Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) staff members process Pacific lamprey before they haul them past Bonneville Dam, June 30, 2021. In fact, CRITFC transported the largest-ever number of lamprey upriver for the Umatilla, Yakama and Nez Perce tribes to release into tributaries in the upper Columbia and Snake River basins in 2021. CRITFC collected and transported 5,714 fish with less than one percent mortality. (U.S. Army photo by Chris Gaylord)
PORTLAND, Ore. — Leaves are changing, the weather is cooling and getting wetter, and Fred Meyer is stocking its shelves with Christmas decorations, which means it’s October. Instead of skipping ahead to winter holidays, let’s fall back and celebrate autumn and Halloween by highlighting a fish that has been demonized in the past, partly for its looks, and partly for our past perceptions of it as a blood-sucking, bottom-feeding trash fish*: the Pacific lamprey.
It’s true. This fish from before the time of the dinosaurs is gruesome, scary, nightmare fuel or part of the “Upside Down” in Stranger Things … and because of those things, lamprey were like the Rodney Dangerfield of fish: They don’t get no respect.
That is,...
10.18.2021 | PORTLAND, OR, US |
Story by Tom Conning
Mother Nature can be comforting and calm but this year it seems like she used our first, middle and last name as she scolded (or scalded) us … “Pacific North [emphasis added] West, what in the world were you thinking?!” … for punching our hypothetical little sister (California). Our punishment has been drought, record-breaking temperatures, wildfires and extremely dry conditions throughout the region. Even though the early part of...
The Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus sits on a 450-foot-tall basalt-rock hill south of downtown. Marquam Hill, also known as “Pill Hill” due to the amount of medical facilities clustered on its crest, is also crowded with homes, steep slopes and daily commuters (during non-pandemic times).
These steep and rocky slopes garnered ridicule for Dr. Kenneth Mackenzie when he initially proposed to build a medical school on...
