest waters in the North Pacific Ocean in the middle of winter to try to solve the fundamental mystery of Pacific salmon: What determines whether they live or die?
The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for January 2019 tied with 2007 as the third highest for the month of January in the NOAA global temperature record, which dates back to 1880.
Some portions of the Columbia River basin saw significant rain and snow, along with cooler than normal weather, over the past week, but the change to a basin water supply forecast that is just a little more than a week old has been slight.
The experimental extreme draining of a reservoir in Oregon to aid downstream migration of juvenile chinook salmon is showing benefits but also a mix of unintended consequences, including changing the aquatic food web and releasing potential predators downstream.
NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Law Enforcement is offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information that leads to a civil penalty or criminal conviction in the shootings of California sea lions in and around West Seattle.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued an El Nino Advisory this week, indicating the climate pattern has taken effect and is likely to continue through the spring. While the El Nino is expected to be weak, it may bring wetter conditions across the southern half of the U.S. during the coming months.
On Tuesday, GOES-17, the second of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s next-generation geostationary weather satellites, completed its checkout phase and is now operating in the GOES West position, providing faster, more accurate, and more detailed observations used by National Weather Service forecasters to predict Pacific storm systems, severe storms, fog, wildfires, and other environmental dangers.
Snowpack and streamflow forecasts are below average across most of the Columbia Basin, with those conditions being particularly pronounced in southern and southeastern Oregon, according to a Thursday water supply briefing from the Northwest River Forecast Center in Portland.
Earth’s long-term warming trend continued in 2018 as persistent warmth across large swaths of land and ocean resulted in the globe’s fourth hottest year in NOAA’s 139-year climate record.
Over the past 20 years, endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales (Orcas) in the Salish Sea have had more births and fewer deaths in odd years than in even years, according to a recent study.
Engineers designing the Wallowa Lake Dam reconstruction in northeast Oregon think they can complete the project, including fish passage, with the $16 million Oregon Gov. Kate Brown reserved in her 2020-2021 budget proposal, paving the way for sockeye salmon reintroduction.
The combination of ocean warming and an infectious wasting disease has devastated populations of large sunflower sea stars once abundant along the West Coast of North America in just a few years, according to research co-led by the University of California, Davis, and Cornell University published Jan. 30 in the journal Science Advances.
Erik Johnson has what looks like a surefire way to hurt support for government spending to protect the environment: Elect a Democratic president.
A new study has found that changes in the atmospheric circulation since the 1980s have offset most of the impact of global warming on winter snowpack in the mountains of the western United States.
After receiving approval from NOAA Fisheries in November to lethally remove sea lions at Willamette Falls, Oregon spent little time starting the program that could euthanize as many as 93 California sea lions this year at the Falls.
A survey of chum salmon redds December 21 downstream of Bonneville Dam found no spawning fish, triggering the transition from flows that protect spawning chum to flows designed to protect the redds during egg incubation.
A new plan to reclassify nuclear waste would allow the federal government to walk away from its obligation to clean up millions of gallons of toxic, radioactive waste at Hanford, Washington state officials said this week.
Scientists have published a novel method for counting Pacific salmon – analyzing DNA from the slime the fish leave behind in their spawning streams.
When the water in today’s deep Pacific Ocean last saw sunlight, Charlemagne was the Holy Roman Emperor, the Song Dynasty ruled China and Oxford University had just held its very first class.
Warm and dry has been the story for the Pacific Northwest in recent weeks, contributing to a region-wide snowpack deficit that may continue for months to come, according to speakers participating in a drought and climate outlook teleconference this week.
Let me first say that I enjoy the newsletter as a great resource. The subject story, though, has a fundamental error in it that needs to be brought to your attention.
With more than 300 threatened chum salmon still hanging out in spawning areas downstream of Bonneville Dam, the interagency Technical Management Team this week put off a decision on whether to transition from the chum spawning operations that began early last month to incubation flows.
A court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to work with plaintiffs in a clean water suit to set a schedule for when it can redo clean water standards for temperature in a number of Oregon streams.
BPA last week released its initial wholesale power and transmission rates proposal for fiscal years 2020 and 2021. The rates proposal includes significant program cost reductions and supports a multi-year grid modernization initiative to maximize the capacity of the federal power and transmission systems and improve grid efficiency.
