Fin is about 4 years old and is a Catahoula leopard dog, blue lacy and Australian kelpie mix. He can inspect up to 140 boats per day. (Credit: Courtney Flatt […]Read More
Mule deer in tall grasses and forbs, Iwetemlaykin Heritage Site, Wallowa Valley, Oregon. (Credit: Leon Werdinger / Alamy Stock Photo) watch Listen (Runtime 0:59) Read A fatal disease for deer […]Read More
A group of elk runs from Yakama Nation hunters on the Hanford Reach National Monument in December 2023. (Credit: Star Diavolikis / Yakama Nation) Listen (Runtime 3:50) Read A video […]Read More
A black bear spotted on a forest road this spring in Eastern WA. (Photo courtesy of WA Dept Fish & Wildlife) Listen (Runtime 0:56) Read The Washington Fish and Wildlife […]Read More
A Western gray squirrel. (Courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.) Listen (Runtime 0:57) Read Washington’s Western gray squirrels are in trouble. So much so that state officials […]Read More
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking for the public’s help to find who poisoned six wolves in northeastern Washington.Read More
Fewer people in the Northwest are learning to hunt, which causes funding problems for state fish and wildlife departments. To solve the funding problem, experienced hunters are teaching newbies how to get involved in the sport.Read More
A bill that could provide the most significant wildlife funding in 50 years is a little closer to becoming law, according to conservation groups. The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act on Thursday passed out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.Read More
Wildfires can leave land vulnerable to flooding and landslides. With the flooding recently, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife expedited the permitting process for projects to protect safety and health for homeowners.Read More
Wolf poachers go mostly undiscovered — but that hasn’t stopped nonprofit organizations from putting up significant cash rewards for information about these incidents. While rewards generally don’t lead to convictions, Defenders of Wildlife’s Gwen Dobbs says reward offers in cases of wildlife poaching can help raise public awareness, “hopefully serving as a deterrent Read More
The number of wolves in Washington state rose strongly last year, according to an annual report from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife released Friday. The rate of increase was more than double what Oregon reported earlier in the week for its wolf population in 2020.Read More
Sage grouse in the Columbia Basin are cut off from others in Oregon and southern Idaho, making them unique in their recovery. In 1998, Washington listed its sage grouse as threatened. They now occupy around 8 percent of their historic range in the state.Read More
Washington state wildlife officials are working with pet store chains to stop the spread of aquarium products found to contain zebra mussels. A zebra mussel is a tiny shellfish native to the Black and Caspian Seas in Ukraine. But they’re now found all over the world, except in the Northwest.Read More
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission recently approved a new rule that could soon grant George’s wish. But the rule is not without controversy. Many conservationists worry that training more hound handlers could put a strain on Washington’s cougar population and lead to catastrophic unintended consequences for the big cats.Read More
According to the rules approved by the commission last week, from July through September, commercial whale watching companies can view endangered Southern Resident orcas during two, two-hour periods daily, The Skagit Valley Herald reported.Read More
Bighorn sheep in central Washington could be in danger if domestic sheep continue to graze nearby. That’s the concern from two groups suing the U.S. Forest Service. Domestic sheep or goats can pass a deadly bacteria to bighorns. Read More
“In this year of, well, exceptions, we’ve been handed an unprecedented level of damage to our wildlife mitigation program,” a Washington state wildlife biologist recently told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.Read More
The federal government says it will remove endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Lower 48. The move will reduce protections for the predators in the western two-thirds of Washington and Oregon. Read More
Washington state has killed the last two known wolves in the so-called Wedge pack in Stevens County, which had been preying on livestock, the Department of Fish and Wildlife said Monday.Read More
The state of Washington on Tuesday ordered that more endangered wolves be killed in a pack that continued to prey on cattle in Stevens County even after one member was eliminated. The decision was criticized by conservation groups who want the state to stop killing wolves. The state has killed more than 30 wolves since 2012.Read More
A petition that called for new rules to limit when the state can kill endangered wolves that prey on livestock was rejected by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission.Read More
In Olympia on Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that restrictions on fishing, hunting, hiking and golfing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus will begin easing next week on May 5. Inslee also announced most state parks, state forestlands and state-managed boat ramps will reopen on that Tuesday.Read More
Protesters took to the streets and parks in Spokane Wednesday in two events to push back against statewide stay-home measures. One was largely a Tim Eyman campaign event. The other focused on people wanting to be allowed to fish.Read More
Washington state wildlife officials are asking that you slow down, don’t drive distracted, use your high beams when you can, and brake a little longer if you see just one deer, since often more deer will follow.Read More
Over at least two decades, Washington business owner Tod Reichert spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying exclusive hunting licenses he used to kill more than 100 elk. His license for the Ellensburg hunt, a “governor’s tag” auctioned to fund elk-related conservation efforts by state wildlife managers, cost him $50,000.Read More
