The Walla Walla River Basin Monitoring and Evaluation Project (WWM&E) is funded by Bonneville Power Administration (BPA, project No. 2000-039-00). The purpose of this project is to conduct natural production, tributary habitat, and hatchery research, monitoring and evaluation. Our goal is to provide ecological information and technical services to decision makers in support of adaptive management for restoration, conservation, and preservation of cultural, social, and economic salmonid resources. We plan to do this by collecting Viable Salmonid Population (VSP) criteria including estimates of abundance, productivity, survival rates, and distribution of reintroduced spring Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) salmon, ESA-listed summer steelhead (O. mykiss), and bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus). Project results, including fish-per-redd, smolts-per-redd, smolt-to-adult return, recruit-per-spawner, etc. are used to help inform and adapt salmonid management and recovery goals.

Project work elements include adult enumeration, spawning surveys, out-migrant monitoring, PIT-tagging, and fish salvages. We believe these monitoring and evaluation actions meet the highest priorities for fish population monitoring as identified by the Walla Walla Subbasin Plan and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s (NPCC’s) 2017 research plan. This project is conducted by the CTUIR, and the work location is the Walla Walla River Basin and tributaries (e.g. Walla Walla River, South Fork Walla Walla River, and Mill Creek). Similar work in the Touchet River drainage (tributary to the Walla Walla River) is conducted independently by WDFW through a separate project (BPA Project No. 2000-039-01). Project methods were adapted from the Salmonid Field Protocols Handbook: Techniques for Assessing Status and Trends in Salmonid and Trout Populations available through the American Fisheries Society  (https://fisheries.org/bookstore/all-titles/professional-and-trade/55055p/). Our project focuses on estimating “adults in” and “juveniles out” as measures of salmonid population viability. For example, adult salmonids entering the basin for spawning migrations are enumerated using video, spawning fish and carcasses are enumerated by multiple pass spawning ground surveys, juvenile emigrant populations are estimated using rotary screw traps and PIT-tags, and fish migration metrics are monitored through PIT tag detection arrays distributed throughout the Walla Walla and Columbia River basins.

Our project offices are located at the William A. Grant Water and Environment Center at Walla Walla Community College, and our library of annual progress reports to BPA are available through our Central Data Management System (CDMS) at https://paluut.ctuir.org/index.html#!/projectFiles/1177.