Terms of Reference

Science advice to the Fisheries Protection Program on the effectiveness of spawning habitat creation for substrate spawning temperate fish

National Peer Review - National Capital Region

January 22-24, 2019
Ottawa, Ontario

Chairperson: Karen Smokorowski and Amanda Winegardner

Context

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has a regulatory regime in place to avoid, mitigate and offset the negative effects of projects on fish and fish habitat. DFO also funds partnership programs to address the historical impacts of fish habitat destruction and alteration through creation and restoration of aquatic habitats.

DFO’s Fisheries Protection Program (FPP) has requested the Canadian Science Advice Secretariat to conduct a peer review of the effectiveness of spawning substrate restoration techniques at restoring or offsetting destroyed and degraded fish habitats and fish productivity losses in regions of varying productivity and across habitat types.

In order to address this request for advice, this science advisory process will largely focus on a single restoration method (spawning habitat creation or enhancement) for substrate spawning fish in temperate systems. This process will primarily make use of a systematic literature review (protocol described in Taylor et al. (2017)) in an attempt to use this type of rigorous analysis in providing applied science advice to management practitioners. Furthermore, to better understand the benefits of using a systematic versus other (conventional) forms of knowledge review and synthesis (or transfer), additional reviews will be incorporated into this CSAS process. We will also use the reviews to better understand and provide guidance on what information is important to collect before, during, and after offset and restoration projects in order to assess their potential and functional effectiveness.  This particular science advisory process is expected to be the first in a series focusing on offset and restoration practices, with later processes focusing on other aspects of the original request for advice (e.g., restoration recommendations across regions of varying productivity and habitat types).

Working Papers

Members of the Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory and the Canadian Centre for Evidence-Based Conservation and Environmental Management (CEBCEM; Dr. Steven Cooke) at Carleton University have produced a document entitled ‘The effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement for substrate spawning temperate fish: a systematic review’ (Taylor et al. (In review with the journal, Environmental Evidence)). The systematic review will serve as the main working paper for this CSAS process, with the primary question: ‘What is the effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement for substrate spawning fish?’. The purpose of this science advisory process will be to examine the conclusions from this review and attempt to adapt them into science advice that can be given in the context of FPP’s operational needs.

A second working paper, prepared by the same Carleton University research group, will focus on literature originally excluded from the systematic review due to quality issues, but that may still contain useful data/information as scientific input for this meeting.

The final working paper reviewed will be a meta-analysis entitled ‘Does habitat offsetting work in freshwater ecosystems? A global meta-analysis assessing compliance and function’ (Theis et al. (In review with the journal, Conservation Biology). While the scope of this meta-analysis goes beyond the effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement, it includes analyses and results that speak to larger issues and will be useful in providing additional insight on the general effectiveness of restoration and offsetting in freshwater ecosystems.

The latter two working papers will provide alternative sources of information to the systematic review that will help participants gauge the value-added nature of the systematic review for providing evidence-based science advice to management practitioners.

Objective

Participants will review Working Paper(s) and other information to address the following questions:

1. Are the commonly applied spawning substrate restoration techniques effective at restoring or offsetting destroyed and degraded fish habitats and fish productivity losses, in regions of varying productivity and across habitat types?
2. Is there information that should be collected from spawning habitat creation/enhancement projects (or other restoration projects) that would allow for improved evaluation of effectiveness?
3. Is there restoration/offset project assessment guidance (e.g., a habitat restoration project assessment tool) for spawning habitat creation/enhancement that could be developed for FPP staff to use as follows (If this project assessment guidance can be developed, could it incorporate regional differences in aquatic ecosystems (e.g., lake river, estuary) and fish assemblages?):
1. To evaluate proposals for authorizing spawning habitat offset/restoration projects;
2. To evaluate proposals for habitat restoration program funding (pre-construction, approval stage) and;  
3. To provide criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of spawning habitat to achieve the offset and restoration functional objectives?

Additionally, the participants will discuss what information gain (e.g., rigour, quality of evidence) or loss (e.g., exclusion of large proportion of literature) occurs as one moves from conventional forms of knowledge review and synthesis (or transfer) to systematic literature review. This is not a main objective of the process but will occur as a byproduct of discussion of the objectives, and may help inform future syntheses of science for evidence based decision making.

Expected Publications

• Science Advisory Report
• Proceedings
• Research Document(s) 

Expected Participation

• Fisheries and Oceans Canada (Ecosystems and Oceans Science, Fisheries Protection Program)
• Academia
• Other invited experts

References

Taylor, J.J., Rytwinksi, T., Bennett, J.R., Smokorowski, K.E., and Cooke, S.J. (2017). The effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement for substrate spawning temperate fish: a systematic review protocol. Environmental Evidence 6:5 DOI 10.1186/s13750-017-0083-1

Taylor, J.J., Rytwinksi, T., Bennett, J.R. et al. (In review). The effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement for substrate spawning temperate fish: a systematic review.  Submitted to the Journal of Environmental Evidence.

Theis, S., Ruppert, J.L.W., Roberts, K.N., Minns, C.K., Koops, M., and Poesch, M.S. (In review). Does habitat offsetting work? A cross-continental synthesis assessing compliance and ecosystem function in North American and European freshwaters. Submitted to the journal Conservation Biology.