ODFW has provided a thoughtful and reasonably complete response to the ISRP's questions. In particular, it is now apparent that more flexibility exists in project prioritization and lead responsibility assignment than existed when ODFW and CTUIR basically maintained largely separate geographic responsibilities. We view the evolving relationship between the two entities as a healthy indication of improved collaboration.

In 2010, ODFW, along with the CTUIR and other key partners in the basin, formed the Umatilla Basin Restoration Team. Participation in the team has led to greater coordination, resource sharing, and a reduction in duplication of restoration efforts between ODFW and CTUIR. Participation in the Basin Restoration Team has also promoted some data sharing between ODFW and the CTUIR. Yearly prioritization of projects continues to be guided by the Umatilla/Willow Subbasin Plan. Effectiveness monitoring of the ODFW’s Anadromous Fish Habitat projects in the Umatilla falls under the purview of other associated projects. The sponsors, however, state they will continue to work with BPA to determine if any of their proposed projects may be candidates for inclusion in the AEM program.

ODFW and CTUIR do not use shared databases but claim that data are being shared among members of the Umatilla Basin Restoration Team. A formalized arrangement should be put into place so that responsibilities of each party for data sharing, custody, response to data requests, are clear. The recent document on Data Management from BPA discusses some of the issues that need to be addressed.

Evaluation of Results

The Umatilla subbasin is a good example of a river system that has achieved real progress in cooperation between management entities in identifying and implementing restoration actions. In particular, the working relationship between ODFW and CTUIR has led to a wide variety of habitat improvements in areas that have been highly altered. The ISRP continues to believe that biological effectiveness monitoring in the Umatilla has lagged somewhat behind the progress made in on-the-ground implementation. We feel the highest current RM&E priority is to understand factors that limit survival in the mainstem Umatilla River and what can be done to remedy problems.

This is a worthwhile project that is implementing important restoration actions primarily in the mid- and lower Umatilla subbasin. The ISRP requests additional clarification of the relationship between this project's activities and those of the tribal Umatilla anadromous fish habitat project (1987-100-01).

1) What methods are used to ensure coordination and resource sharing?

2) How is duplication of effort avoided?

3) How are restoration priorities established from year to year?

4) Have any provisions been made for data co-management?

5) What will be this project's role in long-term biological effectiveness monitoring?

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

The significance to regional programs and technical background were adequately explained. This project continues a long-term ODFW program of restoring fish habitat in the Umatilla subbasin with emphasis on two important anadromous salmonid spawning and rearing tributaries – Birch Creek and Meacham Creek. The objectives of this proposal are to continue the maintenance of existing restoration sites involving dam removal, bank stabilization, riparian revegetation, noxious weed control, riparian fencing, and to continue the effort to improve fish passage, instream habitat, flow augmentation, and water quality including primarily stream temperature and sediment. The project's objectives are consistent with the goals of the Fish and Wildlife Program, recovery plans for listed fishes, and the Umatilla Five year Action Plan.

Restoration activities have been guided by several regional plans, the Umatilla/Willow subbasin plan, the Mid-Columbia River Conservation and Recovery Plan for Oregon Steelhead, and an expired five-year action plan developed for the project that was designed to recover and maintain habitat in the Umatilla subbasin.

The project has two objectives, to restore and enhance riparian areas and stream ecosystems in Birch Creek and to maintain existing fish habitat improvement projects in Birch and Meacham Creeks. It provides ODFW with a way to restore degraded habitat, create cooperative agreements with local landowners, maintain existing restoration actions, and engage in outreach and education. Consequently it is an important regional program.

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

According to the proposal, this is an implementation project that involves very little RM&E; therefore, accomplishments and results are presented as units of habitat improved (34 projects along 25 miles of stream protecting 449 acres of riparian and instream habitat) rather than estimates of increased fish productivity. In general, the descriptions of previous habitat restoration actions were clear, and the proposal suggests that future actions will be more of the same. Although the proposal lacked some specificity about what would be done over the next four years, it did state that the primary objective would be to remove another irrigation dam and to maintain a number of existing restoration sites. The before-and-after photographs were helpful, but they mostly dealt with irrigation dam removal and not with other types of activities.

Thirty-three cooperative agreements have been established between private landowners and project personnel. These arrangements allow the project to lease and protect lands and carry out restoration actions on private lands. They typically last from 10 to 25 years. While the agreements are in place the project makes annual inspections and performs maintenance as needed. After expiration, the private landowners are expected to maintain the restoration actions that took place on their lands. Currently there are 16 active and 17 expired cooperative agreements.

Since its inception, the project has made a number of adaptive management changes. Placement of riparian fencing was changed to account for impacts of flooding. Additionally, the types of plants used to restore riparian vegetation have changed over time. Originally rooted stock was planted soon after a project was completed. Now, they allow natural adjustments to restored habitat to occur before planting, and cuttings of willow and cottonwood rather than rooted plants are predominately used. Rooted plants are still utilized; however, they are now grown in deeper pots to create longer root systems to reduce watering and maintenance after planting.

The project sponsors acknowledged that more effectiveness monitoring was needed, but lack of funding has hindered the development of an adequate monitoring program.

