At the Council’s June 3, 2009, request the ISRP reviewed the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon’s Columbia River Basin Fish Accord proposal titled Willamette Falls Lamprey Escapement Estimate Project (2008-308-00). The project intends to develop quantitative measures for indices of abundance and escapement estimates for adult Pacific lamprey at Willamette Falls. Proposed objectives will address the lack of population information in the Willamette River and address how lamprey behavior and vulnerability to predation may affect abundance estimates.
The ISRP recommends:
Meets Scientific Criteria (in part):
- Objective 3 meets criteria
- Response requested for Objectives 1 and 2
The ISRP comments that overall this project has worthwhile objectives, a reasonable approach if adaptive management is practiced, and a qualified project team. It will increase our knowledge of a species of concern about which surprisingly little is known. The proposal is concise, easy to read, and well thought out.
However, the ISRP concludes that the uncertainties and assumptions underlying this project are too many and too great to justify full-scale implementation of the project at this time (i.e., installation of PIT tag detectors at five passage locations and underwater cameras at two locations). The approach proposed by the proponents seems worth investigating, but at a smaller initial scale. The ISRP recommends that the project proponents initially should undertake the work at one or two passage locations to resolve uncertainties, as detailed in the attached memo, unless they can present a good rationale for implementing a full-scale project (five locations) at this time.
