In the Council's decision and BPA contracting process for developing a final statement of work the sponsors should: Develop a better design for using the data generated from PIT tags along the lines of the suggestions made in the ISRP comments.

Consider alternative ways to collect spatially extensive data on rearing juveniles, perhaps using occupancy sampling.

The sponsors prepared a comprehensive, well-written proposal that addresses important issues involving restoration of fluvial and resident redband trout populations and their habitat in the Hangman Creek area of the Spokane subbasin. The sponsors demonstrate that they have good knowledge of the watershed and they have conducted sufficient studies that enable prioritization of ongoing efforts. These studies indicate the benefits of working with beaver to achieve desired stream habitat conditions, such as deeper, cooler pools. The project compliments a habitat acquisition project that also attempts to improve ground water and stream flow conditions. 

The proposal uses a whole-systems approach to address migration barriers such as habitat forming processes including floods, LWD recruitment, and floodplain connections, as well as water temperature, and sedimentation. Pilot data have been collected to show where the work needs to be done. Migrant traps, PIT tags, and antenna arrays will provide important data about the life histories of these potentially mobile trout and could also provide useful data on their abundance, survival, and movement probabilities.

In order to make the most of the substantial investment in PIT tags, traps, antennas, and electrofishing surveys, we suggest that the sponsor consider integrating all of these into a comprehensive design and analysis using Program MARK. This would allow robust estimates of detection probabilities, survival, movement, and abundance, and the uncertainty in these parameters. In turn, this would provide a solid basis for future management. It may also be possible to develop a better method of less intensive "occupancy" sampling, which would allow better understanding of distribution of fish over larger areas using less effort in the field.

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

Significance to Regional Programs: The investigators provide a clear statement for why the work is significant to regional programs.

Background: Overall, the proposal gives very good background information about the ecology of redband trout and the problems with habitat that are perceived to be the main limiting factors. The information was well integrated throughout the proposal.

Objectives: The investigators propose several actions to address the main limiting factors for the fluvial and resident redband trout in the Hangman Creek basin, which apparently have migratory life histories and use tributaries for spawning and rearing.

Overall, the objectives are a useful mix of short-term strategies such as LWD installation and long-term strategies such as aggrading channels by encouraging beavers to build dams to improve habitat for a wide-ranging species like fluvial redband trout. The objectives also involve monitoring to determine the response of redband trout to the habitat restoration activities.

2. History: Accomplishments, Results, and Adaptive Management (ISRP Review of Results)

Major Accomplishments: To date, it appears that the investigators have made a good start at improving habitat conditions for redband trout throughout the basin.

Response to past ISRP and Council comments and recommendations: The investigators are interested in measuring spatial distribution, abundance, and vital rates of 1) the redband trout rearing in tributaries and 2) the adults migrating into tributaries to spawn. However, they report not having sufficient time to conduct multi-pass electrofishing to achieve #1.

Given that fish will be marked using PIT tags in both migrant traps and during tributary surveys, this project might benefit by integrating all of these results using Program MARK (see web page of Dr. Gary White, Colorado State University), which the Hangman Project Team has considered. This highly flexible analysis program would allow estimates of abundance, survival, and movement among tributaries, as well as "temporary emigration" of fish from tributaries which they may not visit every year. It allows using "model selection and inference" to test treatment-control effects as well as trends through time. Overall, it would likely allow much more robust inference than could be achieved with the current analysis protocol.

Secondly, if one-pass sampling is to be useful for measuring CPUE indices of abundance, then capture probabilities should be either always high, or at least very similar across years, reaches, and crews. This may not be the case and cannot be supported unless data are collected to test it. The Project Team should consider using previous multi-pass data collected in the watershed (Table 6) to validate capture probabilities when changing to a one-pass approach that is appropriately randomized and stratified across sites or of different size and complexity. Otherwise, it might be better to develop an "occupancy sampling" approach where a less intensive sampling protocol could be developed to place fish abundance into, say, four categories of high, moderate, low, and absent. This would allow a wide spatial distribution of sampling, to determine habitats that fish are using seasonally. Analysis tools for these methods are also included in MARK. Regional experts who might be able to help develop these methods include Dr. Paul Lukacs at U of MT, and Drs. Gary White, Kevin Bestgen, Larissa Bailey, Bill Kendall, and Paul Doherty at Colorado State University, and Dr. Jim Peterson at Oregon State University (Coop Unit).

