In 1978, North Creek — which originates in south Everett and runs south to Lake Washington — was teeming with chinook, coho and sockeye salmon, along with steelhead and cutthroat trout. Now, in some years, a few fish return to the creek, Murdoch said. Some years, there are none. The creek runs through a culvert under 128th Street SW. When it rains, the water gushes through the culvert, keeping fish from getting through. This culvert and more than 800 others in Western Washington will have to be replaced or removed to make the streams more fish-friendly, according to a recent federal court ruling. Read more on HeraldNet.
 Bill Dewey of Taylor Shellfish, in Shelton, WA. USA TODAY will explore how climate change is affecting Americans in a series of stories this year. In their first installment, they cover the threats to our oceans. “Ocean acidification,” the shifting of the ocean’s water toward the acidic side of its chemical balance, has been driven by climate change and has brought increasingly corrosive seawater to the surface along the West Coast and the inlets of Puget Sound, a center of the $111 million shellfish industry in the Pacific Northwest. Read more at USA TODAY, or check out Bill Dewey’s jointly authored story at the Bellingham Herald. Millions of dollars are spent each year to restore Puget Sound to a healthy condition. But how do we know if the effort is paying off? The Kitsap Sun is continuing a series of stories examining six categories of indicators the Puget Sound Partnership is using to gauge the health of Puget Sound. Stories will look at indicators in categories like the ecosystem’s food web, water quality, water quantity, species and habitats. Read about these issues on the Kitsap Sun’s website.
Snow on the third day of spring has some people wondering: what gives? Well, actually, spring here began a long time ago, says KPLU weather expert and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Cliff Mass. Read or listen to the article on KPLU.
President Obama’s plan hands a long-sought victory to island residents and members of Washington’s congressional delegation. Read more about what this means in the Seattle Times.
As part of its “green wall against sprawl,” King County agrees to pay Hancock Timber Resources Group $11.1 million for development rights on its White River Forest east of Enumclaw. Read more about this in the Seattle Times.
Climate change will affect different regions of the country in different ways. In the Southwest it may get warmer and drier. In the Northwest, however, climate models predict it getting warmer and wetter. Read about this new study that was published in Nature Climate Change on KUOW – Climate Impact Group’s Eric Salathé is quoted.
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