July 18, 2025

Lawsuit Filed to Stop BPA, Army Corps of Engineers Withdraws EIS Efforts, Anchovy Boom Causes Salmon to Swim Upside Down, Washougal River Basin Dam Removal, Wolf Recovery Reporting... and more

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking public input on a draft periodic status review for the marbled murrelet, which includes a recommendation to keep the bird on the state endangered species list.

Northwest nonprofits have challenged in federal court the Bonneville Power Administration’s decision to join a Southeast power market and sell Northwest hydropower to customers as far away as Louisiana, saying the change would result in higher energy bills, higher transmission costs, reduced access to renewable energy and threaten the agency’s commitment to salmon and steelhead recovery.

NOAA has developed a new high-resolution ocean model to understand and predict West Coast ocean changes.

Federal agencies this week backed away from their efforts to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement for Columbia River basin dam operations and their impact on salmon and steelhead, citing a June 12 Presidential Memorandum as their justification.

A vitamin deficiency likely killed as many as half of newly hatched fry of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River in 2020 and 2021. These new findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation awarded the Tribe $3.3 million to remove the 55-foot-tall, 425-foot-long Kwoneesum Dam on Wildboy Creek. The dam, which was removed in 2024, blocked upstream salmon and steelhead migration on the creek for almost 60 years.

Montana’s wolf population has remained relatively stable in the past few years with only slight declines in the statewide population estimates, according to the 2024 Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks annual wolf report.  

The study, published June 20 in Nature Sustainability, details a new system for leasing rights to water from the basin while reallocating some water to imperiled habitats.