3. Project Relationships, Emerging Limiting Factors, and Tailored Questions

The description of deliverables and work elements suggests that there is broad overlap between this project and the Umatilla habitat restoration project administered by the CTUIR. The relationships between the ODFW and CTUIR efforts that involve coordination, resource sharing, and identification of priorities need to be clearer. How do these two projects, which address a variety of fish habitat problems in the Umatilla River and tributaries, work together to maximize efficiencies? The site visit was helpful, but we still have questions about information exchange between the two projects.

The section on emerging limiting factors focuses on climate change impacts but does not describe what steps might be taken to make the stream and riparian ecosystems more resilient. Some acknowledgment of the spread of invasive species including which ones are likely to pose future problems would also be helpful.

Project personnel work with the CTUIR, USACE, Umatilla Basin Watershed Council, Umatilla Soil and Water Conservation District, BOR, Oregon Water Resources Department, OWEB, and Blue Mountain Habitat Restoration Council and private landowners in the Birch and Meacham Creek subbasins. They also serve on the Umatilla watershed restoration team which meets quarterly to coordinate habitat restoration actions with local partners in the Umatilla basin.

Increased air and stream temperatures, reduced snow pack levels, snow to rain transition, earlier and higher peak stream flows, lower summer through fall stream flows, increased periods of drought, more frequent and extreme storms, changes in ocean conditions, and more severe fire events all brought about by climate change were identified as the major emerging limiting factors.

4. Deliverables, Work Elements, Metrics, and Methods

The project has nine deliverables that include establishing cooperative agreements with landowners, writing and procuring grants to implement restoration projects, removing fish migration barriers, constructing riparian fencing and re-vegetating protected areas, stabilizing stream banks and channels, maintaining restored habitat and fencing, collecting temperature and stream flow data, and education and outreach. Project selection appears to be opportunistic to a certain extent as cooperative agreements with private landowners must be in place before a restoration action can occur. Proposed projects are, however, reviewed by CTUIR, Soil and Water Conservation District, BOR, U.S. Forest Service, ODFW, and the USFWS staff. No formal process for selection was described.

More information is needed on the procedures used to identify restoration priorities and sharing of duties with CTUIR. Do these two projects use the same methods to identify candidate restoration sites and habitat improvement techniques? Although the proposal states that the project does not monitor and evaluate effectiveness, more information is needed on how effectiveness monitoring will be coordinated if and when additional funding becomes available. In particular, what will be ODFW's role in managing the monitoring program? The ISRP understands that an integrated effectiveness monitoring program has taken shape more slowly than hoped, but this proposal, as well as others in the Umatilla subbasin, should be proactive in being ready to implement effectiveness monitoring as funding becomes available. This includes identifying locations where no restoration will occur, and which will serve as unenhanced reference sites.

Recently, three M&E projects have begun. Smolt monitoring is now occurring in Birch and Meacham Creeks as well as in the upper Umatilla River. Little habitat restoration has apparently occurred in the headwaters of the Umatilla River, so it will be possible to compare smolt production from watersheds with varying amounts of restoration activity. Steelhead redd surveys are now also occurring using a GRTS approach. Visual inspections of existing restoration projects are made annually and repairs are made as needed. It would be helpful however, if additional data were collected. For example in areas with riparian fencing some measure of plant cover, species present, solar radiation over the streambed, insect production or other metrics should be routinely collected over time to track how the habitat has responded. In general, some form of action effectiveness monitoring should be taking place.

Specific comments on protocols and methods described in MonitoringMethods.org

According to the proposal no RM&E will occur; however, the proposal also states that the project monitors stream temperatures at 9 locations and streamflows at 2 permanent gauging stations. Whether this monitoring is consistent with MonitoringMethods.org was not clear.

Modified by Dal Marsters on 9/26/2013 2:18:01 PM.

See comments under 198343600 and 198710001, and in particular, 199000501, as well as others from this subbasin.

The Umatilla ecosystem and the human intervention within it remains complex, and the ability to comprehend the interactions of habitat work, as proposed, and flow augmentation, power repay, adult and smolt migration, etc. remains confusing. One concludes that it is adult and smolt migration within the Umatilla as the key limiting factor (particularly, in this case, from Birch Creek to the Three Mile Falls Dam site). Nonetheless, habitat husbandry is a requirement, and the response has clarified several areas of the proposal.

There remains the need to develop an adaptive management experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of habitat improvement techniques, ultimately to the smolt yield stage. ISRP has recommended to Council that some assistance to subbasins may be required to standardize and establish this process within the basin, and we remain hopeful that Umatilla projects will form part of that exercise. Success should be measured in terms of increased smolt production in the system. Sponsors should by now be able to defend their work on the basis of similar treatments by others or results of their own. Absent these results there is no scientific basis for continuing the work. They incorrectly reject the idea that smolt production is the best measure of habitat productivity for anadromous fish. They seem to believe that EDT is the final answer to habitat quality and not merely a basis from which to develop a testable hypothesis. There has been no test of such hypotheses and therefore no basis in science to support continuation of these projects.

This project and others like it are individual parts of what the Council has referred to as the "Umatilla Initiative." As such, none of them is a stand-alone project that can be subjected to scientific peer review on its own merits, but the projects need to be reviewed in the larger context of a plan for restoration of anadromous fishes in the Umatilla Basin. The ISRP's recommendation of "Not Fundable (Qualified)" for the set of projects that constitute the Umatilla Initiative is explained under project 198343600, Umatilla Passage O&M.