The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a last-minute appeal on June 21 by federal agencies, irrigators and Bonneville Power Administration customers to stop the summer spill program that began just after midnight, June 20. A June 10 order called for spilling at dams where fish are collected for barging downstream, and muted the feds' maximized barging policy in low-flow years. ...more

The court-ordered spill program to aid juvenile fall chinook on the lower Snake was the likely culprit for stalling the adult run that was heading back to Idaho. By the end of last week, the Corps of Engineers had cut spill drastically at Little Goose Dam to help more than 2,000 adult chinook get past the dam and move upstream toward Lower Granite Dam where fish passage seemed to be OK. The change in strategy seemed to be working. ...more

Columbia River non-tribal gillnetters got their first significant crack at the summer chinook run for the first time in 40 years when they hit the water June 27 in the first of three 10-hour fishing periods allowed by harvest managers, who have allotted 3,200 fish for the commercials and an equal number for sports fishermen below Priest Rapids Dam. ...more

The impressive collaboration between local governments, stakeholder groups, tribes and the federal government has unveiled a habitat restoration plan years in the making that is designed to recover Puget Sound salmon stocks. The draft plan covers 14 watersheds and is expected to cost more than a billion dollars over the next 10 years, which would double the current funding of $60 million in annual spending on habitat-related projects. ...more

Language added to the U.S. Senate's Energy and Water appropriations bill calls for an end to annual funding of the controversial Fish Passage Center by the Bonneville Power Administration. The language was added by the Subcommittee for Energy and Water Development, where senators from Montana, Idaho and Washington sit. ...more

Late spring rains on the Snake River plain have helped the state of Idaho come up with all 427,000 acre-feet of water called for in the hydro BiOp to augment flows for ESA-listed fish populations. ...more

The Ninth Circuit Court has upheld a 2002 ruling (Washington Toxics Coalition v. EPA) from the Seattle District Court that restricted the use of 38 pesticides near salmon-bearing streams in the Northwest. The June 29 decision also upheld the requirement that calls for warnings about possible adverse effects on fish to be posted where the pesticides are for sale. ...more