Governor’s office chafes at treatment over bull trout

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter’s office is contemplating suing the federal government over its new designation of critical habitat for bull trout.

LINK (Via:The Idaho Reporter)

Florida considers catch and release for bonefish

Bonefish would become a catch-and-release species protected from harvest under a draft rule reaching state fishery managers Feb. 23.

The FWC board will hear a presentation on the draft rule at its Feb. 23 meeting in Apalachicola. If given tentative approval, the no-take rule would be considered for final approval in April.

LINK (Via: Keys Net)

Commercial trawlers kill thousands more striped bass off the Outer Banks

Photo: Jeffrey Weeks

WTF is up with the North Carolina DMF?

Taking advantage of a NC Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) decision to allow them back into the ocean, commercial striped bass trawlers off of Oregon Inlet again killed and discarded thousands of striped bass today in a tragic and wasteful repeat of last month’s fish kill.

LINK (Via: The Charlotte Examiner)

My Mosquito Fish is Smarter Than Your College Student

Mosquitofish perform just as well as college students on a basic numbers test. 

Wait, what?

LINK (Mother Nature Network)

Judge Orders Grazing Halted on Quarter Million Acres to Protect Steelhead

Some good news for steelhead out of Oregon.

Federal judge Ancer Haggerty has barred livestock grazing harmful to endangered steelhead. Haggerty ordered the U.S. Forest Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to reconsider the effects of the federal agencies' grazing plan on native steelhead streams before grazing can resume.

The Malheur National Forest is located in eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains. It includes portions of the Upper John Day, Middle Fork John Day, North Fork John Day and Malheur rivers. The 281-mile long John Day River is the second longest undammed river in the continental United States.

LINK (Via: YubaNet)

How to Tag a Fish Every 2.4 Seconds

The US government’s fish-tagging operations used to be a lot like its intelligence-gathering: slow, imprecise, and occasionally responsible for the torture and death of innocent subjects. No more. The Fish and Wildlife Service now uses AutoFish, a mobile system that employs sensors, cameras, and computer algorithms to inject microscopically coded tags into 60,000 fish a day—without removing them from the water.

LINK (Via: Wired)