FY07-09 proposal 200600600

Jump to Reviews and Recommendations

Section 1. Administrative

Contacts

Section 2. Locations

Province / subbasin: None Selected / None Selected

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: No future O&M costs

Termination date: June 1, 2010
Comments: FY 2009 HEP project reports will be drafted after the end of the field season, which will conclude approximately September 15, 2009. As a result, FY2009 HEP reports will be completed in FY 2010.

Final deliverables: Completed FY 2009 HEP project reports and a final HEP program report based on a comprehensive review/audit of habitat unit credits awarded to BPA resulting from BPA's funding of mitigation projects.

Section 10. Narrative and other documents

Reviews and recommendations

ISRP PRELIMINARY REVIEW (Jun 2, 2006)

Recommendation: Fundable in part

NPCC comments: Overall the ISRP viewed the use of HEP as a policy decision. HEP has played and can continue to play a role in the Council’s program by establishing mitigation credits against the initial baseline losses that were agreed to be reasonably indexed by habitat units (HUs) derived from HEP. However, HEP is no longer considered to be a good method for evaluation of value of land to wildlife, as there have been significant improvements in both analytical methods and available data that underlie estimation of the relationships of wildlife species and assemblages to habitat. Further, HEP is not a sufficiently direct measure to support the purposes of monitoring and evaluation. Far better monitoring approaches and metrics are now available, and use of more direct approaches is required for effective evaluation of benefits to wildlife. In sum, HEP alone does not provide adequate biological M&E, and direct biological M&E is not improved by continuing HEP. If the Council continues to use HEP as the basis for initial determination of mitigation value, then a consistent approach to evaluation is desirable and a standardized HEP approach could help to achieve such consistency. In this case, the proposed project should present more clear explanation of methods to be used, including the timing of sampling and what specific HEP models would be used to evaluate the structural characteristics of habitat, and any additional needed details to allow evaluation of sampling methods. The reviewers found the CHAP portion of the proposal Not Fundable. The proposal did not provide convincing evidence that the approach of NWI would be a significant improvement over the HEP-derived habitat unit metric now in place. In particular, the methods used to determine habitat value (HV) were not clearly presented. It would have been useful for the proposal to include a more clear explanation of the calculation and use of habitat value, with an example from a subbasin of how to use the metric, habitat value, as a measure of progress towards mitigation. It seems likely that direct biological M&E will almost always be more convincing, more interpretable, and thus more useful for evaluation and application to management decision-making than would be a less direct, HEP-type measure. The proposal did not convince the ISRP that the NWI efforts to improve HEP would be as good as direct biological M&E. The ISRP also noted that actual evaluation of wildlife projects was rarely provided in proposals. The use of HEP or CHAP would imply that habitat was an adequate proxy for value to wildlife, but this proposal does not articulate habitat goals or how and when progress towards goals would be measured. The use of HEP to provide monitoring and evaluation is not considered scientifically well advised. The relationships of HEP- or CHAP- derived metrics to focal species identified in subbasin plans or to non-focal species were not defined.

ISRP FINAL REVIEW (Aug 31, 2006)

Recommendation: Fundable in part

NPCC comments: Overall the ISRP viewed the use of HEP as a policy decision. HEP has played and can continue to play a role in the Council’s program by establishing mitigation credits against the initial baseline losses that were agreed to be reasonably indexed by habitat units (HUs) derived from HEP. However, HEP is no longer considered to be a good method for evaluation of value of land to wildlife, as there have been significant improvements in both analytical methods and available data that underlie estimation of the relationships of wildlife species and assemblages to habitat. Further, HEP is not a sufficiently direct measure to support the purposes of monitoring and evaluation. Far better monitoring approaches and metrics are now available, and use of more direct approaches is required for effective evaluation of benefits to wildlife. In sum, HEP alone does not provide adequate biological M&E, and direct biological M&E is not improved by continuing HEP. If the Council continues to use HEP as the basis for initial determination of mitigation value, then a consistent approach to evaluation is desirable and a standardized HEP approach could help to achieve such consistency. In this case, the proposed project should present more clear explanation of methods to be used, including the timing of sampling and what specific HEP models would be used to evaluate the structural characteristics of habitat, and any additional needed details to allow evaluation of sampling methods. The reviewers found the CHAP portion of the proposal Not Fundable. The proposal did not provide convincing evidence that the approach of NWI would be a significant improvement over the HEP-derived habitat unit metric now in place. In particular, the methods used to determine habitat value (HV) were not clearly presented. It would have been useful for the proposal to include a more clear explanation of the calculation and use of habitat value, with an example from a subbasin of how to use the metric, habitat value, as a measure of progress towards mitigation. It seems likely that direct biological M&E will almost always be more convincing, more interpretable, and thus more useful for evaluation and application to management decision-making than would be a less direct, HEP-type measure. The proposal did not convince the ISRP that the NWI efforts to improve HEP would be as good as direct biological M&E. The ISRP also noted that actual evaluation of wildlife projects was rarely provided in proposals. The use of HEP or CHAP would imply that habitat was an adequate proxy for value to wildlife, but this proposal does not articulate habitat goals or how and when progress towards goals would be measured. The use of HEP to provide monitoring and evaluation is not considered scientifically well advised. The relationships of HEP- or CHAP- derived metrics to focal species identified in subbasin plans or to non-focal species were not defined.