Wild Salmon & Steelhead News is published monthly by the Save Our wild Salmon Coalition. Read on to learn about the Columbia-Snake River Basin’s endangered wild salmon and steelhead, the many benefits they deliver to people and ecosystems, and the extinction crisis they face today - unless we act! Find out how SOS is helping lead efforts to restore health, connectivity, and resilience to the rivers and streams these fish depend upon in the Columbia-Snake Basin and how you can get involved to help restore healthy, abundant, and harvestable populations and sustain more just and prosperous communities. To learn more and/or get involved, contact Martha Campos.
1. Newest J Pod calf is in good health!
2. Tribute to Tahlequah
3. Western Energy Markets update: BPA to send ‘Letter to Region’ in early March
4. Sen. Risch and Rep. Newhouse introduce “Salmon Extinction” legislation
5. NWAAE artists' museum exhibits and awards
6. Salmon media roundup
1. Newest J Pod calf is in good health!
This month, Center for Whale Research (CWR) spotted the newest calf J62 in good health, swimming alongside mom J41 Eclipse. CWR reports that J62 (first observed on Dec. 30, 2024) seems to be “filling out nicely and was seen bouncing around between J41" and other members of the J Pod. With the calf bouncing and rolling around in the sea, CWR’s team was able to confirm that J62 is a female based on a photo of her belly!
CWR’s February 8 on-the-water encounter also confirmed that Tahlequah (J35) is no longer carrying her deceased calf J61. Tahlequah was seen carrying her calf for at least 11 days before she and her family moved to foraging grounds on the outer coast, presumably in search for food. The CWR team confirmed J35 looked well and normal, despite appearing visibly thin while she was carrying her calf. We are grateful for CWR in tracking Southern Residents and reporting on their health and well-being.
With just 73 individuals remaining, Southern Resident orcas continue to be pushed toward extinction. Scientists tell us the top reasons for their decline are the lack of their main prey, chinook salmon, as well as noise disturbance from boats that make it more difficult for the orcas to hunt, and harmful chemical pollutants that accumulate in their tissues. As a result of these intersecting threats, female orcas have immense difficulty carrying pregnancies to term and calves especially struggle to survive.
Restoring a healthy lower Snake River is both an unprecedented opportunity and a centerpiece action needed to restore salmon runs that are critical to the survival of the Southern Residents and our region’s communities and special way of life. The orcas, salmon, and steelhead are indicator species that reflect the underlying health of the ecosystems that we all depend upon for our well-being and survival. We must continue calling on our elected officials to be leaders that protect the watersheds and clean, cold waters that orca and salmon—that we all—need to survive and thrive.
If you are a resident of Washington, please contact Governor Ferguson and ask him to take bold action to restore salmon, protect orcas, honor treaties between our federal government and Northwest Tribal nations, and invest in a truly prosperous and sustainable economy.
Learn more about J62:
- The Seattle Times: This baby orca is healthy and it’s a girl
- King 5 Seattle: Welcome J62: A new female orca joins the Southern Resident family
- KIRO7: Orca advocates beg for solutions as salmon shortage threatens whale population
Imagine © Thorly James Last month, Northwest Artists Against Extinction (NWAAE - a project of SOS) extended a call for visual art, poetry, and/or short prose with the intention of sending love and support to endangered Southern Resident orcas and to Tahlequah J35, as she grieves the loss of her calf J61.
And we received an abundance of amazing art and poetry! Thank you to all who submitted! We are now busy assembling a 'digital flipbook' to highlight this extraordinary collection of creative works in honor of Tahlequah and her Southern Resident families. The photo on the right is a sneak peek at the front cover of the digital flipbook! We will soon send an email announcing when the book is live at nwaae.org, under our recently redesigned ART IN ACTION. While you’re there, peruse through the NWAAE collection of ART WORKS!: posters, notecards, books, stickers/bookmarks, and more!
Thanks to all of the talented artists and writers who shared their work for this call. Our work is beautiful because of you!
More about Imagine by Thorly James' featured on the Tahlequah Tribute digital flipbook:
"Some of the philosophy of kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending with gold, is to integrate brokenness with beauty. Kintsugi encourages us to repair rather than discard.
