Habitat Evaluation Procedures (HEP) Report; Precious Lands Wildlife Management Area, Technical Report 2000-2003.

• Main Author: Kozusko, Shana
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: 13 HYDRO ENERGY; 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION; CONIFERS; CONSTRUCTION; DAMS; DECISION MAKING; ELECTRIC POWER; EVALUATION; HABITAT; MANAGEMENT; MITIGATION; RANGELANDS; REARING; STREAMS; US FWS; Canada; Pacific; Tamarack; Perce; Chukar; Joseph Creek; Canada Goose
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/942120; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/942120; https://doi.org/10.2172/942120

The Nez Perce Tribe (NPT) currently manages a 15,325 acre parcel of land known as the Precious Lands Wildlife Management Area that was purchased as mitigation for losses incurred by construction of the four lower Snake River dams. The Management Area is located in northern Wallowa County, Oregon and southern Asotin County, Washington (Figure 1). It is divided into three management parcels--the Buford parcel is located on Buford Creek and straddles the WA-OR state line, and the Tamarack and Basin parcels are contiguous to each other and located between the Joseph Creek and Cottonwood Creek drainages in Wallowa County, OR. The project was developed under the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-501), with funding from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). The acreage protected under this contract will be credited to BPA as habitat permanently dedicated to wildlife and wildlife mitigation. A modeling strategy known as Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) was developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and adopted by BPA as a habitat equivalency accounting system. Nine wildlife species models were used to evaluate distinct cover type features and provide a measure of habitat quality. Models measure a wide range of life requisite variables for each species and monitor overall trends in vegetation community health and diversity. One product of HEP is an evaluation of habitat quality expressed in Habitat Units (HUs). This HU accounting system is used to determine the amount of credit BPA receives for mitigation lands. After construction of the four lower Snake River dams, a HEP loss assessment was conducted to determine how many Habitat Units were inundated behind the dams. Twelve target species were used in that evaluation: Canada goose, mallard, river otter, downy woodpecker, song sparrow, yellow warbler, marsh wren, western meadowlark, chukar, ring-necked pheasant, California quail, and mule deer. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and the Washington Department of fish ...