A lawsuit filed in June by Idaho Power aimed at forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set temperature standards downstream of the utility’s Snake River dams in Hells Canyon was put on hold while the EPA completes the work to set the standards.
An environmental law organization is challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in court over what it says is the EPA’s failure to identify Oregon waters that are impaired by ocean acidification. That identification as impaired would allow Oregon to enforce pollution controls and other protective measures.
Citizens Against Poaching and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are each offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to an arrest or a criminal conviction of the person(s) responsible for the killing of a collared grizzly bear in northern Idaho.
A settlement in an Oregon Circuit Court between environmental groups and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality promises to clear up a backlog of 148 water pollution permits that are 10 years old or older.
Although the count varies by day, as many as 318 chum salmon were counted on one day in late October downstream of Bonneville Dam where they are expected to build redds (nests) and spawn during November and into December.
Most coho salmon caught in commercial purse seines in the Strait of Juan de Fuca recover within 48 hours unless they have mostly visible dermal injuries. Those fish failed to recover within the 84 hour holding period, according to a recent study.
A lawsuit in U.S. District Court of Oregon that already has ended twice before has been resurrected and is headed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The majority of members of a Willamette Falls pinniped task force that convened two months ago agreed that the number of sea lions at Willamette Falls warrants lethal removal and recommended to NOAA Fisheries that it proceed with issuing a permit under Section 120 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act to lethally remove predatory California sea lions in portions of the Willamette River.
Negotiations to renew the 1964 Columbia River Treaty with Canada are proceeding smoothly, following most recent talks in Portland Oct. 17-18, says the lead negotiator for the U.S. State Department.
A federal court in Seattle approved a settlement drawn up between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington Department of Ecology and Northwest Environmental Advocates that will ensure the EPA and Ecology will complete water quality approvals in Washington waters.
Hansen Creek, a small stream in southwest Alaska, is hard to pick out on a map. It’s just over a mile long and about 4 inches deep. Crossing from one bank to the other takes about five big steps.
A mild winter could be in store for much of the United States this winter according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. In the U.S. Winter Outlook for December through February, above-average temperatures are most likely across the northern and western U.S., Alaska and Hawaii.
Protective flows for chum salmon spawning downstream of Bonneville Dam are due to begin as early as November 7, but if the Columbia River basin’s dry fall continues, there may not be enough river flow below the dam to keep chum redds covered with water.
A Simon Fraser University study has found that steelhead trout have a life-cycle variation that responds to changes in temperature and numbers of other species of salmon. They may go to the ocean when they are only a year old and the size of a pinky finger, or when they are five years old and the size of a standard ruler.
The Bonneville Power Administration paid its 35th consecutive U.S. Treasury payment last week. This year’s $862 million payment brings BPA’s cumulative payments to the Treasury during those 35 years to over $29.8 billion.
In declaring a fishery disaster, the U.S. Department of Commerce determined that west coast commercial salmon fisheries suffered during the warm ocean conditions of 2015 to 2017 off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, in addition to the commercial sardine fishery off California.
Warm ocean temperatures in 2015 and 2016 changed the food supply used by forage fish, leaving those fish to feed more on less energy rich gelatinous zooplankton, according to a recent report.
August delivered warmer and drier-than-average weather to Columbia Basin states and most of the West, and more of the same is forecast in October, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center recently reported.
More funding for northern pike suppression in Lake Roosevelt was approved this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Researchers from NOAA Fisheries will soon begin studying the nighttime behavior of Southern Resident killer whales to better understand how much time they spend foraging and their use of sound, and to inform policies that might better protect the whales from vessel noise.
A new report by social scientists at NOAA Fisheries reveals that viewing or photographing the ocean was the top activity for ocean lovers in the U.S. in number of participants, days spent, and how much people paid to do it, with the Pacific Region having the largest number of participants.
The Bonneville Power Administration has appointed Michelle Manary as executive vice president and chief financial officer starting Sept. 30. As CFO, she will oversee the capital and debt management program, accounting, cash management and budgeting for BPA’s $4.3 billion total budget.
The plaintiff in a two-year old case that was dismissed in U.S. District Court of Oregon in early August has asked the judge to reopen the case to reconsider one aspect of his decision.
An angler fishing for smallmouth bass and perch on Idaho’s Lake Cascade near Crown Point earlier this week instead reeled in an adult walleye, measuring more than 19 inches in length.