I made this trio several years ago to honor J35 Tahlequah and her calf whose body she carried for 17 days, as well as four-year-old J50 Scarlet who also died that season. I dotted their metalic-glazed ceramic skin with crystal rhinestones to evoke stars or twinkling water droplets.
The trio shattered last year when I was setting up a display and a shelf collapsed. As I gathered up the pieces, I felt the sudden congruence: Tahlequah’s heartbreak, that I’d put my heart into this work, and that my heart was broken too.
I spent months putting the pieces back together. I meditated on our need to imagine a future where our grandchildren’s grandchildren, human and whale alike, are thriving, a future with plenty of salmon, clean air and water, and safe places to live. I hope humanity will see themselves reflected in the glazed surfaces and through the gaze of these whales and do what it takes to bring about the future we imagine.”—Thorly James, Imagine
3. Western Energy Markets update: BPA to send ‘Letter to Region’ in early March
Columbia Remnant © Claire Waichler, 2018 - Woodcut on sekishu paper.
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), like many power utilities in the Pacific Northwest, has been evaluating two very different energy markets that are now being developed in the western United States. BPA’s decision—whether to join one of these energy markets and if so, which one—will have major long-term implications for the Northwest in terms of energy costs and reliability, our ability to integrate new renewables and to address climate change, and our energy grid’s overall environmental footprint, including salmon recovery and the health of the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Salmon, orca and fishing advocates have been closely tracking these processes and strongly support BPA joining the Extended Day Ahead Market (EDAM) over the alternative, Markets+, that’s being developed by the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). Based on many studies and regional energy experts, EDAM would offer BPA and its customer utilities—and energy consumers like you!—improved access to a wider diversity of affordable clean energy resources and other important benefits.
In August, SOS planted a stake on this issue when we organized many of our coalition partners and published a full-page ad in the Seattle Times calling on BPA “not to short-circuit our region’s future.” Northwest policymakers are paying close attention as well. In recent months, the senators from Oregon and Washington State have sent letters to BPA Administrator John Hairston asking for a whole lot more information to explain its thinking around this important decision and urging them to slow down, take a breath, and continue to evaluate options as these two markets evolve in real-time.
In an important development this month that reflects how things can change quickly, a coalition of interests, including NGOs, labor unions, and energy leaders, introduced a promising bill in the California legislature that is designed to address governance concerns around EDAM. We’ll watch this bill closely as it moves through the legislature and (we hope) becomes law.
Adding to these challenges and changes, recent reduction-in-force orders from the Trump Administration to federal agencies is forcing the sudden and unplanned loss of hundreds of BPA employees this month. It's having significant effects on the power marketing agency's capacity and raising big concerns about its ability to keep the lights on in the months ahead. In the face of these dramatic disruptions, now seems like an especially bad time for BPA to make a major policy decision on energy markets, especially when there’s absolutely no compelling need or urgency to do so at this time.
You can learn more about western energy markets and the implications of BPA’s eventual decision, including recent letters and studies, at our website and on NW Energy Coalition's BPA Day-Ahead Markets Decision factsheet. We’ll be sure to keep you informed on new developments—including any announcements from BPA—in the weeks and months ahead!
4. Sen. Risch and Rep. Newhouse introduce “Salmon Extinction” legislation
The Salmon (Up) Rising © Robyn Holmes
In late January, Sen. Jim Risch (ID) and Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA-4) introduced harmful legislation in Congress that, if it were to become law, would deliver a devastating blow to promising salmon recovery efforts now moving forward in the Columbia and Snake rivers. This legislation sets up a false choice by suggesting that we cannot have both clean and affordable energy AND healthy salmon populations. Misleadingly titled “The Northwest Energy Security Act,” the bill exaggerates the importance of the four lower Snake River dams' energy production while ignoring the salmon extinction crisis facing the Pacific Northwest today.
