The Okanogan Habitat Acquisition and Restoration project is an Operation and Maintenance project that maintains properties acquired by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (CTCR) until they are incorporated into restoration and land management projects. Primarily, the project controls native vegetation or converts previous non-native plant communities to native vegetation and constructs/maintains fencing to protect lands until the CTCR incorporates the lands into their overall land management. As a result, it tends to fall between the CTCR Land & Water Acquisition Project and the Okanogan Subbasin Habitat Implementation Program (OSHIP or soon to be UCHIP). These lands and stream reaches might also be monitored by the Okanogan Basin Monitoring & Evaluation Program (OBMEP).

Currently, the project tends to convert and maintain the plant communities to native grass and herbaceous vegetation to reduce erosion, reduce or prevent invasion of non-native weedy plants, and fence properties and riparian areas. The project does not identify future ecological conditions for the sites and does not manage the property to move toward a desired ecological outcome for fish or wildlife. It uses agronomic practices and NRCS plant community types but does not implement long-term restoration of the properties.

The proposal provided by the proponents appeared to be in the midst of review, had not been well edited, and still included track-changes and numerous typos and grammatical errors.

The ISRP recommends that the project be subsumed within the OSHIP project to integrate the acquisition, maintenance, and restoration of acquired properties to meet the conservation goals of the CTCR. As such, it could continue to manage lands with BPA easements and transition their acquired conditions to long-term desired future conditions. OSHIP could provide an ecological framework for their management based on the habitat evaluation and prioritization framework it has developed for these basins. Furthermore, as with other OSHIP actions, the ecological outcomes of actions by this project should be evaluated by OBMEP.

The ISRP’s recommended Conditions are listed below. The proponents need to assist with development of an M&E Matrix during the response loop (September 24 to November 22, 2021) and to provide information to address the other following Conditions in future annual reports and work plans.

1. Integrate with OSHIP. Coordinate with the Land & Water Acquisition Project and OSHIP to integrate this project with OSHIP and create efficient coordination between land acquisition and incorporation into CTCR conservation programs.
2. M&E matrix - support. As habitat projects and monitoring projects are not presented as part of an integrated proposal or plan, the need for a crosswalk to identify the linkages between implementation and monitoring is extremely important for basins or geographic areas. The ISRP is requesting a response from the Upper Columbia River Programmatic Habitat Project (201000100) to summarize the linkages between implementation and monitoring projects in the Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow, and Okanogan subbasins. During the response loop, we ask this project to assist them in creating the summary and provide information to them about what is being monitored for this implementation project and where and when the monitoring occurs. A map or maps of locations of monitoring actions would be helpful in this regard.

Q1: Clearly defined objectives and outcomes

The ISRP wonders why the proponents have not proposed ecological objectives, either physical or biological, for the specific properties? While the overriding goal of the project is to replace invasive plant species with native plants to benefit native wildlife on lands acquired by the CTCR, how, where and when the proponents will accomplish that is much less clear. The objectives for the project simply are statements of actions and are not stated in the SMART objective format (see proposal instructions). For example, “Objective 1a Identify nonnative vegetative (sic) presents (sic) and how best to begin removal” (Proposal table page 3). As SMART objectives, this might be stated as:

• Obj. 1a. By May 2021 identify the presence of nonnative vegetation on 5 acres of land and determine the best method to remove the nonnative plants.
• Obj. 1b. Remove the nonnative vegetation on 5 acres and begin the reintroduction of native plants by September 2021.
• Obj. 1c. Complete the reintroduction of native plants and evaluate the success of the selected methods by July 2023.

These dates and specific actions are just examples and may not be reasonable for the project. Again, additional objectives with biological outcomes for the lands being managed are needed.

In the text, the proponents mention construction and maintenance of fencing and miles of fencing is shown in the table of results, but there is no mention of fencing in the objectives table.

Q2: Methods

The methods to remove nonnative plants and reintroduce native plants appear to be based on sound agricultural (scientific) methods. The photos in Appendix C (Proposal pages 15 - 20) illustrate how a specific project proceeded and required five years to complete successfully. Other methods that should be described are such things as: 1) How are parcels (Proposal, Appendix D) prioritized for action? 2) How is the decision made to use mechanical or chemical removal on a given plot? The ISRP is concerned that the description of herbicide applications simply indicates that the proponents are using poisons permitted by the BPA herbicide handbook. It does not describe any criteria for application based on pest management principles and determination of risks to native plant communities. Likewise, there is no description of how they develop the plan for the intended ecological outcomes. What are they trying to attain and how did they determine their intended outcome? What species are they planting and why? Are they intended to provide specific ecological roles for nutrients, erosion control, soil formation, water efficiency, fire resistance, food for wildlife or aquatic communities? No information is provided other than they plant native plants and use techniques to make the planting successful in terms of survival.

Several BPA-funded projects implement similar actions to improve lands acquired as part of fish and wildlife mitigation. Coordination and interaction among these projects is encouraged as it would promote sharing of methods and lessons learned making each project more effective. Please see the report for other projects (ISRP 2017-7).

Q3: Provisions for M&E

The proposal does not include methods for monitoring and evaluating the work. The proponents state: “An evaluation of the project’s management strategies is continuous throughout the year of the contract cycle.” (Proposal page 5). This evaluation appears to be at the project management level as opposed to evaluating the outcome of on-the-ground actions to determine how successful the actions have been, but no information is presented to describe past implementation success. The photos in Appendix C show a successful project completed in 2017, but what has become of the land over the last three years? Have the native plants continued to thrive? Perhaps more importantly, has there been an increase in wildlife use of the area? Are the plant communities providing the intended ecological functions? The answer to this last question would require monitoring wildlife use before and after actions. Several years of before and after treatment actions would be needed for statistical validity. The proponents should describe their implementation monitoring methods, evaluation process, and reporting process for implementation success.

Q4: Results – benefits to fish and wildlife

The proposal does not summarize the overall benefit to fish and wildlife. It lists acres of chemical application, acres of mowing, miles of fence maintenance, miles of fence construction, and vegetation planting. These actions likely benefit fish and wildlife, but the proponents should describe the benefits in terms of functional or restored habitat and the likely response of fish and wildlife to those improved landscape conditions. Perhaps their collaborating partners could assist in preparing this overall summary of the benefits to fish and wildlife.