FY07-09 proposal 200103300

Jump to Reviews and Recommendations

Section 1. Administrative

Contacts

Section 2. Locations

Province / subbasin: Intermountain / Spokane

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:

Termination date: No definit date
Comments: Project will terminate when a viable redband trout fishery is re-established in the Hangman Watershed.

Final deliverables:

Section 10. Narrative and other documents

Reviews and recommendations

ISRP PRELIMINARY REVIEW (Jun 2, 2006)

Recommendation: Response requested

NPCC comments: A response is needed on two issues. The first is the extent to which this project is expected to benefit fish and wildlife and the second regards the monitoring and evaluation for the proposal. Regarding the first issue, how would fish and wildlife use the properties protected by the easements? The project history section describes activities, not results or management implications. A response should describe these results and how they have been shown to benefit fish and wildlife. “Enhancement opportunities” are mentioned in the section on objectives, work elements, and methods. Techniques to "enhance" stream channel for trout are not discussed in the narrative. From the description of work elements, $400K would be used to realign 0.7 miles of Sheep Creek and $400K would be used to change the channel morphology of 2 miles of upper Hangman watershed. Passive restoration appears not to be considered. Why? This seems to be an attempt to implement such activity without appropriate analysis and review. No cogent information is provided to indicate these activities would benefit redband trout. Please clarify. Regarding the second issue, the ISRP was critical in the past review of this project’s lack of monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and M&E still is not adequately described in this proposal either. A response should describe these procedures. Other reviewer comments (not requiring response): This project could eventually work out in the long term, but the proposal does not give confidence that the effort is being soundly implemented. The sponsors do not present an adequate strategy for the project. The section on technical and scientific background is not clearly organized. It contains much information that should be in the project history section instead. The project seems to be a mix of land purchase and land managements; the latter is not clearly described. The purpose of the project is not stated up front. The problem is not clearly defined. On pages 5 and 6, the purposes seem to be expressed in the "primary goal" of a previous version of the project as "Protect and/or restore stream habitats throughout the Hangman Watershed . . . to support the restoration or reintroduction of native fish populations that are reduced from their original abundance," and in a more recent (but previous) goal: "Protect and/or restore riparian and priority upland habitats within the Hangman Watershed . . . to promote healthy, self-sustaining wildlife populations." It is later stated (page 9) that the project "proposes to restore and protect habitats that will benefit both fish and wildlife populations, and is intended to complement the Objectives and efforts of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s Project that focuses more directly on fish populations and stream habitats in the Upper Hangman Watershed (#2001-032-00)." Significance to the subbasin plan is adequately shown. With respect to objectives, the goals are not explicit. They seem to be to manage the acquired property and to acquire "management rights" on other property (with $2.6 million). No objectives are stated in the narrative, so they are not really discussed there. They appear on the spreadsheet outline. Objective E, "Stabilize Entrenched Stream Channels," needs better description and justification. The idea of stabilization may be counterproductive with regard to fish habitat. The dynamic processes in streams form and reform habitat for fish. And halting or impeding the processes by artificially over stabilizing the system could (and often does) prevent much habitat from forming. No science is evident in the proposal’s presentation of methods. The subject of work elements is mentioned repeatedly, but no work element is explicitly identified in the narrative except "Manage and Administer Projects" and "Outreach and Education," and none is discussed.

