"The overall goal of this project is to decommission roads that contribute sediment to the streams and encroach on stream channels, flood plains, and riparian areas." "... This project is intended to be a cooperative and collaborative project to reduce sediment, protect and restore critical riparian/stream habitat and increase fish survivability in the Tucannon Subbasin ..."

While reference is made to #199401806, there is no reference to #199401807, also in the Tucannon. The latter takes a similar approach, i.e. sediment control by land management actions away from the stream (road decommissioning in the present case). These three projects are directed to similar objectives and should be more closely coordinated both in specifying goals, objectives, and tasks, and in development of either a collaborative monitoring program or in providing a convincing case that monitoring by other agencies and projects will provide data to assess the success or failure of these efforts. The sponsors need to include their methods for assessing whether or not the actions proposed here do in fact result in attainment of the physical changes described by the objectives. If the projects have to be separately maintained, they each should include a summary of how they are related, coordinated, and evaluated.

Reduction of sediment input from uplands is likely to be the appropriate place to start, but apparently the state and federal governments own the roads. What is their responsibility? A large part of this proposal is to survey which roads to decommission, but this should have been covered in the subbasin plan and on Federal Lands by the Forest Service, state by state. If the existing data from state and federal files are inadequate for the purposes outlined in this proposal, these deficiencies should be described and discussed.

Objectives include reducing embeddedness to 20%, producing large woody debris of one or more pieces per channel width, reducing man-made confinement to less than 25% of bank length, and reducing temperature to fewer than four days of greater than 75F. It is assumed that there is a direct relation between these objectives and measurable benefits to fish and wildlife. The scientific basis for many bioengineering actions does not exist. The sponsors should modify their proposal so that it reflects programmatic comments regarding bioengineering activities.