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sediment issues is improper. The Technical Committee needs to fully understand and review the model prior to its use as proposed in the Document. Apparently at least part of the basis for the Service's concerns regarding sediment lies in their impression that EA releases and efforts to meet target flows may directly result in bed degradation problems which may throw the Platte out of its current dynamic equilibrium state. Peer Review Milestones- The Cooperative Agreement's Milestone R4 -1 states that the "...technical committee... will establish guidelines and procedures for peer review of the documents required in Milestones Rl -1, R2 -1, and R3 -1. This committee will develop and implement a peer review work plan for the period of the Cooperative Agreement." Additionally, Milestone R2 -3 states that "(p)eer review of habitat and species monitoring and research conducted pursuant to Milestones R1 -1, R2 -1 and R3 -1 will be completed and the results reported to the Governance Committee." The CA and the peer review work plan specifically target the peer review of documents required for production of the R3 -1 Document. In order to facilitate timely review, the source documents relied upon by the USFWS should be independently peer reviewed. Given the R3 -1 Document's significant reliance on Joint Study documents (draft and final), the whooping crane instream flow model, and the sediment /vegetation model, I would suggest, at a minimum, they be included in the review. The process and schedule laid out for completion of the Document should not preclude the opportunity for incorporation of substantive changes that may result from peer review. A brief examination of the comments provided to the Service on a previous draft of the Document seems to show that various comments were given greater consideration than others. For example, Lingle's comments appear to have been summarily discounted while those of Hutchison and Kirsch were gone over in great detail. Adaptive Management- The R3 -1 Document fails to adequately incorporate the adaptive management concept as described in Section III.B. of Proposed Program. This critical component of any Program is ignored by the R3 -1 Document. Parts 5 and 6 of Section III.B. of the Program proposal specifically describe how the evaluation of habitat and species responses and how the evaluations of Program effectiveness dovetail with the adaptive management process. The Document needs to more fully develop and describe the procedures intended to incorporate /facilitate adaptive management. 0