(“The importance of fish stocking in German recreational fisheries management as inferred from a large-scale angling club survey”)

In Germany, freshwater fisheries management is mainly conducted by local angling clubs as private fishing right holders. To fulfil their stewardship obligation and to care for the aquatic environment, clubs apply a number of management tools ranging from harvest regulations to habitat management. Fish stocking is hypothesized to constitute one of the most widespread strategies, but the lack of representative data constrain the inferences about the popularity and importance of this controversial management technique in light of alternatives. To understand the type of management applied in Germany’s recreational fisheries system we conducted a nationwide survey with 2.000 randomly selected angling club heads. The response rate after two reminders was 60%, representing more than 1.207 individual clubs. We found that angling clubs invest substantially into the management of club water bodies. Clubs engage in a range of fisheries management actions, with fish stocking representing one of the most preferred strategies as indicated by different indices such as fraction of monetary investments and number of fish stocked annually. The prevalence of stocking conducted by German angling clubs indicates the sector’s immense voluntary contributions to fish conservation, but the data also reinforce the potential to conflict with modern conservation demands.