Salish Sea News Week in Review February 26 2021

 

Aloha Skip the Straw Day!
On the fourth Friday in February, skip the straw. The National Park Service estimates Americas use 500 million drinking straws daily, many of which end up in five large areas of the ocean, called gyres, where plastic garbage collects and many end up in landfills. Plastics are mistaken for food by wildlife, break down into smaller microscopic pieces producing bisphenol A (BPA) which interferes with reproductive systems in marine life. You get the drift. Skip the straw.

A pipeline runs through it: Coastal GasLink is crossing hundreds of waterways in northern B.C.
A major B.C. pipeline will cross about 625 streams, creeks, rivers and lakes, many of them fish bearing, during construction of one of the largest private sector projects in Canadian history, according to the company building it.

Remembering the 6.8 Nisqually earthquake that shook Washington 20 years ago
On Feb. 28, 2001, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake shook western Washington causing billions of dollars in damage.

Biden administration will reconsider northern spotted owl forest protection rollbacks
The U.S. Interior Department is delaying and reviewing the Trump administration’s last-minute roll-back of federal protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl, which called for slashing protections from millions of acres of Northwest forests.

Winding down Puget Sound’s 2020 targets, as approved shellfish acreage keeps going up
In 2020, state health authorities upgraded six shellfish-growing areas in various parts of Puget Sound. Now, thanks to improved water quality, the harvest of clams and oysters can take place on these 309 acres for the first time in years, adding to an ongoing gain in harvestable acreage.

New research suggests 70% decline in diversity of B.C. sockeye salmon stock in past century
Scales from sockeye salmon harvested more than a century ago show the fish returning to the country's second largest watershed for salmon are 70 per cent less diverse than they were in 1913, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University's Michael Price.

Logging change in Puget Sound: Researchers use UW vessel logbooks to reconstruct historical groundfish populations
Researchers from the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, UW Puget Sound Institute, NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have discovered an unconventional way to help fill in these gaps in data: using old vessel logbooks.

B.C. salmon farmers ask Ottawa for more time before closing fish farms
A report commissioned by the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association says millions of juvenile salmon and eggs will be destroyed because of a federal decision to phase out fish farms in British Columbia's Discovery Islands. T

Unique Skeena sockeye populations at risk of dying out, threatening biodiversity: study
There’s an urgent need to increase the biodiversity of sockeye salmon stocks in the Skeena watershed if they are to adapt to challenges like climate change, according to a study published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Scramble to re-issue permits for area shellfish farms underway following lawsuit
Shellfish farms in the state and the agencies that issue them operating permits are scrambling to complete farm-by-farm paperwork following litigation over whether a former permitting system ensured adequate protections for the marine environment.

‘This is something to celebrate’: B.C. defers logging in home of Canada’s last three wild spotted owls
In the absence of endangered species legislation in B.C., the provincial and federal governments have announced a new ‘nature agreement’ that includes pilot projects to protect at-risk species. It starts with logging deferrals in habitat where the existence of a pair of breeding spotted owls, thought extinct in Canada, was made public in 2020.

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe, send your name and email to msato (@) salishseacom.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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