The ISRP’s comments were addressed in a thoughtful, comprehensive manner. The response was thorough and gave frank consideration of issues raised by ISRP. The proponents provided detailed answers to ISRP questions and comments that clarified issues concerning the M&E program, especially the IMW project.

The proponents provided a reasonable justification for the design of the IMW project, which involves comparison between two treatment streams and a reference stream to assess effectiveness of habitat restoration in the treatment streams. Although the proponents argued that the treatment and reference streams were physiographically and biologically similar enough to provide valid results when compared, they were forthright and objective in discussing the limitations of the design, limitations that likely will be common to many future IMW projects.

Given the differences among the treatment and reference tributaries in many biological and physical habitat features, and past management actions, the strongest comparisons may be Before-After comparisons within tributaries in response to habitat restoration. Additional comparisons among tributaries that depend on similar "background" effects of supplementation can be made, but regression analysis using key covariates may be a more useful approach, as the proponents suggest.

One of the limitations of concern to the ISRP is the uncertainty of the degree of hatchery influence which could affect comparability of the treatment and reference streams. Another potential problem is that habitat restoration actions in the treatment streams have been ongoing for some time. The effects of these actions will continue beyond the initiation of the IMW project making it difficult to separate biological and habitat responses resulting from pre-treatment habitat enhancement actions from those occurring post-treatment, after project initiation. This residual effect of pre-treatment actions may complicate before-after comparisons. Finally, given the extent of habitat degradation in the treatment streams, will the proposed restoration actions in these streams, especially Meacham Creek, be great enough to produce a significant, detectable biological response? The proponents should consider how they will deal with these problems analytically or through modification of their design.

This project proposes status and trend monitoring of ESA-listed Umatilla River steelhead and Chinook salmon, and collaboration in an Intensively Monitored Watershed (IMW) project intended to evaluate the effectiveness of habitat restoration actions in two tributaries of the Umatilla. Work related to status and trends monitoring in Objectives 1-4 meets scientific criteria. A response is needed that expands, clarifies, and provides more detail concerning the IMW project and Objective 5. The study design needs more thorough explanation, and more background information on the reference and treatment streams needs to be provided. Comparative metrics and data analyses need further explanation.

Overall, this is a thorough proposal for continuation of a centrally important project in the Umatilla Basin. The investigators describe a highly integrated project to collect critical data on production and survival of wild steelhead and spring and fall Chinook salmon. This project could provide critical data to assess whether the habitat restoration projects in the Umatilla River basin are effective in increasing abundance, survival, and productivity of naturally-spawning steelhead and salmon. In addition, it provides key data to determine the success of the new integrated hatchery supplementation program, whereby separate groups of Conservation and Harvest smolts are produced. These data are necessary to determine if the integrated hatchery program is contributing to the recovery of steelhead and salmon, or just another factor leading to their demise (or no change is detected).

1. Purpose, Significance to Regional Programs, Technical Background, and Objectives

The project is consistent with many regional programs and projects including the NPPC Fish and Wildlife Program and the Umatilla/Willow Subbasin Plan. It addresses several RPAs in the BiOp. This work is of great significance to regional programs, because it provides critical data to assess how natural populations of steelhead and two life history types of Chinook are responding to a variety of conditions, including in-river habitat, flow, migration corridors, and ocean conditions. Without it, little will be known about the performance of the newly created Conservation groups of salmon and steelhead.

The proposal includes status and trends monitoring and a new Intensively Monitored Watershed project. The main goal of the Umatilla IMW project is to determine whether habitat enhancement results in higher abundance, survival, and productivity of natural spawned steelhead and salmon. A confusing aspect of the proposal is that several of the objectives and deliverables include work related to both status and trends monitoring as well as to the IMW habitat effectiveness evaluation. The objectives and deliverables for the status and trends work and those for the IMW work should be separated so that these two aspects of the project are clearly distinguishable. Several projects are addressing components of the IMW work, although this project seems to have the bulk of the responsibility for its conduct. Dividing the work among projects makes scientific evaluation of the IMW effort difficult. Why was the IMW work not consolidated in a single proposal?

2. History: Accomplishments, Results, and Adaptive Management

This project has been ongoing in various forms since 1994, but underwent an extensive review in 2006 by the ISRP. It was restarted in 2009, after reformulating goals. This proposal is characterized by carefully planned sampling designs for the redd surveys and juvenile abundance in tributaries, and for habitat monitoring.

The project can point to various results that have allowed managers to make important decisions based on the data that was collected. Based upon the results presented, the project appears to have been productive and has accomplished it objectives since it inception in 1994. Data collected through this project are critical for monitoring salmon and steelhead populations in the basin.

A notable conclusion drawn from data analysis was that “habitat enhancement has not resulted in a significant improvement for summer steelhead and that the system may be at capacity for production of the species.” The negative relationship between smolts/female and number of females supports this conclusions and suggests that density-dependence may be affecting smolt survival. This conclusion is tentative but it argues for a more rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of habitat restoration actions in the Umatilla Basin, which the proponents propose to undertake.

