Fish & wildlife Subbasin planning Independent scientific review

Scientific Review of Subbasin Plans for the
Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program

August 12, 2004  |  document ISRP/ISAB 2004-13

Related links:

• Full report (1mb PDF)
• Spreadsheet of quantifiable responses (930k Excel [best way to view] or 120k PDF)
• Independent scientific review homepage, with links to subbasin-specific reviews

Executive Summary

A group of 26 members from the combined Independent Scientific Advisory Board, Independent Scientific Review Panel, and its Scientific Peer Review Groups reviewed the 45 plans that cover 58 subbasins for the Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Program. We appreciate the efforts of representatives of the various subbasins who briefed us on their plans and patiently answered our questions. We made every effort to thoroughly review the plans and to apply a consistent level of scrutiny for all subbasin plans, but we acknowledge that the time constraints of the review process made it impossible to examine each plan and discuss each review in the detail we would have liked. For each plan, we address the central questions asked by the Council with regard to the likelihood that the plans would succeed in their attempts to recover fish and wildlife, but, given the sheer volume of material to review, some things no doubt were overlooked. In addition to individual reviews, we provide overarching programmatic observations that represent our general view of the technical merits of the subbasin plans as a whole, but that do not apply equally to every plan. We realize that subbasin planning is a work in progress and hope that our programmatic comments, as well as our specific review summaries and checklists for each plan, assist the Council in developing a strategy to incorporate the plans into the Fish and Wildlife Program, and guide planners in future revisions.

Planning Achievements

The planning process has unquestionably achieved some important improvements in understanding fish and wildlife recovery efforts at the local level, including:

• Increased stakeholder involvement at the subbasin level
• Improved provincial overview and insights into local restoration questions
• Established planning organization at provincial and subbasin levels
• Enhanced coordination among subbasin and provincial fish and wildlife managers
• Focused attention on causes of fish and wildlife declines
• Enhanced the empirical basis for assessments of habitats, both terrestrial and aquatic, and provided extensive data records of these efforts

Strengths of the Plans and Planning Process

Beginnings - Most of the draft subbasin plans constitute a reasonable beginning for subbasin planning. Approximately one quarter of the plans are complete enough to serve as standalone, scientifically sound amendments to the Fish and Wildlife Program without major additional treatment. A few plans stand out for their completeness — these include the Flathead, Kootenai, Fifteenmile, Willamette, and the Umatilla subbasin plans. Even these plans, however, lack a scientifically acceptable and complete Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation Section. The remaining three quarters of the plans, however, need substantial additions and revisions, especially to establish restoration priorities and to complete the Management Plan.   

Assessments - The strongest part of most subbasin plans was the Assessment, where substantial information about the subbasin's physical environment and biological resources was described. Many Assessments were quite thorough, providing information well beyond that contained in earlier subbasin plans and summaries. This achievement alone should be viewed as a major accomplishment of the subbasin planning process. In some instances, the thoroughness of the Assessment sets the stage through the limiting factors analyses to prioritize proposed implementation objectives and strategies in the Management Plan, i.e., the ultimate goal of the process. Although many of the plans failed in these latter phases, that failure was not due to an inadequacy in their Assessments.

Needed Improvements

I. The Assessment

Thoroughness

• Current information — some of the plans do not use current information, instead relying on out-of-date habitat inventories.
• Natural variation — many plans do not consider dynamic watershed and ecological processes, nor take natural variation into account when setting habitat goals.
• Biodiversity — few plans contain strategies for assessing or increasing the diversity of native fish and wildlife, although diversity is a central element of the Fish and Wildlife Plan.
• Mainstem habitat — most of the mainstem subbasin plans neglect to include mainstem river habitats, instead developing a plan only for the small tributaries entering the mainstem. This is a major deficiency.
• Out-of-subbasin effects — the plans often neglect to include an explanation of how actions within the subbasin could affect fish and wildlife elsewhere in the Columbia River System. The notion of cumulative effects was inadequately addressed in these geographically based efforts.
• Future population growth — most plans do not evaluate likely changes in land uses, human population, or fish and wildlife populations into the relevant future (at least two to three human generations). We considered this a major omission from a forward-looking planning initiative. 

