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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: A CA water deal at long last
San Francisco Chronicle
11/06/2009
For decades, California's water wars have flared unabated - cities versus farms, north against south - while half measures left the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta drained and decimated. A solution involving all sides was only a dream. Until now.
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Deadly foam gone, more than 10,000 seabirds die
Oregonian
11/04/2009
The deadly foam that clobbered seabirds in the Pacific Northwest has subsided and several hundred birds rescued from the slime are being released. But the death toll worries conservationists.
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'Treebates' help stormwater programs branch out
Portland Tribune
11/04/2009
A rebate to plant trees? That's the city of Portland's plan to encourage property owners to plant more trees, which help suck up hundreds of gallons of rainwater every year, reducing the amount that flows into storm drains and, eventually, into local rivers and streams.
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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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Species' extinction threat grows
BBC News
11/02/2009
Out of the 47,677 species in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, 17,291 were deemed to be at serious risk. These included 21 percent of mammals, 30 percent of amphibians, 70 percent of plants and 35 percent of invertebrates. The big offender: habitat loss.
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Rare BC abalone easy pickings for poachers
Victoria Times Colonist
11/01/2009
Northern abalone can spend their entire lives within a pond-sized patch of BC coastline. And that is where their problems begin.
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Poaching in Montana's first wolf-hunting season
Missoulian
11/01/2009
When a Columbia Falls man pleaded guilty last week to poaching two wolves just outside Glacier National Park, many thought the area's wolf-hunting quota would be adjusted accordingly. They were wrong.
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Crews work to save birds after San Fran oil spill
San Francisco Chronicle
11/02/2009
Efforts to limit the damage from Friday's fuel spill in the San Francisco Bay focused Sunday on the Alameda shoreline, where rescue workers tried to save oiled birds that had beached themselves and painstakingly removed balls of sticky tar.
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Habitat protections sought for Inlet belugas
Anchorage Daily News
10/29/2009
An environmental group that has pressed the federal government to provide protection for Cook Inlet belugas says it will sue over the government's failure to secure habitat for the declining whale population.
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Feds seek more comment on protections for frog
Corvallis Gazette-Times
10/29/2009
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking more information on whether the northern leopard frog that lives in 19 Western states needs endangered species protections.
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Killer foam: A freak event or a warning?
Oregonian
10/28/2009
A simple organism that killed thousands of seabirds in Oregon and Washington has stunned scientists who are combing through clues in hopes of unraveling its mystery.
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Migration drops a crowd of pelicans
Coos Bay World
10/28/2009
Thousands of brown pelicans have converged on the south and central Oregon coast, with fall migration under way to Southern California and Mexico.
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'It's like an oil spill, without the oil'
KPLU
10/27/2009
It's like an oil spill, but without the oil. That's how wildlife rescue people are describing an unusual red tide along the Northwest coast. The algal bloom is causing hundreds upon hundreds of dead or dying seabirds to wash up on coastal beaches. Today, the deluge of distress shows signs of tapering off.
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BC's wilderness: where the wild things aren't
Toronto Globe and Mail
10/27/2009
Retracing the path of a bear named Eva, photographer finds grim evidence of widespread 'control kills' of animals.
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Views: Once more, subsistence
Anchorage Daily News
10/27/2009
Ten years ago the state Legislature was the pivotal player in determining the future of subsistence hunting and fishing management in Alaska. Now, as the Department of the Interior begins a swift, thorough review of subsistence law on Alaska's federal lands, the state can only comment and say that it looks forward participating.
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Plan consolidates Southern Oregon public land
Bend Bulletin
10/26/2009
A Christian-based summer camp in Antelope is working on a land-swap deal that could create two new wilderness areas and make about 15,000 acres of popular hunting grounds accessible to the public.
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Portland harbor contamination poses risk
Oregonian
10/25/2009
Decades of industrial pollution in the Portland Harbor Superfund site have left high levels of contaminants in river sediment, an exhaustive survey concludes, posing risks to wildlife, fish and humans who eat fish from the nine-mile stretch of the Willamette River.
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Dead-zone microbe thriving off BC coast
Victoria Times Colonist
10/25/2009
There is life in the planet's expanding dead zones, say researchers, who have uncovered a remarkable microbe thriving in toxic waters off the BC coast. The bacteria takes up carbon dioxide like a plant, consumes sulphide that is deadly to most other lifeforms, and exhales nitrous oxide which is a potent greenhouse gas.
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California's water wars
The Economist
10/25/2009
From Australia to Israel, parched places all over the world are now looking to California to see whether, and how, it solves one of the most intractable problems of thirsty civilisations in dry regions.
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Ocean algal bloom killing thousands of birds
Oregonian
10/23/2009
A slimy foam churning up from the ocean has killed thousands seabirds and washed many others ashore, stripped of their waterproofing and struggling for life. The algal bloom stretches from the northern Oregon coast to the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.
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Polar bear habitat protected
Anchorage Daily News
10/22/2009
The Obama administration said Thursday it is designating more than 200,000 square miles in Alaska and off its coast as "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas.
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Scientists warn of another Hood Canal fish kill
Kitsap Sun
10/22/2009
As oxygen levels decline in southern Hood Canal, wolf eels are sluggish and seem to be panting; sea cucumbers are reaching out with filamentous tentacles; and dead octopuses are being found.
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Alaska seeks delisting of polar bears
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
10/21/2009
The state of Alaska is trying to bolster its efforts to overturn the listing of the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
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