Last year’s Idaho steelhead run received a lot of attention for the wrong reason. It was a low run year, and Fish and Game biologists did not initially see as many fish back as they would have liked, but they were pleasantly surprised in the spring.
A proposal to store Columbia River water in an off-channel reservoir at the McNary Dam pool is under consideration.
A Thurston County Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order Aug. 20 that prohibits the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife from lethally removing one or more wolves from the Togo pack in northern Ferry County.
Scientists have developed a new approach to modeling potentially drought-prone soils in Pacific Northwest forests, which could aid natural resource managers to prepare forested landscapes for a changing climate.
A study by Simon Fraser University aquatic ecologists Emma Atkinson and John Reynolds reveals that young salmon may jump out of water to remove sea lice.
Hot and dry weather has dominated the Northwest through the summer, bringing widespread wildfires to the region, and those conditions are expected to continue through October, according to the latest long-range outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
It’s official: 2017 was the third-warmest year on record for the globe, behind 2016 (first) and 2015, according to the 28th annual State of the Climate report. The planet also experienced record-high greenhouse gas concentrations as well as rises in sea level.
For the second straight week, fish managers want to temporarily change spill operations at a Snake River dam hoping to increase the percentage of listed sockeye salmon that move upstream.
Tubular colonial jellies known as pyrosomes that arrived in 2014 along North America’s Pacific Northwest Coast appear to be adapting to cooler water and may become permanent residents.
A two-year old case that alleges the operations at Portland General Electric’s Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams is responsible for more than 1,000 clean water violations in the lower Deschutes is about to end.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has upped the chances of an El Nino weather pattern developing over the fall and winter, spelling potential for a warmer and drier-than-average winter in the Pacific Northwest.
Hot and dry weather has yielded emerging drought conditions across much of Oregon and Washington, but healthy streamflows persist throughout much of the basin mostly due to last winter’s ample snowpack.
As of early July some 6,500 double-crested cormorants were nesting on East Sand Island in the lower Columbia River estuary and even more were seen nesting on nearby bridges, according to a recent report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region, with its Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif., and Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, have released a new blueprint for how the agency will put ecosystem-based management principles into practice on the West Coast.
A bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) aimed at improving the survival of Columbia River salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act by selectively removing some predatory sea lions from the Columbia River and certain tributaries passed the U.S. House Tuesday with a 288-116 vote.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission last week appointed Kelly Susewind of Olympia as the new director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
At the invitation of U.S. District Court in Oregon Judge Michael H. Simon, the Deschutes River Alliance filed an amended complaint last week in a lawsuit that alleges Portland General Electric is violating Clean Water Act rules due to their operations of the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams on the lower Deschutes River.
NOAA Fisheries’ two West Coast Science laboratories are joining forces with the Alameda, Calif., company Saildrone Inc. to test the first use of autonomous, wind and solar-powered vehicles to gather essential data on West Coast fish populations, including commercially valuable species such as hake, sardine, and anchovy.
A research team based at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., has published the results of an international survey designed to assess the relative importance climate scientists assign to variables when analyzing a climate model’s ability to simulate real-world climate.
Pacific lamprey, a prehistoric fish native to the Columbia River basin and treasured by Native American people, are returning to Oregon’s Umatilla River in record numbers.
A June 11 U.S. District Court of Oregon decision ruled against dismissing the 2016 case brought by the Deschutes River Alliance against Portland General Electric. In that lawsuit, DRA alleged PGE is violating Clean Water Act rules due to their operations of the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams on the lower Deschutes River.
Oregon State University has received $88 million from the National Science Foundation to lead construction of a second Regional Class Research Vessel to help bolster the nation’s aging academic research fleet.
Sockeye salmon showing signs of disease and stress are motivated by their condition to leave salt water and enter fresh water earlier than healthier salmon, according to a recent study.
As the snow melt-off progresses and nears an end in some areas, river flows in the Snake and Columbia rivers are declining and so is involuntary spill at eight dams on the rivers that in May forced total dissolved gas levels higher than Washington and Oregon clean water standards allow.
Clean Water Act citizen suits, like the suit brought by the Deschutes River Alliance against Portland General Electric for alleged CWA violations at the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams, was intended by Congress to be argued in court, DRA says in its May 30 brief filed in U.S. District Court of Oregon.
