Abstract
Walleye Sander vitreus, Sauger S. canadensis, and Yellow Perch Perca flavescens (referred to as percids herein) are collectively among the most culturally and ecologically important fish species in North America. As ecosystems change in response to environmental drivers, such as climate change, nutrient loading, and invasive species, there is a need to understand how percid populations respond to these changes. To address this need, a symposium was held during the 81st Annual Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference to bring fishery scientists and managers together to describe and discuss percid population responses to ecosystem change. Prevailing symposium themes included the challenge of identifying mechanisms responsible for population-level changes, developing strategies to adaptively manage for resilient fisheries, and consideration of scale, context, and methods when interpreting variable results. Given the uncertainty of how ecosystem changes affect percid populations, participants emphasized the importance of communicating uncertainties to stakeholders, implementing data-driven management strategies, setting realistic goals, and revising management actions in an adaptive framework. There was universal agreement on both the challenge and necessity of facilitating constructive engagement among stakeholders in cooperative decision making. Symposium participants identified knowledge gaps and discussed future efforts to build on our current understanding of percid populations, including continuation of long-term monitoring, improved standardization of evaluation metrics, implementing adaptive management experiments to identify causal relationships, development of more robust analytical methods, use of historical data sources, and refining techniques to realistically convey management options to stakeholders.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 477-483 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | North American Journal of Fisheries Management |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The symposium concept arose from discussions of trends in observed changes and emerging management challenges that occurred during several annual meetings of the AFS NCD‐WTC between 2017 and 2019. We thank the many members of the NCD‐WTC who were instrumental in organizing the symposium. We are grateful for the financial support contributed by the following AFS entities that covered publication costs for the special section: NCD; Education Section; and the Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska, and Dakota state chapters. Funding was also provided by South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks; the Illinois Department of Natural Resources; and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. We also thank symposium presenters and their collaborators for sharing their research and participating in the discussion forum during the symposium, the authors who contributed manuscripts for this special section, and the many agency staff for years of dedication to collection of monitoring data. We thank J. Raabe for providing a preliminary review of the manuscript. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their comments on the manuscript. There is no conflict of interest declared in this article.
Funding Information:
The symposium concept arose from discussions of trends in observed changes and emerging management challenges that occurred during several annual meetings of the AFS NCD-WTC between 2017 and 2019. We thank the many members of the NCD-WTC who were instrumental in organizing the symposium. We are grateful for the financial support contributed by the following AFS entities that covered publication costs for the special section: NCD; Education Section; and the Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska, and Dakota state chapters. Funding was also provided by South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks; the Illinois Department of Natural Resources; and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. We also thank symposium presenters and their collaborators for sharing their research and participating in the discussion forum during the symposium, the authors who contributed manuscripts for this special section, and the many agency staff for years of dedication to collection of monitoring data. We thank J. Raabe for providing a preliminary review of the manuscript. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their comments on the manuscript. There is no conflict of interest declared in this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Fisheries Society. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.
