The purpose of this project is to restore habitat throughout the Umatilla River basin for listed salmonids and other focal species, including removing fish passage barriers, reconnecting rivers with their floodplains, restoring habitat complexity, reducing water temperatures, and providing suitable sediment sizes. The proponents are using a process restoration approach to work toward a well-integrated set of seven goals and SMART objectives to address the root causes of poor river ecosystem function that affects habitat for the focal species. Their work is guided by a holistic River Vision, Upland Vision, and First Foods approach.

This is an exemplary project. The ISRP was highly impressed with this process-based approach and commend the proponents on preparing a very good proposal. Given the constraints, long restoration time frames, and challenges to monitor responses, this project satisfies our review criteria.

Nevertheless, future proposals, annual reports, and work plans would benefit from addressing several points raised during the review.

1. Addressing challenging limiting factors -- A challenge for the proponents is that the relatively straightforward habitat problems identified early in the project, such as fish passage barriers, have mostly been addressed during the 36-year project duration, leaving problems that require coordinated effort over long time frames and large spatial scales. The two factors most limiting, high water-temperatures and sediment sizes that are too large for spawning, require coordination with other projects (i.e., those for water acquisition to increase stream flows) or large-scale restoration (i.e., enhancing interactions with river floodplains to increase sediment sorting). These are complicated problems, but making this point more clearly will facilitate future proposal and progress reviews. 
   
   
2. Summary of key accomplishments -- The proposal would have benefited from a high-level summary of key accomplishments in one summary figure or table, such as, for example, floodplain area reconnected, miles of habitat gained from fish passage projects, temperature changes in restored reaches, and links to other projects to report the number of fish spawning in reaches. There are some results in appendices (lamprey spawning), but not a clear “dashboard” of relevant physical outcomes, or biological data collected by other projects. 
   
   
3. 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 Umatilla Basin Natural Production Monitoring and Evaluation Project (199000501) to summarize the linkages between implementation and monitoring projects in the basin. We ask your project to assist them in creating the summary and provide information to them about what is being monitored for your implementation project and where and when the monitoring occurs. A map or maps of locations of monitoring actions would be helpful in this regard.

Overall, restoration projects should be able to present a high-level summary of what other collaborating projects have discovered about effects on the ultimate physical or biological responses that determine whether objectives have been met.