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Recommendations for the Design of Hatchery Monitoring Programs and the
Organization of Data Systems
October 3, 2000 | document ISAB 2000-4
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Summary
This report completes the ISAB's three-part response to your request
for a review of the draft performance standards and indicators attached to
the Council's Artificial Production Review (APR).
With the Council's Fish and Wildlife program amendment process
coinciding with the release of the draft FCRPS BiOP, the Governor's Plan,
and the Federal Caucus All-H paper, important salmon and steelhead
recovery planning is underway in the Columbia River basin. These
plans anticipate continued use of artificial production to provide fish
for harvest and to help rebuild depressed wild stocks. Consequently,
the ISAB believes this letter of transmittal provides a timely and
appropriate opportunity to summarize our review of the APR performance
standards and indicators and to suggest that our integrated evaluation of
the various regional plans could serve as a forum to continue to
contribute to the region's hatchery reform efforts.
After completion of the APR, Council asked the ISAB to review the
performance standards and indicators focusing on three questions:
- Are the draft performance standards and associated indicators the
appropriate tools to periodically evaluate the effects of individual
artificial production programs for the purpose of determining whether
the principles, policies, and purposes in the Artificial Production
Report (APR) are being fulfilled?
- Are the draft performance standards and associated indicators the
appropriate tools to adequately evaluate the effects of the artificial
production activities in the basin?
- If a performance standard, indicator or other means of measurement
is not the most appropriate tool for this purpose, what other standard
or indicator would you recommend?
The ISAB responded to that request by preparing three reports dealing
with the following topics:
- Appropriateness of the Performance Standards and Indicators.
- Consistency of Artificial Production Policies and Implementation
Strategies with the Multi-Species Framework Scientific Principles and
the Scientific Review Team Guidelines.
- Development of an Appropriate Data System.
Our first report concluded that a set of indicators would be an
appropriate tool to assess and evaluate individual artificial production
programs (facilities) and artificial production activities in the basin.
Establishing indicators consistent with the APR policies is an important
early step in designing a monitoring program to assess and evaluate
artificial production. This report also concluded that the performance
standards and indicators attached to the APR were inappropriate and needed
thorough revision. We recommended developing a set of indicators
that used measurable metrics with clear relationships to the APR policies,
and ones that were organized hierarchically for subbasin, province, and
basin components, while at the same time encompassing the five different
purposes of artificial production. Once that set of indicators was
chosen, critical values, or norms, of those indicators could be
established as performance standards. Because empirical analysis is
lacking for many of the possible indicators for the APR policies,
performance standards initially would have to be selected based on
ecological and evolutionary theory. Adaptive management
experimentation, in conjunction with a viable program of monitoring, could
be used in the future to refine both the indicators and the performance
standards.
One example of an indicator, proposed by NMFS to be used as its
foundation for recovery evaluation, is lambda, the median annual rate of
population growth. Lambda is calculated from population census data
and values above 1.10 indicate healthy populations, whereas values under
0.80 indicate populations in perilous condition. Employing this
metric as an indicator involves obtaining census data from monitoring,
estimating lambda, and interpreting its value. In the draft FCRPS
BiOP, NMFS proposes standards for lambda in 5-year and 8-year hydrosystem
reviews that would continue implementation of recovery actions or trigger
reassessment of jeopardy conclusions.
In our second report we discussed our understanding of how the
scientific principles in the Multi-Species Framework relate to artificial
production and we commented on the implementation of the ten artificial
production policies presented in the APR. The ISAB concluded first, that
assessing and evaluating artificial production requires a comprehensive
basin-wide tagging program, and second, that clear program objectives are
needed to identify appropriate indicators. Additionally, even though
hatchery reform is a prominent feature of the APR, we noted a lack of
specificity in identifying those practices to be reformed. We
believe that successful reform requires both identifying clear objectives
and establishing an effective monitoring program to assess reform
progress.
