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<br />An effort should be made to track the abundance of the founding population. Thus far, <br />translocated fish have only been batch marked with fluorescent elastomer tags, and <br />there appears to be some tag loss (21 %; Stone and Sponholtz 2003). This precludes <br />mark-recapture efforts to track the population. Once fish reach 150 mm, they can be <br />PIT tagged; allowing mark-recapture studies to precede, however, a funded program to <br />do so must be established, and we recommend that Chute Falls monitoring be a part of <br />the routine monitoring in the LCR. <br /> <br />Generally, managers respond to a potential threat of decreasing a wild Ne by artificially <br />imposing gene flow into the smaller population (i.e., the One Migrant Per Generation <br />rule [OMPG]; Mills and Allendorf 1996). For example, 1 to 10 fish might be moved each <br />generation above Chute Falls. Although such remedial tactics appear to prevent <br />fixation or further loss of heterozygosity within the small population (Mills and Allendorf <br />1996), it does not appear to address the initial problem (i.e., a very small founder <br />population will likely have decreased initial heterozygosity). Additionally, the OMPG <br />assumes no natural selection is occurring in either population (i.e., only drift and gene <br />flow are in operation). <br /> <br />Swamping the translocated fish with a high number of fish from the main LCR <br />population each generation may be an alternative to using the OMPG. Managers could <br />repeat the movement of fish above Chute Falls for several years and then continue to <br />move smaller numbers of fish (say 100 age-1 fish) once a fish generation. This <br />approach is suggested by P. Hedrick (ASU, pers. com.), who believes that the OMPG is <br />inappropriate in this instance and that the numbers should be higher. <br /> <br />Some effort should be made to monitor for potential inbreeding (loss of heterozygosity <br />in either the translocated population or the main LCR population). Since the processes <br />of inbreeding takes generations, it should be possible to monitor for these changes, <br />should they occur. However, tissues must be taken to genetically analyze the fish and a <br />funding mechanism identified to analyze samples. <br /> <br />It will be difficult (if not impossible) to accurately measure downstream levels of <br />movement from the resulting offspring above Chute Falls. Attempts could be made to <br />monitor downstream drift of larvae with drift nets, batch mark age-O fish, or PIT tag fish <br />once they reach 150 mm, but these efforts will likely contain a high degree of <br />uncertainty. For example, most offspring should be expected to move downstream <br />(below Chute Falls) at small sizes (before they can be batch marked or tagged) during <br />flood events, which is also when drift nets become problematic (e.g., currents become <br />too strong and nets very quickly fill up with debris; D. Van Haverbeke, pers. obs.). <br />However, if genetic samples are obtained, it may be possible to detect changes in the <br />populations. <br /> <br />Summary <br /> <br />In summary, uncertainties exist about potential genetic impacts to the main population <br />of humpback chub below the falls (e.g., concerns with inbreeding, effective population <br /> <br />41 <br />