FY 2001 Columbia Gorge proposal 198805304

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

Reason for change in estimated budget

Projected indirect rate was less than anticipated.

Reason for change in scope

The scope of this project will remain the same as in FY 2000 with the exception that one additional task will be added to the FY 2001 proposal. We propose radio tagging adult Hood River stock hatchery winter steelhead to determine if adults escaping to the Hood River subbasin narrowly home to the hatchery smolt release site or distribute themselves throughout the range of the indigenous population.

Cost sharing

Reviews and recommendations

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

Comment:

Recommendation for the set of HRPP proposals: Fundable only if the response adequately addresses the ISRP's concerns. See subbasin comments, above.

The lack of peer-reviewed publications at present is understandable, due to the incomplete evaluation datasets. Additional years will be required (out to 2007 for some stocks) to collect the necessary data for evaluation. Nevertheless, the study is likely to generate results that will be of great interest throughout the basin.

According to the related proposal 1989-029-00, the average spring chinook smolt-to-adult return from the 1993, 1994, and 1995 brood years have been ~0.15%. This is far below the 0.68% SAR target, which suggests that there may be opportunities to improve survival of hatchery smolts. Perhaps taking 50% of the returning adults for broodstock is a bit risky until the performance of hatchery releases can be demonstrably improved. There doesn't seem to be a mechanism in the set of proposals to evaluate the relative benefits and risks of bringing 50% of the run into the hatchery versus passing them above Powerdale Dam for natural reproduction, where SARs may be better (or worse) than for the hatchery cohort. Provide this evaluation. General comments on Hood River Production Program: The Hood River Subbasin Summary was well written and thorough. The Hood River group is on the right track with their watershed assessments and rehabilitation plans listed by priority of action. Concerns are with the hatchery program and the issue of passage at the dam.

Summer and winter steelhead stocks have been in decline during the 1990s, and are now down to less than 200 and 300 fish, respectively, and far below the escapement goal of 2,400 fish. A crude recruitment analysis, assuming these fish were, on average, 4 years-old at return, suggested both stocks are below replacement. The abundance of each seemed correlated, suggesting factors in the decline are affecting both stocks, now down to less than 1or 2 fish/km. It is not possible to separate the freshwater from the marine factors in the decline since no data on wild smolt yield is given. However, the decline is likely related to marine conditions, as found elsewhere. Data on smolt yield exists (five rotary screw traps in the watershed) so an analysis of overall smolt yield and return may be possible. Survivals on hatchery steelhead seemed peculiar in that winter-run hatchery releases faired worse, at less than 1% from 60,000 releases, than summer-runs, which apparently had survivals near 3%. Something is odd about this difference - either the release numbers have varied, summer and winter runs are misidentified, or summer runs are doing something different (migration pathways?). A more thorough treatment of the stock assessment information available is required.

The use of wild brood stock for hatchery purposes, while commendable and correct at the best of times (i.e., when survivals warrant it), is likely depleting the limited wild stock without increased return, given these poor survival rates. Furthermore, supplementation is focusing on the wrong life stage if the current limitation is in the smolt-to-adult stage. It is difficult to separate the "supplementation" from the fish released for harvest. All fish for harvest should be released below the dam. A review and justification of the supplementation program is required.

The comparisons and conclusions on acclimation (Figs. 11 and 12 in the summary) suffer from having no within-year control, and were not in agreement with the presentation on this issue which indicated there was no benefit to acclimation. Fish released from these facilities will compete with wild parr and smolts, particularly if a large portion residualize. Half of the males (perhaps as many as 15,000 of 60,000 releases in this watershed) may fail to migrate, and compete for food and space with wild fish. They plan to study residualism, but some information should already be available, and presented.

A review of the harvest-fish release and returns and consequences to the wild population is needed. What are the consequences within the Bonneville Pool and elsewhere when hatchery smolts out-number wild by several fold? Even catch-and-release fishing has an impact, particularly where effort is high, and this wild population can withstand no harvest impact. This form of supplementation may be doing more harm than good to the wild population; likewise for the harvest program.

They should proceed with their watershed rehabilitation plans and hope that these attempts will improve productivity and capability in freshwater to offset the dramatic declines in smolt-to-adult survival. Meanwhile, there is a need to do more work on the latter, including mortality in the downstream migration within the Hood, within the Bonneville Pool, down the Columbia, at the river mouth, and during the coastal migration. Comments above on hatchery harvest and supplementation will apply to several watersheds, thus an overall review may be required.

