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Canada plans inquiry into disappearance of BC sockeye
Vancouver Sun
11/06/2009
Canada will stage a judicial inquiry into the collapse of sockeye salmon runs on the Fraser River, which have been in a two-decade decline and hit a 50-year low in summer 2009. It has prompted concerns that sockeye are heading for a population failure on the scale of the collapse of Atlantic cod.
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Spirit bears 'invisible' to salmon
BBC News
11/06/2009
On a few islands in western Canada, white 'spirit bears' walk the woods. Now scientists have discovered why these striking animals, a race of black bear, survive. White bears are less visible to fish than their black counterparts, making them 30% more efficient at capturing salmon in the islands' rivers.
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Views: Scientist stakes reputation on salmon plan
Idaho Statesman
11/05/2009
The Obama administration and the region’s federal dam managers are pinning their hopes to the scientific reputation of Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a marine ecologist from Oregon State University. And it’s a good call.
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Farmed salmon's ecological finprint measured
New Scientist
11/04/2009
The first cradle-to-grave analysis of the environmental impact of salmon farms has found that in some ways they're less harmful than, say, raising beef cattle -- but that there is plenty of room for improvement.
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Federal grant supports power, fish project
Kitsap Sun
11/04/2009
Tacoma Power will receive $4.7 million in federal stimulus money to build a new power plant at the lower Cushman Dam on the North Fork of the Skokomish River.
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Constantine wins King County exec
Seattle Times
11/04/2009
Riding a late-breaking wave of liberal support, Dow Constantine - a pro-abortion-rights, pro-labor, pro-transit Democrat - handily defeated Susan Hutchison on Tuesday in a rancorous race for King County executive. Now he has to clean up the county's budget, which is projected to face a $110 million shortfall over the next two years.
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BC natives claim landmark fish victory
Vancouver Sun
11/03/2009
The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council claimed a legal victory Tuesday after the BC Supreme Court affirmed the right of aboriginals to sell the seafood they harvest. The court gave the aboriginal people of the west coast of Vancouver Island the right to harvest and sell fish and other seafood in their territory, although the right is not unrestricted.
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Expert: Impact of BC hydro projects on rivers unknown
Vancouver Sun
11/04/2009
British Columbia is decades behind other North American jurisdictions when it comes to confronting the impacts that hydroelectric development may have on the environment, a green energy conference heard Tuesday in Vancouver.
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What does overfishing have to do with climate negotiations?
The Economist
11/03/2009
Overfishing erodes future prosperity by destroying today a resource that could yield benefits indefinitely. Yet it is subsidised by billions of taxpayer dollars, euros and yen. Now, with fuel subsidies on the table at Copenhagen, a new chance to halt this insanity has emerged in the unlikely form of climate-change negotiations.
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Radio: The Perils Of Over-Fishing
NPR
11/02/2009
Daniel Pauly, a professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, warns that the global fishing industry has drastically depleted the number of fish in the oceans
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Fishing rights between BC native, commercial claims
Toronto Globe and Mail
10/30/2009
The fight for fishing rights in BC waters is at its most ferocious when the salmon are scarce. This fall, hungry grizzlies are having to get in line behind the gillnetters, sports fishermen, and native communities sparring over meager runs.
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CA's Trinity River salmon threatened
Eureka Times-Standard
10/27/2009
The US Bureau of Reclamation is asking for a decades-long extension of state water permits on the Trinity River to give it more time to find uses for the water -- a move river advocates say could threaten the water available for salmon and steelhead.
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Handmade fish ladder helps fish in Medford
Medford Mail-Tribune
10/26/2009
A contraption of plywood and metal strips is helping do what a dam removal and a new bridge so far has failed to accomplish on their own-turn little Lazy Creek in east Medford into an urban steelhead nursery.
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40,000 fish escape BC farm
Victoria Times Colonist
10/25/2009
A recovery vessel working for a BC fish-farming company recovered about 1,100 escaped Atlantic salmon yesterday, and will continue working to catch more of the estimated 40,000 escaped fish. Meanwhile, First Nations leaders questioned how the escaped fish might affect native salmon stocks.
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A big payoff for fish
Medford Mail-Tribune
10/26/2009
A contraption of plywood and metal strips is helping do what a dam removal and a new bridge so far has failed to accomplish on their own - turn little Lazy Creek in east Medford, OR into an urban steelhead nursery.
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Pikeminnow program helping salmon
Seattle Times
10/22/2009
Fisheries and power officials in the Northwest say they think a program aimed at reducing a rapacious predator of young salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers is working, based on the latest tally from the 2009 pikeminnow season.
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Willamette Basin's streams in jeopardy
Oregonian
10/20/2009
The Willamette River basin's miles of arteries and capillaries have just undergone their most thorough check up to date. The biological health of more than 80 percent of streams that run through cities and farms is severely compromised, which is bad news for critters from crawdads to insects to salmon to clams.
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Habitat project on Stilly raises farmers’ ire
Everett Herald
10/21/2009
Farmers and conservationists are split over a plan to flood farmland that Norwegian homesteaders claimed from the Stillaguamish River delta more than a century ago. For now, the effort to breach levees near Stanwood is on hold while the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife seeks permits from Snohomish County.
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Tribes take salmon battle into WA's road culverts
Seattle Times
10/20/2009
Two years ago, a federal judge urged Washington state and Puget Sound treaty tribes to agree on plans and a timetable to fix roughly 1,000 culverts that prevent salmon from reaching several hundred miles of stream. Their talks stalled, and the matter is back in court this week.
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OR restoration attempts to help salmon
Salem Statesman Journal
10/19/2009
A year after work was completed to replace culverts, create logjams and plant native plans on a river side-channel, the result is obvious: the water is clear, the flow is strong and the water runs year-round. The project is the first of what is necessary all along this OR river to help juvenile salmon on their way to the ocean.
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Views: Salmon, science, and the law
Oregonian
10/15/2009
Rather than wallowing in a morass of litigation, the Pacific Northwest is on the brink of a refreshing step forward in the long effort to aid salmon runs.
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Can salmon evolve to survive among fish-killing dams?
Oregonian
10/14/2009
Dams hurt salmon, robbing them of free-flowing rivers and confusing them on their celebrated, circuitous life journey. But maybe the fish can take it.
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Elwha dam removal to restore sacred sites, salmon
Indian Country Today
10/14/2009
When the dams come down on the Olympic Peninsula's Elwha River in 2012, the lake waters will recede, revealing the origins of the Klallam people.
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Salmon most expensive endangered species
Oregonian
10/14/2009
Scientific American has the story on a federal report tallying the costs of recovering wildlife listed as threatened and endangered. And salmon species are by far the most expensive.
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WA Tribes demand culvert fixes for salmon
Seattle Times
10/13/2009
A federal judge should order Washington state to drastically increase the pace of fixing culverts that block salmon passage because nothing else will get the job done in a reasonable amount of time, a lawyer for Native American tribes said Tuesday.
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