Low spring chinook conversion rates from the Lower Monumental Dam pool up through Little Goose Dam has fisheries managers worried that high flows and involuntary spill are causing the fish to stall in the pool on their migration upstream.
While the number of California sea lions in the Bonneville Dam tailrace continues at a below average pace, Steller sea lion numbers are above the 10-year average (2008-17).
The number of Steller sea lions observed in the Bonneville Dam tailrace set an all-time one-day record May 7 of 66 sea lions. The previous record of 62 was set last year.
High river flows in the Snake and Columbia rivers and resulting involuntary levels of spill over dams are rendering moot court-ordered spring spill to state-mandated caps on total dissolved gas.
Flooding continues in parts of the Columbia Basin, driven by warm temperatures and a rapid snowpack runoff in British Columbia, western Montana and Idaho.
For decades the National Park Service has been locked in a battle against lake trout, an invasive fish with a voracious appetite that has overtaken Yellowstone Lake and upended its formerly thriving ecosystem.
Portland General Electric added “primary jurisdiction” to its argument to dismiss a case before the U.S. District Court of Oregon that alleges the utility has violated clean water act guidelines in its operations at the Pelton Round Butte Complex of Dams on Central Oregon’s lower Deschutes River.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is inviting people to share their views at four upcoming meetings in Ridgefield on a draft assessment of a state policy that guides the management of salmon fisheries in the lower Columbia River.
As many as 5,000 double-crested cormorants have returned to the lower Columbia River estuary and are preparing to nest at East Sand Island and other islands nearby, as well as lower estuary bridges.
Tuesday, May 1, marked the beginning of the 2018 Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
The average daily number of California sea lions in the tailrace of Bonneville Dam is below average so far this year, according to a recently completed bi-weekly report of pinniped abundance by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ Anaconda watercraft inspection station intercepted a boat carrying zebra mussels Friday, April 23. The cabin cruiser was being transported from Ohio to Puget Sound in Washington.
Culminating five years of work, Oregon State University has submitted a 1,000-page plan that outlines construction and operation details of a wave energy test site off the Oregon coast, along with measures to avoid, minimize and mitigate any potential environmental effects.
A new genetic analysis of Southern Resident killer whales found that two male whales fathered more than half of the calves born since 1990 that scientists have samples from, a sign of inbreeding in the small killer whale population that frequents Washington’s Salish Sea and Puget Sound.
Lower Columbia River dams began court-ordered spring spill this week to aid migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead just one week after spill began at lower Snake River dams.
Higher than normal precipitation and lower than normal temperatures in the lower Snake and upper Columbia river basins are bringing more snow and a deeper snowpack.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists counted 124 wolves in Oregon this past winter, an 11 percent increase over the number counted last year.
Last year’s closure of the commercial ocean salmon troll fishery off the West Coast is estimated to have cost $5.8 million to $8.9 million in lost income for fishermen, with the loss of 200 to 330 jobs, according to a new model that determines the cost of fisheries closures based on the choices fishermen make.
Portland General Electric moved for the second time in two years in federal court to dismiss a lawsuit in which the Deschutes River Alliance is charging the company with over a thousand clean water act violations resulting from its operations at the Pelton Round Butte Complex of Dams on the Deschutes River.
Some 5,384 salmonids were eaten by sea lions in Bonneville Dam’s tailwater in 2017 before they could migrate up over the dam. That’s 4.7 percent of the entire runs of spring chinook and summer/winter steelhead that passed the dam between Jan. 10 and June 17, 2017, which is the period the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers monitored the number of pinnipeds and how many and what kinds of fish they consumed, according to a recent report.
In its fourth year of a five-year double-crested cormorant management program in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has previously lethally removed or culled cormorants at East Sand Island in the lower Columbia River estuary, the federal agency will instead this year just haze the birds and remove a limited number of eggs at the island as a way to keep the number of nesting pairs under control.
Ocean conditions off most of the U.S. West Coast are returning roughly to average, after an extreme marine heat wave from about 2014 to 2016 disrupted the California Current Ecosystem and shifted many species beyond their traditional range, according to a new report from NOAA Fisheries’ two marine laboratories on the West Coast. Some warm waters remain off the Pacific Northwest, however.
Abundance of Columbia River smelt is so low this year that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has decided not to open the Cowlitz River to recreational smelt dip-net fishing.
