Headlines

Hunters and anglers are cheering this evening after a bid to sell off or exchange nearly half a million acres of public land in the West was stripped out of US House’s reconciliation budget bill following pushback from within the ranks.

Spring Chinook season will roll into mid-June on the Lower Columbia and reopen in the gorge pools for 25 days starting later this week, state managers decided this afternoon.

Blacktail deer hit and killed by vehicles in Cowlitz, Clark and Wahkiakum Counties can now be salvaged under a new rule recently approved by WDFW.

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson has signed into law a pair of bills increasing the cost to fish and hunt in the state.

Mid-May 2025 catch stats for the Lower Columbia, select Southwest Washington tributaries and the lower Willamette River.

The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission is preparing to walk away from its controversial draft Conservation Policy.

Warmer temperatures, changing ocean conditions and higher competition in the North Pacific are impacting Washington Coast winter steelhead, and if not for those factors, their “survival and abundance would have been nearly constant over the last four or five decades,” WDFW says about new research on the stock.

King County shares the good news about how Lake Sammamish kokanee have begun to bounce back from the brink as well as plans to expand hatch boxes on tributaries.

Eliminating the Marine Mammal Commission. Eliminating $500 million for a new downstream salmon and steelhead smolt passage facility on a King County river that will help open 100 miles of “high-quality” spawning and rearing habitat.

NOAA details how a largescale habitat project on Southwest Washington’s lower East Fork Lewis River will improve Chinook, steelhead and chum habitat, as well as benefit anglers and the local economy.

The suspension of most recreational activities on the Yakima Training Center in Central Washington by the US Army due to a “hiring freeze” and upcoming military training has blown up hundreds of elk and deer special permits that were otherwise going to be available there this big game hunting season.

The Columbia’s upriver-origin spring Chinook run has been upgraded by nearly a quarter, allowing for a reopening on portions of Washington’s Snake.

Mid-May 2025 catch stats for the Lower Columbia, select Southwest Washington tributaries and the lower Willamette.

Oregon fish and wildlife troopers are looking for tips in the case of a wild steelhead illegally kept and left to waste on the North Umpqua River at Amacher Park in Winchester outside Roseburg on or about Thursday, May 8.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers is urging members and the public to contact their US House representatives and demand “that public land sales be removed from the budget reconciliation package.”

Columbia salmon managers approved two more weeks of spring Chinook fishing on the lower river below Bonneville and two more days in the mainstem reservoirs above there.

Columbia spring Chinook managers are proposing to reopen the big river below Bonneville Dam for 14 days and mainstem gorge pools above there for two days.

A bipartisan bill introduced by two Northwest senators that would create a new USFWS grant program to fund water infrastructure and waterfowl and migratory bird habitat in the Columbia River Basin and Washington and Oregon Coasts has Ducks Unlimited and other organizations applauding.

With the upriver spring Chinook run now expected to at least make forecast and catch balances available above and below Bonneville, Columbia salmon managers this week are exploring fishery options.

Early May 2025 spring Chinook and steelhead catch stats for Southwest Washington tributaries.

Northwest states and tribes are asking Congress to include at least $371 million in funding for salmon and steelhead hatchery production, facility maintenance, fish recovery, pinniped removal, management and more in the Columbia watershed in the next federal budget, a request supported by a range of sportfishing and environmental groups.

Last Saturday, over 300 people including 185 young anglers participated in a union-organized fishing event near Tri-Cities that also saw all the kiddos go home with a free rod and reel.

I’m very interested in the folks who make critter work a professional career, and so I was very excited to read Scott McCorquodale’s new book Chasing Wildlife Secrets: A Biologist’s Journey about his life and times as a Washington wildlife researcher.

There’s still the matter of the governor’s signature – or veto – but WDFW is taking stock of the Operating and Capital Budgets that Washington’s legislature just passed in Olympia.

Late April 2025 spring Chinook and steelhead catch stats for the Cowlitz, Kalama, Lewis and Wind Rivers and Drano Lake.

Washington lawmakers passed a bill reinstating the Columbia River endorsement to fish for salmon and steelhead this afternoon following amendments to it in the Senate and concurrence from the House. It now heads to Governor Bob Ferguson’s desk and is the second fishing-related fee increase from state legislators this session.

A bill that would bring back Washington’s Columbia River endorsement requirement to fish for salmon and steelhead in much of the watershed was tweaked in committee this afternoon as it received a majority do-pass recommendation.

A Washington state Senate committee gave three recently appointed Fish and Wildlife Commission members do-pass recommendations this morning.

Wednesday was a great day to go out for spring Chinook with a guy who grew up fishing the Willamette and nearby Clackamas Rivers.

A fishing and hunting license increase is one big step closer to hitting most Washington hunters and anglers’ wallets this summer after Substitute Senate Bill 5583 passed out of the House of Representatives on a 51-46 vote yesterday.

ODFW reports that a Chinese mitten crab was found in the Lower Columbia east of Tongue Point earlier this week, a first for the Northwest, and worrisome given “significant infrastructure and ecological damage” seen during a mitten crab infestation elsewhere on the West Coast.

A program that as of December 2023 has provided $1.8 billion in federal money and leveraged another $2.2 billion for almost 16,000-plus projects that have restored, created or set aside nearly 1.2 million acres of habitat and reopened 12,000 miles of water for salmon and steelhead in the Northwest and rest of the US West…

Mid-April 2025 spring Chinook and steelhead catch stats for the Lower Columbia and select Southwest Washington tributaries.

A bill that would require Washington salmon and steelhead anglers to once again buy an endorsement to fish the Columbia River and its tributaries passed out of the state House of Representatives today on a 53-44 vote.

That viral pic of a large pack of wolves gathered around a bear they supposedly just killed on a road near Diamond Lake in Oregon’s Southern Cascades?

Federal fish, wildlife and land overseers are proposing to change standing rules that include the habitats of listed species in take protections and balance conservation with extractive uses on vast swaths of public ground in the West.