At the east end of Coeur d’Alene, bald eagles swoop and dive over the lake as excited onlookers snap pictures or watch with spotting scopes, and others stroll by on the Centennial Trail with their dogs, enjoying the winter wildlife show. This is where a temporary onramp will be constructed to allow three giant, Montana-bound megaloads of oil refinery equipment to complete their roundabout journey through the area in January and February and trundle back onto Interstate 90 on the far side of the tall stretch of Veterans Memorial Bridge. On Thursday night, more than 50 people turned out for a public meeting about the hauls, with questions about everything from safety to fisheries.

Gillnets have removed about 4,000 northern pike from the Box Canyon Reservoir portion of the Pend Oreille River in the second season of efforts to suppress the non-native species and their potential impact to Columbia River salmon. Crews directed by the Kalispel Tribe and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have been setting 28 to 32 gillnets a day in the river from Newport downstream 55 miles to Box Canyon Dam.

Some anglers were disturbed this month to read that fish biologists are using nets to survey fish populations at Lake Roosevelt. The method is used across North America and has nothing to do with the state’s current proposal to liberalize catch limits of walleye and bass in the reservoir and some other waters, said Chris Donley, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife inland fisheries manager.

PORT ANGELES – Scientists knew oceangoing fish would eventually return to the Elwha River on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, once two massive concrete dams were torn down. They just didn’t think it would happen so soon. Biologists tracking fish in a tributary of the Elwha last month spotted wild steelhead that likely made it on their own past the site where the Elwha Dam stood for nearly a century – before it was dismantled in March as part of the nation’s largest dam-removal project.