Salmon and Culverts

19 tribes are suing Washington State over the slow pace of repairing culverts that block salmon from reachhing their spawning grounds.

By the state’s count, more than 1,800 fish barriers associated with state highways block more than 3,000 miles of potential stream habitat. The Legislature has funded culvert replacement since 1991, but the pace of construction is such that it could take up to 100 years to fix the problems. And that does not include county roads, which are not part of the lawsuit.

LINK (Via:The Kitsap Sun)

Appeals court upholds feds' salmon hatchery policy

A federal appeals court Monday upheld the federal government's discretion to use salmon raised in hatcheries to bolster wild runs, but not as a substitute that would lift Endangered Species Act protections.

LINK (Via: Mercury News)

This was the single most important legal case we were faced with under the Endangered Species Act," NOAA Fisheries spokesman Brian Gorman said from Seattle.

Suck it Pacific Legal Foundation.

Sign a Petition to Protect Wild Salmon

Alexandra Morton is circulating a petition to get the Canadian Federal Government to start regulating salmon farms now that the BC Supreme Court has ruled that salmon farms are a fishery and a federal responsibility.

You can sign the petition here. LINK

Invasive species are greatest threat to Northwest salmon

Photo: Steven Nehl, The Oregonian

That's the conclusion of a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

This report argues the greatest threat to fish are non-native species like crappie or bass that can eat up juvenile salmon as the make their way downstream from their birthplace to the ocean.

LINK (Via: Oregon Live)

Combining pesticides makes them more deadly to salmon

Common agricultural pesticides that attack the nervous systems of salmon can turn more deadly when they combine with other pesticides, researchers have found.

Scientists from the NOAA Fisheries Service and Washington State University were expecting that the harmful effects would add up as they accumulated in the water. They were surprised to find a deadly synergy occurred with some combinations, which made the mix more harmful and at lower levels of exposure than the sum of the parts.

LINK (Via:The Mercury News)

Redden has not ruled out removing Snake River dams

U.S. District Court judge James Redden says a federal plan meant to balance energy and utility needs in the Columbia Basin with salmon and steelhead restoration remains flawed.

LINK (Via: The AP)