FY 2002 Blue Mountain proposal 27017

Section 1. Administrative

Project location

Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives (RPAs)

Section 2. Past accomplishments

Section 3. Relationships to other projects

Section 4. Budget for Planning and Design phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Planning and Design phase

Section 5. Budget for Construction and Implementation phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Construction and Implementation phase

Section 6. Budget for Operations and Maintenance phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Operations and Maintenance phase

Section 7. Budget for Monitoring and Evaluation phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Monitoring and Evaluation phase

Section 8. Estimated budget summary

Itemized budget

Total estimated budget

Cost sharing

Reviews and recommendations

This information was not provided on the original proposals, but was generated during the review process.

Comment:

The ISRP recommends that the study site be limited to either Rapid River/Boulder Creek, or the Imnaha River, and that a single proposal be developed as a pilot study to evaluate the proposed application of Pradel's ideas, and the PIT tag applications and detection methods to fluvial bull trout. The new proposal should include a discussion of why the effectiveness of a new PIT-tag system is necessary if it is already under evaluation elsewhere. The sponsors need to show full coordination of proposal development with research presently underway with fish habitat and bull trout at the site of choice.

Comment:

This USFWS suggests that this proposal was designed to develop techniques to assess recovery planning and provide information for implementing the biological opinion. The proposed work would assess bull trout population density, abundance, and life history characteristics for core areas of the Imnaha Subbasin and evaluate relationships to habitat quality and land use based on field evaluations and mark/recapture techniques. The USFWS suggests the proposed work would "also provide the technical information to develop a template for bull trout recovery planning." The USFWS indicated that the proposed work is "needed to evaluate population response to recovery measures within and outside of the tributaries." According to the USFWS, the proposed work would help implement reasonable and prudent measure 10.A.3.1 and terms and conditions 11.1, 11.2. and 11.A.2.2.b in the FCRPS biological opinion.

The USFWS views the proposed work "as an extremely important project for assisting in determining bull trout population status and habitat conditions" and believes there is a "need to systematically collect critical tributary information on bull trout to help in assessing the effects of FCRPS operation." The USFWS supports the funding of this proposal.

Comment:

The statistical design presented via proposal and responses was not deemed adequate to evaluate critical limiting habitat factors. The movements important in metapopulation dynamics are not likely to be defined via the methods proposed and during a study of only three years' duration. The response to questions about replication is still confusing. One problem is that there is no indication of the sizes (stream lengths) of the 5 study areas that would constitute the replicates within each tributary stream. It is very important that these each be of adequate length, taking into consideration such factors as channel width, diversity and spacing of channel forms and features, "home range size" of the target fishes (encompassing routine day-to-day movements), and seasonal changes in habitat use by the fish. The sponsor has not discussed this or even presented any idea of appropriate replicate length. Determination of appropriate replicate lengths could be an objective in the pilot study.

The objective of determining survival rates will be difficult, and trying to correlate survival and other population parameters with habitat variables will be even more problematic. Basically, the within-stream replicates cannot be independent with regard to the fish population while the fish are moving significantly, so paired comparisons would be tenuous. The reviewers agree that the envisaged basic information on relationships between bull trout and their habitat is indeed needed (and future proposals could use the results from this project to develop a watershed assessment), but at this point pilot study is required to better work out the procedures for making such determinations in this stream system.

A further concern is that the sponsor did not clearly state the extent to which habitat study sites (the replicates) would be colocated with the population sampling sites. Some reviewers assumed they would be identical (and some of the above comments are predicated on that), but others questioned the situation. This might be clarified simply and quickly with Council staff and BPA contract officers if the project is funded.

In regard to the original, multi-stream design, habitat variables, sites within streams probably will be more correlated with each other than with sites in different streams. Analysis of data from this segment of the project will require a hierarchical analysis or demonstration that the sites are more or less independent. Another problem is that the Imnaha system contains a relatively narrow range of land uses. Therefore, the prospects for relating bull trout survival and growth to land use patterns (Objective 6) may not be a good in this basin as in some others. On the other hand, perhaps it will be best to conduct the pilot study here where land use patterns are not complex.

The proponents should use a probabilistic procedure for selecting some if not all of the study sites. The ISRP strongly recommends that they select sites using the "Oregon Plan" as a model. See the proposals, ISRP reviews, and proponent responses for fish, habitat, and water quality monitoring in the Salmon subbasin (199107300, 199405000, and 28051). Also, see the Council's draft recommendations on monitoring in the John Day of the Columbia Plateau Province (199801600). The proponents are referred to the programmatic section of this report on Monitoring, the specific comments on Aquatic Monitoring and Evaluation, and the specific comments on Terrestrial Monitoring and Evaluation.

In responding to the ISRP suggestion that (in addition to the project's quest for baseline data) testing of more elegant hypotheses than those embodied in the proposal is needed to facilitate bull trout recovery, the sponsor wrote that the project would be testing hypotheses but did not specify what they would be.

Given the number of areas in which ODFW and USGS projects on bull trout would be complementary, the PIs of both projects should develop an explicit coordination mechanism to ensure continuing collaboration and avoid duplication. The response lists several areas in which there is potential gain from collaboration; all are described as possible, but only hypothetically. Before funding, the PIs need to describe the means by which data collection will be coordinated, shared, and formatted in compatible ways so that each project's analysis benefits from the other.

Comment:

Comments

Already ESA Req?

Biop?

Comment:

BPA RPA RPM:
Not BiOp related

NMFS RPA/USFWS RPM:
USFWS BiOp Related

Comment:

The US Fish and Wildlife Service project proposes new work to assess bull trout population density, abundance and life history characteristics in the Imnaha. The ISRP viewed the work as largely experimental in nature to test and develop methods of stock assessments never tried on bull trout populations. The nature of these new methods warranted a pilot study approach according to ISRP and they gave the project a Fundable In Part recommendation to proceed testing methodologies on one tributary rather than the four tributaries proposed in the project.

Bonneville rated the proposal as not fundable at this time, stating the actions proposed did not relate to a specific RPM in the USFWS Biological Opinion on Bull Trout and that "Most, if not all of this work, is in the tributaries and not the mainstem." The Fish and Wildlife Service commented in a letter to the Council that the project "will help implement reasonable and prudent measure 10.A.3.1 and terms and conditions 11.1 and 11.A.3.1.a-f in the FCRPS BO." Those aspects of the Biological Opinion relate to the use of the Lower Snake reservoirs by bull trout and the counting and determining presence and size of populations of bull trout in the four Lower Snake reservoirs.

As discussed in the general issue on bull trout projects, the Council recognizes the apparent dispute between the Service and Bonneville on the implementation of the Biological Opinion on bull trout. We would prioritize the work proposed in this new project as an element of the fish and wildlife program responsibilities, leaving for the discussions between the Service, Bonneville, the Council and other interested parties the ultimate implementation of the bull trout Biological Opinion. The Council agrees with the ISRP that the project should be limited to a pilot study to determine the effectiveness of its assessment methodologies and approaches. Thus, as presented in the budget tables, we significantly reduce the proposed budget to a pilot study scale.

Keeping in line with Council policy to disfavor additional substantial assessment work prior to subbasin planning, the Council would recommend not funding Construction/Implementation task 2.1 and Monitoring and Evaluation task 2.1. The Council would recommend funding the other proposed tasks, but keeping the scale of the study confined to one creek, rather than the four proposed by the project sponsors.

Comment: