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Latest AFS Publications

Evaluating a Stakeholder‐Driven Bass Regulation Change in Florida: Agency Staff and Stakeholder Perspectives

We evaluated stakeholder engagement aspects of a statewide Largemouth Bass Micropterus salmoides regulation change in Florida. Staff from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) who worked on the project and stakeholders who participated in outreach were interviewed and/or surveyed about their opinions of the process. This was the largest stakeholder engagement process ever conducted by... Read More

Evaluating a Stakeholder‐Driven Bass Regulation Change in Florida: Agency Staff and Stakeholder Perspectives

We evaluated stakeholder engagement aspects of a statewide Largemouth Bass Micropterus salmoides regulation change in Florida. Staff from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) who worked on the project and stakeholders who participated in outreach were interviewed and/or surveyed about their opinions of the process. This was the largest stakeholder engagement process ever conducted by... Read More

State‐Level Freshwater Mussel Programs: Current Status and a Research Framework to Aid in Mussel Management and Conservation

Despite increased focus on their ecology and conservation, freshwater mussels remain one of the most imperiled groups of aquatic organisms. We documented current management actions, resources, and challenges in managing freshwater mussels in the United States through a survey of state natural resource agencies. Approximately 85% of surveyed states (N = 40) actively managed mussel populations. Common... Read More

Magnuson‐Stevens: Continue to Support the Best Science

A new marine fisheries policy was approved by the AFS Governing Board Atlantic City in August to inform the proposed Congressional re‐authorization and amendment of the Magnuson‐Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA), the federal law that governs fisheries management in offshore waters. Early this year, AFS President Steve McMullin empaneled a special committee of... Read More

Flannelmouth Sucker: The Ironhorse of the Colorado River Basin

When I began graduate school in 2012 at Kansas State University, I was excited to work with the highly endemic fishes of the Colorado River basin, particularly federally endangered Colorado Pikeminnow Ptychocheilus lucius. However, low catch rates combined with limited historical catch data for Colorado Pikeminnow shifted my research focus toward community‐wide investigations of native and... Read More

FishGen.net: An Online Genetic Repository for Salmon and Steelhead Genetic Baselines

FishGen is a final repository for Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp. and steelhead O. mykissgenetic data generated as part of the genetic stock identification and parentage‐based tagging projects in the Columbia River basin and throughout the Pacific Coast of North America. Resource Data, Inc., developed this web‐based, GIS‐interfaced software, which is freely available to the public, with funding from... Read More

A Practitioner’s Perspective on the Continuing Technical Merits of PHABSIM

Since its initial development and application in the mid‐1970s, the Physical Habitat Simulation System (PHABSIM) and models, which are part of the instream flow incremental methodology (IFIM) developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Bovee and Milhous 1978; Bovee 1982), has been extensively used (Reiser et al. 1989; Hatfield and Bruce 2000; Locke et al. 2008), reviewed (e.g., Wesche and Rechard 1980;... Read More

Why Keep Hatcheries? Weighing the Economic Cost and Value of Fish Production for Public Use and Public Trust Purposes

Resource allocation for fisheries management and conservation in the United States has not grown substantially in recent years, and there is ongoing debate over how limited resources should be used to create, maintain, or restore fisheries. Hatcheries have been in existence in North America since 1848, but their organization and role in fisheries management are... Read More