This report is the Independent Scientific Review Panel’s (ISRP) final review of proposals submitted for Fiscal Year 2002 funding in the Columbia Plateau Province. It contains final recommendations and detailed comments for each proposal submitted.
The review process to develop these recommendations and comments included several steps. On June 15, the ISRP released a preliminary review of Columbia Plateau proposals (Acrobat PDF format). The review process for that report included several elements that are the foundation of the provincial review process. Each proposal received review by at least three reviewers and discussion by the larger review team to reach consensus. Presentations were given on each proposal. Following each presentation, an opportunity was provided for a question and answer session between reviewers and the proponents. In addition, the ISRP review teams visited most of the subbasins in the province and were provided slide presentations for the subbasins they were unable to visit.
With the release of the ISRP’s preliminary report, project sponsors were provided several weeks to respond to the ISRP’s comments. The ISRP received responses from 100 of the 104 proposals for which a response was requested and from several proposals for which a response was not requested. Only those responses that were requested were reviewed. The ISRP reviewers who had reviewed the original proposal reviewed the response related to that proposal, and the ISRP review teams as a whole discussed the responses. The ISRP received CBFWA’s Draft FY 2002-2004 Columbia Plateau Province Work Plan, as scheduled on August 3, 2001, and briefly conferred to compare the ISRP review team recommendations with CBFWA’s recommendations and comments. Consequently, each ISRP recommendation includes a comparison with CBFWA’s prioritization and takes into account project sponsor responses to the ISRP’s preliminary review.
This marks the end of the ISRP’s duties in the fourth iteration of the provincial review process. The ISRP continues to be enthusiastic about the new approach and notes improvement in the process. Specifically, the site visits and presentations were well organized, informative, and demonstrated an improving trend over those in the Gorge, Inter-Mountain, and Mountain Columbia province workshops. This is evidence that the review process is generating benefits towards better organization, coordination, and scientific emphasis to projects.
With the exception of a programmatic statement regarding monitoring, this report does not include a programmatic section with identification of general issues that cut across subbasins and provinces. Although many such issues arose, the ISRP ran out of time to reach consensus recommendations on these broad issues. In addition, the ISRP was unable to complete the response review of the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan proposals in the Columbia Plateau. Rather than delay release of this report, the ISRP plans to include discussion of these issues and reviews in later reports.
