1990-044-00: Proposals

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Proposals

A Proposal is an application to continue existing work or start new work. While historically the Program solicited for all types of projects at once, starting in fiscal year 2009, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and BPA are reviewing and soliciting for projects that are similar in nature and intent. These "categorical" reviews started with Wildlife projects and continue with Research, Monitoring, & Evaluation (RME) and Artificial Production (Hatchery) projects.

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Project 1990-044-00 - Coeur D'Alene Reservation Fisheries Habitat

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	Proposal Number	Proposal Version	Type	State	Project	Title	Description	Creator	Percent Complete	Proposal Budget Limit	Create Date	Last Updated	Primary Contact	Proponent	Purpose	Emphasis	Solicitation	Portfolio	Biop Fish Accord
		Proposal Version 1	Existing Project	Pending BPA Response				Angelo Vitale


	RESCAT-1990-044-00	Proposal Version 1	Existing Project	Pending BPA Response	1990-044-00	Coeur D'Alene Subbasin Fisheries Restoration and Enhancement	This is an ongoing project designed to address the highest priority objective in the Coeur d’Alene Subbasin: to protect and restore remaining stocks of native resident westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi) to ensure their continued existence in the basin and provide harvestable surpluses of naturally reproducing adfluvial adult fish in Lake Coeur d'Alene and in Lake and Benewah creeks, with stable or increasing population trends for resident life history types in Evans and Alder creeks. The project objectives are tiered to the Intermountain Province Objectives 2A1-2A4 and to the Columbia River Basin Goal 2A that addresses resident fish substitution for anadromous fish losses (Intermountain Province Subbasin Plan 2004). Project objectives are: 1) improve stream habitats; 2) track trends in salmonid demographics and population structure; 3) evaluate effectiveness of habitat restoration; 4) address impacts from non-native introduced fishes; and 5) increase cooperation and coordination among stakeholders. The management approach being applied is based on identifying and protecting core refugia and expanding restoration outward from areas of relatively intact habitats and populations, coupled with an analytical approach to prioritizing actions based on the degree of impairment to processes operating at the scale of species and ecosystems and the rarity of specific habitat types. Habitat restoration and enhancement activities employ the seven highest ranked strategies for addressing this objective within the Subbasin. Since 2004, 6.8 km of habitats have been made accessible through removal of passage barriers, 457 m of stream habitats have been treated with additions of coarse wood, and 6.2 km of degraded mainstem and tributary habitats and 20.3 hectares of associated floodplain have been treated through large scale channel restoration. In treated areas, we have increased channel length, pool habitats, and wood frequency and volume. Restoration efforts have significantly improved stream bank conditions to reduce erosion potential and reconnected streams to their floodplains. Temperature monitoring in mainstem reaches have revealed the creation of thermal refugia that were the results of our activities. Although we have yet to see direct evidence of a significant response by cutthroat trout, we observed more pronounced positive trajectories in abundance in tributaries of Benewah Creek compared to the watersheds that have received less management intervention in recent years. This may have been a collective response to the large-scale habitat restoration and the aggressive brook trout suppression program that have proceeded since 2004. As additional years of data are collected, further comparisons among watersheds will allow us to better evaluate whether population responses are the result of our remedial actions. Recently we used watershed assessments and long-term monitoring data as the basis for developing and ranking additional habitat projects to address watershed process impairment for sediment, flood hydrology, riparian and channel function and water quality. The resulting list of projects will be used to negotiate landowner agreements for implementation, and serves as the core of on-the-ground work that is identified in this proposal. Implementation will support recovery of resident and migratory westslope cutthroat trout through restoration and enhancement of landscape processes that form and sustain riverine habitat diversity. We propose to treat 15 km of channel with large wood additions to improve habitat diversity, sediment storage, grade control, habitat cover, and connectivity with floodplains. Riparian habitats associated with 12.7 km of channel are targeted for treatment to restore and/or conserve stream adjacent forests to provide natural recruitment of coarse woody debris over time. Some 19 km of forest roads are targeted for BMP’s to reduce sediment delivery to important spawning and rearing habitats. Finally, 28 barriers are targeted to improve fish passage and open access to 28.3 km of stream habitats. We propose to implement these projects in prioritized sub-watersheds using a hierarchical and/or staircase design within the constraints dictated by landownership. This approach results in multiple treatment replicates at different temporal and spatial scales. Treatments may be applied in a pulsed manner over a 5-10 year period so