After nearly two years of challenges to its lawsuit, a conservation group is getting its chance to argue the merits of its case in U.S. District Court of Oregon. The court case charges Portland General Electric with water quality violations due to its operations at the Pelton/Round Butte complex of dams on Oregon’s Deschutes River.
Over the next year NOAA Fisheries will weigh whether chinook salmon in the Upper Klamath and Trinity Rivers in Northern California need federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, as sought in a petition from the Karuk Tribe and Salmon River Restoration Council.
The search is officially underway for a new director to lead the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The plaintiff in the suit over alleged water quality issues in the lower 100 miles of the Deschutes River has asked to change the court schedule to carve out time for a request for more spill at the re-regulating dam of the Pelton-Round Butte Complex of dams.
This month the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife began relocating California sea lions from the lower Willamette River to the Oregon Coast in an attempt to reduce extinction risk to wild Willamette steelhead.
While neighboring states hash out their differences over endangered species, licensing the Hells Canyon Complex on the Snake River hangs in the balance.
In a new study researchers have turned chemical data that shows salmon migration patterns into sound. The approach – called sonification – enables even untrained listeners to interpret large amounts of complex data, providing an easier way to interpret “big data.”
Northwest anglers have long known that when patches of warm Pacific Ocean water drift closer to shore each summer, it’s time to chase after albacore tuna.
Citing extensive public input, Idaho Fish and Game has decided against pursuing lake trout suppression on Priest Lake in the northern part of the panhandle.
While much of the Columbia River basin states had above-average precipitation in January, Oregon and southern Idaho were “abnormally dry” for the month, and those conditions are expected to continue in Oregon through May, according to the NOAA Climate Prediction Center.
Joe Stohr, who has served as deputy director for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for more than a decade, has been named the agency’s acting director.
New NOAA research is showing the ability to predict snow levels in the mountains of the West some eight months in advance. This prediction can be down to the scale of a mountain range, which will improve regional water forecasts.
The governors of Oregon, Washington and Idaho in a letter urged members of the Northwest congressional delegation to support legislation that would help reduce predation by sea lions on salmon and steelhead, sturgeon and lamprey.
The U.S. State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency are weighing in on the matter of Canadian mining pollution in transboundary waters such as the Columbia Basin’s Kootenai River drainage, making it an agenda item during upcoming discussions between the two federal governments.
The Environmental Protection Agency says it is suspending its process to withdraw mining restrictions in Bristol Bay, Alaska, leaving them in place while the agency receives more information on a potential mine’s impact on the region’s world-class fisheries and natural resources.
The Bonneville Power Administration has released it 2018-2023 Strategic Plan, which outlines “how it will deliver valuable benefits to the Pacific Northwest in the face of challenging industry dynamics and other risks that could otherwise hinder its commercial performance,” said the agency.
Cleanup of an oil spill and removing the spill’s source in the Columbia River estuary near Astoria will continue for a couple more weeks, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
After three years as director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Jim Unsworth today informed the state Fish and Wildlife Commission that he will resign his position effective Feb. 7.
The vaccines used by commercial fish farmers are not protecting fish from disease, according to a new study.
It’s probably no surprise to those who are tracking sea lions feeding on salmon and steelhead at Bonneville Dam or Willamette Falls that the California sea lion population along the West Coast of the U.S. and British Columbia is healthy and robust.
Wild Fraser River sockeye salmon juveniles eat less after entering the ocean when they have a heavy infection of sea lice they likely picked up when passing salmon farms in Johnstone Strait, British Columbia, according to a recent study.
This year the larger portion of chum redds downstream of Bonneville Dam are nearer the dam in an area dubbed the Strawberry chum spawning area, according to information provided by Tony Norris of the Bonneville Power Administration.
Parties to a nearly two-year old court case that charges Portland General Electric with water quality violations at its Pelton/Round Butte complex of dams on Oregon’s Deschutes River stipulated to a court management schedule that could move the case to oral arguments in District Court this spring.
At least two wolves are using an area in southern Wasco County, marking the first time multiple wolves have been confirmed in the northern portion of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains since they began returning to Oregon in the 2000s.
The recreational sturgeon season in The Dalles Pool (The Dalles Dam upstream to John Day Dam) will close effective 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 20, under rules announced this week by fishery managers from Oregon and Washington.
Oregon State University President Ed Ray says that the university’s new Marine Studies Building will be built at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.
An Oregon U.S. District Court judge has formally accepted a court-ordered spill plan developed and filed by federal agencies, states and environmentalists.
