Request for Qualifications for Anadromous Salmonid Habitat Conservation Plan Juvenile Abundance Monitoring

The City of Santa Cruz is soliciting Statements of Qualification (SoQ) from individuals or firms (Consultants) to conduct juvenile salmonid abundance monitoring surveys in the San Lorenzo River and its tributaries. Abundance monitoring will be consistent with California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) California Monitoring Plan (CMP) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) methodology.

In anticipation of permit issuance for the City of Santa Cruz Anadromous Salmonid Habitat Conservation Plan, the City of Santa Cruz is inviting individuals or firms (Consultants) to submit statement of qualifications for conducting juvenile salmonid abundance monitoring in the San Lorenzo River and its tributaries. The City of Santa Cruz (City) has applied for incidental take permits (ITP) from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to incidentally take the federally threatened Central California Coast steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) (steelhead) and state and federally endangered Central California Coast coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) (coho). The incidental take is anticipated to occur as a result of City Covered Activities within the area covered by the City of Santa Cruz Anadromous Salmonid Habitat Conservation Plan (ASHCP or HCP). The HCP provides for permit coverage for a wide range of City activities such as operation, maintenance, and rehabilitation of the City’s water supply and water system facilities; operation and maintenance of the City’s municipal facilities; management of City lands; and research monitoring. The City anticipates that the incidental take permits will be issued for a period of 30 years.

The HCP monitoring program will provide the information necessary to assess compliance with the terms of the HCP, verify progress toward the biological goals and objectives, and implement a feedback loop to ensure that management/mitigation measures of the HCP can be updated as needed in response to changing conditions and new knowledge. The monitoring program will provide data on the distribution and abundance of the Covered Species, their habitats, and potential threats within the Plan Area. Using these data, the City will be able to assess changes in the quality and quantity of the specific habitat of the Covered Species, identify significant changes in the populations of the Covered Species, measure progress towards meeting the HCP’s biological goals and objectives, and decide if changes in management or monitoring are warranted.

Population and Habitat Monitoring addresses the status of Covered Species populations and habitat and will be compatible with the California Monitoring Plan (CMP) (Adams et. al 2011; Boughton, et al 2022). The CMP is a coordinated effort led by CDFW and NMFS with the goal of measuring progress to recovery of listed salmonid species under California Endangered Species Act (CESA) and federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) listings. The City’s HCP requires monitoring to evaluate levels of take and effects of the City’s activities on populations and habitat of covered species. To the extent that these efforts have common goals, the City’s monitoring program can contribute to the wider evaluation of population status at the regional level.