Northwest (OR WA)

"Salmon counters at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River are seeing the biggest chinook run since 1938, but environmentalists still worry."

"As he waits for crabs to take his bait, the Cambodian man explains his approach to eating seafood out of the Duwamish River. 'If it comes up black ... I throw it back,' he says. 'But if it looks normal, that means it just swam up from the Sound. It’s OK to eat.'"

"More than half a century has elapsed since the Seattle School Board — with nary a raised eyebrow, records indicate — voted to allow one of the nation's biggest and busiest highways to be built cheek-by-jowl with John Marshall Junior High, trading away the school's playground for a larger plot of land nearby."

"ROCKAWAY BEACH, Ore. -- From her front porch, Nancy Webster has a clear view of the hills just east of the coast highway, a western hemlock forest that's home to Rockaway Beach's water supply."

"Trains smack of progress, freedom and adventure. It’s said that railroads revolutionized America. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) touts the safety record of the rails: 'In 2012, North American railroads safely delivered more than 2.47 million carloads of hazardous materials.' But sometimes trains leak, derail or just plain explode."

"SPOKANE, Wash. — The Pacific Northwest’s sense of itself can sometimes seem green to the point of parody: a medium-roast blend of piney peaks and urban cool, populated by residents who look descended from lumberjacks or fishermen."

"When the Silver fire ignited about 2 p.m. Wednesday, officials say the stage was set for explosive growth that initially overwhelmed residents and the emergency crews sent to get them out of harm’s way."

Research biologists are studying the elusive Cascades frog, which lives in alpine meltwater ponds in Washington's Olympic Mountains, to understand how warming climate might affect the ecosystems they depend on.

"Firefighters in Washington state and Oregon were grappling on Wednesday with blazes that have blackened more than 200 square miles of terrain across the Pacific Northwest, forcing hundreds of residents to flee their homes."

"In response to a massive bumblebee die-off blamed on pesticides, the Oregon Department of Agriculture issued a temporary restriction Thursday on 18 insecticides with the active ingredient dinotefuran."