- The Columbia Basin Bulletin
- Posts
- Columbia Basin Bulletin - November 23, 2025
Columbia Basin Bulletin - November 23, 2025
Salmon Return After Dam Removals, BPA's Fish Accords With States, Tribes Expire, Company Proposes Underwater Power Line... and more
Columbia Basin Bulletin
November 23, 2025
A little more than a year after the removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, California Department of Fish and Wildlife scientists are seeing salmon reoccupying just about every corner of their historic habitat.
The Bonneville Power Administration allowed the long-running Columbia Basin Fish Accords with tribes and states to expire Sept. 30, 2025 and it’s unclear if future agreements that would benefit salmon and steelhead recovery in the basin will materialize. Although BPA says it is open to discuss future Accords agreements with tribes, so far that has been more aspirational than substantive, at least according to one tribe.
Details of the proposal for a 100-mile high tension power line that would be laid beneath the Columbia River, rather than travel over land, was aired last week by developers of the project in three public meetings.
Steller and California sea lions are known to take a big chunk of early migrating adult salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River, but a recent study has also found that Steller sea lions are eating more than 2 million young Chinook salmon along Washington’s northwest coastline.
A draft evaluation of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Willamette River basin dams that includes analyses of a deeper drawdown at Detroit Dam and a cessation of hydropower is up for public review. However, in the draft the Corps’ preferred alternative maintains hydropower at the dams.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Walla Walla District, in partnership with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Yakama Nation, the Washington Department of Ecology, and the Mid-Columbia Fisheries Enhancement Group has awarded a $1.2 million construction contract to PIPKIN INC. for the Bateman Island Causeway removal project.
The New Year’s Day opening of the popular recreational white sturgeon fishery in the Columbia River’s Bonneville and The Dalles Dam pools was nixed by Oregon and Washington at a joint state hearing last week. However, the sturgeon fishery in the John Day pool will open as normal for anglers, Jan. 1. The change in regulations begins in 2026.
The most recent filings in U.S. District Court in Portland by plaintiffs in the latest challenge to the biological opinion of the federal Columbia/Snake river hydropower system’s impacts on salmon and steelhead does not have to do with impacts by the federal dams, but instead it is a plea to dismiss a nearly two-year old counterclaim by the state of Idaho.
A team of scientists completed its sixteenth consecutive annual review of the Fish Passage Center’s draft Comparative Survival Study of salmon and steelhead that migrate past federal dams in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Floating solar panels are emerging as a promising clean energy solution with environmental benefits, but a new study finds those effects vary significantly depending on where the systems are deployed.
The Bonneville Power Administration shared its end-of-year financial performance results for fiscal year 2025 at its Nov. 13 Quarterly Business Review, saying it had hit all financial targets.
Wild wolves living in Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Territory on BC’s central coast have learned to pull crab traps out of the ocean—behavior that represents the first documented case of potential tool use in the species, according to a new study.
