Results tagged “columbiariver”

Another great sea lion photo by Bob Whitney Remember how we wrote yesterday that six sea lions were found shot in traps in the Columbia River? Turns out they weren't shot. According to a NOAA press conference held this morning regarding the sea lion deaths, necropsies of the animals showed no evidence of recent gunshot wounds. X-rays did show metal fragments in the soft tissue of two of the sea lions, and another had a metal slug in its blubber. Another one of the sea lion victims had several shallow puncture wounds, consistent with a......

Steller Sea Lion at Marrowstone Island WA courtesy of Flickr Contributor Bob Whitney This weekend, the carcasses of six sea lions were found shot to death in traps on the Columbia River. Now investigators from local law enforcement and Oregon and Washington's Departments of Fisheries are looking for the sea lions' executioner. The bodies were found in recently set traps at the base of the Bonneville Dam, where sea lions have been a known nuisance to Chinook salmon and other fish. Four of the killed seals were California Sea Lions and two were Steller Sea......

Arlington, OR [via KOMO] - Residents of this tiny town on the Columbia River are in an uproar over photos posted on mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist's MySpace page. The photos show the mayor in nothing but her bra and panties. On a firetruck. The mayor has commented that she doesn't feel she's done anything wrong, but some residents strongly disagree. "I think it's disgusting," said local woman, Prickly Ironbox. "A woman's underthings should never be seen. Especially not on public stuff like a firetruck." Blushing, Ironbox added, "Though, I do like those firemen calendars. Never buy them,......

Monday LESS IS MORE: In Trance of Scarcity: Stop Holding Your Breath and Start Living Your Life, Victoria Castle asks why we feel that nothing is ever enough. Castle's book shows us how to escape this malaise and become more relaxed and alive. Hopefully it doesn't involve crisscrossing the U.S. on a book tour. 7pm // Third Place Books // FREE NATURE WRITING: Robert Michael Pyle's Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place presents the story of Gray's River, one of the earliest settled......

Sightline's Eric de Place celebrated his own private Kyoto on Friday by congratulating the region for their collective environmental work. British Columbia, which has been slow to catch up with even the rest of Canada, has finally been pushed in the right direction by the Prime Minister's recent green initiative talk. Oregon's governor Ted Kulongoski has recently said that he wants the state to become the "clean energy capital of the nation" and released an action plan that focuses on renewable energy sources, biofuels, conservation and......

Last March we were trying to keep a stiff upper lip as we informed you that the bill banning PBDEs, a wily fire-retardant chemical, had been stifled for another year. PBDEs are tricky because while they should just sit there and avoid catching fire, it turns out they display a proclivity for striking out on their own, and have been busy making their homes in people, even in breast milk. This is a red flag because PBDEs are associated with developmental disorders in young'uns. Could there be a......

It's Mother's Day weekend. Some people say we should remember our mothers all year-round, not just on a single day. But we do! With yo momma jokes! Seattlest contributors share their favorites, along with their plans for enforced family togetherness. Don always thinks of Norman Bates on Mother's Day. But that aside, when the mother in his home is not out siphoning the neighbor's gas tanks, she wants to bond with Mothers Earth and Nature. So he's off to the Washington Park Arboretum here this weekend for verdant splendor--full lush blossoms and oozing sap! The Mid-May Plant Sale is......

Now's the time for the big salmon shows where they navigate through our local fresh waters to their birthplace where they'll lay a few million eggs and die. We hear it's really cool how they swim upstream and jump up waterfalls and get eaten by bears and orcas and McCormick and Schmick's diners. Ah, the wonders of nature. Now's the time when the Bonneville Dam ladders should be crawling with Chinook, but, well, where are they? Traditionally 19,000 salmon would have passed through the area by now, but as......

Recently, West Seattle mom (Volvo driver, PCC shopper) Karina Aldredge learned that there is strong scientific evidence that "levels of PBDEs are rising rapidly in the environment and in human bodies, particularly in North America where the use of PBDEs is the highest": Recent studies show that women in the United States have levels of PBDEs in their breast milk that are up to 100 times higher than the levels found in European women. Studies in wildlife have shown that PBDE levels are rising at alarming rates, doubling every one to......

Seattlest readers driving south this holiday weekend might wanna swing by the Ariel Store and Tavern on State Highway 503, 10 miles east of the I-5 Woodland exit, about 140 miles south of Seattle. Why? Every November, the tavern hosts "D.B. Cooper Days" to commemorate Thanksgiving Eve, 1971 -- the night the notorious skyjacker parachuted from a jetliner over southwest Washington with $200,000 in ransom money, never to be heard from again. Details vary from source to source, but here's the basic story: On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a......

The busy beavers over at Seattle's Northwest Environment Watch have taken their statistical sideshow to the wilderness. They've decided to track the health of five northwestern indicator species: gray wolves, woodland caribou, greater sage grouse, Chinook salmon, and the resident orcas off the coast of Washington and British Columbia. (Yes, Virginia, there's a chart!) What does a look at these five species tell us? Results are mixed, according to our preliminary research. Some species, like wolves, are steadily growing in number. Others, like the woodland caribou, are clinging to......