The Vancouver Wildlife League has changed its monthly members meeting from Wednesday, Jan. 1 to Wednesday, Jan. 8. The meeting will start at 7 pm and will be held at the WDFW Region 5 office in Ridgefield. The speaker will be Larry Cassidy, Jr.
The League usually holds its monthly meeting on the first Wednesday of every month, but the club decided that a New Year’s Day meeting would be difficult for many members to attend.
State to use drones to see restoration project
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is planning to use a drone to collect information regarding a habitat project on a section of the lower Columbia River. The project that will be documented is an off-channel habitat project that has reconnected a wetland to the Columbia River.
“The drone will collect images and videos of the South Bachelor Island Reconnection Project in Clark County,” said George Fornes, a WDFW biologist in a news release. “We recently completed work to reconnect off-channel wetland habitat to restore access for juvenile salmon.”
The monitoring will begin during the first week of January 2020. Monitoring will continue for one year. Each monitoring event will take about three days to complete and will be conducted twice a year.
The monitoring will be timed for low flows from August through October and will also be timed for high-flow events.
A 100-foot wide channel was cut from the river to the wetland, and dredged materials were used to create shallow water habitat for juvenile salmon. The drones will be used to see if the project is functioning as planned.
The project is located along about 2,000 feet of South Bachelor Island near the confluence of the Lake River and the Columbia.
Oregon crabbers must ID their traps
Oregon crabbers are reminded that they must identify their crab pots or rings by marking the surface buoys starting Jan. 1.
The identifying information must be printed legibly and be permanent. It should include the name of the owner, and at least one of the following: phone number, permanent address, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife ID number, or vessel ID number.
Tags are not an acceptable replacement for marking the buoy. The rule does not apply to gear deployed from piers, jetties, or beaches
Deadline for comments on land purchases arrives
The deadline for submitting comments to the WDFW concerning 18 land-purchase proposals is tomorrow.
The department had asked for comments concerning the land purchases, which include parcels for habitat protection and restoration, as well as public boating access. A complete list of these purchase can be found at the WDFW website at: https://wdfw.wa.gov/about/wdfw-lands/land-acquisitions.
The department will accept written proposals, as well as emails sent to lands@dfw.wa.gov or mail them to: Real Estate Services, PO Box 43158, Olympia, WA 98504.
