At the Council’s July 6, 2011 request, the ISRP reviewed a proposal for the Idaho Office of Species Conservation’s Columbia River Fish Accord project titled, Lemhi River Restoration (#2010-072-00). The proposal’s purpose is to "improve habitat quality in the Lemhi River watershed, including pool habitat, spawning habitat, riparian condition, stream flow, and passage to benefit all life stages of Snake River spring/summer-run Chinook and Snake River steelhead."
The ISRP requests a response.
The ISRP concludes that more details are needed to conduct an assessment of the technical merit of the proposal. The following areas require additional information:
- Explicitly state biological objectives for habitat conditions and focal species status resulting from implementation of habitat restoration strategies.
- Provide a complete description of the technical criteria being used to prioritize restoration projects.
- Describe the location of different types of restoration efforts relative to use of the streams by focal species.
- Provide information on the habitat and biological response to projects that have been implemented in the Upper Salmon River watershed; including a description of any problems encountered in implementing these projects.
- Provide more detail on how restoration actions will address site-specific limiting factors for fish including data-based evidence on the relative importance of limiting factors listed in the proposal and how the importance of the limiting factors is considered in the prioritization process.
- Describe the nature of the relationship between the proposed habitat program and the Integrated Status and Effectiveness Monitoring Program (ISEMP) including an explanation of whether ISEMP will be evaluating reach-level or impact-area responses of projects implemented by this program. Provide a complete description and examples of the adaptive management process.
- Provide additional detail on the work elements relating to RM&E, especially methods that will be used to monitor the project’s biological effectiveness. For the study of groundwater/surface water interactions provide objectives, describe how the information will be used, and where the study will be conducted. For the proposed tagging study, explain how responsibility for tagging will be divided between this program and ISEMP and provide more details about sample size, duration of sampling, key environmental monitoring metrics, analytical techniques, and data archiving.
