Columbia Basin Bulletin - July 1, 2025

Lamprey Restoration Plan, New BPA-Funded Basin F/W Program, New NW Power/Conservation Executive Director... and more

Four Columbia River basin treaty tribes recently completed their second restoration plan for “imperiled” Pacific lamprey in the basin fifteen years after the first such plan in which the Tribes had urged aggressive action in order to recover the culturally significant fish.

Some 60 state and federal agencies, tribes and individuals delivered recommendations by the May 19 deadline on how the Northwest Power and Conservation Council should amend its 2014/2020 Columbia River Basin Fish & Wildlife Program for the future.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has hired Peter Cogswell as its new executive director. Cogswell’s first day at the Council will be Monday, July 7th.

The eastern North Pacific population of gray whales that migrates along the West Coast of the United States has continued to decline, with reproduction remaining very low. Two new Technical Memorandums from NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center report the estimated population size and calf productivity in 2025.

Cultivated salmon is now being served at Kann, a Haitian restaurant in Portland, Oregon, led by the culinary talents of James Beard award-winning Chef Gregory Gourdet. This milestone marks the very first for cultivated seafood anywhere in the world, signaling meaningful progress in bringing cultivated meat and seafood from pilot facilities into real-world kitchens.

A new report, co-authored by Washington State University conservation biologist Cheryl Schultz, provides a roadmap for recovering butterfly populations across the U.S.

Lookingglass Creek, a tributary to northeast Oregon’s Grande Ronde River at Palmer Junction, opened for spring Chinook fishing from Wednesday, June 18 through Sunday, June 29. The open area is from the mouth upstream to the confluence of Jarboe Creek.

During the last ice age, storms soaked the now-arid Southwestern U.S., while today’s rainy Pacific Northwest remained relatively dry. As global temperatures rose and ice sheets retreated, those storms shifted north—reshaping the climate patterns that define both regions today.