a. Abstract

The remand of 2004 Biological Opinion (BiOp) on the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) including 19 Bureau of Reclamation Projects in the Columbia Basin (Revised pursuant to court order, NWF v. NMFS, Civ. No. CV 01-640-RE D. Oregon), in conjunction with the Columbia Basin Fish Accords, US v. Oregon, and the Pacific Salmon Treaty (PST); set forth ambitious goals for the restoration of salmon and steelhead stretching from the wilderness forests of Idaho to the international waters off the Alaskan coast. The Tribal Data Network’s (TDN) primary goal is to ensure the availability and sharing of accurate and timely data among CRITFC-member tribes and with other agencies to meet the reporting needs of the Accords and BiOps while also building capacity within tribes to support informed policy management decisions.  The Tribal Data Network will facilitate decision support for implementation of the Columbia Basin Fish Accords, recovery planning under the ESA, tribal co-management needs with regard to US v. Oregon and the Pacific Salmon Treaty.  

The Tribal Data Network will assist the tribes in carrying out tribal management responsibilities.  It will assist tribal fisheries managers in monitoring and evaluating natural habitats, anadromous fish production, anadromous fish passage, and other critical performance metrics found in the Accords and BiOps.

b. Technical and/or scientific background

The need for more effective sharing of fisheries and associated natural resource information among resource managers in the Columbia Basin has been recognized at least since 1988 (CIS 1988, MEG 1990). Progress since then has been slow, but has accelerated recently through various interagency groups (NED 2004-2007; PNAMP 2004-present; NWEIS 2007-present including the Northwest Environmental Information Sharing Executive Summit of May 8th 2008). Throughout the activities and reports from these groups, the value of, and lack of access to, tribal fisheries and habitat data has been recognized as a critical information gap for informing regional resource management decisions. Additional monitoring and reporting requirements under the Endangered Species Act and the Columbia Basin Fish Accords make access to tribal natural resource data increasingly important.

The specific reporting metrics are nearing final development and will include the primary data necessary to derive estimates of adult escapement abundance, life stage survival estimates, fish distribution, life history trajectories, and changes in habitat conditions. These metrics are described in general terms in Table 2. More detailed descriptions of the metrics and sampling locations can be found in the Accords  and NOAA monitoring guidance documents. These primary and derived data will have to be structured in such a way that they can be compared across populations and watersheds, and rolled up from fine to broader spatial scales. The scales will include reach, stream, watershed, population, major population group (MPG), and ESU level aggregations.