ISRP FINAL REVIEW (Aug 31, 2006)

Recommendation: Fundable in part (Qualified)

NPCC comments: Funding is scientifically justified for land acquisition, conservation easement, riparian management, and M&E only. The qualification is that M&E methods need to be expanded to include fish (even before trout return to the project area, if they do). This long, disorganized proposal contained much irrelevant material and was exceedingly hard to review. The project might work out in the long term, but the proposal did not give confidence that the effort is being soundly conducted. The response retrieved the situation to some extent. The proposal did not present an adequate strategy for the project. The technical and scientific background was poorly organized and contained much information more suited to the project history. The project is a mix of land purchase and managements; the latter not clearly described. The problems to be dealt with are not clearly defined, and the purpose of the project was not stated until page 6. The “original” project goal (page 6) was: “Protect and/or restore riparian and priority upland habitats . . . to promote healthy, self-sustaining wildlife populations,” the present project goal being left unstated. The proposal next says this will involve landscape-level management to complement a companion project (200103200) that deals with fish habitat in the same system. However, the sponsors describe no habitat requirements for wildlife species, allude to little about the area as wildlife habitat, and apparently name wildlife species only once (“monitoring . . . will include parameters on land birds, waterfowl, bald eagles, small mammals, herpetofauna”). Instead, it delves more into matters of fish and streams, including a section on “Native Fish Habitat Protection Work Elements,” and even genetic make-up of redband trout. Thus, the project inexplicably changed to deal with both fish and terrestrial wildlife, and to deal with in-stream management, as well as upland and riparian matters. The sponsors do not adequately explain the relationship of this change to Project 200103200, which was to deal with aquatic matters. Significance to the subbasin plan was adequately shown in the proposal. The response’s reporting of results was adequate, considering the short duration of the project. The proposal’s section F, Biological Objectives, Work Elements and Methods, contains no outline of objectives but is a rambling, partly historical discussion involving various diffuse statements of objective with no clearly listed work elements, and with some intermixture of methods. The ISRP asked for response on the extent to which this project is expected to benefit fish and wildlife, asked how fish and wildlife would use the properties protected by the easements, and commented that the project history section described activities, not results or management implications. A response was needed describing these results and how they have been shown to benefit fish and wildlife. The detailed response augmented the original proposal and clarified the logic behind the effort. As a result, the acquisition and conservation easement portions of the proposal appear justified, although biologically there is some risk. The ISRP asked why no cogent information was provided to indicate that the proposed activities would benefit redband trout, which compose the fish population at issue. The response explained how obtaining easements and promoting riparian vegetation could help reestablish the habitat connectivity that the small, isolated redband populations need. It did not show that the fish need the proposed in-channel restructuring. The proposal mentioned “Enhancement opportunities” in Section F, but techniques to enhance stream channels for trout were not discussed in any useful detail. From the description of work elements, $400K would be used to realign 0.7 miles of Sheep Creek and $400K would be used to change the channel morphology of 2 miles of upper Hangman Creek. Passive restoration appeared not to have been considered in the proposal, and the response indicated judgment that a fully passive approach would not suffice, but that further physical analyses need to be done. The proposed channel work is not yet scientifically justified. Judging scientific soundness is not possible for the large ($600K) program to realign the Sheep Creek channel and change morphology in Hangman Creek. Given more information, such actions might be justified, but the proposal contains insufficient information on this subject to enable a review. If the sponsors undertake a proposal for stream habitat work in a future review cycle, it should draw significantly on the expertise of hydrologists and fluvial geomorphologists, working in conjunction with stream fish ecologists. A problem not covered in the proposal is the unfavorable and apparently ongoing pattern of climate and stream flow, in which high stream flow is occurring earlier in the year and is followed by months of extreme low flow during worsening annual droughts. This does not bode well for re-population by trout from higher elevations into re-created habitat lower in the valley, where the water is already excessively warm in summer. Promoting riparian vegetation could help overcome this problem (and would benefit many forms of wildlife, as well), but the proposed channel restructuring, as described, would not. The ISRP was critical in the past review of this project’s lack of M&E, and M&E still was not adequately described in the 2007-2007 proposal either. The response presented detailed material on the M&E plan, which concentrates on terrestrial matters. No M&E elements concerning fish and fish habitat were evident, and this is a major deficiency in view of the project’s trend in planned activity toward emphasis on fish habitat. The M&E's aquatic aspects could be improved by more specific linking with the other projects that cover the fish.