location: Washington

location: Washington

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A tribe once declared ‘extinct’ helps reintroduce salmon to the Columbia River
- For thousands of years, Kettle Falls was a vital salmon fishing ground for the Sinixt, but early 20th-century dam construction blocked salmon migration.
- Wrongfully declared extinct in Canada in 1956, the Sinixt fought for recognition and were officially acknowledged as Aboriginal Peoples of Canada in 2021.
- In 2023, the U.S. government signed a $200 million agreement with a coalition of tribes, including the Sinixt, to fund an Indigenous-led salmon reintroduction program into the Columbia River system above dams in Washington.
- Sinixt leaders say this project is an important effort to help right a historical wrong in the legacy that led to their “extinction” status, while many hope to one day join salmon efforts on their traditional territory in Canada.

Virtual fences can benefit both ranchers and wildlife
- Virtual fencing manages livestock using GPS-linked collars to train animals to stay within a set boundary, similar to an invisible dog fence.
- Coupled with the removal of existing barbed-wire fencing, it could open up whole landscapes for wildlife by removing injurious barriers for migratory herds, reducing mortality from fence strikes for numerous bird species, and protecting sensitive habitats from trampling by cattle.
- Virtual fences are easily moved with a tap on an app, and can be used to improve pasture management through rotational grazing, reduce wildfire risk, and other benefits.
- These systems are cheaper than building and maintaining physical fences, and are already in use in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Norway.

Spamming streams with hatchery salmon can disrupt ecosystems, study finds
- In a new study, researchers found that releasing hatchery-bred native masu salmon into freshwater streams in Hokkaido, Japan, destabilized the local ecosystems.
- Overall, the study found that the total number of fish, and number of different species, both declined in the long term due to greater competition for resources like food and preferred feeding spots.
- Masu salmon populations also did not increase in the long term, the research found.
- With hatchery releases increasing in many areas — and for many species — the findings add to the ongoing debate over their wider effects on wild fish populations.

Island-hopping cougars redraw boundaries of big cats’ potential range
- Scientists have documented cougars swimming long distances across the Salish Sea, which challenges former conceptions of cougar ranges and habitat connectivity.
- The research suggests that cougars could access thousands of islands in the Pacific Northwest by swimming up to about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) across the sea.
- Other experts have documented cougars swimming across rivers, strengthening the idea that cougars spend more time in the water than previously thought.

Brazil-U.S. cooperation is key for global forest conservation (commentary)
- On Friday, Brazilian President Lula visits President Biden in Washington, D.C., to discuss topics including the U.S. joining the multilateral Amazon Fund, aimed at fighting deforestation in Brazil: a commitment could be announced during the meeting.
- In the early 2000s, then President Lula’s Brazil slowed Amazon deforestation, designating 60 million acres of new protected areas and Indigenous territories, mounting anti-deforestation law enforcement operations, and cutting off farm credit to landowners who leveled forests illegally.
- The U.S. joining the Amazon Fund would be very important, but a genuine partnership is about more than money, a new op-ed argues: “The U.S. and Brazil should share their cutting-edge science, technology and data to monitor forests. Both sides have world-class space agencies and innovations to track and manage land use,” they write.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Sumatran tiger arrives at Tacoma captive-breeding program
- A male Sumatran tiger has arrived at a captive-breeding program in Tacoma, Washington state, where it’s hoped more of the critically endangered cats will be born.
- Fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers survive in the wilds of Sumatra today, where forest loss is pushing many of the island’s species, including tigers, into smaller pockets of habitat.
- This article was produced in collaboration with McClatchy News.

