Current Stories
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Protection sought again for giant, spitting worms
Wenatchee World
07/01/2009
Fans of the giant Palouse earthworm are once again seeking federal protection for the rare, sweet-smelling species that spits at predators. They filed a petition Tuesday with the US Fish and Wildlife Service requesting the worm be protected as an endangered species.
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Judge overturns Bush admin. logging rule
Oregonian
07/01/2009
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down the Bush administration's change to a rule designed to protect the northern spotted owl from logging in national forests.
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Abandoned fishing nets no more
Seattle Times
07/01/2009
Nearly all of the abandoned fishing nets in Puget Sound that kill marine animals and damage habitat will be removed with the help of $4.6 million in federal stimulus money.
The net-removal efforts are among six projects in the state that will receive $16.5 million for marine and coastal habitat restoration.
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Views: The spill, 20 years later
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
07/01/2009
It has been just more than 20 years since oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez and soiled the biology and economy of Prince William Sound, ruined lives, and forever tainted the image of what is now the world’s largest company. Now, the end of the legal chapter of this story is near.
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Saving species no longer about the prettiest
Washington Post
06/29/2009
Are we ready to start saving ugly species? Though we gravitate towards iconic creatures like salmon, scientists say they're noticing a little more love for the unlovely lately. Plain-Jane plants, birds with fluorescent goiters and beetles that meet their mates at rat corpses are getting new respect - valued as homely canaries inside treasured ecosystems.
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Tiny beetle hell on forests
New York Times
06/28/2009
Summer fire seasons in the West have always hinged on elements of chance: a heat wave in August, a random lightning strike, a passing storm. Now, tiny bark beetles have now left seven million acres of pine forest all but dead, throwing a swath of land bigger than Massachusetts into a kind of fire-cycle purgatory.
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First foods inform tribe's conservation
Indian Country Today
06/28/2009
Resource management on the lands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon took a unique turn a couple years ago when the board of trustees approved a plan built around consideration for their first foods: water, salmon, fish, big game, roots and berries.
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Rare wolverine spotted on Mount Adams
Oregonian
06/25/2009
A camera set up on a remote slope of Mount Adams captured a picture worth several thousand words -- a rare and elusive wolverine.
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An ancient forest could get protection
Eugene Weekly
06/25/2009
For a century, Oregon's Coast Range has been farmed for timber, transformed from a vast, misty rainforest to a patchwork of clearcuts. Only several stretches of native rainforest still exist. This month, US Rep. Peter Defazio and Sen. Ron Wyden introduced a bill permanently designating the area as wilderness.
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Puget Sound orcas accounted for
Kitsap Sun
06/25/2009
When the Southern Resident killer whales came south out of Canada over the weekend, all three pods were together for a time. That gave scientists a chance to tally the local orcas -- none were missing, but there were no babies, either.
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Northward: Birds try to escape climate change
High Country News
06/24/2009
A new study of hundreds of bird species shows an average winter shift of 35 miles, while some (like the varied thrush) have moved even 400 miles. Apparently global warming means global weirdness and unpredictabilities. Who knows what an Oregon winter is, any more? Surely not the snowy, sunny thing we had this year. Soon we will add: Where's the thrush?
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Court allows Juneau gold mine to dump waste in lake
Anchorage Daily News
06/23/2009
The U.S. Supreme Court's Monday decision allowing a gold mine near Juneau to discharge its waste into a fish-bearing lake could be the final word in the long-running dispute.
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Future up in air for bat colony
Olympian
06/22/2009
The 5 miles of shoreline and Chapman and Woodard bays on Henderson Inlet are filled with an old pier, a trestle, log booms and hundreds of pilings left from when the site several miles northeast of Olympia was a Weyerhaeuser Co. log-sorting and -rafting operation.
But in the 25 years since Weyerhaeuser abandoned the site, and 11 years since DNR bought it to conserve it, some of those man-made structures have become havens for wildlife.
