Monitoring and Evaluation of United States Fish and Wildlife Service Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program Stream Restorations in Illinois

This report serves to document results from water quality, physical and biological characterizations (i.e., monitoring) of United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program (Partners Program) stream restorations in Illinois. More broadly, it provides a method for evaluating ecological impacts of restorations, a tool for documenting progress toward USFWS goals and a vessel through which to convey outcomes of USFWS activities to the public. Measures and evaluations within provide numerical values that can be used quantify progress towards national and regional performance measures developed by the USFWS. Contained within these pages is a discussion of the need for monitoring (Section 1), the conceptual framework behind the monitoring design (Section 1) and evaluations of each restoration (Sections 2-7). A summary of ecological patterns observed across monitoring locations and the degree to which restorations support USFWS objectives are also discussed (Section 8).