The sponsors provided answers to the ISRP's questions that were adequate and informative.
The ISRP particularly welcomes the pledge by sponsors to dedicate staff in FY 2007 to synthesizing data and submitting manuscripts for publication in peer reviewed journals, using information collected by the Hood River monitoring and evaluation projects, the Parkdale Fish Facility, and the Powerdale Fish Trap.

A concern identified by the ISRP in the Hood River habitat project (199802100) is the need to assess the extent to which the residualism of hatchery steelhead is resulting in the displacement of wild fish from Hood River habitat. It is expected that much of this task will be done in close conjunction with projects 199802100 and 198805304. It is important to ensure that the benefits to wild salmon and steelhead are fully realized because some of the fish response to the habitat work might be confounded by residualized steelhead.

An over-riding issue with respect to the suite of Hood River projects is to more fully define the future timeline and objectives for the project, particularly with the impending loss of Powerdale as a counting and monitoring station. The sponsor's judgment on success of the program is premature. For example, statements such as "Underwood et al. (2003) used Hood River adult returns and smolt to adult rates to determine whether or not the hatchery component of the program was contributing to the wild fish runs. The winter steelhead hatchery supplementation has benefited the wild population and has met or exceeded program goals (Underwood et al., 2003, p.218)" need to be examined more closely and peer reviewed.

The following are the specific issues of concern from the initial ISRP review and an assessment of the sponsor's responses:

1) "Escapement goals listed in Tables 1 and 2 differ significantly between those proposed by the 1991 Master Plan and the more recent scaling done by EDT. The more recent estimates are considerably more conservative. Presumably, the latter estimates are more reflective of carrying capacity estimates via EDT, than the earlier Master Plan goals." The response give was fairly informative.

2) "Powerdale Dam provides the Hood River Production Program the opportunity to enumerate all returning adults and to control or eliminate escapement of out-of-basin strays. That ability will be lost in 2010 when Powerdale is removed. It will be interesting to see how the sponsors propose to manage the various stocks in the Hood system once that happens. The ability to control strays and enumerate returning adults is an important current attribute of the system that will need to be addressed in future proposals." The explanation provided was adequate.

3) "The rationale and significance to subbasin plans and regional programs section does not provide a logical statement on this issue; rather, it rambles and mentions, more than convinces, the reader that the authors understand the issue. Clarification is needed."
The explanation given was well written and convincing that the authors understand how all is related to the subbasin planning process.

4) "…despite persistent ISRP recommendations about the need to provide a brief summary of results (in the form of synthesized data) within proposal, it is still not done."
The sponsors responded by stating that they "will dedicate staff in FY 2007 to synthesizing data and submitting manuscripts for publication in peer reviewed journals. The topics will use information collected by the Hood River monitoring and evaluation projects, the Parkdale Fish Facility, and the Powerdale Fish Trap. This will be included in the FY 2007 statement of work for this project and will be accomplished prior to FY 2008." Accomplishment of that promise will be assessed in the future.

5) "Objectives are often simply superficial escapement goals set by the program, not objectives on how to accomplish them. Objectives fail to lay out how the Hood River Production Program will evaluate supplementation, which is one of the major reasons the program was funded." Response was fairly superficial but did hint that efforts were underway to have better analysis and synthesis, e.g., statements like, "The co-managers will meet in FY 2007 to exchange data and perform a similar analysis to evaluate the supplementation efforts to date."