At the Council’s July 1, 2009 request, the ISRP reviewed the Colville Confederated Tribes’ Twin Lakes Enhancement Proposal (#2008-111-00), a Columbia River Fish Accords project. The purpose of this project is to improve summer habitat for native inland redband trout in Twin Lakes, Washington by enhancing dissolved oxygen levels in bottom waters.
ISRP Recommendation: Response requested.
This proposal lacks sufficient technical justification, background information, and detail in other areas (including study design, objectives, and methods) to enable the ISRP to evaluate the scientific merit of the proposal. The ISRP requests a response for the proponents to provide the following information in order to complete this review:
- Summary results and reports (with web based links to reports if available) from the three years of redband trout studies in Twin Lakes by the Colville Confederated Tribes should be included in the Technical Justification section.
- What is the source(s) of anthropogenic phosphorous loading to Twin Lakes?
- The proposal does not present basic limnological data about the project lakes. Included should be such data as catchment basin area, water surface area, maximum and mean water depth, shoreline development, water sources and flux, and the characteristics of lakebed sediments and aquatic macrophytes. Lacking such basic information, the ISRP cannot evaluate reasonability of the project.
- Include a discussion of how redband trout can be re-established in an already diverse fish community dominated by non-native species.
- Section E indicates that this is a new project, but clearly this project is ongoing (~three years?). Please explain.
- Unless there are mortality or growth data on redband trout available from Twin Lakes studies, the objectives in Section F will need to be revised.
- Work Elements (WE) 2 and 3 (the main ones) are too general, and much more detail is needed on hydroacoustic and creel survey designs and methods.
- Can golden shiner be used to monitor changes in methyl mercury during the study?
