Columbia Basin Bulletin

The reservoir behind central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam is full (1,600-foot elevation), air temperatures in the lower Snake River basin are warming into the 100’s over the July 4 weekend and beyond, and tailwater temperature at Lower Granite Dam is warming towards 68 degrees Fahrenheit, the maximum allowed by NOAA Fisheries’ biological opinion on impacts of the federal hydroelectric system on salmon and steelhead.

Idaho, Washington and Oregon are in line to receive $1,840,082 to upgrade or replace existing fish screens that prevent migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead from getting trapped in canals and irrigation ditches.

Last week, Oregon and Washington fisheries managers shut down retention of Columbia River sockeye salmon from the ocean to the two-state border at Hwy 395 near Pasco, WA, even as the run size forecast rose twice and by early this week had nearly doubled.

During recent periods of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Alaska, young Pacific cod in near shore safe havens where they typically spend their adolescence did not experience the protective effects those areas typically provide, a new Oregon State University study found.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week affirmed a lower court ruling that prevents Scott Timber from clearcutting old growth trees within Oregon’s Elliott State Forest. The decision will protect marbled murrelets, which are a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The court found that the proposed logging of the 355-acre Benson Ridge parcel by the subsidiary of Roseburg Forest Products would violate the ESA.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week released its final environmental impact statement analyzing proposed barred owl management alternatives to protect northern and California spotted owls in Washington, Oregon and California from invasive barred owls.

A bird that spends its entire life near mountaintops in the Pacific Northwest is likely to become in danger of extinction as a result of climate change, the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service has announced. Following a review of the best available science, the Service has finalized a listing of the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Spearfishing for bass is allowed on southwest Oregon’s Coquille River through Oct. 31. Spears, spear guns and angling with bait to take smallmouth bass is allowed, and there are no harvest size or limits.

Aimed at protecting wild Pacific salmon, Diane Lebouthillier, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, announced this week that the Canadian Government will ban open net-pen salmon aquaculture in British Columbia coastal waters by June 30, 2029.

Gray whales that spend their summers feeding in the shallow waters off the Pacific Northwest coast have undergone a significant decline in body length since around the year 2000, a new Oregon State University study found.