In a letter to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind, Inslee asked that the state increase efforts to change guidelines that dictate when a wolf can be lethally removed.Read More
Threats of violence have caused Washington officials to cancel a series of in-person informational wolf management meetings. In a news release, state Fish and Wildlife director Kelly Susewind said the tensions this summer were “on both sides of the issue.”Read More
King County Superior Court judge ordered state officials on Friday morning to temporarily stop killing members of a wolf pack in the Colville National Forest, in northeastern Washington — but their fate had already been decided.Read More
A lawsuit filed Thursday seeks to prevent the state of Washington from killing more wolves from a pack that is preying on cattle. The Maryland-based Center for a Humane Economy filed the suit in King County Superior Court, contending too many wolves have been killed as a way to protect livestock at a single ranch in the Kettle River Range in Ferry County.Read More
It’s hard not to notice that cougars are making it into the news these days. It’s also hard to miss how they’re getting there: by entering neighborhoods and putting residents on edge.Read More
Wolves should be removed from the federal endangered species list throughout Washington state, Washington Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind wrote in a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released this week.Read More
State and federal officials signed an agreement Wednesday to protect Washington’s forests and wildlife. The plan would combine resources to fight destructive wildfires, threats to forest health and challenges faced by salmon and orcas.Read More
Three Washington Native tribes are joining two state agencies and two public utility districts in targeting the northern pike. That’s a big species of fish that’s caught for sport in the upper Midwest, but which fisheries biologists say poses huge potential damage to Northwest salmon runs.Read More
There’s a new wolf pack on the western side of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Wildlife officials say it’s the first time they’ve documented a pack there since wolves were wiped out decades ago.Read More
The number of wolves in Washington state is likely much higher than previously thought, according to a University of Washington researcher who spent two years studying the animals using scat-sniffing dogs.Read More
A young black bear that was badly burned in the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire in north-central Washington and later became an international inspiration, has died. Officials with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife say Cinder the bear was killed by a hunter in fall 2017 but have just this year discovered remains and determined it was Cinder. Read More
An elusive carnivore in the weasel family is roaming free in Washington’s North Cascades for the first time in at least 70 years.Read More
An online map of wolf sightings from the public includes unconfirmed reports of wandering wolves from the Idaho border to the Pacific beaches, not to mention inside major cities such as Seattle and Tacoma.Read More
The U.S. House passed a bill Friday that would end federal protections for gray wolves in the Lower 48 states. For wolves in the Northwest, that would mean protections fall to state agencies. Read More
Washington officials have authorized the killing of wolves in two more of the state’s packs. Conservationists oppose the move. They say it could only worsen wolf-livestock conflicts. The order comes after wildlife officials confirmed wolves preyed on four cows in one attack and six in another this past fall.Read More
Washington government marksmen now have clearance to go out this weekend to shoot a wolf from a pack that has been preying on cattle in the Colville National Forest. On Friday a judge declined to extend a temporary stay on the killing won by several environmental groups last week.Read More
Northwesterners are hearing a lot about mountain lions lately. Since May, an extremely rare fatal attack in the Washington Cascades, a Willamette Valley pool party interrupted by a wandering cat and a viral Facebook video of a mountain lion lounging in a southern Oregon woman’s living room have made headlines across the region.
Are the Northwest’s mountain lions acting Read More
Since 2008, wildlife biologists in Washington state have worked to reintroduce the fisher, a locally-extinct forest weasel. Read More
As boat inspections in the Northwest ramp up for summer, an inspection at the Washington-Idaho border near Spokane last week turned up highly invasive zebra mussels.Read More
A rare attack by a cougar killed a Washington state man over the weekend Saturday, May 19 and seriously injured another man near North Bend, Washington.Read More
A disease that affects wild elk populations has been spreading in Western Washington for a decade. Now, wildlife managers say they have found evidence of elk hoof disease east of the Cascades.Read More
One of the eco-labels Wilcox Farms acquired in recent years is “salmon-safe,” a label more often seen on craft beer and Northwest wine bottles than egg cartons. The salmon and steelhead in the Nisqually River have been declining for decades, and that’s a huge concern for the Nisqually Tribe.Read More
Forests and grasslands in eastern Washington are at high risk for large, intense wildfire. This spring Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to using controlled burning on more than 1,000 acres in Okanogan, Ferry and Pend Oreille counties.Read More
Every year, wildlife officials keep track of how many salmon return to their spawning grounds. This year, they expect low returns of salmon in Washington state—and that could change the fishing outlook.
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Last month, a Washington resident was fined more than $8,000 for poaching three wolves in 2016. DNA evidence linked him to three separate kills, but other poaching cases remain unsolved. Read More
