EPA Announces $79 Million In Investments To Reduce Toxic Contaminants In Columbia River Basin
August 11th, 2022
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan Wednesday announced a $79 million investment from the infrastructure bill aimed at reducing toxic contaminants in the Columbia River Basin.
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Proposed Open Pit Gold Mining Project In Salmon River Basin Gets First Significant Permit; Nez Perce Tribe, Groups File Challenge
August 4th, 2022
In the outer reaches of the Columbia River Basin, in central Idaho, a proposed open pit gold mining project has received its first significant permit from the state. And it is being challenged by the Nez Perce Tribe and others.
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Yes, Columbia River Basin Includes Nevada, Salmon Blocked Since 1928; Corps Seeks Comments On Plan To Restore Section Of Owyhee River
August 4th, 2022
The Owyhee River, a Columbia River basin tributary with headwaters in Nevada, where until 1928 salmon returned, is about to get attention from the Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District. The Corps, along with the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe, is developing a plan to restore aquatic and riparian habitats on a section of the remote desert river.
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Biden Administration Announces Plans To Plant More Than One Billion Trees In 10 Years; $100 Million In Reforestation This Year
July 28th, 2022
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week announced a strategy for how the Biden Administration will address a reforestation backlog of four million acres on national forests and plant more than one billion trees over the next decade.
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Yet Another Trump ESA Rule Bites The Dust; Back To The Old Way Of Designating Critical Habitat
July 20th, 2022
The Biden administration today repealed a second Trump-era regulation that weakened habitat protections for threatened and endangered species.
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Extinction Risk For World’s Only Winter-Run Chinook: Eggs Moved To Cold Water Above Shasta Reservoir, Could Inform Reintroduction Above Dams
July 20th, 2022
The Winnemem Wintu Tribe, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week celebrated the return of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon eggs to the McCloud River upstream of Shasta Reservoir for the first time since the construction of the Shasta Dam in the 1940s.
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White House Issues Reports On Basin Salmon Recovery, Costs; ‘Business As Usual’ Not Restoring ESA-Listed Salmon, Steelhead
July 15th, 2022
Saying that “business as usual” is not restoring threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia/Snake river basins, the White House released two reports this week, adding more information to the debate on the costs and efficacy of breaching the four lower Snake River dams as a path towards recovery.
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A Salmon From Upper Columbia Blocked Area Returns; Tribes Tracking Released Juveniles As Part Of Reintroduction Effort
July 14th, 2022
A female spring chinook salmon released as a smolt by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe in 2020 in upper Hangman Creek near Tensed, Idaho has returned to the Upper Columbia River where she will be transported around dams lacking fish passage and returned to her natal stream. She will be the first adult Chinook salmon to return to the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s aboriginal territory in over 100 years.
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Current Recovery Plan Not Working: Tucannon River Spring Chinook In Big Trouble, Options Explored
July 14th, 2022
What’s the most imperiled salmon stock in the Columbia/Snake river basin? It may be the Tucannon River’s spring Chinook. The fish have taken a dive, possibly facing extinction.