Heavy rain in the North Fork Clearwater River basin expected this week will cause inflows to the Dworshak Reservoir to rise to 4,500 cubic feet per second late in the week and will reach as high as 10 kcfs by the weekend.
The U.S. Coast Guard has decided that a 45-foot pleasure yacht that sank in the Columbia River Oct. 31, 2017 is a hazard to navigation and will remove the boat from the river’s bottom in the next couple of days or weeks.
The Kalispel Tribe of Indians has successfully formed its own electric utility.
Colder and wetter-than-average conditions persisted across the Pacific Northwest in November, with a La Nina weather pattern becoming well established and strengthening during the month, and the outlook is for much of the same going into March.
It’s been a few weeks since spawning chum salmon have been observed downstream of Bonneville Dam, so fisheries and dam managers agreed this week to transition from flows that guarantee coverage of chum redds (nests) to minimum level of flows that will keep the redds covered until incubation of the eggs in April.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality this week “announced key milestones and significant progress in moving the cleanup of the Portland Harbor Superfund Site forward,” said an EPA press release.
Subyearling fall chinook salmon lose weight as they migrate downriver through the McNary and John Day dam pools. Although their preferred food through these still waters is Daphnia, a naturally occurring small planktonic crustacean, warmer water requires more energy and the fish in August will turn to non-native juvenile America shad as a food source.
Surveys of spawning areas downstream of Bonneville Dam are finding that chum salmon, listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, are actively spawning.
Fisheries managers this week reset guidelines for when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration can hold flows to zero at night and on weekends at lower Snake River dams.
Landing nets in catch and release fisheries are recommended to shorten fight time, reduce handling time and to protect fish from harm when handling the fish.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is looking for snowshoers, backcountry skiers and snow-machine users in the Pacific Northwest to gather data to use in computer modeling for snow-water equivalent, or SWE.
As it had become clear that sea lions preying on salmonids at Willamette Falls could cause the extinction of Willamette River winter steelhead, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife applied October 6 to NOAA Fisheries for a permit to lethally remove some California sea lions that this year have taken as many as 25 percent of the winter steelhead run.
Fisheries and dam managers agreed last week to maintain a lower than normal reservoir elevation at Dworshak Dam in order to avoid the high emergency outflows from the dam experienced last winter due to heavy snow and rain.
With unanimous support, the U.S. Senate Thursday passed the Columbia River In-Lieu and Treaty Fishing Access Sites Improvement Act that would enable the Bureau of Indian Affairs to make safety and sanitation improvements at the tribal treaty fishing access sites along the Columbia River, which are on lands held by the United States for the benefit of the four Columbia River Treaty tribes.
A forecast for La Nina conditions in the Pacific Northwest has been raised to an advisory, with colder and wetter weather seen in October now expected to continue throughout the winter.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s system of 13 dams and reservoirs in the Willamette River Basin’s primary purpose is flood risk management. However, the Corps is in the process of determining if a reallocation of water storage could grant municipal and industrial water supply, irrigation and fish and wildlife better access to the stored water.
The Western Governors Association is requesting clarification on the Department of Interior’s efforts to prevent the spread of invasive quagga and zebra mussels, including questions about Interior’s timeline, states’ resources and authority issues.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report, which serves as Volume I of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, describes current trends in the climate globally and for the U.S., and projects trends in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise and Arctic sea ice for the remainder of this century.
With just 248 double-crested cormorants culled by federal hunters at East Sand Island in the lower Columbia River estuary, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is declaring the operation over for the year.
Chum salmon have yet to be seen near Ives Island and both the river flow and tailwater elevation at Bonneville Dam remain low, but salmon managers and dam operators this week set next Tuesday, November 7, as the start to annual chum flows at the dam.
Fishery managers in Washington and Oregon are seeking candidates to fill positions on advisory committees that provide guidance on sport and commercial fishing issues on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
On October 27, 2017 at about 11:30AM, an OSP Fish and Wildlife Trooper and an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Biologist responded to the report of an elk hunter, who had self-reported shooting a wolf in Union County. The two responded to the hunter’s camp in the Starkey Wildlife Management Unit.
With flows at Bonneville Dam much lower than in October 2016 and, as yet, no fish present, the interagency Technical Management Team this week delayed chum salmon protection operations at the dam that normally begin each year on November 1.
