For 20 years the Columbia Basin Bulletin has offered readers in-depth news coverage of Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead recovery, the most extensive and expensive ecological restoration effort in the United States. Your Paid Membership will allow the CBB to continue reporting the important details of Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead recovery and other fish and wildlife issues.
A recent study combined ecological analysis with the social sciences, identifying a critical link between fish abundance, angler behavior and management actions.
Some five to 16 million salmon and steelhead had historically returned to the Columbia River basin, but just an average of two million fish return today and only 40 percent of those are naturally produced stocks. If goals in a new Columbia Basin Partnership Task Force report can be met in the next 50 to 100 years, the number of naturally produced fish could increase by eight-fold.
While recent rain is helping many parts of the state, more than a few scattered showers are needed to fix Washington’s drought. For the past few months, Washington’s weather has been all over the map, says a Washington Department of Ecology blog post.
California salmon reintroduced to their historic habitat as juveniles are, for the first time, returning to their home rivers to spawn. NOAA Fisheries says their journey home demonstrates that fish reintroductions can successfully return salmon to the state’s restored rivers and streams in an important step toward their recovery.
U.S. House Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) have reintroduced the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act that would dedicate roughly $1.4 billion to the Wildlife Conservation Restoration Program. The money would fund voluntary efforts led by the states, territories and tribal nations to prevent vulnerable wildlife from becoming endangered.
In Oregon’s fertile Willamette River Basin, where two-thirds of the state’s population lives, managing water scarcity would be more effective if conservation measures were introduced in advance and upstream from the locations where droughts are likely to cause shortages, according to a new study.
