U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Mark Begich (D-AK) have issued statements following recent reports from Alaska pilots that large amounts of debris are accumulating along the central Gulf of Alaska coast from Kayak Island to Montague Island.
The Washington Department of Ecology will hold public workshops on possible changes to the state’s fish consumption rates in May in Ellensburg, Tacoma and Spokane Valley.
A May 2 investigation by ODFW confirmed that four penned sheep (two ewes, two lambs) were killed by a wolf on private land east of Weston, Ore., in northern Umatilla County.
Leadership from four Columbia River treaty tribes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Indian Affairs gathered on the banks of the Columbia River Wednesday morning to celebrate the completion of the Dallesport Treaty Fishing Access Site.
Researchers from the University of Oviedo have for the first time analyzed a DNA fragment from commercial feed for aquarium cichlids, aquaculture salmon and marine fish in aquariums.
NOAA Fisheries announced Thursday that it is proposing to remove the “eastern” Steller sea lion population, currently deemed “threatened,” from the list of endangered wildlife.
Michael C. Ormsby, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, announced this week that Tom D. White, age 37, and his wife, Erin J. White, age 37, of Twisp, Wash., entered guilty pleas pursuant to plea agreements with the United States to criminal charges involving illegal conduct relating to endangered wolves.
U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, and Mark Begich, D-AK, have called for a clear federal action plan to address the tsunami debris off the Pacific Coast, following the discovery in March of a tsunami-swept Japanese fishing vessel off the coast of Canada.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife collared a 96-pound male wolf from the Wenaha pack Monday in northwestern Wallowa County.
A leak was repaired Tuesday in a sewage pipe in Trail, British Columbia, where a coupler broke, spilling raw sewage into the Columbia River. The estimate of raw sewage spilled to the river was estimated at about 1.15 million gallons.
Wind turbines in the Bonneville Power Administration’s transmission grid generated over 4,000 megawatts for the first time on Sunday, March 11, producing nearly twice as much energy as that generated by coal, gas and nuclear plants connected to BPA’s system at that time.
Two new NOAA Sea Grant studies will look at how new business models, based on the success of community supported agriculture, could benefit fishing communities in Washington, Oregon, and California.
The Oregon Supreme Court on Monday issued opinions certifying wording for ballot titles for a trio of initiatives aimed at banning commercial non-Indian gill-net fishing on the mainstem Columbia River.
Leaders of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s member tribes expressed support Thursday for NOAA Fisheries’ decision to authorize the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington to permanently remove California sea lions that travel up the Columbia River each spring to prey on returning salmon spawners.
As the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers team at Ice Harbor Lock and Dam performs repairs of power transformer heat exchangers or “cooling units” that recently leaked oil into the river, the Corps says it is taking precautions to protect Endangered Species Act-listed fish.
Columbia-Snake river water supply forecasts for the approaching warm months remain “below normal, but not drastically so,” according to the Steve King of NOAA’s Northwest River Forecast Center in Portland.
Just over a week after the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes decided to expand an environmental review process for a controversial lake trout netting project on Flathead Lake, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has withdrawn its support for the process.
As of this week, the Spokane region has a formal organization to lead efforts to find and reduce toxic compounds in the Spokane River. Thirteen governmental agencies, private industries and environmental organizations have signed a memorandum of agreement that forms the Spokane River Regional Toxics Task Force.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Walla Walla District, announced Feb. 16 that it was extending by 30 days the public comment period on an Environmental Assessment and draft Finding of No Significant Impact for the “Dworshak Reservoir Nutrient Supplementation Pilot Study.”
Nuclear radiation health experts from Oregon State University say the debris from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan that may begin to wash up on U.S. shores this year will not pose a radiation risk.
Four Columbia River basin tribes’ right to police themselves at congressionally designated treaty fishing access areas was upheld Thursday in a decision released by the state of Washington’s Supreme Court.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $770,000 contract Monday to J.E. McAmis, Inc., of Chico, Calif., to remove large rocks from the base of the spillway at Bonneville Lock and Dam.
Climatic and accompanying ocean conditions that have remained “persistently negative,” since late spring/early summer 2010, could bode well for Columbia River basin and other salmon populations that return from the Pacific to spawn next year, the year after, and possibly beyond.
Despite a mid-January burst of precipitation, snowpack in the Columbia River basin remains below “normal” as the region heads into wintertime’s home stretch.
As the one-year anniversary of the devastating March 11, 2011, Japanese earthquake approaches, and debris from the ensuing tsunami moves closer to the West Coast, a group of Oregon agencies, university scientists, political staff, non-governmental organizations and others is preparing for its arrival.
For years there have been concerns about the potential impacts – genetic contamination and disease — from salmon farmed in British Columbia net pens upon wild Pacific salmon. Now comes a pilot project to reduce environmental risk by raising salmon in a tank.
The ZeaChem biorefinery under development along the Columbia River in Boardman, Oregon got a boost Thursday from a $232.5 million USDA conditional loan guarantee announced by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The gray wolf designated OR7 has remained in California since he crossed the state line from Oregon on Dec. 28.
Washington State University has established a new academic entity: the School of the Environment, an interdisciplinary teaching, research and extension enterprise intended to address complex, multidimensional environmental issues.