Old-growth forests of Pacific Northwest could be key to climate action
- Coastal temperate rainforests are among the rarest ecosystems on Earth, with more than a third of their total remaining global area located in a narrow band in the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest. These are some of the most biodiverse, carbon-dense forests outside the tropics, thus crucial to carbon sequestration.
- “The diversity of life that is all around us is incredibly rare,” a forest ecologist tells Mongabay on a hike in Olympic National Park. “It’s all working together. And there’s not much left here on the Olympic Peninsula or just north of us in British Columbia.”
- British Columbia did the unexpected in 2016 by establishing the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, protecting 6.4 million hectares (15.8 million acres) of coastal old-growth forest. But elsewhere in the province, 97% of all tall, old-growth forest has been felled for timber and wood pellets. In the U.S., protection outside Olympic National Park is scant.
- New protections are promised, but old-growth logging continues apace. The U.N. says the world must aggressively reduce carbon emissions now, as scientists press the Biden administration to create a national Strategic Carbon Reserve to protect a further 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of mature forested federal lands from logging to help meet U.S. carbon-reduction goals by 2030.

When Chinook salmon is off the menu, other prey will do for endangered orcas
- A new study has found that endangered southern resident killer whales mainly consume endangered Chinook salmon, but will broaden their diet when this species isn’t available.
- The researchers obtained data through prey and fecal waste collected from resident killer whales over a 13-year period.
- Efforts to reinstate Chinook salmon populations through hatchery efforts can play an important role in supporting resident killer whale populations, although these programs need to be carefully managed to ensure that stocks are diverse, the study suggests.

Bold sustainability commitments: An interview with Microsoft’s Lucas Joppa
- One of the boldest climate commitments in 2020 came from the tech giant Microsoft, which in January pledged to be carbon negative by 2030 and to address its legacy emissions–all the carbon the company has emitted since its founding in 1975–by 2050.
- Microsoft has also committed to replenish more water than it consumes and produce zero net waste by 2030, while protecting more land than it uses by 2025. Further, the company said it would lend its computing power toward efforts to combat biodiversity loss and use its voice to advocate for public policies that “measure and manage ecosystems.”
- Heading up these ambitious sustainability initiatives is Microsoft’s chief environmental officer Lucas Joppa, a Ph.D. ecologist who also conceived of Microsoft’s AI for Earth platform.
- Joppa spoke with Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler in a December 2020 interview.

New eDNA sampling system aims for cleaner, more efficient field research
- Researchers tested a new self-preserving filter housing system that automatically preserves eDNA from water samples, while reducing the risk of DNA contamination and plastic waste.
- Scientists who use eDNA currently rely on cumbersome cold storage or liquid preservatives and single-use sampling equipment to preserve their eDNA samples, which are highly sensitive to degradation as well as contamination.
- The new system incorporates a hydrophilic plastic material in its filter housing that physically pulls water from the sample without having to add chemicals.
- In a six-month test, it allowed data collectors to preserve samples quickly and easily, at ambient temperature and with far reduced plastic waste, preventing degradation for weeks and with slightly higher amounts of captured DNA than a standard method.

Indigenous peoples unite in fight to heal the Salish Sea
- Indigenous communities on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border have called for a moratorium on a proposed port terminal in British Columbia and for a cumulative environmental assessment to be carried out.
- The communities fear an increase in ship traffic will be the final nail in the coffin of a local orca population that is already under severe stress.
- The Lummi Nation, on the U.S. side of the border, faced a similar fight in 2016, when they succeeded in blocking the construction of a coal port in Washington state.

Mongabay discusses technology’s role in conservation at Seattle event [VIDEO]
- A team from Mongabay discussed new applications of technology for conservation with representatives of Seattle Audubon and Acate Amazon Conservation during an event at Seattle Central College, Washington.
- In this video recording, the panelists discuss topics ranging from bioacoustics to remote sensing and AI and answer questions from the audience.

Scientists tackling conservation problems turn to artificial intelligence
- Grantees of Microsoft’s AI for Earth, a program aimed at helping groups address complex environmental problems, met at Microsoft headquarters recently to learn new ways to apply artificial intelligence and cloud computing to their respective projects.
- The program awards grants of access to and training in the company’s cloud-based data storage, management, and analysis to address challenges in four thematic areas: addressing climate change, protecting biodiversity, improving agricultural yields, and lessening water scarcity.
- Grant recipients include teams working on game theory to predict poaching patterns; mining social media photos to determine distributions of particular species; and using machine learning and animals’ acoustic activity to determine effectiveness of conservation interventions.

Earth Day founding organizer calls for end to plastic pollution
- Denis Hayes was the principal national organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, and he took the event to the international stage in 1990.
- Earth Day 2018 is slated for April 22 and focuses on plastic pollution, so Mongabay asked him about this event and what else is on the mind of this key leader of the international environmental movement.
- Earth Day is said to be the most widely observed secular holiday in the world, with activities happening in most countries around the world.
- Hayes is also active in sustainability issues in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. and his work is housed in one of the greenest office buildings in the world.

WildSpeak conservation photography event set for Washington, D.C.
- WildSpeak 2017 will gather some of the world’s leading conservation photographers, filmmakers, and scientists in Washington, D.C. to explore the role of visual media in improving science communication and conservation outcomes on November 14 and 15.
- The annual event is hosted by the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP).
- ILCP’s new director Susan Norton shares some incredible images made by ILCP fellows and some thoughts about what’s exciting about this year’s event and the conservation photography field generally.

Effective climate change action needs technology and policy
- Tens of thousands of people participated in the People’s Climate March on April 29th to demand policies that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, respect science, and apply technology to limit the damage caused by climate change.
- Major technological breakthroughs—such as better city designs, more efficient storage batteries, and power plants that capture CO2 already in the atmosphere—as well as expansion of existing technologies, are needed to reduce the negative impacts of climate change.
- Experts add: Political and societal will that promotes expanded use of climate-friendly technology at a massive scale are critical to achieving climate change reduction goals.

The March for Science makes its stand: “There is no Planet B”
- On Saturday, April 22nd tens of thousands of protestors defied bone chilling rain to march on Washington D.C., while fellow marchers protested at “March for Science” events across America and around the world.
- The D.C. march, attended by prominent scientists and supporters of science, was held in opposition to the anti-science policies of Congress and the Trump administration — which has proposed draconian cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency, and a virtual shutdown of U.S. climate research.
- Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, summed up the purpose of the march: “to insure that policy is informed by an objective assessment of scientific evidence.“
- Caroline Weinberg, co-founder of the U.S. March for Science, noted that: “Science extends our lives, protects our planet, puts food on our table [and] contributes to the economy.… [P]olicymakers threaten our present and future by ignoring scientific evidence.”

Powering aquatic research with self-charging tags
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers have developed the first self-charging tracking tag, an implanted acoustic transmitter that harnesses energy from the swimming animal bearing it, for studying fish behavior throughout the organisms’ lives.
- The scientists hope the tag will help us better understand long-lived and migratory species of concern, as well as comprehend and mitigate the ramifications of dams and marine energy on fish movement and survival.
- The team will field-test the tag on white sturgeon in the Columbia and Snake rivers next year.

Deadly bat disease has now reached Washington state
- In March, experts confirmed that a little brown bat had died of white-nose syndrome near North Bend in Washington State.
- This is the first record of the disease in U.S’s west coast.
- Experts say that the discovery of the disease almost 1,300 miles from the previous westernmost detection suggests that humans are most likely responsible for the spread of the disease.

DNA evidence just helped convict illegal loggers in the US Pacific Northwest
- Harold Clause Kupers, a wood buyer and mill owner in Washington state, pled guilty in a District Court in Tacoma to violating the Lacey Act.
- Kupers allegedly taught three other defendants, all of whom have pled guilty to theft and damaging government property, how to identify and harvest the most desirable trees, known as “figured” bigleaf maple.
- The U.S. Forest Service assembled a team to build a genetic reference database of bigleaf maples and applied DNA profiling technologies to secure the conviction against Kupers and his cohorts.

In landslide vote, Washington says yes to anti-wildlife trafficking measure
- I-1401 makes it a crime to sell, purchase, trade, or distribute parts and products of any wildlife species covered under the initiative.
- Endangered animals covered by this initiative include elephants, lions, tigers, rhinos, leopards, cheetahs, marine turtles, pangolins, sharks and rays.
- Violations are punishable either as a gross misdemeanor, or a Class-C felony.

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