Outdoors

PORTLAND – Crater Lake’s visitor numbers continued to fall in 2024, with the Oregon national park posting its lowest annual count in more than a decade.

Despite Major League Baseball’s insistence on playing meaningful games in March, April is still a month marked by opening days.

Shawn Humphrey had always wanted to kill a big bull elk in the Wenaha unit in northeastern Oregon.

SEATTLE – Lonely Planet has picked Ruby Beach in Olympic National Park as among 25 of the “world’s best beaches.”

The boat ramp at a lake southwest of Cheney will be closed Wednesday morning while volunteers spruce it up.

Fly fishing

The water cannot speak for itself. I believe if it could, it would apologize.

Some already threatened cold-water fish species in the Northwest will not only face shrinking habitat from climate change but also will face growing pressure from invasive fish species fleeing their own warming and dwindling waters, according to modeling from researchers at Oregon State University.

A Virginia rail comes out of hiding for a moment in this photo by Buck Domitrovich.

MINNEAPOLIS – American pork and beaners are about to find out there’s no free lunch in Canada.

A 20-year-old Spokane man is in critical condition in a North Carolina hospital after shattering several vertebrae in a mountain biking accident Saturday.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson named three people to the state Fish and Wildlife Commission late Monday afternoon, reappointing two commissioners and bringing on one newcomer.

Washington’s wolf numbers shrank slightly last year for the first time in 16 years.

Washington lawmakers advanced a bill Saturday that would raise hunting and fishing fees.

BILLINGS – Employing a certified industrial hygienist while constructing an RV campground seems like it could raise a red flag or two. But that’s what the Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks is proposing in its plans to add 16 RV sites with electric hookups on top of an old gun range at Makoshika State Park, just outside Glendive in eastern Montana.

MINNEAPOLIS – In August 2023, Gordon and Jennifer Fothergill were at the Itasca County Fair in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when Jennifer’s phone rang.

The wallets of hunters and anglers would take a hit under a bill moving through the Washington Legislature.

BILLINGS – As the state of Montana’s lawsuit over Yellowstone National Park’s bison management plan creeps forward in court, 260 animals have been shipped to slaughter so far this winter and another 86 quarantined for possible live transfer to tribes.

LEWISTON – With a few deft moves, Ray Rhimer twists a length of .32-gauge stainless steel wire at his home office in the Clarkston Heights.