 | GEOREV-2003-011-00 | Proposal Version 1 | Existing Project | Pending BPA Response | 2003-011-00 | Columbia River Estuary Habitat Restoration | The Estuary Partnership requests $16,431,412 over 4 years to build on and expand the Estuary Partnership’s Lower Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program to restore ecosystem structure and function of the lower Columbia River and estuary, from Bonneville Dam to the mouth. The Program includes toxic contaminant reduction and species recovery efforts, representing the umbrella program for the lower river. NPCC/BPA funding under this Project focuses on a subset of actions addressing BPA’s Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP) goal of improving habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms, specifically salmonids. Funding of this Project provides direct funding for multiple restoration actions under CEERP annually and provides leverage for us to expand restoration efforts beyond CEERP for a comprehensive, integrated and collaborative ecosystem based restoration program.
Activities to date have developed and refined the comprehensive and well-coordinated Lower Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program. The Estuary Partnership with our partners (e.g., CREST, CLT, watershed councils) have developed the experience, tools and knowledge of the lower river and created a framework to maintain, refine and adaptively manage a more advanced ecosystem restoration program. Lessons learned during these efforts have guided the development of the program and the enclosed proposal. The Lower Columbia River Ecosystem Restoration Program includes six major components designed to address the region’s goal of ecosystem restoration and specifically support the needs of resource management programs and partner restoration practitioners to meet that goal:
1) a governance structure designed to improve efficiencies and increase results by ensuring a high degree of communication and coordination among partners, integrating restoration and protection priorities within regulatory and planning activities of agencies, use of best available science and identifying issues and gaps;
2) a holistic vision and plan for the lower Columbia River that includes a restoration prioritization strategy to identify priority geographic areas for protection and restoration;
3) a technical assistance program that provides capacity and support for restoration partners who individually cannot afford this expertise to work with landowners to identify, develop, construct and monitor restoration actions;
4) a rigorous scientific review and competitive bid process to evaluate and prioritize individual restoration actions;
5) a restoration inventory database to track status of actions in a GIS-based system, allowing annual reporting to USEPA, BPA and others; and
6) an adaptive management framework that includes
a) ecosystem monitoring to track trends in habitat conditions and fish use, provide a suite of reference sites for use as end points in restoration actions and place results of RME findings into the context with the larger ecosystem (via project #2003-007-00);
b) action effectiveness monitoring to track whether restoration actions are meeting goals and need for future actions; identifies actions that work best and informs how to improve our actions (this project and #2003-007-00);
c) critical uncertainties research to address specific questions (e.g., salmon use of estuarine habitat’s contribution to adult returns) (via USACE AFEP) and
d) implementation monitoring (this project and #2003-007-00).
The Estuary Partnership will continue to partner with CREST, CLT, tribes, watershed councils, local governments and others to implement this program, including annually implementing and monitoring multiple restoration actions.
The Project described here is the umbrella of the “umbrella projects”. The design is built from years of experience, learning and discussions with researchers, resource managers and restoration practitioners throughout the lower Columbia River, the Pacific Northwest and across the U.S. It addresses the Estuary Partnership’s CCMP goal of restoring ecosystem structure and function through the protection and restoration of 19,000 acres of habitat by 2014 and 25,000 acres by 2025, adopted by USEPA in their Strategic Plan. It also addresses the large scale restoration actions included within NOAA, Oregon and Washington salmonid recovery plans; the Pacific Coast Joint Venture implementation plan for migratory, nesting and overwintering birds; the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC) Sub-basin Plan, the NPCC’s Fish and Wildlife Program and RPAs 37 and 38 in the 2008 Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion.