— Re: “Corps Dworshak Nutrient Supplementation Study Aims To Boost Kokanee, Listed Bull Trout,” Jan. 20, 2012, https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/415679.aspx
— From Mike Faler, Fisheries Biologist, Orofino, ID
In regards to the article about the Dworshak Nutrient Supplementation Project, I would like to point out just a few of the omissions, discrepancies, and inconsistencies I observed in the narrative:
A new study suggests that the impact of predation on juvenile Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska has been significantly underestimated, creating a “productivity pit” from which their population will have difficulty recovering without a reduction of predators.
The Bonneville Power Administration, Idaho Power and PacifiCorp have agreed to continue exploring joint participation in the 300-mile, 500-kilovolt Boardman-to-Hemingway Transmission Line Project.
Concerned about the impact of debris from the Japanese tsunami on Oregon’s fishing, crabbing, shipping and tourism industries, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, said this week it is time for federal, state and local agencies to develop a response plan and start communicating with the public.
Recent data from the federal Toxics Release Inventory, which includes a section on the Columbia River basin, shows that toxic chemical releases rose in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, says the Environmental Protection Agency.
Researchers at the University of Oviedo in Spain have come up with a way of tagging gunpowder which allows its illegal use to be detected even after it has been detonated. Based on the addition of isotopes, the technique can also be used to track and differentiate between wild fish and those from a fish farm, such as trout and salmon.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released its draft environmental assessment of a request from West Butte Wind Power, LLC, for a permit that would allow for the “take” of golden eagles at the company’s proposed wind project in central Oregon.
Debris from the tsunami that devastated Japan in March could reach the United States as early as this winter, according to predictions by NOAA scientists.
Photos captured on an ODFW remote camera in northeast Oregon show the Wenaha wolf pack had at least one pup this year.
The Washington Department of Ecology has approved the first water rights for municipal, domestic and industrial purposes from the Lake Roosevelt storage pool behind Grand Coulee Dam under the state’s Columbia River water development program.
The Oregon Elections Division on Thursday released two “certified” initiative titles for proposals that would, if added to the Nov. 6 ballot and approved by voters, restrict and/or eliminate commercial fishing by non-tribal Oregon fishermen in the Columbia River and other “inland waters.”
After four years of development and extensive public review, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission last week unanimously adopted a plan that will guide state conservation and management of gray wolves in Washington.
The Washington Department of Ecology will hold a public workshop in Seattle as part of an effort intended to update statewide environmental standards “that will better safeguard people who eat fish and shellfish from Washington’s waters.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week released a new scientific integrity policy.
Marine predators such as sharks, tunas, swordfish, and marlins are becoming increasingly rare under current fishing trends, say University of British Columbia researchers.
This fall’s bull trout spawning was 78 percent of the 10-year average in streams feeding Montana’s Kootenai River below Libby Dam, and 70 percent of the 10-year average in streams feeding Lake Koocanusa north of the dam.
After four years of development and extensive public review, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider adoption of a plan to guide state conservation and management of gray wolves as they re-establish a breeding population in the state.
In a letter sent this week, 52 members of the U.S. House of Representatives called on President Obama to convene a “solutions table” regarding efforts to protect and restore endangered wild salmon and steelhead in the Columbia and Snake River basins of the Pacific Northwest.
Recent stream surveys have revealed an alarming trend in declining bull trout reproduction in Montana’s Swan River drainage, along with troubling numbers in the North Fork Flathead Basin and improving spawning in the Flathead’s Middle and South Fork drainages.
After 30 years of Montana resistance against mining and drilling in the Canadian Flathead, the British Columbia provincial government has formally and finally approved a law protecting the drainage from development.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco has directed NOAA Fisheries to assemble a report on Infectious Salmon Anemia – due by the end of November – that will outline steps needed on surveillance, research and response, including contingency plans for handling the potential spread of the virus.
A recently published research paper suggests that maintaining natural temperatures on Montana’s Flathead River system may inhibit the movements of invasive lake trout to upstream waters.
With additional reports of British Columbia salmon testing positive for Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA), U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, and Mark Begich, D-AK, this week sent a letter to key senate appropriators calling for the federal government to independently test samples of the recently detected virus, rather than relying on Canadian scientists.
A huge “migration” of trees has begun across much of the West due to global warming, insect attack, diseases and fire, and many tree species are projected to decline or die out in regions where they have been present for centuries, while others move in and replace them.
U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, and Mark Begich, D-AK, have introduced a bipartisan amendment that calls for an investigation of the spread of the Canadian salmon virus that they fear poses a threat to Pacific Northwest wild salmon and the coastal economies that rely on them.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says it is closely monitoring and evaluating a recent report that samples taken from sockeye salmon in British Columbia show exposure to Infectious Salmon Anemia Virus (ISAv).
A massive trail of debris from the devastating tsunami that struck Japan in March of 2011 is slowly making its way across the Pacific Ocean en route to the West Coast of the United States, where scientists are predicting it will arrive in the next two to three years – right on schedule.
A new wolf pack is using the Snake River wildlife management unit of northeast Oregon, which borders Idaho and includes the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and Wilderness.
