It seems like the idea’s been around long enough to just about qualify for old-growth status, but a bill to designate select public woods and waters on the Olympic Peninsula as wilderness or wild and scenic again advanced after a US Senate subcommittee hearing this week.

With as many as 70 percent of Yakima River salmon and steelhead smolts reportedly dying as they migrate down the lower 40 miles of this Eastern Washington stream, federal and tribal officials are teaming up to figure out how to improve their survival.