In a stunning reversal, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is suspending its effort to reverse an Obama-era plan to restrict mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska based on a controversial mine project’s risks to the region’s important salmon fisheries and natural resources. The unexpected move from President Trump’s pro-business administration was a blow […]
The grisly video above shows a coho salmon struggling to survive in polluted stormwater runoff on the Duwamish River in Washington. This contaminated water—filled with oil from cars, pesticides, dirt and debris—can kill this particular species of Pacific salmon in hours, according to Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, which posted the clip on Oct. 21. Sadly, it […]
By Katherine Ripley On Aug. 19, around 4 p.m., 5,000 salmon escaped from Cooke Aquaculture, an aquaculture farm in the Puget Sound in Washington. There have been some anecdotal accounts of animals behaving strangely in response to the solar eclipse that happened on Aug. 21. Could this salmon jailbreak have been the animals’ reaction to […]
Thousands of Atlantic salmon escaped from a damaged net pen at a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm off Cypress Island in Washington’s Puget Sound on Saturday, sparking fears from some that the farm-raised fish could threaten wild Pacific salmon. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) said that 305,000 salmon were in the net pen at […]
Dr. Alexandra Morton Consumers have been led to believe that when they buy farmed salmon, they are helping protect wild salmon and the whales and bears that feed on them, but nothing could be further from the truth. The wild and remote coast of British Columbia Canada is the perfect habitat for making wild salmon. […]
California’s plethora of salmon and trout species are dwindling at a rapid rate. A new study found that of the 31 genetically distinct kinds of salmon and trout on the West Coast, 23 will likely go extinct within a hundred years. The study is a follow up to a 2008 report that drew the same […]
By Taryn Kiekow Heimer If the Trump administration’s strategy is to put a foreign mining company first—and America’s greatest wild salmon fishery dead last—then sadly it’s succeeding. Friday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) settled a lawsuit with Northern Dynasty Minerals—the Canadian junior mining company behind the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska. The […]
A tiny bug is behind a major problem in the global farmed salmon industry. The sea louse, or salmon louse, is eating into farmed Atlantic salmon supplies in Scotland, Norway, Iceland and Canada, driving salmon prices higher and creating a “chemical arms race in the seas,” the Guardian reports. Salmon companies around the world are […]
By Brett VandenHeuvel Thursday, Columbia Riverkeeper filed the nation’s first lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator Scott Pruitt, Columbia Riverkeeper et al. v. Pruitt. Pruitt has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. As Attorney General of Oklahoma, he repeatedly sued the EPA to weaken environmental protections. It seems appropriate, then, that the […]