From now through September, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is offering current freshwater or saltwater fishing license holders the opportunity to upgrade to a combination license for under $28. The upgrade will give those anglers all the fishing privileges of a combination license at the cost they would have paid if they […]
Washington Department of Fish & WIldlife
Salvaging road kill is legal starting this week
As of Friday (July 1), it will be legal for people to salvage deer or elk killed in motor-vehicle accidents.
More than 3,000 deer and elk are killed on Washington highways every year, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).
Benson Creek residents get close-up look at fire and flood effects
With rain adding more moisture to ground already saturated from snowmelt, an engineer, habitat biologists and a conservation planner took interested Benson Creek residents to a dam high in the Benson Creek watershed to explain repairs that will be …
State protections continue for threatened squirrels, owls
Two species native to the Methow Valley — western gray squirrels and northern spotted owls — will retain threatened and endangered status, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission (WDFW) has decided.
Reviewing options for ravaged watershed
Risks from erosion, mudslides and floods remain high in the Benson Creek watershed, which was ravaged by wildfire and floods almost two years ago. Federal and state agency officials and conservation planners are exploring options for …
Deer weathering Methow’s snowy winter
The Methow Valley’s resident mule deer herd is enduring a winter with lots of snow and reduced winter range as a result of wildfires that destroyed vegetation on thousands of acres during the past two summers.
Despite those stressors, the deer appear to be making it through the season as well as can be expected, said biologist Scott Fitkin of the Washington Department of Fish …
Benson Creek residents, agencies still working on solutions to 2014 flood
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) will repair the uppermost of five dams in the upper Benson Creek watershed as soon as weather permits. All five lakes failed in an August 2014 rainstorm when logs and debris cascaded down from …
Busy weekends at the Basecamp
North Cascades Basecamp launches its annual soup-and-something-interesting series on Thursday (Jan. 14) with a presentation by local biologist Kent Woodruff about the Methow Beaver Project. All of the Thursday night events begin with soup at 5:30 p.m. ($7 per person) followed by the program at 6 p.m. Coming up: • Jan.21: Celeste and Kip Roberts […]
Ruling bars federal Wildlife Services Program from killing wolves
A federal judge has barred the federal Wildlife Services program from participating in lethal removal of gray wolves in Washington, and rejected an Environmental Assessment (EA) prepared by the agency.
In response to a challenge brought by a coalition of conservation organizations, U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan said last week that…
The beaver believers
When Chomper and Sandy met in a concrete pen in Winthrop, it was love at first sniff.
He’s an inquisitive 44-pound male, busted for felling apple trees. She’s a lustrous red-blonde, incarcerated for killing cottonwoods. Sandy had first been paired with an inmate named Hendrix, but they lacked …
