The objectives of this project are not amenable to scientific review. However, the ISRP provides the following review and makes suggestions for project improvement.

The proponents provide a succinct yet comprehensive proposal that addressed each component of the review process. The Status and Trend Annual Reporting (STAR) project appears to be a very useful outreach effort that describes progress by the large YKFP effort and supporting these projects with data management, outreach, and annual reporting, which enables researchers and practitioners to do their work, analyze the data, and share results in decision forums. other efforts in the upper Columbia Basin that involve the Yakama Nation. The effort facilitates communication among the many Yakima subbasin projects conducted by Yakama Nation by supporting these projects with data management, outreach, and annual reporting, which enables researchers and practitioners to do their work, analyze the data, and share results in decision forums.

The proposal indicates that reporting is conducted at various scales (assessment unit, subbasin/population and ESU/DPS), including reporting of smaller-scale indicators, such as primary limiting factors and restoration actions along with expected benefits. The project has provided excellent, photo-filled annual reports that facilitate information on the progress of projects and trends of species status, and it has largely succeeded in striking a balance between meeting needs for technical and lay audiences. However, many of the fish-trend plots would benefit by showing the quantitative objective for the species. Likewise, when reporting miles or acres of habitat restored, the reports should place this in perspective by stating the number of miles or acres that were expected to be restored in the time period, and how many miles or acres are needed for success (to the extent possible). In any one year, the data for the last time period are presented, but what is the change over time? What are the objectives and expected outcomes for the habitat work? For example, how many more barriers need to be eliminated? While the objectives for this specific project do not attend to these kinds of quantitative metrics, the projects served by this project do have quantified metrics that should be evident and presented.

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 Yakima Basin Habitat project (199705100) to summarize the linkages between implementation and monitoring projects in the Yakima basin. During the response loop (September 24 to November 22, 2021), 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.

It would help the project to develop a more appropriate goal statement and to develop a full suite of SMART objectives (see proposal instructions), which should be fairly simple to produce from the information provided in the proposal. One objective missing is for a way to gage how satisfied the clients are with the service, which should include a formal methodology to get feed-back for improvements.

Q1: Clearly defined objectives and outcomes

An overall goal of the project is "to support mitigation described in the 2008 FCRPS Biological Opinion and the obligations of the NPCC Fish and Wildlife Program by annually reporting progress towards salmon recovery efforts relevant to the Columbia Cascade Province and within the Ceded Lands of the Yakama Nation.” The activities include procuring, managing, documenting, and distributing the relevant and available data to meet the needs of natural resource managers. A key component for the STAR project is annual reporting to the Yakama Nation Tribal Council, General Council, staff, and other relevant audiences, progress in meeting restoration goals through habitat protection, restoration, and monitoring actions. In addition, progress towards meeting objectives associated with operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System, hatchery supplementation actions, and other topics are periodically summarized.

The proponents list a number of implementation objectives for the project. Most of these objectives seem to be met on an annual reporting basis. A detailed timeline for various project components is provided. However, the objectives are not in SMART format (i.e., specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timeliness). This format would help to clearly identify milestones and outcomes, and it would allow a better understanding of progress. Regarding an associated measurable aspect, an example would be Objective 3 where the statement should indicate a target of how many projects and project biologists are to be included in the interviews, which should largely correspond to the project lists given in Section 8, adjusted for potentially new or ended projects on an annual basis. Regarding timeline, the four headers in the timeline table provided in Section 7 do not match up well with the five Objectives given in Section 3.

Q2: Methods

The methods offered are a list of activities for each Objective very little description. It was useful to see methods linked with objectives, but it was not clear how the project prioritizes efforts and products in a given year. It would be more informative if the methods were listed as numbered actions with more description about what will be done when.

Q3: Provisions for M&E

This is an information and data sharing effort. As such, the proponents receive requests from the Yakama Nation Tribal Council, General Council, managers, and other Yakama Nation leadership members. They also receive requests from project managers and biologists. The project reports on the monitoring and evaluation being done by other projects across the Yakima subbasin.

It is obvious that the project proponents devote considerable effort to collaborate with partners and intended audiences. They state that they request feedback for the different levels of work, and that they engage leadership, staff, information technology consultants, and partners to be able to adapt to changing needs and circumstances. They strive to improve data management and to provide products and services that are useful. What is not clear is if they have considered a formal way to document the total number of people and/or projects using their services, and a way to objectively assess the satisfaction of the services rendered as a feedback mechanism to understand effectiveness.

There are clearly issues to be addressed with this type of project including data compatibility, people being late with their data, backlogs, and so on. This certainly requires problem solving and adjustment by project personnel.

Climate change is listed as a confounding factor, and the proponent is correct that the data they procure and serve may be highly useful in assessing effects of climate change. However, climate change will have no direct effect on the project itself other than perhaps changing emphasis of the data procured and provided.

Q4: Results – benefits to fish and wildlife

The annual reports provide a highly visual summary of progress made in each subbasin. These reports appear to be very useful to policy makers and stakeholders.

The highly visual online "restoration stories" also provides very useful outreach for policy makers and the public. Although the primary fish webpage was operational, several fish data links on the interactive website did not work (https://yakamafish-nsn.gov/fish-data).

Salmon data are uploaded to the Streamnet web-based database (snq.streamnet.org) and the coordinated assessments database (https://cax.streamnet.org/). This coordination with other projects is very important.

It is clear that this project serves the data needs of many other projects so they can assess benefits to fish and wildlife. The project may not directly benefit fish and wildlife, but it does provide a way to understand how fish and habitat are performing in a number of subbasins.

The production of an annual report on RM&E is a very worthwhile endeavor, and the use of a coordinator dedicated to producing this report annually may be a very reasonable approach. However, all subbasin stakeholders should be of the same opinion before this effort is initiated. Also, the activities proposed for the STAR coordinator during the initial 10 months of this project appear to be less ambitious than they might be. A significant amount of progress towards the first STAR could be made in this time frame rather that simply generating an outline of what the report should contain. A revised proposal is requested that: • clearly documents that there is agreement among the stakeholders that this is a reasonable approach; • describes the procedures for coordination with other agencies and organizations doing similar work (regional coordination of anadromous salmon RME for the BiOp, FWP, High Level Indicators, PNAMP implementation monitoring); • has objectives and timelines clarified and altered to better reflect what could be accomplished during the initial phase of this project; justifies why only a table of contents will be generated in the first year or describes additional anticipated progress; • describes procedures for encouraging and documenting stakeholder input and feedback as part of monitoring and evaluation of STAR.