Columbia River

Wildlife officials from Oregon and Washington have voted to close spring salmon fishing on the Columbia River to save endangered fish runs. Members of the Columbia River Compact, a board made up of wildlife officials from the states, voted to close the fishing season effective Feb. 16. It is the first fishing ban on the river since the compact was formed in 1918. The closure bans all sport and commercial fishing along 140 miles of the lower Columbia below Bonneville Dam.

The hows and whys of sustainable agriculture will be part of a new series of Pacific Northwest cruises next year through the Columbia River Gorge that traces some of Lewis and Clark's route. Participants will hike, bike and kayak to explore the natural wonders of the area and also visit a family-owned farm and regional wineries to get a firsthand look at sustainable farming practices. Meals will reflect this emphasis on regional food, wine and beer. Lindblad Expeditions' Columbia & Snake Rivers Journey: Harvests, History & Landscapes  stops at Fort Clatsop (where the Corps of Discovery wintered in 1805-06)

Twelve Roman Catholic bishops in the Pacific Northwest called Thursday for environmental stewardship in the Columbia River watershed, saying environmentalists and business interests need to work together to protect the common good of the region. The bishops from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia issued the pastoral letter after four years of study.

The wide, green gorge where the majestic Columbia River begins its final push to the sea generates so many stiff breezes that windsurfers from around the world make their way to Hood River, not far from here, to ply their colorful sails atop the churning whitecaps. Lately though, electricity, not recreation, has become the big-ticket wind client in the Columbia Gorge. Wind turbines have sprung up all over the blustery hilltops in eastern Washington and Oregon, an area soon to become home to the largest wind farm in the world, developed for customers of Southern California Edison.

A cruise ship with more than 250 people on board ran aground on a sandbar in the Columbia River. The Coast Guard was transferring passengers to another ship. Officials said that no injuries were reported and that the vessel was neither sinking nor leaking fuel. The 360-foot Empress of the North -- a vessel modeled on the stern-wheelers of the 1800s -- ran aground between Portland and Washougal, Wash., the Coast Guard said.

For five years during the 1960s, researchers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation took spent fuel from the plant's bomb-making reactors and conducted a series of radiochemistry experiments. Once the work was finished, the fuel--so radioactive it couldn't be handled except by remote control--was buried in three underground trenches. And there it remained, largely forgotten.

Federal fishery officials on Tuesday invoked the Endangered Species Act on behalf of a dwindling family of sockeye salmon on the Columbia River. With its decision, the National Marine Fisheries Service brought the West to the brink of a colossal-sized showdown between economics and environmentalism, potentially the biggest and fiercest ever seen.

The House voted Thursday to establish the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in Washington and Oregon to protect one of the country's natural treasures from overdevelopment. The bill, approved on a 290-91 vote, was sent to the Senate. The measure would establish a 260,000-acre scenic area where the Columbia River cuts through the Cascade Mountains along the Oregon and Washington border.

Christopher Swain, who swam the length of the Columbia River to protest pollution, finished his yearlong journey Tuesday. The 1,243-mile swim began at the river's source in Canada and ended with Swain pushing through 8- to 10-foot swells at the river's mouth in Astoria. "I was overwhelmed," Swain said Tuesday. "There was a moment when everything hit me." Swain conceived of the swim as a way to bring attention to the harm done to the river by dams, pollutants and other threats.

Chalk one up for those wily coyotes. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a settlement with animal rights activists, has agreed to temporarily stop trapping and shooting coyotes at a national wildlife refuge along the Columbia River. The reprieve comes despite concerns that the coyotes are eating fawns at the Julia Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Washington, pushing an endangered deer species to the brink of extinction.

Precipitation and runoff in California's major river basin will not fall dramatically with climate change, according to a new federal study that shows rising temperatures will have an uneven effect on the West's water supplies. A Department of Interior report released Monday agrees with other analyses that have found climate models are better at predicting temperature rises and an accompanying decline in spring snowpack than they are in projecting future precipitation and stream flow levels.

A federal appeals court Tuesday halted the killing of sea lions that had been feeding on endangered salmon along the Columbia River, pointing out contradictions in the government's conservation policy that targets the natural predators while allowing fishermen to take many more of the scarce fish. At least two dozen of the flippered predators have been captured and euthanized by the National Marine Fisheries Service since the federal government in 2008 authorized the agency to kill protected sea lions in Washington, Oregon and Idaho to prevent them from feeding on salmon and steelhead headed upstream to spawn.

WILLIAMS, ARIZ. The Polar Express When, where: Nov. 12-Jan. 8, Williams Train Depot Highlights: The high-desert train takes a special after-dark trip to the North Pole to visit Santa and his reindeer. Riders enjoy tales and treats along the way, and each child receives a gift. Cost: $29; $19 for children age 2 to 15; Christmas Eve tickets cost twice as much Info: (888) 848-3511, http://www.thetrain.com PASCO, WASH.

Even among those who seek to protect wildlife above all, there are moments of great conflict. One of those moments is playing out near Portland, Ore., as sea lions gorge on endangered chinook salmon that gather at the base of the Bonneville Dam, preparing to make their way up the fish ladders to spawn. Last week and this, wildlife officials have killed six of the most incorrigible of the animals, which have refused to be dissuaded by noise, rubber bullets or other harassing techniques.

In March, a couple of plump, 900-pound California sea lions showed up at the Bonneville Dam, which spans the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon, 146 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. Their mission: to gorge themselves on a feast of endangered chinook salmon laboring to get over the dam's fish ladder. The two had been caught before and branded as recidivist malefactors by wildlife officials, who have spent decades and billions of dollars trying to protect the salmon.

Astoria, Oregon, 1887 "M oishe !" my mama yelled from the kitchen of our cabin on the bank of the Columbia River. "What now, Mama?" "Come peel potatoes for the latkes!" [potato pancakes] "I'm making a dreidel . " [A dreidel is a toy similar to a spinning top.] "Then take the menorah and candles out!" [A menorah is a nine-branched candle holder used to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.] Just as I put my dreidel down, my poppy marched in like the Angel Michael and saved the day!

The Columbia River rolls lazily through the desert of central Washington, nourishing crops and wildlife in what otherwise would be a wasteland of sagebrush and barren hills. The river, which once roared through deep gorges, was immortalized in Woody Guthrie's Depression-era song "Roll On, Columbia": Green Douglas fir where the waters cut through, Down her wild mountains and canyons she flew, Canadian North-west to the ocean so blue, It's roll on, Columbia, roll on!

ON CERTAIN DAYS, IN CERtain kinds of light, I shouldn't be allowed to drive in the Columbia River Gorge, because I can't keep my eyes on the road. They dart back and forth of their own accord, spinning recklessly around to catch a chance combination of color, a barely seen waterfall tumbling off a cliff into air, a sudden bundle of lupine by the road--and, always, the Columbia River.

Hauling truckloads of hitchhiking juvenile salmon around dams is one silly way to save a species. And it doesn't work either. As four dams were built along the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington from the late 1950s to early 1970s, it took only a few years for the river's healthy salmon populations to plummet. By the mid-1990s, the populations of four types of salmon had been declared endangered or threatened. The federal expenditure of $8 billion since then for fish ladders, hatcheries, habitat restoration and, yes, trucks and barges to transport the salmon around the dams has not restored the fish.

If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.