M&E Challenges in Evaluating the Response of Terns, Plovers, Whooping Cranes and Sturgeon to Flow, Sediment and Habitat Management Actions

This presentation will focus on the Design and Evaluate steps of the AM cycle, highlighting the critical links between these steps and the role of targeted M&E.  The Platte River Recovery Implementation Program (Program) is intended to address loss of habitat for four “target” species in the river in central Nebraska: the endangered whooping crane (Grus americana), interior least tern (Sterna antillarum), and pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus); and the threatened piping plover (Charadrius melodus).  The Program implements management actions, monitoring, and research under an adaptive management plan to link science learning to management and policy decision-making and to learn more about the physical processes of the central Platte and the responses of the four target species to management actions.  Since 2007, the Program has initiated several monitoring protocols and research projects to build background information and is now moving into large-scale implementation of management actions such as short-duration high flows, sediment augmentation, channel widening, vegetation removal, nesting island construction, sandpit management, and other activities.  As the Program moves closer to implementation of management actions, staff and partners continue to address several monitoring and evaluation challenges to ensure learning stays focused on critical uncertainties, including:  1) ensuring that monitoring is collecting data that represents metrics of interest for priority hypotheses; 2) relating critical uncertainties to decisions regarding flow, sediment, and land management; 3) building contrast into management treatments within the context of a single linear river system over a short time period (13 years) and a relatively small spatial scale (90 river miles); 4) conducting systematic monitoring and research on a system largely held in private ownership; 5) utilizing multiple contractors to implement monitoring and research and keeping those contractors informed as to the ultimate purposes of scientific activities for the Program;  6) very small sample sizes (ex. only a few hundred whooping cranes exist in the wild, of which very few utilize the central Platte River); and 7) implementing two management strategies comprised of several similar management actions (ex. mechanical river widening and clearing are utilized in both strategies).  Addressing these challenges is also presenting staff and partners with the opportunity to better plan for annual and longer-term data synthesis and clearly bound the problem(s) being addressed by the AM Plan to help better inform decision-making at the policy level.