HAILEY, Ida. – Western Watersheds Project yesterday entered into a settlement agreement with the Forest Service that gives salmon, steelhead, and bull trout spawning habitats in the upper East Fork of the Salmon River a chance to recover from the impacts of livestock grazing. The settlement resolves litigation challenging violations of Endangered Species Act requirements […]
Continue Reading →Earlier this year two dams on the Elwha River in Washington state that had blocked migration of salmon and steelhead for over a hundred years were finally removed. Within just months salmon and steelhead trout swam past the dam sites and spawned. Such a quick response is what everyone had hoped for, although some believed they […]
Continue Reading →The Elwha River, on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, flows out of Olympic National Park. It was dammed in the early part of the last century in violation of an 1890 law which required fish passage facilities on dams “wherever food fish are wont to ascend”. The logging companies were so powerful that the fisheries commissioner allowed […]
Continue Reading →The fish do better in the river than they do in a barge.
I’m not really a fan of Rocky Barker because I think he is biased towards the collaborative process because it has worked within the framework of the Snake River salmon and steelhead issue. When contrasted with other collaborative processes this issue has […]
Continue Reading →Judge Redden said the Bush Plan for salmon wasn’t good enough, Obama thinks it is.
Well, here is another example of how the Obama Administration has followed the lead of the Bush Administration on environmental issues. As we can see from the Gulf Oil Spill those policies are literally a disaster. While salmon returns have […]
Continue Reading →Mixed strategy recommended by independent panel for 2010
NOAA Fisheries wanted to barge all of the salmon from the Snake River around the dams and not spill any water over them because of the low water year that is predicted to be 54% of the normal flow. An independent panel said no and suggested that […]
Continue Reading →These sea-run rainbow trout are now moving well up the Salmon and Clearwater Rivers-
The season has been good so far. Now the fish are moving well upstream. I see the average time to catch one is about 5 hours, depending on your fishing location.
Roger Phillips’ Fish Rap: Steelhead fishing is heating up […]
Continue Reading →Of course, you can’t truly count them until they are in Idaho rivers, but so far a very strong run-
For those not familiar with the Columbia River and its tributaries, Bonneville Dam is first dam anadromous fish have to cross on the Columbia River on their journey home to spawn.
Continue Reading →Recently Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) announced that in talks about salmon recovery that dam breaching should be on the table. It’s not an endorsement of dam breaching but it is a departure from former Senator Craig’s stance.
On top of this development comes a letter to politicians signed by several business owners in Lewiston and […]
Continue Reading →For deep inlanders, steelhead are sea-run rainbow trout — big anadromous fish like salmon. Unlike salmon, steelhead don’t spawn and die, but return to the ocean (although in reality few fish survive to run and spawn a second time). Steelhead lose the characteristic red band (the rainbow) that freshwater rainbow trout have.
Idaho’s steelhead runs […]
Continue Reading →