Assessment Tools

• Data resources — some assessments do not provide the specific information needed to analyze limiting factors and to develop well-justified Management Plans. Although in some cases the data needed to accomplish that task truly were not available, in many others that task simply was overlooked.
• Analytical tools — use of habitat models often led to inadequately documented conclusions. For example, a common concern noted by reviewers is that the intended use of EDT is frequently confused in the plans. EDT is a tool designed to assess relative habitat capacity by species and to identify habitat attributes that are likely limiting factors to survival and production. EDT is a tool that is based on the weight of expert opinion (expressed in the rule sets by species). If future planning is to be assisted by analytical tools, it is increasingly important to determine if the current tools are adequate, if they are accessible for testing, and if their use is supported by the communities that will be influenced by the results of the analysis.

Endangered Species Act

• ESU coverage — although the plans generally note ESA-listed species and describe any threatened and endangered populations that occur within the subbasins, the plans do not usually include any larger discussion of the evolutionarily significant units (ESUs) at the geographic scale of the ESU itself or with respect to adjacent ESUs within the Columbia River Basin, even for focal species. For example, there is usually no discussion of how important a local population is to the ESU; i.e., whether it is one of only two populations remaining or one of many populations?
• Recovery planning — subbasin plans vary in coverage of the information needed for Technical Recovery Team (TRT) efforts and USFWS recovery plans. In some cases, however, TRT recovery objectives dominate the biological goals, to the detriment of developing a "ground-up", locally supported subbasin plan.  
• Consistency with ESA — consistency with the ESA was frequently "checked off" with respect to the Technical Guide. To complete this task adequately, the viable salmonid population (VSP) metrics of biological performance for ESA-listed aquatic focal species developed for the subbasin plan need to be checked directly for consistency with VSP metrics proposed by NOAA Fisheries and the USFWS.

Focal Species and Ecosystems

• Focal species selection — the emphasis on ESA-listed species, especially aquatic species, led some planners to exclude non-listed species, which resulted in some important habitat types being overlooked. The strongest plans were those that used functional analysis in selecting terrestrial focal species. Focal species that had very low abundances present a costly task for monitoring changes in these species and their habitats.
• Focal species and native species assemblages — augmenting focal species information with an assessment of changes in the characteristics of biological communities or ecosystem processes would provide a more complete picture of progress towards improved "ecosystem health."
• Discussion of population status and trends — this was almost universally lacking for terrestrial and non-salmonid aquatic species.

Artificial Production

• Integration of natural and artificial production -a major shortcoming in nearly all subbasin plans is a failure to link artificial production activities in the subbasin with ongoing and proposed habitat improvement activities in either the Assessment or Management Plan sections. Large, complex hatchery programs, such as those that occur in the Yakima, Salmon, Grande Ronde, and Clearwater subbasins, are not well described (except in appendices), nor are they integrated with the plans' limiting factors analyses and proposed habitat actions.
• Supplementation — some plans do not justify the role and scale of this type of proposed artificial production activities in achieving the subbasin's future vision. After the extensive dialogue on supplementation that has occurred over the years in the Columbia River Basin, this failure to justify supplementation causes continued concern over the integration of supplementation programs with natural production.

Limiting Factors

• Limiting factor identification — limiting factors often included a mix of environmental variables that ranged from single parameters that could limit one life history stage of a focal species at a single location in the subbasin, to broad landscape processes that affect the entire drainage system. The problem with mixing individual limiting factors with watershed processes is that simple remedies for one factor almost never addressed problems with the others.
• Applying results of limiting factor analysis — most of the plans do not discuss management actions in the context of the dynamic nature of watersheds, nor do they examine limiting factors within the context of the range of natural conditions. Recommendations for restoration tended to favor one-size-fits-all habitat conditions that were inadequately linked to limiting factors.

II. The Inventory

Thoroughness and Evaluation

• Existing habitat protection — the quality of the Inventories varies greatly. In many instances, the Inventory simply lists acreage or stream miles under land management protection (e.g., wilderness areas, wild and scenic rivers, etc), rather than give a true assessment of whether or not this protection status is improving the environmental problems identified in the assessment. Rarely is the significance or durability of existing protection evaluated; e.g., under current roadless area proposals, are roadless areas really protected?
• Success and failures of past activities — only a few plans analyze how the successes or failures of past projects and their accomplishments relate to the list of problems and needs that emerge from the Assessment.
• Gap analysis — there is little effort to identify the gaps between actions that have already been taken or are underway and the needs identified in the Assessment process to inform prioritization of strategies in the subsequent Management Plan. Many plans require further inventory and/or analysis to structure a credible Management Plan.
• Good examples — Some subbasin plans, like the Yakima, developed database management applications that associate key words in the Assessment with database inventories of programs, plans, and projects. A few subbasin plans, such as the Flathead and Kootenai, use the information in the Inventory to identify needed monitoring efforts and to design future proposed monitoring activities. Such approaches could be employed usefully in other subbasins. 

