A key goal of the Tribal Data Network (TDN) project is to ensure the availability and sharing of accurate and timely monitoring data among CRITFC-member tribes and other co-management agencies to meet monitoring data management and reporting needs of the Columbia Basin Fish Accords, recovery planning under the ESA/BiOps, tribal co-management needs with regard to US v. Oregon, and the Pacific Salmon Treaty.  Another key goal for the Tribal Data Network is to build capacity within member tribes to make informed resource decisions.  

The Tribal Data Network will assist the tribes in carrying out tribal co-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.  

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.

Specific reporting metrics are nearing final development and were refined over the last two years through meetings with tribal staff throughout the region, and through the annual Tribal Data Workshop.  These 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. The draft Tribal Network Design document will provide more detail.  Other detailed descriptions of the metrics can be found in the Accords  and NOAA monitoring guidance documents. A key NOAA guidance document which influenced this project is the DRAFT “Guidance For Monitoring Recovery of Salmon and Steelhead Listed Under the Federal Endangered Species Act (Idaho, Oregon, and Washington)”, Bruce A. Crawford & Scott Rumsey, Monday, April 27, 2009.  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 river kilometer, reach, stream, watershed, population, major population group (MPG), and ESU level aggregations.  The Tribal Data Network has monitored discussions between the CRITFC habitat group and the CHAMP group and has developed a subset of essential metrics to begin coordinating habitat metrics, which are detailed in the Tribal Data Network design document.

The work elements in the SOW provide specific detail regarding the objectives of the project, to summarize, a key focus of the project is to build tools and consolidate data and create and maintain databases to assist member tribes in meeting their resource co-management responsibilities while building capacity within the tribes to make better more informed resource management decisions.  This will be accomplished through building databases and tools to assist tribes in the collection, storage, summarization, reduction, and dissemination of data in a timely, accurate, and cost effective fashion.  The Tribal Data Network also serves a coordination function between member tribes and co-managers and will provide legwork to pull together monitoring data sets for tribal and regional analysts, as well as develop intermediate summary data products which facilitate analysis.

The Tribal Data network has produced successful pilot projects in its first two years of operation.  A Lamprey population estimation software tool was produced for the Warm Springs Tribe.  A lamprey data entry tool was produced for the Yakama Tribe.  A Catch Estimation System for the Snake River Basin was produced for the Nez Perce Tribe which used emerging digital pen technology, and   legacy harvest data was organized for the Nez Perce Tribe. A web site was built to disseminate these data.  A regional Smolt Monitoring codebase was acquired,  enabled for modification, and presented to the Nez Perce Tribe and Warm Springs Tribe for modification and adaptation.  A tribal data needs assessment was completed.  A data management system for PIT tag and biological data including genetic data was developed for the Bonneville Adult Fish Facility (AFF). A data management system for habitat data was developed for the Grande Ronde basin which produces output summaries for resource co-managers.  An infrastructure was produced at CRITFC's Portland office to collect, store, process, and disseminate monitoring data.  Pilot programs were put in place to disseminate real time Zone 6 dam counts, Nez Perce harvest data, and weekly sampling reports from the Bonneville AFF.