The Forest Service has identified a preferred approach for continuing the aerial application of fire retardant on national forest lands.
As described in the final environmental impact statement it issued, the preferred approach would map land and water areas to avoid endangered, threatened, and sensitive species.
Oregon’s Water Quality Standards, with the stiffest water pollution regulations in the country, were approved Monday (Oct. 17) by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael L. Connor has announced that Lorri Gray-Lee will succeed Karl Wirkus as director of the Bureau’s Pacific Northwest Region when he retires at the end of December.
The good news for salmon advocates was that California sea lions’ consumption of fish below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam was down in the spring of 2011 after steady increases each year since 2004.
It may not seem like a lot, but the return of 138 lamprey to a specially designed ladder on the lower Umatilla River, an eastern Oregon tributary of the Columbia River, has surprised fisheries experts who expected smaller returns that would take much longer to materialize.
The total sport catch of fall chinook salmon this year in the lower Columbia River — 25,677 adult chinook through this past Sunday, Sept. 25, — is now the second largest since at least 1980 and could well take over the top spot in the coming days.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife staff will kill two wolves from the Imnaha pack after confirming they were involved in another livestock loss.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District, is increasing outflows from Albeni Falls Dam and lowering Lake Pend Oreille with an elevation target of 2,060 feet above mean sea level by Sept. 30.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will repair erosion damage to a section of one of Bonneville Lock and Dam’s fish ladders without delay, Corps officials said.
La Niña, which contributed to extreme weather around the globe during the first half of 2011, has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is forecast to gradually strengthen and continue into winter.
Salmon and other fish predators take the adage ‘no guts, no glory’ literally, by having up to three times the “gut” capacity they need on a daily basis just so they can “glory” when prey is abundant, University of Washington researchers have discovered.
It’s been rough and wearying work, plying the waters of Glacier National Park’s remote Quartz Lake for unwanted lake trout, but the effort appears promising so far.
Since the experimental suppression project got under way in 2009, more than 1,500 non-native lake trout have been removed from the lake through spring and fall gill netting.
U.S. commercial fishermen landed 8.2 billion pounds of seafood in 2010, valued at $4.5 billion, an increase of 200 million pounds and more than $600 million in value over 2009, according to a new report released by NOAA.
Scientists can now remotely monitor the ocean’s changing chemistry with help from some of the five-foot-tall Argo floats that drift with deep ocean currents and transmit data via satellite back to land.
In last week’s story “Feds, States, Tribes Sign Statement Aimed At Strengthening Effort To Reduce Toxins In Columbia River” https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/411973.aspx the listing of the entities that signed the agreement was incorrect.
Leaders from the federal government, tribes, states, and non-profits gathered in Spokane, Wash., last week to sign an “executive statement” they say strengthens their commitment to reduce toxic contaminants in the Columbia River basin.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission approved voluntary guidelines for egg cure manufacturers to reduce or eliminate the use of sodium sulfites in bait cures used for salmon eggs.
A multiyear project aimed at restoring native westslope cutthroat trout in alpine lakes above Montana’s South Fork Flathead drainage has resumed with Necklace Lakes being treated with a toxin to remove non-native or hybrid fish.
The special fishery for triploid rainbow trout below Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River closed Aug. 26 at midnight.
California Department of Fish and Game biologists say that sea lions are responsible for a number of recent pelican deaths in the San Luis Obispo area.
The Herring School Workshop — a three-day conference this week at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University, Burnaby campus — brought several groups together to digest and discuss the dismal fate of herring in the Pacific Northwest.
A new Simon Fraser University-related study confirms sea lice from salmon farms are compromising wild fish populations.
It is based on the most comprehensive examination of sea lice from salmon farms and wild salmon dynamics in British Columbia to date.
The Imnaha wolf pack in northeast Oregon had at least one pup this year.
Footage captured July 16, by an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife employee show a black-colored pup travelling with the Imnaha pack’s alpha female (its mother). So far, photographs and visual observations have turned up only one pup for the Imnaha pack this year, but more pups may be found.
Unless yet another freak of nature occurs, it appears that world’s largest, and perhaps most studied, Caspian tern nesting colony will produce zero chicks this year at the lower Columbia River estuary’s East Sand Island.
Since May 1, anglers participating in the pikeminnow sport-reward fishery program, have caught thousands of predatory pikeminnow from the Columbia and Snake rivers and as a result saved migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead that are protected under the Endangered Species Act.
A 17-mile stretch of the Columbia River between Bridgeport and Brewster, Wash., is about to become a hotspot for triploid trout fishing.
Until Aug. 31, anglers will be allowed to catch and keep triploid rainbow trout in the mainstem Columbia River from the Highway 173 Bridge in Brewster to the Highway 17 Bridge in Bridgeport, under a new regulation issued by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The delivery of a draft ballot title Tuesday triggered a comment period of 10 business days’ duration on a proposal to amend Oregon law to ban the use of gill nets by non-tribal commercial fishers in the Columbia River.
If genetically modified Atlantic salmon were to escape from captivity they could succeed in breeding and passing their genes into the wild, Canadian researchers have found.
NOAA this week announced a new aquaculture initiative the agency says will help meet the United States’ “growing demand for seafood, while creating jobs and restoring healthy ecosystems.”
