Freshwater mussels are often an overlooked, yet essential, resource found in oregon and washington s riversand streams they play a vital role in aquatic food webs, maintaining water quality, cycling…

Freshwater mussels are often an overlooked, yet essential, resource found in oregon and washington s riversand streams they play a vital role in aquatic food webs, maintaining water quality, cycling nutrients, andproviding quality habitat, yet they are among the most imperiled groups of plants and animals globally, andlocally some populations are experiencing a time sensitive, emerging issue mass mortality events oregon andwashington form the core of the ranges of three mussel strategy species, including one currently underconsideration for ESA listing by the US fish and wildlife service washington s state wildlife action plan swap states that many of these species need additional inventory surveys to more clearly delineate theirdistribution, or for the rarer taxa, to identify key sites in need of protection , and priorities includemonitoring for population assessment similarly, oregon s swap prioritizes a set of research and monitoring needsfor strategy species despite their importance and imperilment, mussels frequently go unnoticed, and as such, there has beenlimited reliable quantitative data to support species management and conservation efforts however, recentadvances in environmental DNA edna analyses have created new opportunities to address data gaps by providing acost efficient and effective new method for detecting rare species in rivers further, a new visual surveyprotocol tailored to western species of mussels provides a standardized approach to conducting investigations andreporting consistent metrics with these monitoring and evaluation techniques, a multi state, multi speciesmonitoring and evaluation project has the potential to fill basic data gaps and support USFWS and state agenciesas they review and manage strategy species this project seeks to address emerging issues and undertake high priority actions for three sgcn freshwatermussels in oregon and washington, to fill critical data gaps, enable development and application of viabilitymetrics, and support management actions by training staff in and employing effective and advanced techniques edna and visual surveys to achieve these goals, staff at the oregon department of fish and wildlife, washington department of fish and wildlife, and xerces society for invertebrate conservation will 1 develop adatabase and data portal enabling effective data collection, storage, management, and sharing 2 conductinvestigations at sites for sgcn freshwater mussels, including collecting 152 edna samples and conducting 110VISUAL surveys and 3 establish a baseline of mussel bed viability against which population trends can beassessed into the future project work would occur from 2023 through 2025 these targeted efforts would build on existing resources and the success of recent edna analyses in oregonand washington, and information and tools developed will be used to support partner efforts to collect andcontribute data the project would also provide data that will be used to update state wildlife action plans andguide species conservation and management project results would be communicated with colleagues, otherresearchers, and partners within the conservation community