In addressing adaptive management, the proponents indicate that the information they obtained has assisted with management decisions and provide some examples. They did not specifically address how their project has changed based on previous results. However, their decision to participate in CHaMP is indicative of their willingness to shift the direction of the project.

3. Project Relationships, Emerging Limiting Factors, and Tailored Questions for Type of Work (Hatchery, RME, Tagging)

The proposed project is one of four collaborative BPA funded projects aimed at monitoring the status and trends of Chinook salmon and summer steelhead in the Umatilla River. The project is tied to several other BPA funded projects in the Umatilla Basin. It also relates to several other IMW projects in the Columbia Basin that are collaborating in the development and implementation of CHaMP. In particular, this project and another in-basin project (1990-050-01; Umatilla Basin Natural Production M&E) are cooperating in conducting the IMW habitat evaluation in the Umatilla. Some discussion of the new C & H / Integrated Segregated hatchery production scheme would have been helpful, but it seems that the proposed project, without explicitly discussing it, will deal with it effectively.

In addressing emerging factors the proponents make the general statement that the data collected by this project could assist in determination of fish population response to emerging threats but do not offer anything more specific. Climate change and predation by birds and native and non-native fish predators are key emerging limiting factors which are dealt with in other proposals. It will be important to determine how this project can link with those data, such as estimating loss of this DPS of steelhead from Caspian tern and cormorant predation at the mouth of the Columbia River.

4. Deliverables, Work Elements, Metrics, and Methods

This proposal has components pertaining to both routine status and trend monitoring and evaluation of habitat effectiveness under the IMW program. Methods and metrics for assessing status and trends in Objectives 1-4 are fairly standard and are appropriate for this type of work.

The ISRP views positively the proponent’s willingness to engage in rigorous habitat effectiveness evaluation under the auspices of CHaMP and according to ISEMP protocols. Properly conducted, this evaluation could yield the most valuable information to date on effectiveness of habitat enhancement in the Umatilla Basin. Several issues, however, need clarification.

Several objectives and deliverables (e.g., deliverables 4, 6, 9, and 10) in the proposal apparently include work related to both status and trends monitoring and to the IMW habitat effectiveness evaluation, complicating scientific review of the proposal. It would be helpful if the objectives and deliverables for the status and trends work and those for the IMW work could be separated so that these two aspects of the project are clearly distinguishable.

The study design for the IMW project needs more thorough explanation, and more background information on the reference and treatment streams should be provided. The proposed approach for evaluation of the effectiveness of habitat enhancement actions is to compare a control or reference stream with each of two treatment streams that have undergone habitat enhancement. A main difficulty is that appropriate treatment and control streams are difficult to find. The Upper Umatilla, a reference stream, receives supplementation, whereas Meacham Creek, a treatment stream, has been subject to habitat restoration and also is supplemented. Steelhead use both tributaries for spawning and rearing. Therefore, a comparison between these tributaries should yield information on the effectiveness of the habitat projects in Meacham Creek, assuming there is no interaction between the habitat work and supplementation, and other physical and biological differences between the tributaries are negligible. In contrast, Birch Creek, another treatment stream, receives no supplementation but connectivity and fish passage has been restored. Since the Upper Umatilla is supplemented, it is not an adequate control stream to compare with Birch Creek, although trend monitoring (i.e., before-after) can be conducted to assess changes. How will this apparent problem be resolved?

The proponents need to deal with several other questions pertaining to the IMW project. How do the reference and treatment basins compare physiographically and biologically? The history of land use, habitat loss, and hatchery influence in reference and treatment tributaries should be summarized. What habitat restoration actions have been and will be implemented, and on what time frame? What is the fish distribution and abundance in these streams?

Comparative metrics and data analyses need further explanation. What metrics (fish and habitat) will be compared between treatment and reference basins to evaluate the effectiveness of habitat restoration actions? Will the proponents be responsible for collection of habitat and fish data, data integration, and data analysis? What data will be collected by other projects? An extremely large amount of data will be collected. How will it be analyzed? It should be possible to use model selection to assess how, for example, smolt production relates to habitat restoration, by fitting models with and without this covariate. ISEMP proposes a long list of habitat variables that can be measured. How will the decision be made as to which of these variables are most important for this work?

This is a very thorough proposal with thorough methods that justify continuation. A history of the project to date was covered in detail in over ~ 20 pages. This project should assist in providing critical evaluation information to the set of Umatilla projects. And the ISRP encourages the proponent to publish results and observations in the formal fisheries literature. Monitoring and evaluation of smolt yields and survivals is the focus of the investigations. Some adaptive management is evident (e.g., steelhead releases moved to lower reaches), clearly indicating the benefits of this type of work.

The project should provide data on egg-to-smolt survival and/or smolts-per-spawner as a function of spawner density to augment the information provided in table 4 (p 33). This is the key response variable in monitoring population dynamics and towards evaluation of management actions.

There may also be a possibility, worth exploring, to collaborate with other tagging studies (e.g., POST), and to explore alternative methods for estimation of adults to relate smolt yields to spawner abundance more effectively.

See ISRP comments on the "Umatilla Initiative" under proposal 198343600.