This week marked the 10th anniversary of the removal of the 125-foot high Condit Dam on the White Salmon River in southern Washington. As anticipated, after 10 years as a free-flowing river, salmon and steelhead are returning to the White Salmon, but perhaps not yet in the numbers that meet the stream’s potential.
In an effort to recover salmon and steelhead runs in the Columbia River basin, Washington Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Jay Inslee announced today a joint state and federal effort to determine the impacts and benefits of breaching the four lower Snake River dams.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray are exploring options to breach the lower Snake River dams and replace the benefits they provide, Inslee told a virtual gathering of Washington environmentalists Thursday.
A request for a preliminary injunction to increase spill next year at lower Columbia and Snake river dams, as well as to lower operating pools behind the dams to aid migrating juvenile and adult salmon and steelhead, took one more step forward in federal court.
The potent combination of dams and climate change are the major contributing factors of warm water temperatures impacting salmon and steelhead in the Columbia and Snake rivers, according to a document released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week.
As the Columbia River at Bonneville Dam warms to over 71 degrees Fahrenheit and with expectations of the second lowest steelhead run since Bonneville Dam was built, recreational angling for fall chinook, the largest remaining run of chinook salmon on the Columbia River, begins August 1.
The Columbia Basin Collaborative this week more clearly defined who in the region is invited to participate in a process aimed at improving salmon and steelhead recovery in the Columbia River basin.
Act now and act together, or watch salmon runs continue to plummet in the Northwest. That was the message Wednesday (July 7) when tribal leaders from throughout the Columbia Basin gathered for a “salmon and orca summit” organized by the Nez Perce Tribe and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
Natural origin spring/summer chinook salmon adult returns to the Snake River basin are declining at a rate of 19 percent each year and 77 percent of Snake River spring/summer chinook populations will fall below a quasi-extinction risk threshold of 50 fish for each distinct population by 2025 without emergency actions, Nez Perce tribal fisheries biologists warned this week.