Background
Since 2000, the Estuary Partnership has been implementing its ecosystem restoration program with funding from BPA, NOAA, USEPA, OWEB, EMSWCD and others. The program includes: on-the-ground restoration activities; scientific evaluation criteria to evaluate proposed actions; datasets to identify, prioritize and develop actions and an infrastructure for soliciting, developing, selecting and funding priority actions. The Estuary Partnership, working with its partners, continues to adapt this program to ensure a solid, scientific-based framework for strategically locating restoration and protection actions within the lower river and integrating results from emerging research and lessons learned from past actions into future planning and program implementation.
Since 2000, regional restoration partners have accomplished over 173 actions representing 18,433 acres restored or protected in the lower river. Estuary Partnership funding alone has supported approximately 60 actions that have restored or protected over 3,325 acres and opened over 50 miles of stream habitat. The Estuary Partnership has also completed a multitude of programmatic tasks to provide a strong scientific framework for decision-making and effective implementation:
1. Established a solicitation, technical review, prioritization and selection process for restoration and protection proposals, including the development and continual refinement of a rigorous set of restoration proposal evaluation criteria
2. Developed and used a restoration prioritization framework for assessing landscape disturbances and comparing potential ecological uplift across actions
3. Completed an inventory of shoreline condition to aid in identifying site specific limiting factors and potential restoration actions
4. Established 4 pilot action effectiveness monitoring sites that has since expanded into an overarching programmatic strategy
5. Developed a system of 51 reference sites
6. Compared action effectiveness data to reference sites to refine monitoring protocols and developed region specific restoration design considerations
7. Developed a Restoration Inventory geodatabase to track location and status of actions
8. Hosted a series of workshops on restoration to identify issues and increase coordination
9. Developed a Technical Assistance Program to help restoration partners identify, design and monitor restoration actions
Our Project also leveraged resources for us to develop additional tools to prioritize locations for strategic placement of restoration actions and improve information available for designing and evaluating them.
Current Proposal
Implementation of the Project will allow regional partners to continue protecting and restoring the lower Columbia River ecosystem structure and function, focusing on habitat opportunity, capacity and realized function for aquatic organisms. This Project will increase habitat opportunity by reconnecting historic channels, floodplain and wetland habitats to the mainstem and tidal tributaries. It will improve habitat capacity by increasing habitat complexity and native species, in turn promoting site conditions supporting the production of preferred invertebrate prey, high assimilation efficiencies and low predation and competition levels. Ultimately, these improvements should improve physiological conditions within organisms using these sites including foraging success, growth, fitness and survival. The overarching project goal is to ensure ample coverage of diverse, quality habitats throughout the lower river to aid the recovery of juvenile salmonid natural life history diversities. We will accomplish this with the following:
• Maintain a scientifically rigorous set of review criteria for evaluating individual restoration actions.
• Identify and prioritize protection and restoration actions working with landowners in the lower Columbia River.
• Design, permit, construct and manage restoration actions within the lower Columbia River.
• Monitor the success and effectiveness of restoration actions for adaptive management.
• Provide technical review and funding recommendations of restoration and protection actions for BPA.
• Provide regional coordination or restoration and monitoring as well as information sharing events to ensure ecosystem-scale adaptive management.
Through this Project, 4-8 restoration actions will be constructed annually at tidally influenced and historic floodplain wetland habitats within the lower Columbia River:
• Improving habitat opportunity through breaching levees; reestablishing flow patterns altered by causeways, culverts and tide gates; restoring channels in intertidal areas and restoring and enhancing connections between lakes, sloughs, side channels and floodplains with the mainstem
• Improving habitat capacity through adding large woody debris; removing or managing invasive and nuisance vegetative species and planting of native plant species.
We will monitor action effectiveness at Estuary Partnership led sites and coordinate monitoring and data management with partners at their sites. We will provide technical review and funding recommendations of proposed actions for BPA and coordination opportunities for partners to ensure adaptive management and integration of emerging science. | Catherine Corbett | | | 12/06/2012 | 11/26/2013 | Catherine Corbett | Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership | Habitat | None | 2013 Geographic Category Review | 2013 Geographic Review | BiOp |
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