Recommendation for the set of HRPP proposals: Fundable only if the response adequately addresses the ISRP's concerns.

Issues to address:

1. The proposals contained little specific data presentation.
2. Quantify the juvenile loss through the Powerdale hydro facility.
3. Consider using PIT tags or acoustic tags in the smolt evaluations.
4. Release all smolts below the dam where the goal is to increase the available harvest but consider/address the indirect impacts to wild fish from C&R.
5. The turn-back of hatchery steelhead at the ladder has increased straying, and may have lad to increased angling effort within the lower river (thus further C&R of wild). Alternatives to turnback should be provided (cull?).
6. What are the consequences of increased hatchery smolt presence within the Bonneville Reservoir, the lower Columbia River, and at the mouth, and given the aggregate hatchery releases in the Province and elsewhere?
7. Justify hatchery production levels. In the absence of quantitative stock assessments, the proposals fail to justify technically the need for the projects presented. For example, what is the basis for the numbers of hatchery fish to be released?
8. Develop a monitoring and evaluation plan for the separate tasks of harvest development, supplementation, and habitat rehabilitation.

The Hood River Production Program has many things going for it, including its dedicated staff, high quality facilities (Powerdale collection site and Parkdale), links between the habitat restoration efforts and the production program, etc. Nevertheless, the M&E portion of the program fails to adequately address monitoring and evaluation questions that are critical to the program's success. These include quantifying the juvenile loss through the Powerdale hydro facility, lack of consideration of using PIT tag technology to gather additional juvenile migration and adult return data, and deeper integration of the wild and hatchery production components for winter steelhead goals.

Acclimation as a supplementation strategy, as a means to enhance the survivability of artificially produced smolts released into the watershed, seems not to have been demonstrated, at least by the data presented in the proposals. Reviewers perceive that a better strategy for enhancing winter steelhead fisheries would be to release all smolts below the dam.

Recycling as a fishery-enhancement tactic, returning marked steelhead to the mouth of the tributary to make them available to harvest again, seems to have been responsible for enhanced straying into other watersheds; if so the practice is detrimental to the maintenance of biodiversity in the subbasin and should be curtailed.

Finally, density limits in the Bonneville Pool and lower Columbia River need to be addressed in this Subbasin Summary and others as a potential factor limiting salmon productivity. Without appropriate assessment of stocks including survival in the pool and lower river, and without consideration of density as a potential limiting factor, managers may inappropriately increase smolt releases to the detriment of future cohorts of native salmon. Reviewers note with concern that proposers in the Hood River program contemplate doubling of hatchery production as a method of supplementation; the detrimental effect of this increased density of salmon smolts on the survival of native salmon has apparently not been considered.

Comment:

Comment:

Comment:

Comment:

Specifically, the responses adequately addressed the ISRP's concerns on juvenile loss through the Powerdale Facility, the potential use of PIT tags (perhaps to be revisited during the 2002 conference), smolt releases below Powerdale Dam, straying of recycled adult steelhead, and the impact of smolt numbers in the Bonneville Pool (a valid concern, but likely outside the purview of the Hood River Production Program). With respect to the justification of HRPP production levels, the final paragraph of the response gets to the main point of the ISRP's concern, somewhat unsatisfactorily (although what is said is no doubt true). Detail and references were lacking for this section.

A major concern of the ISRP is the need for an overall monitoring and evaluation plan. The PI's acknowledge that more coordination and summarization would be beneficial. We hope they are able to move forward on this issue.

Finally, the ISRP noted that both proposal and verbal presentation contained little specific data presentation. The response indicates that the PI's felt that an undue emphasis was placed on brevity for both proposals and presentations (this year and previous years) that precluded presentation of past results. While there is probably some truth in this viewpoint, the ISRP has been clear and consistent in articulating its expectations to the region that proposals for continuing projects must contain results-oriented summaries of past work in order to justify continued support for the project. Within the proposal, it is appropriate to cite past annual reports and publications that resulted from the work, but merely citing the reports without summarizing the results and learning that occurred is not an adequate response. The ISRP has been very clear on this expectation.

Comment:

Comment:

Sponsor comments: See comment at Council's website