A smaller-than-expected return of chinook salmon prompted Washington regulators to close chinook fishing at the end of the day Sunday on sections of the Snake and mid-Columbia rivers, which had been scheduled to remain open through mid-June.

The current forecast is for 180,000 returning chinook, down from 269,300 initially projected by Washington and Oregon fishery managers.

Columbia River treaty tribes also agreed to close their main stem spring chinook fisheries Sunday.

Areas covered by the early closures include the Columbia near the Ringold Springs hatchery in Franklin County; the Snake from the railroad bridge at confluence with the Columbia upstream to the no-fishing zone below Ice Harbor Dam; and the Snake from the Texas Rapids boat launch upstream seven miles to the boat launch about a mile upriver from Little Goose Dam.

Sport and commercial fisheries below Bonneville Dam on the Columbia have been closed since mid-April, and the recreational fishery between Bonneville and McNary dams closed Saturday.

In addition, almost all recreational salmon fishing has been closed on rivers throughout California, and a chinook closure was ordered on the lower Willamette River in Oregon.

Boise State University will play host to a scientific conference this week addressing the potential risk of lead poisoning from high-velocity bullets in wildlife and venison for humans.

The four-day gathering will cover issues ranging from lead poisoning among subsistence hunting Inuits in Alaska and Russia, lead levels in ravens in southern Yellowstone National Park, lead found in swans in Western Washington, and the politics of nontoxic ammunition.

The issue has been heightened since North Dakota and Minnesota officials told food bank operators to clear their shelves of venison donated by hunters this year.

Researchers realized there might be a connection between lead poisoning, bullets, venison and humans after 1996, the year rare California condors were reintroduced in northern Arizona. As many as 60 now fly over the Grand Canyon and southern Utah, but researchers and the Arizona Game and Fish Department found the scavengers were ailing from lead poisoning after eating hunter-killed deer and leftover gut piles. In 2006, five condors died of lead poisoning and 90 percent of the rest had signs of exposure.

One North Dakota researcher used a CT scan to examine about 100 packets of venison from local food giveaway programs and found 60 percent had multiple lead fragments. While no cases of lead poisoning from venison had been reported, his research helped lead to the warning to food banks in North Dakota in March.

Days later, Minnesota followed suit after separate tests in that state.

The executive director of the Idaho Water Users Association says the group is against a federal bill to designate portions of the Snake River as “wild and scenic” because it could harm historic water rights.

Norm Semanko says the group is dead-set against any federal protection designation for a 42-mile stretch of the Snake River below Jackson dam. That portion of the Snake River flows mostly in western Wyoming before reaching Palisades Reservoir in eastern Idaho.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday approved a bill to designate 387 miles of the Snake River as “wild and scenic,” which affords protection of parts of the river and its immediate environment.

The bill now goes to the full Senate.

Legislation that expands the borders of Idaho’s Minidoka Interment National Monument is now law.

President Bush on Thursday signed into law a larger public lands bill that includes the Minidoka measure, as well as the bill to create Washington’s Wild Sky Wilderness.

Minidoka was one of 10 detention camps in the West and Arkansas that the federal government operated between 1942 and 1946. The camps held thousands of West Coast residents who were deemed a security risk because they had at least 1/16th Japanese ancestry.

The measure, authored by Idaho Sens. Mike Crapo and Larry Craig and Rep. Mike Simpson, allows the Minidoka monument to stretch its borders through a series of acquisitions of adjacent public and private land. Backers of the project have identified more than 200 acres to add, an amount that would more than triple the monument’s size.

The legislation also clears the way to allow private groups to raise money for the expansion and pay to refurbish the camp and rebuild a block of barracks.

President Bush on Thursday signed into law a bill to establish the first new wilderness area in Washington state since 1984.

The House gave final approval to the Wild Sky Wilderness bill last month. It designates 167 square miles in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest north of Seattle as federal wilderness, the government’s highest level of protection.

Wild Sky, first introduced in 2002, covers approximately 106,000 acres of low-elevation forest on the west slope of the Cascades. The wilderness designation will block development and other economic activity in a sprawling area north of U.S. Highway 2 that includes habitat for bears, bald eagles and other wildlife, as well as streams, hiking trails and other recreation.

The bill signed on Thursday also designates a site on Bainbridge Island, where hundreds of Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes on the way to internment camps during World War II as a national historic site.

(AP)

A federal judge in Montana has rejected the government’s request to delay a lawsuit seeking to place the gray wolf back on the endangered species list.

The judge said Thursday he’s unwilling to risk more wolf deaths.

At least 39 of the Northern Rockies’ 1,500 gray wolves have been killed since they lost federal protection in March. Wolves are now under the authority of state wildlife agencies in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. The states have relaxed rules for killing wolves that harass or harm livestock and plan the first public hunts in decades this year.

Environmentalists say the loss of federal protection threatens the wolf’s recovery. State officials pledge to keep wolves on the landscape but say hunts are needed to reduce livestock conflicts.

(AP)

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday gave approval to the Owyhee Initiative, federal legislation sponsored by Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo to settle land management issues and create new wilderness in Southwest Idaho.

The measure creates 517,000 acres of new wilderness and releases 199,000 acres of wilderness study areas in some of Idaho’s most rugged and scenic back country. It also provides certainty for continued ranching and economic activity, and ensures continued access for back country users and preservation for Native American cultural resources in the area through local management agreements.

Wilderness advocates, ranching representatives and Senators testified favorably about the initiative during a hearing last month. Its provisions were hammered out through an eight-year effort in Idaho begun by the Owyhee County Commissioners, who requested that Crapo assist with the collaborative process.

The legislation passed on a voice vote, and will likely be included in a package of other land management bills that will be considered together by the full Senate as early as next month.

Federal officials now say the six sea lions found dead in traps near Bonneville Dam apparently were not shot to death, leaving open the questions of how the animals died or whether humans killed them.

NOAA Fisheries officials say preliminary results of a necropsy found no evidence of recent gunshot wounds but found numerous shallow puncture wounds in one animal consistent with sea lion bite marks.

The department still is trying to determine how the animals died and how the doors to the traps in which they were found had been closed.

Investigators had believed the animals were shot at close range with high-powered rifles, the bullets passing through the flesh.

X-rays found metal fragments in soft tissue near the neck of two animals, and a metal slug was found in the blubber of one animal. However, neither the fragments nor the slug appear to be fatal and may have been from old wounds.

The Humane Society, which is suing to block the authorized killing or removal of up to 85 animals a year for five years, agreed with the federal government and the states of Oregon and Washington to continue a ban on killing and stop permanent removal until next year, in part to allow more efforts to go toward investigating what was thought to be shootings of the animals over the weekend. The agreement allowed the governments to continue removing animals and branding them for identification if they return them to their natural habitat.

(AP)