Our third report reiterates the recurring themes above: objectives for
artificial production programs are needed for subbasins, provinces, and
the entire basin. Together with the APR policies, these objectives
form the foundation for designing those indicators that would be used in a
monitoring program to assess the Columbia River basin hatchery
system. Assessing the hatchery system requires collecting three
types of information:
- Specific details of fish culture practices inside the hatchery.
- What happens to the hatchery produced fish after release.
- What effect the hatchery produced fish have on wild and other
hatchery fish outside the hatchery.
Assessing how fish culture practices inside the hatchery (information
type 1) affect what happens to hatchery produced fish after release
(information type 2) is required to evaluate alternative fish
rearing/release strategies and guide hatchery reform. Assessing the
effects of hatchery produced fish on wild and hatchery fish outside the
hatchery is required to evaluate the success of supplementation and
evaluate possible detrimental effects of mitigation and augmentation
programs.
No organization is currently responsible for the design and
implementation of a comprehensive monitoring program. Because this
monitoring should anticipate standardized data collections at hatcheries,
within subbasins, the migration corridor, estuary, and ocean, the lack of
a responsible organization needs to be addressed.
A monitoring program to assess artificial production needs an archiving
system that provides stakeholders with access to the data. There is
no need to centralize the entire data storage and retrieval system.
Internet technology allows an effective system of web links between
modular sites responsible for specific functions, such as data archiving
or data access. Data archiving functions should be modularized so
there is one archiving center for each class of data. At the current
time there are not enough archiving centers, and important classes of data
are not being compiled and archived in an accessible form. The data
access function should be modularized to serve specific data access needs,
which can evolve with changing needs for analysis.
Because the recommendations provided in our three reports are intended
to increase the likelihood of successful assessment, evaluation, and
reform of the hatchery system, we have necessarily focused on perceived
shortcomings. We also want to acknowledge that the APR policies are
generally consistent with the scientific principles in the foundation, and
that we support them. Our primary concern after reviewing the APR is
that the implementation actions are not sufficient nor specific enough for
the anticipated hatchery reforms to be realized. We believe the APR
represents a beginning effort, not a completed task.
Hatchery technology was increasingly employed in the mid-1900's in an
attempt to mitigate the effects of habitat elimination within the Columbia
basin. Regional decision-makers acknowledged they were using an
unproven experimental technology, and some scientists urged more rigorous
monitoring. Based on the observation of continuing declines in
returns of adult salmon to the basin coincident with increasing releases
of hatchery smolts, we concur with the conclusions of the National
Research Council and the Federal Review of Hatchery programs that
mitigation was in fact unsuccessful. Whether this lack of success
was due to our inability to grow fish in captivity that could survive
adequately in the wild, or whether it is due to habitat conditions being
insufficient to support the numbers of fish produced is largely
unknown. Had the monitoring programs called for by scientists been
implemented, at least a portion of this question could have been addressed
now, and the controversy of employing hatchery technology resolved.
Planning efforts that are now underway anticipate continued use of
hatchery technology, not only to supply fish for harvest, but also
to support recovery of ESA listed stocks. Regional decision-makers
acknowledge that the current technology is unproven and experimental and
advocate using adaptive management to resolve uncertainties.
Monitoring the outcome of management experiments is a cornerstone of
adaptive management. The ISAB recommends initiating and supporting
the immediate establishment of an adequate comprehensive monitoring
program. Investment in a monitoring program will be significant and
may reduce the numbers of smolts released initially, however, eventual
program improvements and the resolution of uncertainties and controversy
should make the effort well worth it.
ISAB members are currently reading the Council's Fish and Wildlife
program amendments, the FCRPS BiOP, the Governor's Plan, and the Federal
Caucus All-H paper. With our coordinators, Mr. McConnaha and Dr.
Schiewe, we are discussing the appropriate role and format for the ISAB to
review these documents. For the hatchery portion of that review we
intend to pursue the linked questions of experimentation, adaptive
management, and monitoring, with a view to offering advice on how to
implement these generalities in a specific program.
Sincerely,
Jim Lichatowich, Chair
Independent Scientific Advisory Board
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