FY07-09 proposal 200713200

Jump to Reviews and Recommendations

Section 1. Administrative

Contacts

Section 2. Locations

Province / subbasin: Blue Mountain / Grande Ronde

Section 3. Focal species

Section 4. Past accomplishments

Section 5. Relationships to other projects

Section 6. Biological objectives

Section 7. Work elements (coming back to this)

Section 8. Budgets

Itemized estimated budget

Total estimated FY 2007-2009 budgets

Cost sharing

Section 9. Project future

Future O&M costs: This is primarily a research project. Therefore, any maintenance costs are limited to field and office equipment repair or replacement.

Termination date: Undetermined
Comments: Some level of monitoring and evaluation should always accompany hatchery production. Complete termination will coincide with the termination of the NEOH hatchery program.

Final deliverables: We will implement a five-year review process for incorporating NEOH M&E information into the adaptive management process. Every five years co-managers will facilitate a symposia to review NEOH performance and status. The five year review will include a 5-year comprehensive report that will serve as the framework for the symposia. The final "deliverable" will be a summary report and symposia that address the success of supplementation as a recovery strategy in northeast Oregon.

Section 10. Narrative and other documents

Reviews and recommendations

ISRP PRELIMINARY REVIEW (Jun 2, 2006)

Recommendation: Response requested

NPCC comments: The ISRP requests that the sponsors for the set of NEOH proposals develop a coordinated response to the general comments on the NEOH program provided under proposal 198805301 and address specific comments on individual proposals. Comments specific to this proposal: The short description of this proposal indicates that it would focus on the M&E for the NEOH programs and projects. While we commend the sponsors for compiling a large and extensive M&E program associated with the NEOH, we urge the various cooperating co-managers to work together to provide a compelling logic path or set of evidence that it is justified in terms of benefit to the targeted populations and subbasins. It would be appropriate in a single place to describe the role(s) and activities of the various participants to provide a universal view of the overall NEOH program. The primary benefit of the current M&E program will be the examination of ongoing projects. Under separate review, the ISRP did not judge that construction of a new facility in the basin would be warranted until some of the data and evaluation demonstrate that supplementation can achieve its objectives at rebuilding wild production. A single robust stock assessment (with trend) would seem a critical element that is missing (or at least not obvious). Technical and scientific background: Review for project 200713200 - NEOH Monitoring & Evaluation Implementation addresses a key need previously and repeatedly identified by Council's scientific groups not only for the NEOH supplementation projects, but all supplementation throughout the basin to meet robust scientific requirements for adaptive management. Moreover, the ISAB and ISRP have stressed the need for clearly identifying appropriate hypothesis testing, objectives, performance standards, sampling strategies (including randomized designs with comparative reference streams), analysis and interpretation, and reporting. The NEOH M&E Implementation proposal clearly is designed to address a "problem related to fish and wildlife in the Basin" by not only formalizing an M&E approach, but by mapping out an ambitiously robust and regional implementation approach that is consistent with Council's advice and state of the science. A key side benefit of the approach outlined is that it can be transferred to other regions and the results broadly instructive to the supplementation approach to maintaining and ultimately rebuilding depressed Chinook salmon populations basinwide. Rationale and significance to subbasin plans and regional programs: The NEOH Monitoring and Evaluation Implementation project is highly consistent with the Fish and Wildlife Program as it provides the basic methods and information needed for broad adaptive management decisions. The need and rationale for M&E has been repeatedly identified in Council's advice for the Fish and Wildlife Program and is expressly outlined in the Imnaha and Grade Ronde subbasin plans and NEOH master plans. At a broader scale, however, there continues to be a need to justify the NEOH production and release programs in terms of stock sizes and expected contribution of released fish to the natural/wild populations in the Subbasin. Relationships to other projects: NEOH Monitoring & Evaluation Implementation is directly tied to other NEOH and subbasin projects as a broad, umbrella project to collect fundamentally important data and analysis of the effectiveness of supplementation. The project benefits from cooperation between the Nez Perce and Umatilla Tribal authorities and the State of Oregon (although some depiction of roles and responsibilities would be helpful). Project history: This proposal is described as being new, but it takes advantage of several ongoing efforts by elevating and recognizing the importance of an integrated and robust M&E. As such, there should be results from past evaluation and monitoring activities that can be analyzed and summarized. Objectives: This proposal is designed initially as a five-year effort. The time frame is appropriate to generate information on a single Chinook salmon generation as a logical first step to longer-term monitoring. The four primary objectives are further broken down and addressed by sets of performance measures and are linked to Imnaha and Grande Ronde subbasin plan elements and more broadly to the basin's Fish and Wildlife Program. Upon closer examination, many of the objectives are really tasks not measurable objectives and need some examination and refinement so they are. Tasks (work elements) and methods: NEOH Monitoring & Evaluation Implementation has an ambitious and robust experimental design that includes reference streams where no direct supplementation shall occur and takes advantage of randomized EMAP-type sampling. There is also some opportunity to communicate with others in the basin to avoid unnecessary duplication of certain kinds of experimental monitoring (e.g., parentage analysis – there are several throughout the basin ongoing). Monitoring and evaluation: This proposal is a broad M&E project entirely scoped out to address information needs for other NEOH projects. It would be helpful not only to ISRP, but also the sponsors if they were to construct a basic decision tree linking the M&E tasks, objectives, and findings to management (this was requested in the Three-Step Review). There is a tendency to “measure everything.” The sponsors need to carefully choose some key integrative indicators to monitor to evaluate success towards each objective and demonstrate how the results will plug back into the decision process (i.e., adaptive management). Facilities, equipment, and personnel: This proposal recognizes the need to intensify sampling directed at comparing hatchery and wild fish throughout the region. These are identified. Information transfer: This proposal identifies several methods and approaches for information transfer. While the sponsors include key staff from co-managers, the project identifies the opportunity to analyze, interpret, and share information more broadly through programmed "symposia" or workshops, as well as through presently available data warehouses in the basin. Though not explicitly described, there will be enormous opportunities to more formally publish results through peer-reviewed outlets. The importance of this latter cannot be overstressed as it provides a more generally available and distributed record, but also provides for an additional layer of independent peer review and thus credibility. Benefits to focal and non-focal species: NEOH Monitoring & Evaluation Implementation focuses primarily on Chinook salmon population(s) response to supplementation within the targeted subbasins. The informational benefits for adaptive management are critical with long-lasting benefits both within the targeted subbasins but also potentially basinwide. There is a potential for interference from other activities if the reference stream framework is not maintained or if activities such as harvest or supplementation (mostly downstream) are not accounted for or controlled. The proposal does not specifically address the issue of impacts on non-focal species, but the issue is reasonably irrelevant as an M&E project.

ISRP FINAL REVIEW (Aug 31, 2006)

Recommendation: Fundable

NPCC comments: See group comments for 198805301. This monitoring and evaluation proposal is a key component of the overall NEOH effort.