Quarterly Report to the Platte River Governance Committee
July 14, 1999
FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
Milestones
R1-1 - Documentation of habitat and species conditions.R3-1 - Procedures to determine biological response.
W17-1 - National Fish and Wildlife Foundation expenditure of funds. (Completed)
P2-1 - Assess effects of enhanced flow activities on pallid sturgeon.
P3-1 - Milestones for first increment of a proposed program.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has been involved in the following activities from April 21, 1999 through July 13, 1999:
The draft report on existing habitat and species conditions in the Central Platte River region.
(R1-1) was distributed to the Technical Committee, Governance Committee and other participants for review and comment on June 18. The Technical Committee will provide comments to the Executive Director by July 23. Governance Committee and consolidated Technical Committee comments are due to the Service by August 20. Upon receipt of review comments, the report will be revised based on the comments. We anticipate that the revised draft report would then be available for peer review by September 17. This schedule is contingent on recommendations from the Technical Committee and others based on the integration of available information from the monitoring and research protocols and parameters to measure biological responses.
The Service and others within DOI have continued to work with the Technical Committee in developing procedures for measuring biological responses (R3-1). The Service and Technical Committee have coordinated on the integration of the research milestones and have developed a schedule to complete these milestones in a coordinated fashion.
The Service will be providing additional funding support to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) to fully fund their project to compile and analyze the existing whooping crane, least tern and piping plover databases. The project will consolidate, summarize, and statistically characterize habitat information from a database which has been collected over many years by the whooping crane migrational tracking project. For least tern and piping plover,
NGPC will consolidate, summarize, and statistically characterize the distribution, reproduction, and population trends in Nebraska. The project is intended to improve the comprehensive understanding of habitat use and population status of the three species. NGPC presented a detailed description of the project to the Technical Committee in June.
As reported last March, the Midcontinent Ecological Science Center (MESC), U.S. Geological Survey, is presently evaluating and updating biological criteria of the whooping crane roost habitat model for the Service using current information. The refined biological criteria combined with existing hydraulics models will provide a refined flow/habitat relationship as well as sensitivity test of model output, and will provide a better whooping crane model for our use in the EIS and ESA analyses. The draft report from MESC is expected October 1, 1999.
Limited funds preclude full reconstruction of the channel hydraulics portion of the crane habitat model. However, the Service does plan to dedicate funds remaining from this fiscal year toward re-measuring and re-checking the channel hydraulics at several key reaches of whooping crane use. The measurements will be performed by the Bureau of Reclamation and will be used to assess whether possible channel changes since the original measurements (1984-1989) significantly influence the crane model output.
PLATTE RIVER EIS OFFICE
Milestone P1-2 - DOI will continue NEPA compliance for the Program and will issue a draft environmental impact statement with preferred alternative by the end of year 2 of the Cooperative Agreement.
The EIS Team is conducting a screening level evaluation of the land and water elements suggested by the public and agencies during the scoping phase. The EIS Team is continuing to work on these elements in formulating alternatives to the proposed Program.
To meet the goal of completing the NEPA process within the time frame of the Cooperative Agreement, the EIS Team plans to release a Formulation Status Report for public review in December of 1999, a draft EIS with preferred alternative in May 2000, and a Final EIS in November, 2000.
For further information about the Partnership,
contact any Governance Committee member.For comments and questions about this website, please email Buck Feist or call 406-247-7607