biodiversity

Conservationists are “cautiously optimistic” after discovering a mother wolverine and her kits at Mount Rainier National Park. It’s the first time a family of wolverines has called the park home in more than 100 years.

Regulations that began Jan. 1 restrict bottom trawl fishing on about 90% of the seafloor off Washington, Oregon and California.

A controversial plan to reintroduce grizzly bears to Washington’s North Cascades will not be finished by the end of the year. Federal officials had pushed to bring grizzlies back to wilder parts of the state. Those efforts have stalled.

Washington’s North Cascades will soon see the return of a small, weasel-like predator called the fisher. The carnivores have been missing from the area since the 1930s. Biologists hope the reintroduction next week will follow in the footsteps of other successful efforts in Washington.

Increasingly hot and dry summers in Oregon and Washington have started to affect some of our most impressive travelers – the songbirds that migrate thousands of miles to breed here each spring.

The western monarch butterfly is disappearing. With its distinct orange-and-black wings, the monarch is one of America’s best-known butterflies. But for the past few decades, their numbers have dropped, threatened by climate change, pesticides and habitat loss.