The U.S. State Department last week announced that Jill Smail will be the new Columbia River Treaty negotiator for the department, replacing Brian Doherty.
Researchers at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center are reporting a never-before-seen phenomenon in Alaska waters—an influx of strange organisms that resemble flattened, translucent sea pickles.
Environmental disturbances such as El Niño shake up the marine food web off Southern California, new research shows, countering conventional thinking that the hierarchy of who-eats-who in the ocean remains largely constant over time.
A weak La Nina weather pattern is still predicted to settle in before winter, but that powerful atmospheric influence is unrelated to a “river of moisture” that is moving across the Pacific Northwest this week.
Those involved with the nation’s largest, long-term conservation project aimed at restoring native trout recently received an Award of Excellence from Montana Governor Steve Bullock.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has confirmed the presence of New Zealand mudsnails in Monterey County’s Carmel River.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke this week announced the selection of Bryan Rice, a veteran federal administrator and citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, as the new Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal agency that coordinates government-to-government relations with 567 federally recognized tribes in the United States.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is awarding $32 million in Indian Environmental General Assistance Program (GAP) grants to tribes and tribal consortia in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week announced the appointment of Chris Hladick of Alaska to become regional administrator for Region 10, which includes Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.
The Department of the Interior has announced the hiring of Jason Larrabee as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person(s) responsible for killing a federally protected gray wolf in south-central Oregon.
The Bonneville Power Administration made its 34th consecutive annual payment to the U.S. Treasury on time and in full. The total payment was for $1.3 billion for fiscal year 2017, which ended Sept. 30. BPA’s cumulative payments to the U.S. Treasury during those 34 years amount to more than $28.9 billion.
In response to a petition by conservation groups last year, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission last week asked for public input on its draft status review of the Marbeled Murrelet, a seabird found along the coastline from mid-California to Alaska.
Explosive volcanic eruptions in the tropics can lead to El Niño events, those notorious warming periods in the Pacific Ocean with dramatic global impacts on the climate, according to a new study.
Including data on juvenile salmonids taken by avian predation may result in more accurate and possibly less expensive survival studies, according to a recent study that looked at seven years of survival data for upper Columbia River steelhead.
What would have been the largest coal export terminal in the U.S. was denied the water quality permit this week it needed to move ahead on construction.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has ended efforts to remove members of a wolf pack that has shown no sign of preying on livestock in Stevens County since late July.
NOAA is reporting the summer of 2017 was the third warmest on record globally, with the Pacific Northwest feeling the same heat, but the region may be in for another cold, wet fall and winter.
Two night poachers gillnetting in the Deschutes River sanctuary zone in the Columbia River mainstem were caught by Oregon State Police and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Enforcement this week, the agencies said in a press release.
About 200 double-crested cormorants are nesting on East Sand Island, some or all with 7- to 10-day old chicks, far fewer of the birds than would be expected at what Portland Audubon had deemed the largest colony of double-crested cormorants in the world.
A suit charging Portland General Electric for Clean Water Act violations downstream of its Pelton/Round Butte Complex of dams on the Deschutes River was granted its second stay last week, September 11.
The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies recently elected Idaho Fish and Game Director Virgil Moore as its new president, a release from the group said.
As juvenile salmon and steelhead enter the ocean, the common murre and sooty shearwater, offshore avian predators that feed on forage fish such as salmon, throw up a “predator gauntlet” while the fish are still in the Columbia River plume, according to a recent study.
A large team of researchers will invade the California coast near San Luis Obispo this month to launch an intense study of the Pacific Ocean’s inner shelf – a little-studied region between the surf zone and the mid-Continental Shelf.
Human antidepressants are building up in the brains of bass, walleye and several other fish common to the Great Lakes region, scientists say.
State wildlife managers plan to take lethal action against a wolf pack that has repeatedly preyed on livestock in Ferry County during the past two months.
When the Fukushima power plant released large quantities of radioactive materials into nearby coastal waters following Japan’s massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami, it raised concerns as to whether eating contaminated seafood might impair human health — not just locally but across the Pacific.
The Washington State Department of Health recently added the 150-mile stretch of the Columbia River from McNary Dam to the I-90 bridge near Vantage to its growing list of waterways with fish consumption advisories.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlilfe has confirmed four livestock depredations by the Meacham Wolf Pack of Umatilla County this month, all to the same livestock producer in the same privately-owned pasture. This is despite dedicated and substantial proactive non-lethal efforts to stop wolf-livestock conflict.
