An attorney for two groups seeking to save the Orca whales in the Pacific Northwest from starvation and the native Chinook salmon from extinction on the Snake River recently wrote a letter to federal officials in the Biden administration. Please talk to us, she writes. You can come to us or we’ll travel to Washington to see you. Sharon Grace, attorney with DamTRUTH and Southern Resident Killer Whale Chinook Salmon Initiative, included the secretaries of the interior, en

A recent letter sent by NWRAP to Northwest Governors is six pages long. The simple message to the governors is short: Tell your representatives on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to follow the science, look at the numbers, use the models, gather the data and show some gumption. Northwest Resource Accountability Project (NWRAP) representatives seeking to breach four dams on the lower Snake River recently sent a tough-minded, strongly worded letter to the govern

I am writing to cast a scientist’s eye on recent Bulletin pieces about the Lower Snake River Dams that appeared in The Bend Bulletin on January 17, 2022. I am a PhD aquatic ecologist. I spent 13 years as Research Coordinator at Olympic National Park during removal of the two large hydropower dams on the Elwha River. The four Snake River Dams pose complicated issues concerning hydropower and river commerce. But the disastrous state of the salmon fishery is not complicated. Unl

It is endgame for Snake River salmon, one of the world’s most magnificent, unique, perpetually renewable natural resources. Their migratory range extends from 7000 feet in elevation 700 miles inland and thousands of miles along the Pacific Coast. A genetic heritage millions of years in the making, once numbering in the millions of adult fish annually, driven to the brink of extinction in 50 years by incompetent mediocrities and corrupt political hacks who lost their moral bea