An unprecedented decade-long study of apex predators in the Pacific Ocean found a wider range of distribution among some species than previously thought, unknown relationships between other species, and the importance of biological “hotspots” to the survival of most of these sea creatures.
Where Atlantic salmon feed in the ocean has been a long-standing mystery, but new research led by the University of Southampton shows that marine location can be recovered from the chemistry of fish scales.
The Oregon Environmental Quality Commission Thursday approved new water quality standards designed to reduce or prevent toxic pollutants in Oregon waterways and that will be based on new human health criteria, including the highest fish consumption rate in the United States.
The rules include provisions allowing dischargers of pollutants to seek variances if a facility cannot meet the new standards.
Hugh Morrison has been selected to be the assistant regional director for Budget and Administration in the Pacific Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Regional Director Robyn Thorson announced this week.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center this week said a transition from La Niña to El Nino/Southern Oscillation-Neutral conditions occurred during May 2011 as indicated by generally small sea surface temperature anomalies across the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife may kill at least one additional wolf from the Imnaha pack after another livestock animal was confirmed to have been killed by wolves yesterday.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has revised a draft plan for state wolf recovery and management, and will conduct more public review later this year.
A newly released Washington Department of Ecology study on PCBs in the Spokane River concludes that significant reductions in polychlorinated biphenyls levels have occurred over the last two decades but concentrations still don’t meet state and Spokane Tribal standards.
Oregon’s Imnaha wolf pack’s alpha male was fitted with a new working GPS collar Thursday.
Facebook is well-known for connecting friends, publicizing events and allowing people ample space to procrastinate online.
The long-held adage that the majority of juvenile salmon mortality takes place during their first days and weeks in saltwater may not strictly be true.
Although wolves have been removed from federal Endangered Species Act protection in the eastern third of Washington state, they remain protected as a state endangered species throughout Washington.
Re: CBB, May 6, 2011 “Study Of Portland Watershed Council Shows Disproportionate Representation By Wealthier, Liberal “ https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/408194.aspx
— From Matt Clark, Executive Director, Johnson Creek Watershed Council
California sea lion numbers have increased recently in the waters below Bonneville Dam but their average daily attendance this year remains the lowest it’s been since 2003, according to the April 29 status report from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers researchers at the dam.
Sunday, May 1, marked the beginning of the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program in the Columbia and Snake Rivers, offering cash to anglers who catch the predatory fish.
A study of one of the largest watershed councils in Portland shows some inequities and a disproportionate representation by the city’s wealthier, well-connected, and liberal residents.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will kill two wolves from the Imnaha pack in response to repeated livestock losses caused by the pack.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will ramp up releases from Libby Dam, possibly in an unusual way, to ensure that flows can be curtailed during the peak runoff to avoid flooding on the Kootenai River.
Over a two week period in early April, water from the Columbia River was pumped 10 miles south through existing pipes and irrigation infrastructure to a shallow man-made pond – the first stage of an aquifer recharge project in the arid farming land of eastern Oregon.
Fish and marine species are among the most threatened wildlife on earth, due partly to over exploitation by fishing fleets. Yet there are differences in assessing trends in worldwide fishing stocks which, researchers writing in Conservation Biology argue, stem from inappropriate use of time trends in catches.
Five days after discovering wolverine tracks in the Wallowa Mountains of Northeast Oregon, researcher Audrey Magoun downloaded photos of two wolverines from a bait station camera.
Persistent rain and snowfall across the Columbia-Snake river basin during the first 18 days of April has resulted in a spike in a prediction of how much water will rush down through the system from April through September.
Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter this week signed a bill declaring the federal government’s introduction of wolves to Idaho a state disaster.
A site has been selected near Newport, Ore., for a new wave energy test program, the first of its kind in the United States and the closest one this side of Scotland.
The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that P4 Production LLC (P4), a mining and phosphorus processing company owned by Monsanto and operating near Soda Springs in southeast Idaho, has agreed to pay a $1.4 million civil penalty for alleged Clean Water Act violations at its South Rasmussen Mine.
The Columbia River basin is poised to enjoy what will likely be its largest water supply since 1999 in terms of April through September runoff past The Dalles Dam on the lower river.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will host three public meetings in coastal communities later this month to solicit input on regulations for the 2011 fall chinook salmon and coho seasons in Oregon bays and coastal rivers.
A new study by researchers at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute suggests most entanglements of Steller sea lions in human-made marine debris along the Pacific coast could be prevented through education and changes to manufacturing and packaging processes when the entangling materials are produced.
Nobody knows how the black bear got there. The first time it was spotted on Monday, the bruin was already precariously perched on The Dalles Dam spillgate.
The ongoing spread of non-native mussels in the Great Lakes has caused “massive, ecosystem-wide changes” throughout lakes Michigan and Huron, two of the planet’s largest freshwater lakes, according to a new University of Michigan-led study.
Monitoring wolf populations has never been easy and it has gotten more difficult in recent years with expanding populations, but now there’s interest in putting a new method to work, possibly as soon as this year.