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A way out of the woods
Medford Mail-Tribune
06/21/2009
On an Oregon forest that was ground zero for the Northwest timber wars, an economic stimulus project feels like a start - not only to grappling with the growing threat of wildfire in a warming climate, but in healing rifts between environmentalists, the timber industry and the Forest Service that have left the national forests in limbo.
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Future up in air for bat colony
Olympian
06/22/2009
At a conservation preserve near Olympia, WA, plans are being made to remove some of the man-made structures that clutter the shoreline. While salmon and oysters would benefit from a more natural habitat, some of those log booms and piers have become havens for other wildlife, such as bats.
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Protection in a fragile environment
Indian Country Today
06/22/2009
The Makah Nation’s land overlooks water that's home to whales, endangered salmon and dozens of other marine species. But the crossroads of the Strait of San Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean is also notoriously perilous for oil tankers and cargo ships. The WA Legislature recognized that by adding a permanent funding source for an emergency response tug to be stationed at Neah Bay.
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Coalition petitioning for Glacier Park protections
Missoulian
06/22/2009
Glacier National Park and its neighbor to the north are endangered by mining proposals, according to tribal leaders, business interests and conservationists petitioning the international community. They say Canada has failed to meet conservation obligations by moving ahead with controversial coal and coalbed methane energy development plans in southeastern BC, on the borders of the parks.
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Views: Two pieces of good news for Puget Sound
Olympian
06/19/2009
Deluged with bad publicity, prim and proper Victoria has done an about face. It will begin to treat its sewage before discharging it into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. And Congress is on track to double its financial commitment to cleaning up Puget Sound.
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Marine reserves win OK in Oregon
Coos Bay World
06/18/2009
A measure to create marine reserves to help restore dwindling fishing stocks won approval in the Oregon Senate after supporters called it a fair compromise backed by environmentalists, fishermen, and coastal groups. Oregon is the only state on the West Coast without any marine reserves.
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Early walrus count results alarming
Anchorage Daily News
06/18/2009
A partial federal assessment of Pacific walrus estimates their minimum population at just 15,164 but says the count likely missed a number of animals. A 1990 aerial survey estimated the population at 201,039 in the same region.
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Feds want to keep protections for rare Pacific seabird
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
06/17/2009
The marbled murrelet in Washington, Oregon, and California should remain protected as a threatened species, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday. The agency finished its five-year status review of the small seabird that nests in old-growth timber. Federal biologists found that the birds in the three states are a distinct population that continues to decline and faces a broad range of threats.
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Climate damage getting worse, Obama warns
Seattle Times
06/16/2009
Rising sea levels, sweltering temperatures, deeper droughts, and heavier downpours - global warming's serious effects are here and getting worse, the Obama administration warned in the grimmest, most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House. Paradoxically, though, the report is also more optimistic about what can be done.
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Vancouver Island natives sign historic treaty
Vancouver Sun
06/16/2009
Canada's government passed a long-awaited treaty with a group of Vancouver Island First Nations on Tuesday, giving five aboriginal groups $73 million and 24,550 hectares of land. The 2,000 people who live on the island’s west coast will also be given the right to govern themselves and manage their land and resources, including fish and wildlife.
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Exxon ordered to pay $507.5 million to victims of spill
Seattle Times
06/16/2009
Exxon Mobil has been ordered to pay $507.5 million in punitive damages to Alaska natives, fishermen, business owners and others harmed by the massive 1989 oil spill off Alaska.
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Ocean's chemistry may be killing sea life
Seattle Times
06/14/2009
As the Northwest's oyster industry heads into its fifth summer of crisis, scientists are pondering a disturbing theory. They suspect water that rises from deep in the Pacific Ocean may be corrosive enough to kill baby oysters. If true, that could mean shifts in ocean chemistry associated with carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels may be impairing sea life faster and more dramatically than expected.
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