FY 2000 proposal 199102900

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

Other budget explanation

Schedule Constraints: A LIDAR habitat survey in the Hanford Reach is potentially limited by contractor availability

Reviews and recommendations

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

Comment:

Comments: This proposal addresses a wide scope of studies on fall chinook in the upper river. The proposed project is very large and ambitious, both in terms of scope and schedule for delivery. The objectives of this proposal are clearly described, but it not clear what should actually be done next due to the large backlog of data and insufficient reporting of previous work. The scope of these investigations seems to detract from the methods detailed for each objective. The testability of some objectives and the experimental designs presented are quite variable resulting in a range of possible criteria scores. The proposal identifies only two more years of research to address these objectives. It is doubtful that all the objectives can be successfully accomplished with the requested resources.

Overall, this is an enormous effort (approximately $7.5x10^6 in previous funding) with far too many different and specific objectives for any individual reviewer to provide much overall perspective. Previous efforts appear to have been directed primarily to Snake River fall chinook while the current proposal calls for a contrast of the performance of Hanford Reach fall chinook with the poorly performing Hell's Canyon fall chinook population. However, given that a large amount of data has been collected in previous years which has not yet been reported along with the potential importance of this work to the understanding/recovery of Snake River fall chinook, the reviewers recommend an independent peer review panel to examine this program before any expansion of work is supported.

The reviewers were also uncertain about what was meant by the use of "Assumptions". Are these working hypotheses? They also questioned the value of using the time of tagging (page #1003) as a variable to study survival, migration timing, or relation to environmental variables. What is the evidence that time of tagging is an informative variable and what can be inferred from time of tagging?

Comment:

Comment:

Programmatic Criteria 2: Met? no - Questionable whether sample sizes will allow the comparisons between Snake and Mid Columbia fish suggested in this proposal.

Milestone Criteria 3: Met? no - Same comment as above.

Resource Criteria 4: Met? yes -

Comment:

Comment:

The sponsors have adequately addressed the concerns of the ISRP. The need and ability to proceed with objectives 6 & 7 were addressed and the status of reporting to date clarified. The latter could be more fully clarified if the reports/papers were associated with the objectives that were investigated.

Without arguing whether the ISRP or the proponents "missed the mark …", the ISRP wishes to clarify the basis of our comments on assumptions stated in the proposal. The assumptions involved in an objective or an hypothesis are not a statement of what you expect to learn, or why an objective was investigated (e.g., see Objectives 1,5,6,7), but should be a statement necessary in order to test an hypothesis or to make inferences from results. Examples of these latter assumptions were also contained in the proposal, for example;

1. Objective #3 "surrogates for natural fish" … i.e., the size-survival relations estimated for hatchery fish are assumed to be representative of associated natural populations.
2. Objective #4 … this objective assumes equal catchability of hatchery and wild fish in order to sample representatively.

The distinction between these "types" of assumptions should be clearly differentiated in future proposals.

The out-year budgets in this proposal have not been reduced for the completion of Objectives 2 through 5 (15% of current budget) and should be adjusted accordingly. We further noted that 80% of this budget are for salaries, benefits, and administrative overhead. A detailed breakdown of the tasks and associated costs would seem advisable.

Comment:

Comment:

Sponsor comments: See comment at Council's website