Water releases from Montana’s Hungry Horse Dam have been bumped up over the last week to make room for runoff from a persistent, well-above-average snowpack.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission on Thursday, March 31, appointed Virgil Moore as the new director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
A late winter-into-spring wet spell across the Columbia-Snake basin has served to solidify predictions that the region will enjoy an above average water supply pouring down from the mountains in the coming months.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said this week it will begin implementing its 2011 Spring Fish Operations Plan for spring migration to help Columbia River Basin juvenile salmon and steelhead migrate to the ocean.
Inland commercial navigation between Lewiston and Portland resumed March 26 with the official reopening of the navigation lock at Lower Monumental Lock and Dam on the lower Snake River, near Kahlotus, Wash.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released an environmental review that proposes a management hunt for wolves in Montana’s West Fork Bitterroot drainage to reduce predation on a diminished elk herd in that area.
The Bonneville Power Administration will build a new power line across southeast Washington.
The project is expected to provide up to 170 jobs and will carry 840 additional megawatts of renewable wind energy, enough to power about half a million Northwest homes when the wind is blowing.
The concentrations of toxic flame retardants called PBDEs in fish tissues from the Spokane River are higher than any other tested area in Washington state, but recent studies indicate levels of those toxics may actually be dropping.
Montana Fish, Wildlife, Parks has released the annual report detailing results from the lake trout removal project on Swan Lake. A three-year experimental lake trout removal project was initiated in 2009. The report describes the results of 2010.
The 2011 Arctic sea ice extent maximum that marks the beginning of the melt season appears to be tied for the lowest ever measured by satellites, say scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Whopping precipitation totals across the Columbia-Snake river basin have helped push the forecast of the spring and summer water runoff volume to 104 percent of normal, which would be the best outpouring since 1999, according to data compiled by the Northwest River Forecast Center.
At least 566 wolves inhabit Montana according to the 2010 annual wolf conservation and management report released by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
The snowpack in the mountains that ring the Columbia-Snake river basin has — through a boisterous La Nina winter — continued to store a spring-summer water supply that appears likely to be near the 30-year average.
U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., on Wednesday introduced legislation aimed streamlining the process for states and tribes to gain federal permission to lethally remove California sea lions that prey on protected Columbia and Snake river salmon stocks that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Three additional wolves from the Imnaha Pack were collared by state and federal biologists last weekend in Wallowa County.
The potential had remained that a Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas terminal could be constructed at a proposed site 20 miles upriver from Astoria, Ore., but, in contrast, a pipeline to connect it to a transmission system could not legally be built.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission has announced six candidates for the position of director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
During a Feb. 16 hearing in Portland before Oregon’s Environmental Quality Commission, tribal voices stressed the need to better protect Oregon’s citizens with the approval of proposed water quality standards for toxic pollutants that would be based on new human health criteria, including the highest fish consumption rate in the United States.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer has drawn a bold line on the land, announcing Feb.16 that he is directing Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks not to prosecute ranchers who kill wolves that threaten livestock, and directing the department to cull wolves that have impacted elk populations in the Bitterroot Valley.
Another chapter has unfolded in the running effort to ban mining in the Canadian headwaters of the Flathead River basin, with Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer announcing this month a deal that will compensate two mining companies for investments they’ve already made in the drainage.
Predatory fish such as cod, tuna, and groupers have declined by two-thirds over the past 100 years, while small forage fish such as sardine, anchovy and capelin have more than doubled over the same period, according to University of British Columbia researchers.
The Californian Department of Water Resources hopes that underwater strobe lights and offensive electronic sounds contained within a curtain of bubbles will keep migrating salmon on the straight-and-narrow in the Delta.
Wind turbines in the Bonneville Power Administration’s transmission grid generated over 3,000 megawatts for the first time Tuesday (Feb. 22) , producing enough electricity to serve a city three times the size of Seattle for an hour.
In the Feb. 11, 2011, CBB story “Council Rejects State Agencies’ Funding Request For More Sea Lion Traps At Bonneville Dam” the information about Washington Northwest Power and Conservation member Tom Karier’s vote was incorrect.
The semi-annual rite of making repairs and undertaking routine maintenance at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam’s Powerhouse 2 fish ladders got a little more burdensome in late January with the need to remove some 1,700 white sturgeon – ranging from about a foot long to 10 feet long — that had, apparently, settled in for the winter.
Mostly supporters turned out in Pendleton Tuesday to testify about the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s proposed Water Quality Standards that will be based on new human health criteria, including the highest fish consumption rate in the United States.
The latest Northwest River Forecast Center forecast predicts that the Columbia River basin will enjoy a “normal” water supply this spring and summer fed by mountain snowpacks that are in relatively good shape.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will conduct a scientific assessment of the Bristol Bay watershed to better understand how future large-scale development projects may affect water quality and Bristol Bay’s salmon fishery, a major salmon resource for the United States.
A wet start to January helped to push the Columbia River basin’s water supply forecast to slightly above average, despite barren skies that have dominated much of the region in recent days.
Community watershed councils can establish a social infrastructure that facilitates successful science-based management by participating in data collection and forming neighborhood peer networks, according to a study from the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station.
U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., introduced legislation Wednesday that would remove wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act.
