Ten Year Review of Implementation and Effectiveness of Plum Creek Timber Company Native Fish Habitat Conservation Plan in Western Montana

The Native Fish Habitat Conservation Plan (NFHCP) was approved by the US Fish and Wildlife Service under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2000.  This 30-year agreement conserves and enhances bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus), westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi), and Columbia River redband rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdnerii) habitat on over one million acres of forestland in western Montana.  On Plum Creek Timber Company ownership, the NFHCP is being implemented on 900,000 acres.  Over the past decade, the NFHCP has been partially transferred and assumed by Stimson Lumber Company and The Nature Conservancy on an additional 160,000 acres acquired from Plum Creek.  Biological goals of the plan are to maintain or improve “4 Cs” essential to trout conservation: Cold water, Clean water, Complex and Connected habitats.  The NFHCP has 55 individual commitments to reduce sedimentation from haul roads, upgrade fish barrier culverts, provide effective buffers along streams during harvest operations, implement grazing management practices, place protective riparian deed restrictions on lands that are sold, riparian restoration, and research and monitoring the effectiveness of the NFHCP.  Every five years, the Service conducts a major review of the NFHCP with Plum Creek, and determines if the plan is meeting its goals.  If not, the plan can be modified through a framework outlined in the NFHCP.  This framework includes a number of adaptive management “triggers”, which if observed, require evaluation of biological relevance, causal factors, and as warranted, revision of the plan.  In 2011, a ten-year review of the NFHCP was conducted.  This presentation describes the outcome of the review, including accomplishments of the plan for road and watershed restoration, results of adaptive management research studies, effectiveness of the plan at meeting biological goals, and description of any necessary revisions to the NFHCP.