Sea lion removal at Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls will restart in October, but with a twist that allows tribes and states to capture and euthanize far more sea lions, including both California and Steller sea lions, and to target sea lions in the lower Willamette River and from the I-205 bridge on the Columbia River upstream to McNary Dam, as well as the river’s tributaries.
Fishery managers this week asked dam operators to postpone zero nighttime flow operations at lower Snake River dams, effectively asking them to set aside an operation included in NOAA Fisheries’ 2020 biological opinion of the impacts on salmon and steelhead of the Columbia/Snake river power system and the Columbia River System Operator’s environmental impact statement even before the CRSO completes its record of decision.
An agreement was recently signed that is a key step in the return of sockeye salmon to northeast Oregon’s Wallowa Lake. Bull trout, mountain whitefish, wild rainbow trout, and possibly steelhead could also start returning to Wallowa Lake when fish passage is restored.
Likely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and recent smokey skies, the number of anglers this year participating in the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program is down 28 percent from this time last year. Currently, the 2020 harvest of northern pikeminnow on the Columbia and Snake rivers is on track to be the lowest on record.
Spawn timing for wild chinook salmon in the Skagit River system in Washington is slowly occurring later in the year as the river warms due to climate change, a finding that fits with previous research. However, the trend for hatchery-origin stray chinook salmon in the same river is towards earlier spawning, according to a recent study.
Estimates of the number of fall chinook salmon, coho salmon and B-Index steelhead entering the Columbia River rose again this week, but, with the exception of the B-Index steelhead and early-stock coho, abundances are still expected to fall short of 10-year averages.
Bonneville Power Administration line crews were rapidly deployed to areas where BPA transmission and fiber customers experienced service interruptions due to devastating wildfires that swept across much of the Pacific Northwest.