BPA will reconvene an expert panel to evaluate a recent report suggesting that aggressive energy efficiency measures and other actions could delay the need for a new power line on the I-5 Corridor in southwest Washington.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, has released a draft report on its investigation of contamination on Bradford Island and in the water near the island at Bonneville Lock and Dam.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s December Wolf Report says the Inmaha Pack may have produced six pups in 2010.
Fraser River sockeye salmon with a certain genomic profile are more likely to die before spawning, contributing to the recent declines in British Columbian salmon, says a new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Wanted: Social arbiter and diplomat in one of the most emotionally charged arenas of wildlife management. Must be a detective and data cruncher with an uncanny ability to trap live gray wolves.
Ocean conditions off the coast of Oregon and Washington changed from nightmarish to dreamy for juvenile salmon this past late spring-early summer and in the process confounded experts’ efforts to predict how those young fish may have fared.
The Bonneville Power Administration is inviting public comments on its draft environmental impact statement for a proposed new 500-kilovolt transmission line running from BPA’s existing Big Eddy Substation in The Dalles to a proposed new Knight Substation about four miles northwest of Goldendale, Wash.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District has alerted commercial and recreational mariners that it is extending the closure of The Dalles navigation lock to March 23.
The Pinniped-Fishery Interaction Task Force this week released its “final report and recommendations” for improving the effectiveness of a program aimed at lethally removing California sea lions that prey on spawning salmon below the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
As promised last summer, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is inviting comments in January and February on proposed rulemaking to Oregon’s New and Revised Human Health Water Quality for Toxics, which would make the state’s “Fish Consumption Rate” the highest in the country.
Increasing acidity in the sea’s waters may fundamentally change how nitrogen is cycled in them, say marine scientists who published their findings in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Bonneville Power Administration and its transmission customers have reached a partial settlement to avoid a rate increase for transmission as customers manage through a difficult economy.
A new University of California-Davis study contradicts earlier reports that salmon farms were responsible for the 2002 population crash of wild pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago of western Canada.
Little is known about tidal turbines’ environmental effects and environmentalists, regulators and turbine manufacturers all need more data to allow the industry to grow.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission, in a telephone conference call Wednesday, suspended Idaho’s 2008-2012 species management plan for wolves.
Dan Ashe has been nominated by President Obama to be the next director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Ashe currently serves as the agency’s deputy director.
Anglers hooked large payoffs during this year’s Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program, raking in over $1.2 million by catching 173,112 of the voracious salmon eaters.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has posted for public review the maps and descriptions of proposed marine reserves and protected areas on its marine reserves website at www.oregonocean.info/marinereserves
A sharp increase in the number of sick and dead California sea lions has been reported along the Oregon coast in recent weeks and necropsies conducted on dozens of the animals suggest that many may have died from leptospirosis.
This year’s survey of bull trout spawning turned up average results in Montana’s Flathead River Basin, but indicate a significant decline in the Swan River drainage.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the last section of the Columbia River Channel Improvements Project this week, finishing an effort that took more than 20 years to complete.
NOAA this week released a national policy encouraging the consideration and use of catch shares, a new fishery management tool aimed at rebuilding fisheries.
Contractors from Teck Metals Ltd. (formerly Teck Cominco) have finished removing black slag, a byproduct of the smelting process, from Black Sand Beach near Northport, Wash.
Brian T. Kelly has been named state supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Idaho State Office. His appointment was this week by Robyn Thorson, director of the agency’s Pacific Region.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials and others gathered Wednesday to celebrate completion of a 17-year renovation program at the Bonneville Lock and Dam First Powerhouse that makes the project a more reliable and efficient energy producer and reduces salmon mortality at the dam.
In an effort to reduce wolf-livestock conflicts in Wallowa County, a new range rider will accompany cattle grazing in areas of the Imnaha wolf pack this summer.
Scientists have long known that wind-driven “upwelling” during the spring and summer along the Pacific Coast is critical for bringing deep, nutrient-rich water to the surface and fertilizing plankton blooms that form the base of the marine food web.
Bruce Jim, a Warm Springs tribal member, has been selected by officials from the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Warm Springs tribes to lead the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission as its new chair.
The most sophisticated array of instruments ever put in Washington waters has been mounted on a buoy and Seaglider that was deployed this week off the coast near La Push, in water that typically makes its way into Puget Sound.
The Imnaha wolf pack has at least four new pups this year, images captured on a motion-triggered trail camera show.
A new study concludes that an old, fundamental and widely accepted theory of how and why phytoplankton bloom in the oceans is incorrect.
The Bonneville Power Administration is inviting public comments on its draft environmental impact statement for a proposed new high-voltage transmission line.
For the second consecutive year, the weather in Oregon has made an abrupt shift to summer-like conditions, turning off the rainfall spigot almost overnight and putting the record-setting sogginess of early June firmly in the rearview mirror.
There are no known new technologies, and the methods now used in attempts to chase California sea lions away from their salmon feeding grounds below Bonneville Dam lack effectiveness.
Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released this week.
The U.S. District Court in Spokane has approved and entered a judicial consent decree that imposes a new, enforceable schedule for cleaning up waste from Hanford’s underground tanks.
NOAA Fisheries scientists onboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer are collecting plankton samples from Hawaii to the U.S. West Coast and collecting floating plastic debris from the so-called “great Pacific garbage patch,” a concentrated area of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean.