Adaptive management: The investigators appear to have made good choices to adapt their management to key uncertainties in riparian planting survival and the role of beavers in improving floodplain and instream habitat.

ISRP Retrospective Evaluation of Results

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe has acquired much of the land surrounding the Hangman Creek watershed. These acquisitions significantly facilitate the habitat restoration and redband trout population recovery activities. Previous assessments conducted by this project identified factors that may be most limiting to redband trout recovery, and identified reaches where these factors predominate across the southern section of the upper Hangman watershed so that restoration actions can be prioritized. Within the mainstem of Hangman Creek, the results of modeling indicated that the most effective method to increase suitable habitats for redband trout would be to improve rearing temperatures by increasing the amount of stream shading. Further, the sponsor identified the mainstem of Hangman Creek to be a restoration priority given that these reaches likely provide the potential to serve as both critical rearing habitat, such as overwintering, and as migratory corridors that would increase population connectivity. Results from watershed assessments indicate that increasing the quantity of usable physical habitat for redband trout in tributaries would be best accomplished by increasing pool depth. Based on earlier findings, the project proposed to accelerate the trajectory for recovering habitat by utilizing restoration approaches that emulate the ecosystem engineering effects of beaver and enhancing the stability of natural dams or pool habitat where they exist in the watershed.

The sponsor has adaptively managed the restoration project. The initial poor results for survival of riparian plants during 2005-7 forced the project to evaluate and adapt the methods to both the limited financial resources available and the conditions in the watershed. Major channel reconstruction was originally considered as a restoration alternative for several mainstem reaches in the upper Hangman watershed. However, this approach was deemed largely infeasible due to the costs. The project is now using beaver as a means to improve stream conditions, and recent evidence indicates beaver activities are helping the sponsors achieve their objectives. The sponsor has implemented an interesting and beneficial habitat and redband trout restoration plan. Project elements are in place to document implementation effectiveness in the coming years. As described in the ISRP retrospective report (ISRP 2011-25), the full benefits of habitat restoration activities such as these will require many years.

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

The project complements an associated restoration effort that acquires land for protection and restoration and improves groundwater and instream flow conditions. The main emerging limiting factor of climate change, causing increased temperature, decreased baseflows, and more variable flow and temperature conditions, would be ameliorated by the proposed habitat work.

4. Deliverables, Work Elements, Metrics, and Methods

The project's deliverable status has an average completion rate of 82% (132 of 161 deliverables). Annual report writing accounts for 10 of the total 29 incomplete deliverables. Most of these report deliverables are expected to be complete by early 2012. The information provided to date has been very good.

The investigators seem well positioned to make good progress on increasing LWD, and its recruitment over the long term, to increase deep pools and aggrade channels to provide floodplain connections. Likewise, they have completed pilot work to improve methods of riparian plantings that will provide shade and materials for beavers to build dams. However, it was unclear whether any of these stream segments are subject to cattle grazing, and whether this could also be a limiting factor.

Several fish migration barriers have been removed, and two are slated to be retrofit, but two more will remain. Are there no plans for these remaining two barriers? This is a concern since one poorly-located barrier could potentially disrupt access to habitat for fish from throughout much of the important stream segments.

As described above, one-pass estimates of trout abundance for assessing trends in CPUE through time will not withstand scientific review, and so will not be useful to support management, unless they are validated. Likewise, ageing fish with scales will likely not be useful unless these are also validated against otoliths over the range of sizes and years collected. Scales may underestimate age, especially if YOY trout do not lay down an annulus especially in cold reaches or adults live long but grow relatively slowly in later years so that scales are resorbed each year at the margin.

The staircase design looks suitable and appears to incorporate a number of random effects for time and site. It is important that appropriate error structures be tested for this mixed effects model, to ensure robust inference.

Temperature loggers are apparently in place only March to October, but winter conditions can be as important as summer for fish. Temperatures during winter can be very useful measures of groundwater inflow, since pools without it can freeze, potentially to the bottom in harsh winters. Monitoring temperatures year round is recommended.

4a. Specific comments on protocols and methods described in MonitoringMethods.org

The sponsors developed seven protocols and about 40 methods within these protocols, and documented these in MonitoringMethods.org. The descriptions were very good. The sponsor probably spent considerable time developing text for this web site. However, the ISRP did not find it useful for this proposal review to have methods split into many separate web pages. The continuity of what the project was trying to do was lost when it was split into many separate sections.

Modified by Dal Marsters on 4/17/2012 2:43:42 PM.