that some reaches may serve as temporary controls. Specific reaches will also likely remain untreated and serve as permanent controls within each sub-watershed. In this manner, habitat and biological metrics will be examined and compared between treated and control reaches to evaluate local responses to the treatments. As more reaches are treated, biological responses will be examined and compared at larger scales. It is imperative that we have the capability to reliably track temporal changes in adfluvial spawners given that one of the primary objectives of our recovery efforts is to augment the number of returning adult cutthroat to our watersheds. Trapping modifications made during the last proposal cycle likely explain the greater numbers of adult cutthroat captured in Lake and Benewah creeks in more recent years and the consistency in trapping efforts. Because of the increased number of adults captured in our traps, we were able to obtain a sufficient sample size to initiate a mark-recapture program to estimate spawner abundance beginning in 2009. The ability to obtain rather precise estimates of annual adult abundance should permit us to reliably assess the status of adfluvial spawners in our watersheds and track trends in this high-level indicator over time. Our program also tracks adfluvial juvenile production in Lake and Benewah creek watersheds. Juvenile outmigrant abundance estimates and associated age structure information will permit the derivation of outmigrant per spawner ratios, a watershed-wide indicator that would allow tracking of trajectories in juvenile production in addition to aiding in the assessment of in-stream population response to our restoration actions. Our monitoring program has also conducted population surveys at established index sites distributed across tributary and mainstem reaches to evaluate cutthroat trout abundance trends at a much finer spatial scale than that attainable using our migrant trap data. Trend trajectories permit an examination of whether conditions appear to be improving or declining at local tributary, watershed, and regional scales. Trend monitoring also permits a description of temporal changes in spatial distributions to assess expansion rates of cutthroat trout populations to examine whether newly created suitable habitat is undergoing colonization. Index site abundance data collected from 2003 to 2009 revealed the presence of temporal trends in age one and older cutthroat trout in our monitored watersheds, though the abundance trajectories varied among systems. We will continue these monitoring efforts during this proposal cycle. Furthermore, we propose to refine the PIT-tagging program we began in 2006 by using half-duplex technology to examine fine-scale movements and utilization of restored habitats by cutthroat trout to describe action effectiveness in a more cost-effective manner. We initiated a brook trout control program in 2004 in the upper portion of the Benewah watershed to offset unintended benefits of restoration actions for this non-native species and create recruitment bottlenecks at other vital life stages. Our approach was tempered by the desire to maintain connectivity with the lake to promote the migratory life-history variant of our cutthroat trout population and its concomitant high productivity potential. Initially, our control strategy entailed annually removing fish before fall spawning periods by conducting single-pass electrofishing efforts through contiguous mainstem reaches and in tributaries that supported relatively high densities of brook trout. Numerical responses in brook trout to our efforts were examined at index sites throughout the upper watershed. More recently, our suppression approach has refocused tactics toward curbing reproductive success by inhibiting access to suitable spawning habitats through installation of temporary barriers and curtailing shocking efforts to a 2 km mainstem reach where adult densities have been found to be the greatest. If these methods prove successful, we will seek to further reduce the frequency at which we conduct our suppression measures. Given that recent PIT-tag data suggest that adfluvial juvenile-to-spawner return rates are exceptionally low in our monitored systems, we are placing a stronger emphasis on understanding the processes and mechanisms that are impacting the suitability of rearing habitats in Lake Coeur d’Alene. As an initial step toward this management goal, a collaborative study with the University of Idaho is currently underway to better understand whether predation by northern pike and smallmouth bass is a predominant mechanism regulating juvenile in-lake survival rates. Demographic and dietary data is being collected from both predators during repeated sampling efforts and incorporated into bioenergetic models to estimate the consumption of cutthroat trout. The study will conclude in 2013 and information gained will support the development of actions to reduce this source of mortality. These efforts reflect an understanding gained through project monitoring, that limiting factors in stream environments and the lake must be collectively addressed to recover adfluvial cutthroat trout populations. Implementing actions in the lake to improve juvenile return rates should provide the spawners necessary to seed restored stream habitats and increase in-stream production.	Angelo Vitale			09/15/2011	02/26/2014	Angelo Vitale	Coeur D'Alene Tribe	Habitat	None	Resident Fish, Regional Coordination, and Data Management Category Review	Resident Fish, Regional Coordination, and Data Management Categorical Review