It’s been a bit of a nightmare this year for nesting Caspian terns at the Columbia River estuary’s East Sand Island and elsewhere across the Pacific Northwest with colonies besieged by predators, floods and, possibly, short food supplies.
Scientists tracking the northward migration of Humboldt squid into Oregon’s offshore waters are enlisting commercial fishermen to help them keep count of these tentacled predators — and what they’re eating.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife this week approved a temporary rule increasing the combined steelhead/salmon bag limit to total of three fish a day on the Willamette, Clackamas and Sandy rivers, effective June 18 through Oct. 31.
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for May, March-May (Northern Hemisphere spring-Southern Hemisphere autumn), and the period January-May, according to NOAA.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week announced the release of the inaugural issue of the public domain Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management and the re-launch of the North American Fauna.
A cool, wet April and May have eased, though not erased, concerns about the spring-summer water supply on which fish, farmers and others depend.
Rain gauges have gotten a big shot during the final week of May, in addition to a precipitation blitzkrieg across the Columbia River basin’s midsection to start June.
A major research effort aimed at learning more about where salmon from specific river systems migrate in the Pacific Ocean will resume this year after a two-year hiatus — and expand to encompass the entire West Coast of the United States.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on June 1 disapproved Oregon’s New and Revised Human Health Water Quality Criteria for Toxics, clearing the way for Oregon to continue the rulemaking process whereby the “Fish Consumption Rate” will be increased to the highest levels in the United States.
As requested by the Oregon Legislature, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has delivered a report detailing how the state can deal with mounting concerns over persistent pollutants that find their way from household, industrial and other uses into Oregon waters.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a new permit requirement that would decrease the amount of pesticides discharged to our nation’s waters and protect human health and the environment.
Scientists are a valuable and trusted source of information, researchers say in a recent report, but too often do an inadequate job of bringing that information to those who need it in a factual, non-technical, credible and neutral format.
ODFW is authorizing USDA Wildlife Services to kill two wolves from the Imnaha pack, which are responsible for five confirmed livestock losses in the past few weeks.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has until June 1 to approve or disapprove water quality criteria for toxic pollutants adopted by Oregon in 2004, according to a court order stemming from a federal lawsuit filed in April 2006 by Northwest Environmental Advocates.
U.S. senators from the Northwest and California introduced legislation this week to permanently prohibit offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf of California, Oregon and Washington.
A draft “Columbia River Basin Toxics Reduction Action Plan” offered for public comment this week “represents a blueprint for immediate and short term actions to restore the Columbia River Basin over the next five years.”
The Arctic region, also called the “planet’s refrigerator,” continues to heat up, affecting local populations and ecosystems as well as weather patterns in the most populated parts of the Northern Hemisphere, according to a team of 69 international scientists.
Above average April precipitation across much of the Columbia River basin helped push up ever so slightly expectations for spring and summer runoff that is vital for fish and humans.
State biologists trapped six sea lions this below Bonneville Dam this week, one of which was eligible for lethal removal under the terms of authorization received from the federal government.
Business leaders, fishing and recreation groups, conservation organizations and clean energy advocates this week announced the launch of “Working Snake River for Washington.”
It’s time to get hooked on the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program, which kicks off Saturday, May 1, in the lower Columbia and Snake rivers, say promoters of the annual effort to catch predatory fish that zero in on juvenile salmon and steelhead.
A check-up of water quality conditions in the Yakima River watershed has identified additional sources of toxic contamination to surface waters, and confirmed that changes in agricultural practices have lessened the amount of pollution coming from irrigation runoff.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking public comment on its recently released plan for the conservation and recovery of Oregon’s native salmon and steelhead populations in the lower Columbia River.
The changing chemistry of the world’s oceans is a growing global problem, says the summary of a congressionally requested study by the National Research Council, which adds that unless man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are substantially curbed, or atmospheric CO2 is controlled by some other means, the ocean will continue to become more acidic.
Columbia-Snake river basin water supply forecasts continue to slip, though a spate of snowstorms in late March and early April has arrested the freefall, at least for now.
State biologists this week trapped and euthanized two California sea lions, bringing to eight the number of big pinnipeds removed so far this year from the waters just below Bonneville Dam on the lower Columbia River.
Wan Teece of Enterprise caught a kokanee weighing 8.23 pounds, measuring 26.25 inches in length with a girth of 16 inches at Wallowa Lake on March 24, breaking the Oregon state record for kokanee and possibly a national record, too.
California sea lions late this week were as scarce as spring chinook salmon in the area just below the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam after state biologists captured seven of the big creatures and removed five of them.
New Clean Water Act water quality standards recently adopted by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation may be the harbinger of stricter pollution controls for point-source discharges, including those of municipalities and industry.
A 10-year effort by a University of Rhode Island scientist to develop transgenic rainbow trout with enhanced muscle growth has yielded fish with what have been described as six-pack abs and muscular shoulders that could provide a boost to the commercial aquaculture industry.
Oregon officials on Wednesday trapped and euthanized with chemical injection the first California sea lion of the new season in the ongoing effort remove specific pinnipeds that are preying on salmon spawners in the waters below the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
With snowpack levels in much of the Cascade Mountain Range at 25 percent or more below average, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has asked the state Legislature to re-establish the state’s drought relief reserves.
