With advice from a variety of sources now in hand, Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff will begin piecing together a recommendation for how available fish and wildlife monies will be spent in fiscal years 2007-2009.

“We’re just a few months away from having recommendations for the proposed work,” Patty O’Toole, NPCC program implementation manager, told the Council Wednesday during its meeting in Missoula, Mont. Project proposals submitted in January requested a total of slightly more than $1 billion during the three-year period. The Council’s fish and wildlife program will have about half that amount available.

For complete information about the 2007-2009 project solicitation go to http://www.nwcouncil.org/fw/budget/2007/Default.asp

Over the past month scientific advisers, local/state prioritization groups and a panel formed to review mainstem/systemwide projects have submitted their funding recommendations to the Council.

O’Toole said that the staff intended to evaluate the input from the various sources and the projects themselves and provide funding recommendations in September for the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee to review. The full Council is expected to make its funding recommendations in October.

Outliers in the process are potential Endangered Species Act demands. The Council program, formed at the behest of 1980’s Northwest Power Act, has been called on in recent years to fund “off-site” mitigation for listed salmon and steelhead affected by the federal Columbia/Snake river hydrosystem. The Council answers a broader NWPA mandate to mitigate for all fish and wildlife affected by the construction and operation of the hydrosystem.

Work is now under way to develop a new ESA biological opinion for the hydrosystem. That work is not expected to be concluded until February at the soonest.

The Bonneville Power Administration’s Greg Delwiche told the fish and wildlife committee Tuesday that it is “highly likely” that the new BiOp will include an off-site package that will require funding. The power act dictates BPA’s responsibility for funding the Council program. BPA also has funding responsibilities under the ESA as marketer of power generated in the federal hydrosystem.

Delwiche said the agency considers the Council program as “integrated” to meet both power act and ESA needs.

Some of the projects receiving lower priority in the local/state groups’ provincial budget balancing have BiOp implications.

“Those are some of the tradeoffs these groups are dealing with,” O’Toole told the Council.

“Our obligation is broader than listed species,” Oregon Councilor Joan Dukes said during a fish and wildlife committee discussion of potential ESA impacts on the Council budget. The federal process is in midstream with the prevailing 2004 BiOp outlining specific project needs. It is not know which of those needs will be carried forward into the new BiOp, or what additions are forthcoming.

Washington Councilor Larry Cassidy said a forcing of new BiOp projects into a carefully considered, and full, Council budget should not be tolerated.

“You might as well consider the Council worthless if that happens,” Cassidy said. The Council would have to say “stop.”

The provincial recommendations from the local/state groups are the first submitted “post subbasin plans.” Those plans, for almost all of the more than 50 subbasins in the Columbia River basin, were developed at the local level. They are intended to identify limits to fish and wildlife productivity and prioritize actions believed necessary to overcome those limits.

The provincial prioritization produced some interesting results. As an example, in Oregon’s portion of the Columbia Plateau Province, there were 10 ongoing projects (out of 46 total) that “are not getting recommendations to go forward,” O’Toole said. Another 17 projects had their proposed budgets cut to help balance the overall provincial budget.

In the Mountain Columbia Province, eight potentially “new” projects emerged as priorities out of 23 projects. O’Toole and Idaho Councilor Judi Danielson caution that projects with new numbers — the means for identifying those new projects — doesn’t necessarily mean they are new. In some cases ongoing projects are split with part moving forward with a new project number.

A total of about 240 projects prioritized by the local/state groups were directed back into the so-called “fix-it loop.”

The Independent Scientific Review Panel in its preliminary review of the projects concluded that 218 of the 540 projects submitted overall were “fundable” or “fundable in part” and that anther 104 proposals are “not fundable.” It says that the panel needs additional information or “responses” from project proponents before the ISRP can judge 210 other proposals. The ISRP assesses proposed Council projects for scientific sondness.

Project sponsors had until today (July 14) to respond to the ISRP’s concerns. The ISRP will then close the fix-it loop by evaluating responses and issuing a final review Aug. 31.

A team of state, tribal and federal fish and wildlife managers and representatives of BPA, the Council and the Corps have been at work since March to review a set of “basinwide” project submittals. The projects propose to do research, monitoring and evaluation, coordination and data management that have broad program and/or basinwide relevance (as opposed to being project, subbasin or single province oriented).

That Mainstem/Systemwide Review Team narrowed the list of projects by cutting numerous projects and recommending others, including numerous ongoing projects. A second iteration of the MSRT’s recommendation balances the budget at $32 million. About $52 million worth of proposals were submitted for funding during the three-year period.

“This was a brutal process. We had to cut a lot of money,” said Tom Iverson of the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority. CBFWA facilitated the MSRT process.

The MSRT recommendations said no to some projects that the Council has traditionally favored, such as one that tracks Columbia River salmon up the continental shelf after they leave the rivers mouth. The project is led by Canadian scientist David Welch.

The MSRT also recommends funding projects, such as bull trout monitoring, “that are not appropriate to be funded by the FCRPS,” said Doug Marker, NPCC fish and wildlife director.

“We’ll be developing these issues to make staff recommendations to the committee first,” Marker said. Those recommendations would provide the rationale for any deviations from the MSRT recommendations.