Adrenaline and noradrenaline, the “fight or flight” hormones, peak first, followed more gradually by cortisol. A new study http://jeb.biologists.org/content/220/14/2529 finds that largemouth bass whose cortisol levels rise most after a brief bout of stress are inherently harder to catch by angling.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife managers acted on their intention to remove some of the adult wolves in northeast Oregon’s Harl Butte pack to limit further livestock losses as non-lethal measures and hazing have not been successful in limiting wolf depredations.
Interpreting relationships between species and their environments is crucial to inform ecosystem-based management (EBM), a priority for NOAA Fisheries. EBM recognizes the diverse interactions within an ecosystem — including human impacts — so NOAA Fisheries can consider resource tradeoffs that help protect and sustain productive ecosystems and the services they provide.
This week the Bonneville Power Administration set rates for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 that, says the agency, “will help support long-term rate stability and maximize the value of the regional federal power and transmission systems.”
The “Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act” advanced through the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee this week. The next step will be a vote on the U.S. House floor.
Academic journals are increasingly asking authors to use transparent reporting practices to “trust, but verify” that outcomes are not being reported in a biased way and to enable other researchers to reproduce the results.
With growing risks to the nation’s electrical grid from natural disasters and as a potential target for malicious attacks, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should work closely with utility operators and other stakeholders to improve cyber and physical security and resilience, says a new congressionally mandated report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The Pacific Northwest should expect continued warmer-than-average temperatures and normal rainfall August through October, according to a new long-term climate outlook developed by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center.
Washington State wildlife managers plan to remove members of a wolf pack that has repeatedly preyed on livestock in Stevens County since 2015.
Oregon State University has just received a grant of $121.88 million from the National Science Foundation to spearhead the construction of a new class of research vessel for the United States Academic Research Fleet. It is the largest grant in the university’s history.
Facing some of the lowest steelhead returns on record, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has already curtailed steelhead fishing seasons throughout the Columbia River basin by adopting rolling season closures, reduced bag limits, and a night angling closure for all species.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists have captured and fitted a tracking collar to a female gray wolf in Lassen County, and confirmed that the wolf and her mate have produced at least three pups this year.
A multi-year survey of the nutritional, physiological and reproductive health of endangered southern resident killer whales suggests that up to two-thirds of pregnancies failed in this population from 2007 to 2014.
A creative spill operation at Little Goose Dam on the lower Snake River designed to urge spring chinook salmon to pass the dam ended Wednesday.
A new plan to reduce spill eight hours a day at Little Goose Dam to encourage passage of adult spring chinook salmon seems to be working.
The weather-climate outlook for the coming summer months appears to be comfortably warmer and drier than the last couple summers in the Columbia Basin.
For the first time in more than a century, native redband trout will be able to move freely between both sides of the North Canal Dam on the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon thanks to the completion of the North Canal Dam Fish Passage Project.
Nearly 9,000 spring chinook salmon were held up between Lower Monumental Dam and Little Goose Dam on the lower Snake River and last week the interagency Technical Management Team changed operations by reducing spill at the dam that it had hoped would get the fish to pass at Little Goose.
Forecasts for the summer’s water supply in the Columbia River basin continue to climb at many basin dams.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke this week announced the appointment of Greg Sheehan to the newly-created position of Deputy Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The forecast for water supply in the Columbia River basin is continuing to rise ever so slightly, according to information provided at this week’s interagency Technical Management Team.
A NOAA monthly climate briefing held Thursday provided a recap of April and outlooks through August that indicate a potential warmer and drier summer for Columbia Basin states.
Brian Mercier was appointed Executive Manager of the Bonneville Power Administration’s Fish and Wildlife Division May14. In that position, commonly referred to as the Director of Fish and Wildlife, Mercier reports directly to Lorri Bodi, Senior Vice President of Environment, Fish and Wildlife.
Artificially adding nutrients to the Kootenai River in Idaho, downstream of Libby Dam, influences growth of two native species more than does controlling water temperature and discharge from the dam, according to a recently released study.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks seeks public review of its proposal to remove non-native and hybridized cutthroat trout in the upper portion of Overwhich Creek and its tributaries in the southwest Bitterroot Valley, above Painted Rocks Dam.
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