The ongoing El Niño of 2010 is affecting north Pacific Ocean ecosystems in ways that could affect the West Coast fishing industry, according to scientists at NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have introduced legislation aimed at protecting the North Fork Flathead from mining, a response to similar protections recently enacted by the province of British Columbia.
In January, wolves killed four calves and a cattle dog at a Sweet-Ola area feed lot.
Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials worked with the producer and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services to stop depredations, but the wolves kept coming back.
Questions, suggestions and many criticisms were recently aimed at a lake trout gillnetting project on Flathead Lake proposed by the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife staff collared three wolves in eastern Oregon from the Imnaha pack last week, which will help wildlife managers better track and understand the pack’s movements.
Plans for an experimental water spill from Montana’s Libby Dam to help Kootenai River white sturgeon this spring now are uncertain because of below-average mountain snowpack above the dam.
The lieutenant governor of British Columbia announced Tuesday that all types of mining and oil and gas development “will not be permitted” in the province’s portion of the Flathead Valley.
Pyrethroids, among the most widely-used home pesticides, are winding up in California rivers at levels toxic to some stream-dwellers, possibly endangering the food supply of fish and other aquatic animals, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Illinois University.
Follow-on tests of the mineral oil that leaked from a spare transformer Dec. 23 at The Dalles Lock and Dam on the Columbia River near The Dalles, Ore., have detected extremely low levels of polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs are a suspected human health carcinogen and bioaccumulate in the food chain.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been receiving calls about brown pelicans that are either washing up dead on the coast or are exhibiting behavior which is uncharacteristic for the species (ie. begging for food, no fear of humans, eating bread crumbs as handouts).
Living-feeding conditions for young salmon took a turn for the worst in that 600-mile wide swath of water off the Oregon and Washington coasts called the California current, according to NOAA Fisheries Service scientists.
A new study has been published showing snowpack trends in the Cascade Mountains from 1930 to 2007.
A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.
A slow start to the 2009-2010 rain and snow season has forecasters predicting below average runoff to fill rivers, reservoirs and lakes during the spring and summer.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson this week announced the selection of Dennis J. McLerran to be the agency’s regional administrator for EPA’s Region 10. The region encompasses Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking comments on a draft environmental assessment of major repairs to portions of the jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington.
Fishery officials are refining their run-size forecasts for components of this year’s return of spring chinook salmon to the Columbia-Snake river basin with the updates repeating the same refrain, “2010 should be a very good year.”
Catch share programs result in more consistent and predictable fisheries but do not necessarily improve ecological conditions, according to a new study published online this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A recent study by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife confirms that some commercially-available cured fish eggs — a popular salmon and steelhead bait — are harmful to juvenile salmon and steelhead.
The Bonneville Power Administration is rescheduling its workshop on its June Columbia River High Water report. It will now be held from 1-5 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 12, to discuss the June high-runoff event.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is offering a $2,500 reward for information regarding the death of a federally protected male gray wolf found Sept. 30 in the Umatilla National Forest in northeast Oregon.
A project aimed at purging non-native fish from an alpine lake in the Jewel Basin Hiking Area in western Montana got under way Wednesday, with a helicopter flying in people and gear from a staging area in the Foothill Road area.
Montana’s two senators have matched legislation from the state’s lone congressman calling for the delisting of gray wolves in Montana and Idaho.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District, water managers have released the planned Lake Pend Oreille elevations for Oct. 1-15. The Corps operates Albeni Falls Dam, which regulates the level of Lake Pend Oreille.
Kelly Benoit-Bird, a pioneering young oceanographer from Oregon State University, has been selected as one of 23 recipients nationwide of prestigious 2010 MacArthur Fellowships.
The Department of the Interior last week launched a new effort to develop a department-wide policy on tribal consultation, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk announced.
The Department of Energy has selected a Northwest team to conduct a regional smart grid demonstration project designed to expand existing electric infrastructure and test new smart grid technology with up to 60,000 customers in five states.
Recent spawning surveys indicate most of Glacier National Park’s west-side bull trout populations are teetering towards extinction, but an aggressive netting project in one lake was successful in suppressing invading lake trout.
A new report summarizing public reactions to wave energy development in the Pacific Northwest suggests that many people are cautiously supportive, but want a “go slow” approach that entails careful research and testing before significant use.
The ocean and the land are natural sponges, or sinks, that absorb carbon dioxide, or CO2, from the atmosphere. But a group of international scientists, including two from NOAA, have found that the emissions are outpacing the ability of the sinks to soak up the excess CO2.
A video taken by ODFW on Nov. 12 in the Imnaha Wildlife Management Unit (east of Joseph, Ore. in Wallowa County) shows at least 10 wolves make up a pack that ODFW has been monitoring since June 2008. The video was taken from an adjacent ridge across a canyon and shows a mixture of gray and black individual wolves moving upslope.
At a change of command ceremony today, Brig. Gen. John R. McMahon assumed command of the Northwestern Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
A new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study shows concentrations of toxic chemicals in fish tissue from lakes and reservoirs in nearly all 50 states.
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