Legally, any "Guideline" is not the law, nor are they enforceable regulatory rules. They are suggestions or generally accepted practices, but they are not fail-proof. They can even lead to poor results requiring years of expensive adaptive management improvements. They look to the past rather than capture more progressive thoughts, so Guidelines by definition don't capture new or creative solutions, no matter how good they may prove to be. They may represent the best of the past, but they encourage experimentation, because the best of the past is not good enough in today's changing world. Anything that is not printed in the guidelines is, by the guideline's definition "experimental".  This does not mean that because something falls outside the guidelines it should be discounted because it has been labeled experimental. Rather, it most assuredly means that most every fish passage site is at least in part "experimental". With climate change, everything in the  guidelines is again experimental because the norms are changing and becoming more extreme. Be aware of the guidelines, they can be helpful, but don't be afraid to go outside of them either, indeed its expected - embrace experimental and we will accelerate the advances in fish passage. Check out Some of the latest NMFS guidelines below.don

To add credence to any fish passage proposal, best practice dictates you will need to site other experts and their studies to support your paper. We have done some of that work for you. Please feel free to use the list of fish passage studies referenced in the document below, to save you both time and effort finding them, and give yourself more time to read and understand them.