The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday recommended funding of from $800,000 to $900,000 annually during fiscal years 2008 and 2009 for portions of the Comparative Survival Study, a project coordinated by the Fish Passage Center.

The recommendation eliminates one element of the study, the PIT-tagging of juvenile chinook salmon and steelhead from lower Columbia River basin streams so their survival rate can be compared with that of upriver fish upon their return as adults.

In eliminating the upriver/downriver comparison, the Council was heeding the advice of the Independent Scientific Review Panel and Independent Scientific Advisory Board. The panels in a review of the CSS proposal said that three of the project's four biological objectives meet the Council program's scientific review criteria.

The planned comparison of SARs of upriver chinook that were transported through the federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system with downriver indicator stocks, did not, "because of inevitable confounding from other factors in establishing cause(s) of upriver/downriver differences that may be detected, regardless of sample size and detection power that could be achieved," says the ISAB/ISRP review http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/isab/isabisrp2007-6.htm)

The CSS is a field study of the survival of PIT-tagged spring/summer chinook and PIT-tagged summer steelhead through the Snake/Columbia river hydro system from smolts through returning adults, with a focus on relative survival of fish that traveled as smolts by alternative routes (e.g., in river, transported, different routes of dam passage, and different numbers of dams passed).

The project has been funded through the Council's Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program since 1996. The Bonneville Power Administration supports the program and makes final funding decisions.

When the Council completed its program funding recommendation package for 2007-2009 it did not earmark any funding for the CSS project in 2008-2009, saying it would delay those decisions until a CSS retrospective report was completed and had been reviewed by the ISAB and ISRP. The contract for the work was earlier extended into fiscal year 2008, from Oct. 1 through February.

The funding will allow the continued PIT-tagging Snake River spring/summer chinook salmon, and increase the level of tagging for Snake River steelhead, in FY08 and FY09 to fulfill the first three CSS biological objectives, specifically 1) estimate smolt-to-adult survival rates (SARs), 2) compare SARs to the SAR hydro goal, and 3) evaluate transport to control (T/C) ratios, according to a memo prepared by Jim Ruff, the NPCC's manager, mainstem passage and river operations.

In all, about 244,000 chinook and 56,000 steelhead will be tagged for the study this year, Ruff said.

A Nov. 29 letter signed by Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, Idaho Fish and Game, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service urged full funding for the proposal.

"The ISAB/ISRP review recognized the CSS is successfully implementing a large-scale monitoring program and the review supports the PIT tag marking of additional wild downriver groups to determine SARs and other population metrics for these stocks as part of regional monitoring and evaluation," the letter says.

The letter can be found at http://www.nwcouncil.org/news/2007_12/f1.pdf (page 9 of the PDF document.)

"Many stocks in addition to those of Snake River origin are affected by the operation of the FCRPS and the measures mitigate for those effects, including the downriver steelhead populations proposed for marking that are listed under the ESA.

"Eliminating these downriver mark groups or delaying the implementation of mark groups will cause critical gaps in these time series. These gaps in SARs will make assessing population status and evaluating restoration and recovery measures difficult and less timely.

"More specifically, the ISAB/ISRP indicated that CSS biological objectives (1), (2), and (3) and associated work elements meet scientific review criteria -- estimate SARs, in-river survival rates, T/C ratios and make comparisons against hydro goals.

"The downriver populations proposed for tagging are needed to satisfy these three objectives. The ISAB/ISRP did not recommend eliminating the tagging of downriver groups for these monitoring and evaluation purposes," according to the letter from fish management entities. "Building a time series of survival among representative population groups provides important empirical data for assessing the relationship of this survival information to environmental effects and management actions.

"This monitoring and evaluation approach does not assume that survival differences are only attributable to hydrosystem impacts," the letter says.