This proposal is for a new project to assess the status of bull and westslope cutthroat trout in the Upper Pend Oreille Basin and to develop a plan to manage for them and for a sport fishery. The proposal is well developed in its problem review and analysis. It establishes adequate rationale and significance to regional programs, and it explains the relationship to other projects. It states an overall goal of ensuring self-sustaining populations of these species, as well as a single objective of securing abundances of these fishes that will support numerically specified annual sport harvests.

Although the overall project concept and goal were mostly worthy as expressed in the proposal, and the sponsors have the necessary techniques well in mind, the ISRP felt a response was needed to include better consideration of future monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of management. The proposal's M&E section was not specific enough, and even though the management plan did not yet exist, the sponsors still needed to discuss how they would go about devising the M&E element of it.

The response was appropriate to the stage of project development. The example data support their contentions. The sponsor has the multifaceted basis for appropriate M&E well in mind and, in fact, already has been doing some of the needed measurements routinely on streams that are involved.