C.

41
From: Bilby, Bob
To: John Ferguson; tebo@utk.edu; travis@neuro.fsu.edu; pkareiva@tnc.org
Cc: John Stein
Subject: RE: Request for additional FCRPS BiOp review by Dr. Lubchenco
Date: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 2:43:59 PM

I have time between 10 and noon tomorrow when I can review the documents.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: John Ferguson [mailto:John.W.Ferguson@noaa.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 1:18 PM
To: Bilby, Bob; tebo@utk.edu; travis@neuro.fsu.edu; pkareiva@tnc.org
Cc: John Stein
Subject: Request for additional FCRPS BiOp review by Dr. Lubchenco

Joe, Bob, Peter, and Dan:

I am writing on behalf of Dr. Lubchenco to ask whether you are able, given
your schedule, to review some brief documents that have been prepared as
part of an Adaptive Management Plan (Plan) for the Federal Columbia River
Power System Biological Opinion (BiOp). Since your review of the BiOp
early last month, NOAA and the Action Agencies have been working to
incorporate your suggestions into the BiOp. I can't go into the specifics
in an email, but in general, the Plan calls for additional activities and
steps to be added to the BiOp, which fall into four
categories: 1) immediate actions that will be implemented regardless of
salmon population trends, 2) formal triggers to provide improved "early
warnings" of possible changes in trends, 3) if a trigger is reached, rapid
responses are being formulated that can be implemented if needed, and 4)
if a trigger is met, additional contingency (long term) plans can be
implemented. All of the actions are to be guided and aided by additional
life-cycle modeling of pop trends, effects of climate, more spatially
explicit modeling and modeling of potential interactions among variables
affecting pop status and trends and among the various "H's"
and ESUs. Our main focus is to reduce the uncertainty you rightly pointed
out exists with some key assumptions, build formal triggers into the BiOp
implementation for early warning, and have additional actions that could
be implemented if needed.

Specifically, I am writing to see if you are able and willing to review

from 1 to 3, 2-page issue papers. These papers are being finalized and
will be sent to Dr. Lubchenco later today. She has asked to see if you
are able to review these brief documents. If so, I will send them to you
later today and ask that you send your input back to me by tomorrow, if at
all possible. Unfortunately, we are up against some hard court filing
deadlines here and haven't more time than that for your review.
If not, we understand.

Thank you for considering her request.

Regards,

John

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