This extreme bill would lock federal agencies into following an illegal and outdated dam operations plan developed during the first Trump Administration. It would harm all salmon and steelhead populations in the Columbia-Snake River Basin that migrate above Bonneville Dam—the most-downstream dam in the federal system. This 2020 plan explicitly acknowledges that its dam and reservoir operations, in combination with the growing effects of climate change, will lead to the extinction of many salmon populations. The plan includes numerous arbitrary and inconsistent analyses and relies on now-rescinded Endangered Species Act regulations that more than a dozen states and environmental groups had previously challenged in federal court. The dam operations finalized in this plan fail to incorporate essential information submitted by the Tribes describing the devastating impacts caused by the dams on Treaty rights they reserved with the United States more than 150 years ago.
Northwest people need to speak out against this 'salmon extinction' legislation. It would roll back historic progress we've made recently and perpetuate a costly and harmful status quo. Rather than returning to earlier failed policies, we should continue moving forward with effective and affordable solutions outlined in the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative (CBRI). The Columbia Basin Initiative, developed by the 'Six Sovereigns' in 2023, establishes for the first time a comprehensive, regionally supported roadmap to rebuild imperiled native fish populations, honor Tribal treaty rights, and restore healthy ecosystems while supporting a robust Pacific Northwest economy. Support for and collaborative implementation of the CBRI is essential to the health of the Columbia-Snake River Basin.
The Risch/Newhouse legislation would dismantle the historic progress recently achieved by the four lower Columbia River Tribes, the states of Washington and Oregon, and many Northwest policymakers. With this legislation, Sen. Risch and Rep. Newhouse willfully ignore well-established scientific consensus and expert analysis. They are perpetuating significant historic and continued harm to Tribes. And they are missing an important opportunity to recover imperiled salmon populations with shared solutions that replace existing dam services, create jobs, and invest in clean energy and modern infrastructure—ensuring a more prosperous future for communities here in the Northwest.
Save Our wild Salmon is working hard with our coalition partners and other allies to educate people and policymakers about this extreme legislation and to ensure it never becomes law. With the current makeup of Congress, this will be a big challenge and we will need your help to stop it!
Inland Northwest Residents (eastern Washington, Idaho, and northeast Oregon): Please join us and ACT NOW to urge your member of Congress to reject this damaging legislation and begin working together on real solutions that recover salmon and invest in our communities—moving everyone forward together!
SOS invites Sen. Risch, Rep. Newhouse, and all other co-sponsors to reject this harmful bill and instead begin to work with regional policymakers and stakeholders to advance fair and effective solutions that work for everyone. Stay tuned as SOS continues to track the proposed bill and the ways you can take further action.
5. NWAAE artists' museum exhibits and awards
We’re excited to share some of Northwest Artists Against Extinction (NWAAE) partner artists' current exhibits and recent awards!
Sea Change: The Art of Karen Hackenberg is showing at the Tacoma Art Museum through April 6, 2025. In this collection, NWAAE artist Karen Hackenberg "focuses on manmade bits of detritus – plastic bottles, cans, toys – that she finds on the beaches near her home in Port Townsend (WA).” In this one-person exhibition of approximately 40 works, Karen “meticulously transforms beach trash into captivating visual narratives. Her work creates a striking juxtaposition between form and idea, encouraging viewers to reflect on the environmental impact of human activity,” describes Tacoma Art Museum.
You can preview a glimpse here, but you’ll want to be sure to see this exquisite show in person at the Tacoma Art Museum!
© Erik Sandgren, “Wallula to the Sea” (polyptych), 2023, acrylic on panel, 48” x 96” (48” x 24” each). Photo: Laura Grimes
NWAAE partner artist Erik Sandgren’s exhibit, Wallula to the Sea at the Maryhill Museum of Art was recognized by Oregon ArtsWatch as one of the “best, brightest, most imaginative and thought-provoking work of the year on display by Northwest artists.” Congratulations, Erik!
If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to watch Erik's interview on KOIN6 about the 50-year tradition of the Sandgren Oregon Paintout. Last fall, the Paintout was on display at Oregon State University in Corvallis, as well as Erik’s book Pacific Threshold. What an honor it is to work with the creative, visionary, and incredibly talented Erik Sandgren!
Here are a couple of recent stories about the urgency and opportunity today for salmon recovery and river restoration:
