In response to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s request on April 14, 2026, the ISRP reviewed a new proposal from the Spokane Tribe of Indians (STOI), titled Inland Lakes & Streams Management Plan Development & Implementation (BPA project #2024-003-00). The project’s intent is to develop an Inland Lakes and Streams Management Plan for watersheds within the Spokane Reservation to guide project implementation to enhance, protect, restore, and maintain lake and stream habitats. The plan will be updated periodically and serve as a framework and baseline for future reference to track progress and outcomes of completed projects. A complementary project objective is to assess the suitability of Reservation habitat for long-term beaver recolonization, and based on that assessment, refine the STOI plan to implement, monitor, and adaptively manage beaver-related habitat restoration projects.
ISRP Recommendation: Response Requested
This proposal represents a complex and comprehensive plan to monitor aquatic resources of the Spokane Indian Tribes within or entering the Reservation. The plan includes standard protocols for sampling physical characteristics and biotic assemblages of streams and inland lakes. Sampling protocols are widely accepted by the scientific community and are most effective when coupled with a spatial and temporal sampling design to capture important sources of environmental variation. The plan is ambitious, targeting many features of the Reservation’s aquatic resources. Information gathered through this plan clearly has the potential to inform restoration and enhancement actions and will lead to a richer understanding of inland lakes and streams on Tribal lands.
To help reach a final recommendation on this new proposal, the ISRP requests a point-by-point response to the following items:
- Clarify watershed goals and sustainability
- Develop SMART objectives
- Provide rationale for types of data collected
- Identify causes of impairment
- Address confounding factors
- Clarify elements of the sampling design
More details on these response request items are described in the ISRP’s full memo.