III. The Management Plan

Thoroughness

• Comprehensiveness — the Management Plans are almost universally the weakest elements of the plans; less complete than Assessments, but often more complete than Inventories that are intended to inform Management Plan development.
• Wildlife, biodiversity, and ecosystems — the Management Plans tend to incorporate far less attention to wildlife than to fish and often do not include much consideration of landscapes, ecosystems, and overall biodiversity.

Objectives and Strategies

• Confusion about terms — the Management Plans consistently confuse objectives, strategies, and actions. Indeed, many of the strategies read like objectives. Objectives should be measurable. Strategies, on the other hand, are the particular actions that would be implemented to achieve a given biological objective. Strategies are intended to be more specific than objectives and should comprise an integrated set of actions designed to achieve the objectives.
• Limiting factors and restoration prioritization - most plans do not identify a well-documented set of limiting factors in the Assessment, nor address these factors logically in a prioritization framework or use them to develop justifiable, prioritized implementation actions in the Management Plan. Prioritization is particularly important, not only to provide direction for restoration activities, but also to serve as the basis for evaluating project proposals. The general lack of adequate prioritization appears to result from a lack of time to complete the planning process, a lack of follow-through on the logic path after limiting factors were presented, a judgment that available information was insufficient, a conscious choice among participants not to prioritize, or an inability among participants to reach consensus on priority items. 

Fish & Wildlife Program Principles

• Need for explicit statements — there are no explicit statements of how the Management Plans address the Fish and Wildlife Program's principles. Future versions of the plans would benefit from this addition. Some plans, such as the Flathead and Kootenai, directly incorporate the Program's Scientific Principles as explicit guidelines for program development. More direct comparison of objectives, strategies, and priorities with the scientific principles that are intended to help supply an underlying framework of sound science is needed in most or all plans. 

IV. Research, Monitoring and Evaluation

Thoroughness

• Completeness — the research, monitoring, and evaluation (RM&E) section is incomplete in all subbasin plans, partially due to limitations in the objectives and strategies. RM&E sections usually do not mention the data needs identified in their own Assessments. Most plans need to include a clearer path from RM&E to adaptive management.
• Linkages between habitat projects and fish and wildlife responses — there is a critical need to evaluate (and demonstrate, if possible) where and when habitat restoration efforts increase or sustain fish and wildlife populations and at the same time maintain or increase diversity.
• Stock assessments — must include the smolts/spawner and adults/smolt separation of freshwater and ocean life stage information. Assessing habitat capacity and trends in adult production and recovery require this basic information.
• Regional coordination — the Management Plans do not discuss present strategies to coordinate regional monitoring programs and to share data, perhaps due to the inadequate assessment of current and proposed efforts.

Prioritization

• Approaches — most Management Plans failed to prioritize RM&E activities.
• Feasibility assessment — once they reach a prioritized set of RM&E recommendations, to determine their practicality, Management Plans should provide a feasibility assessment that includes estimates of costs. The scale of the plans makes such determinations subjective.

Finally, we believe review and future use of the 45 subbasin plans would be greatly facilitated by specifying page limits for each Plan (perhaps a 200 page total). The current subbasin plan drafts range from approximately 150 pages at the shortest to more than 2,000 pages in several instances. While making the review process more manageable, more importantly, a page limit would make the plans a more effective and accessible set of public documents, facilitating their implementation. The page limit also would encourage subbasin planners to focus concisely on larger issues while reducing details not needed for assessing the plans' potential effectiveness. This process was a learning experience for all involved, representing an enormous information management and analysis task. The next steps in this process, however, must focus on synthesis and the identification of prioritized opportunities for achieving restoration goals.

Legal note: The reports by the independent scientists were provided as public comment on the recommendations received by the Council for subbasin plan amendments. The reports, like all of the public comment submitted, is advisory, and will be considered by the Council as it follows the Act's fish and wildlife program amendment steps. We are making these reports available on the website at the request of subbasin planners and others interested in this process. The reports are very important comment on the proposed subbasin plan amendments, but they are not dispositive on the scientific and technical issues they address. Rather, it is the Council that ultimately must make determinations and findings about the use of the best available science in the proposed subbasin plans

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