"A U.S. study has found an unusually high incidence of gastrointestinal disease in a small U.S. town located downstream from a Teck smelter in Trail, B.C."

"In the early 1990s, anglers in the Upper Columbia River reported seeing beads of liquid mercury floating in the water."

"The Pacific Northwest may be the epicenter of U.S. coffee culture, and now a new study shows the region's elevated caffeine levels don't stop at the shoreline."

"When a bunch of wild pigs showed up around C.J. Strike in 2009, Idaho wildlife officials began to sweat."

After decades of conflict over the Klamath River, stakeholders including farmers, tribes, environmentalists, fishermen, governors, and federal officials, struck an agreement they thought served everybody. Then the Tea Party scotched it.

"BOARDMAN, Ore. -- A new link in the world's future energy supply could soon be built here on the Columbia River, and it would have nothing to do with the vast acres of wind turbines or the mammoth hydroelectric dams that give this region's power sources one of the cleanest carbon footprints in the nation."

"Public health officials have their hands full keeping your clam chowder and raw oysters safe. That's due, in part, to red tides."

"The states of Oregon and Washington can kill sea lions that have feasted on endangered Columbia River salmon, under an authorization given on Thursday by the federal government.

The decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) marked the latest reversal in the federal government's position on sanctioned killing of California sea lions. It upset animal rights advocates, who argue the creatures are unfairly blamed for low fish stocks.

"The Seattle City Council voted Monday to ban single-use plastic bags from groceries and other retail stores, joining a growing trend among cities that embrace green values."

"SEATTLE — So many pine, fir and spruce trees in the Northwest are riddled with bugs and disease that major tree die-offs are expected to rip through a third of Eastern Washington forests - an area covering nearly 3 million acres - in the next 15 years, according to new state projections."

"Whitebark pines may be among the earliest victims of a warming climate in the Northwest, as rising temperatures at higher elevations have brought the trees into contact with the destructive mountain pine beetle."

Craig Welch reports for the Seattle Times November 7, 2011.

 

"A federal judge [Monday] upheld new rules designed to protect West Coast salmon and steelhead from three widely used farm pesticides."

"Port Angeles, Wash. — In a deep turquoise pool in a gorge of steep granite and thick Douglas fir, dozens of salmon swam fitfully. Swirling and slow, they made their way up one side of the riverbed, only to run into the steep concrete face of Elwha Dam — the formidable barrier that for nearly 100 years has cut off most of the Elwha River from the salmon that traditionally populated it."

"EAST SAND ISLAND, Wash. — It's been a dozen years since the federal government moved thousands of black-capped squawking seabirds here to reduce their diet of endangered fish. Things haven't exactly gone as planned."

On Washington's Olympic Peninsula, the nation's largest dam-removal project to day is poised to restore ancient salmon runs.