SAN FRANSCISCO, Calif. — Animal Wellness Action, and the Center for a Humane Economy, and affiliates applauded a U.S. District Court for doing away with a last-minute Trump administration rule removing wolves from the Endangered Species Act

A recent report shows an explosion of growth of a non-native species in the Columbia River.

This winter, a team of plant researchers is giving the Umtanum desert buckwheat new hope. Researchers and volunteers planted a second outcropping at the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy near Yakima.

In the past few weeks, several lynx (wápupxn) have been captured in Canada and relocated to the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington state in hopes that a resilient population will be established there.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. government attorneys will appear before a federal judge Friday to defend a decision from the waning days of the Trump administration that lifted protections for gray wolves across most of the country, as Republican-led states have sought to drive down wolf numbers through aggressive hunting and trapping.

The Canada lynx, which has been documented in the North Cascades, will remain listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to a settlement agreement filed Friday in U.S. District Court.

The number of ferruginous hawks in Washington continues to decline. The birds face multiple threats, including wildfires, urban sprawl and loss of prey. Washington’s ferruginous hawk population is continuing to slip. The state Fish and Wildlife Commission unanimously voted at a meeting in August to change the hawk’s status from threatened to endangered, in an effort to stop the decline.

Northern leopard frogs are rapidly disappearing in the Northwest. Biologists hope this effort will help the population in Washington. The release last week was an effort to help boost this genetically important population. The frogs are bellwethers for ecosystem health. Now that they’ve grown to roughly six centimeters long, the frogs are ready to join the state’s only known population at Central Washington’s Columbia National Wildlife Refuge.

Endangered killer whales received new habitat protections from the U.S. government Friday. The National Marine Fisheries Service finalized rules to expand the Southern Resident orca’s critical habitat from the Canadian border down to Point Sur, California, adding 15,910 square miles (41,207 square kilometers) of foraging areas, river mouths and migratory pathways.

SALEM — The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission has again voted to grant endangered species protections for the marbled murrelet, a small seabird that nests in old-growth forests along the Pacific Coast. Environmental groups initially petitioned the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to “uplist” the marbled murrelet from threatened to endangered under the state Endangered Species Act in 2016, arguing the bird is in danger of going extinct.

New proposed protections for the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan — an alpine bird subspecies whose snowy habitat is shrinking — have drawn the attention of the Board of Lewis County Commissioners. On Monday, Commissioner Gary Stamper, whose rural and expansive district includes most of East Lewis County, said the recent announcement is “something we need to stay on top of.”

Scientists are now monitoring what they call an unusual mortality event that’s been reducing their population again. But, a small group is surviving the die-off by taking an annual detour into Puget Sound. Researches call this group the Sounders. Normally, gray whales wait till they get to the Arctic to eat. They feed on tiny crustaceans, all summer long. But for about 30 years now, researchers have observed this small group in North Puget Sound every spring, feeding on ghost shrimp that burrow beneath the sand. The Sounders are made up of a core group of about 12 known individuals.

Of the 802,000 acres that burned in Washington in 2020, some 725,000 were scorched within the boundaries of the Columbia plateau, including around 600,000 acres of shrubsteppe habitat — an area nearly three times the size of Mount Rainier National Park. That was a lot to burn in a landscape already reduced by half from the original 10 million or so acres in Washington, lost in conversion to farmland and development. The acreage that just burned isn't "lost" in the same sense as ground permanently converted to other uses. It will recover, in different ways and in different places over time. Just what that recovery looks like is something the state Department of Fish and Wildlife is still working to understand.

SEATTLE (AP) — European green crabs were found in Washington's inland waters in 2016, prompting extensive monitoring. Now state officials said this destructive invasive species is spreading in several coastal locations. They thrive in shallow water and soft sediment, which Washington's estuaries provide.

This spring, biologists discovered something they weren’t expecting to see. Male sage grouse proudly strutting during their quirky mating dances. The strange thing was, these birds were puffing up the bulbous air sacs on their chests, their songs calling out to nearby hens, right in the middle of a giant burn scar. “You’ll see these males displaying out in a completely burned, barren landscape. And they seem to be able to handle it,” says Michael Schroeder, who’s been working on sage grouse issues for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for nearly 30 years.

The number of bald eagles in the lower 48 U.S. states — a population once on the brink of extinction — has quadrupled in the last dozen years to more than 316,000, federal wildlife officials say, despite steep declines in other American bird populations.

There has been a 1.6% reduction in the total number of butterflies observed west of the Rocky Mountain range each year since 1977, researchers calculated, which amounts to a staggering loss of butterflies over the timespan of the study period.

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.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will be conducting a prescribed burn next week in the north Potholes area of the Columbia Wildlife Area. The goal of the burn is to improve habitat for the northern leopard frog.

The big beige blur in the middle of the state may seem boring, but it is essential to the survival of grouse, orcas and people.