Field reports: Sage grouse lose home on range

WILDLIFE – Down to just 90 birds in southern Alberta, the province’s sage grouse are being pushed to extirpation by unrestrained oil and gas development.

University of Alberta scientist Mark Boyce, who’s studied sage grouse since 1977, said they could be gone in two years.

The population has declined by half two years in a row, he said, noting this would be the first case in which the oil industry has caused the extirpation of a species from Alberta.

The birds won’t come within 1.9 kilometers of an oil or gas well, according to studies Boyce and others have published. Given the distribution of the industry in Alberta, that doesn’t leave the bird with much habitat.

Unless prime breeding areas are quickly closed to development, the grouse will fade away, he said.

“There’s no excuse for allowing oil and gas to have so much power that they’re able to cause a species to go extinct,” he said. “It’s not worth it and it’s not necessary.”

Edmonton Journal

Entiat switches to summer chinook

FISHING – While spring chinook salmon were flocking back to the upper Columbia River in near-record numbers this year, only about 20 returned to the Entiat National Fish Hatchery.

But the low number is no cause for concern.

The federal hatchery is switching fish. Instead of spring chinook, next spring, workers will release about 150,000 juvenile summer chinook. That number will build yearly until they’re releasing 400,000 summer chinook to make their way to the ocean each spring.

Summer chinook are related to spring chinook, only they spawn about a month later. Known as June hogs, they’re usually larger, but otherwise they look, smell and taste a lot like “springers.”

But they’re not endangered, so they don’t come with the same environmental constraints.

A summer chinook fishing season could be set on the Entiat in five years.

The Wenatchee World

Anglers cash in on Roosevelt trout

FISHING – Aaron Sears of Spokane and Dennis Bauman of Green Acres each won $100 gift cards recently for turning in tag information they found on trout they harvested from Lake Roosevelt.

They were among 25 anglers who earned awards ranging from $25-$100 in the last tag drawing Eastern Washington University fisheries researchers will hold until next year.

“We are no longer tagging rainbows,”said Holly McLellan, who’s been studying trout with the help of anglers for several years.

But anglers should continue turning in information if they catch a tagged fish, since EWU is planning another tag drawing in April, she said.

New research involving tagging is being developed,

“So I anticipate the tag program continuing, but mass tagging of rainbows is ending,” she said.

Rich Landers