Alaska Public Media-

If you think trying to carry on a conversation in a noisy restaurant or bar is difficult, imagine how whales in the noisy waters of the Salish Sea feel. Whale scientists think rising levels of underwater noise are having a harmful effect on the Northwest’s iconic killer whales. Now the Port of Vancouver, in British Columbia, is spearheading an experiment to temporarily slow down big ships to reduce noise.
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The Issaquah Press ~

Before emerging from the creek on a cold, sunny December morning, Dan Lantz pulled out a notebook to record a very familiar number this kokanee spawning season — zero. 
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Lantz, an environmental scientist for King County, and other fish ecologists were expecting a low return of kokanee this year. Spawning runs are typically cyclical, with boom and bust years. But nobody expected the numbers to be this bad.

The Oregonian ~

SPOKANE, Wash. — A federal judge is forcing discussion of a radical step to save endangered salmon: taking out four dams on the Lower Snake River.

The public will get a chance to weigh in at meetings throughout the Northwest starting next month.

"Scientists tell us that removing the four Lower Snake dams is the single most important action we could take to restore salmon in the entire Columbia-Snake river basin," said Sam Mace of Save Our Wild Salmon.

Peninsula Daily News ~
PORT ANGELES — It didn’t take long for a half-mile section of eroded beach to be transformed after derelict armor was removed east of the Elwha River mouth.

In one tidal cycle, parts of the sediment-starved, coarse-cobble shoreline were covered by 6 feet to 10 feet of sand as the Beach Lake Acquisition and Restoration project was put into motion last weekend.

Portland Business Journal ~

The federal government moved closer to selecting where to build a long-planned wave energy test center — the facility that Oregon wave energy backers see as vital to the future of the industry in the state.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday said it would soon issue a funding opportunity announcement that would offer up to $40 million in federal funding for the test center.

National Geographic-

In August 2014, workers completed the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, as the final part of the 210-foot-high (64-meter-high) Glines Canyon Dam was dismantled on the Elwha River in northwestern Washington State.
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The multistage project began in 2011 with the blessing of the U.S. National Park Service, which administers the surrounding Olympic National Park. The goal was to remove unneeded, outdated dams and restore a natural river system, with presumed benefits for fish and other wildlife. 

Seattle PI -

Once-mighty Columbia River and Snake River salmon runs are in a "perilous state" and U.S. government restoration efforts are "failing," a U.S. District Court judge said in a tough opinion released Wednesday.

Judge Michael Simon threw out the feds' latest plan for managing the Northwest's greatest river system.

The 149-page ruling by Simon is the fifth time courts have rejected federal plans as flawed or inadequate under the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.