FEIS on Platte River Recovery Program

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How is water provided to the Program? prove river Each- State contributes a proj ect for the Program that provides a means to im? flows in the Central Platte Habitat Area in Nebraska: The State of Wyoming provides the Pathfinder Modification Project that restores some of the space in Pathfinder Reservoir that has been lost to sedimentatiori. This project provides roughly 34,000 acre-feet of storage space which can store water for use by the Program. The State of Colorado provides the Tamarack Project, which re-times roughly 10,000 acre-feet of flows in the South Platte to help improve the timing of flows to the Habitat Area in Nebraska. The State of Nebraska provides an Environmental Account in Lake McConaughy which can store up to a maximum of 100,000 acre-feet of water for the Pr`ogram. Together these three State projects improve flows in the Central Platte Habitat Area by roughly 80,000 acre feet per year on average. The Program also includes thirteen smaller water supply or conservation projects to provide roughly an additional 60,000 acre-feet of flow improvement in the Habitat Area in Nebraska. How does the Program use Adaptive Management, Research and Peer Review? An adaptive management approach to habitat restoration is a key part of the Program. The Program will extensively monitor Program actions and the resulting cha.nges in habitat and species response. This information will be used to identify the best, most cost-effective methods, and to adjust Program actions and management objectives. The Program will conduct research on key aspects of target species biology and habitat use, with the aim of filling information gaps important to the Program. The Program's plans for adaptive management, monitoring, and research, and the findings from those activities, will be subject to independent peer review anci will be made available to the public. In 2003, at the request of the Governance Committee, the Department of the Interior funded a$700,000 National Research Council review of the science associated with the target species, the Service's flow and habitat recommendations, and the Department's analysis of the river processes related to the loss of habitat. After reviewing the available data and literature, the Council gave a strong endorsement of the Department=s science and the underlying need for the recovery program. The final Council report, Endangered and Threatened Species of the Platte River, was released in 2005. 6