A Multiple Watershed Approach to Assessing the Effects of Habitat Restoration Actions on Anadromous and Resident Fish Populations, Technical Report 2003-2004.

Habitat protection and restoration is a cornerstone of current strategies to restore ecosystems, recover endangered fish species, and rebuild fish stocks within the Columbia River Basin. Strategies featuring habitat restoration include the 2000 Biological Opinion on operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS BiOp) developed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the 2000 Biological Opinion on Bull Trout developed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and Sub-Basin Plans developed under the Fish and Wildlife Program of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NWPCC). There is however little quantitative information about the effectiveness of different habitat restoration techniques. Such information is crucial for helping scientists and program managers allocate limited funds towards the greatest benefits for fish populations. Therefore, it is critical to systematically test the hypotheses underlying habitat restoration actions for both anadromous and resident fish populations. This pilot project was developed through a proposal to the Innovative Projects fund of the NWPCC (ESSA 2002). It was funded by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) following reviews by the Independent Scientific Review Panel (ISRP 2002), the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority (CBFWA 2002), the NWPCC and BPA. The study was designed to respond directly to the above described needs for information on the effectiveness of habitat restoration actions, including legal measures specified in the 2000 FCRPS BiOp (RPA 183, pg. 9-133, NMFS 2000). Due to the urgency of addressing these measures, the timeline of the project was accelerated from a duration of 18 months to 14 months. The purpose of this pilot project was to explore methods for evaluating past habitat restoration actions and their effects on fish populations. By doing so, the project will provide a foundation of retrospective analyses, on which to build prospective, multi-watershed designs for future habitat restoration actions. Such designs are being developed concurrently with this project by several other groups in the Columbia Basin (RME Workgroup 2003, NMFS 2003, Hillman and Paulsen 2002, Hillman 2003). By addressing questions about habitat restoration and monitoring (in coordination with other related efforts), we hope that this project will catalyze a shift in the Basin's paradigm of habitat restoration, moving from implementation of individual watershed projects towards rigorously designed and monitored, multiwatershed, adaptive management experiments. The project involved three phases of work, which were closely integrated with various related and ongoing efforts in the region: (1) Scoping - We met with a Core Group of habitat experts and managers to scope out a set of testable habitat restoration hypotheses, identify candidate watersheds and recommend participants for a data evaluation workshop. (2) Data Assembly - We contacted over 80 scientists and managers to help evaluate the suitability of each candidate watershed's historical data for assessing the effectiveness of past restoration actions. We eventually settled on the Yakima, Wenatchee, Clearwater, and Salmon subbasins, and began gathering relevant data for these watersheds at a workshop with habitat experts and managers. Data assembly continued for several months after the workshop. (3) Data Analysis and Synthesis - We explored statistical approaches towards retrospectively analyzing the effects of restoration 'treatments' at nested spatial scales across multiple watersheds (Chapters 2-5 of this report). These analyses provided a foundation for identifying existing constraints to testing restoration hypotheses, and opportunities to overcome these constraints through improved experimental designs, monitoring protocols and project selection strategies (Chapters 6 and 7 of this report). Finally, we developed a set of recommendations to improve the design, implementation, and monitoring of prospective habitat restoration programs in the Columbia River Basin (Chapter 8)