Collaboration to Address Community Change: The Bass-Walleye Project in Wisconsin

Walleyes are an integral component of recreational fisheries across the U.S. and Canada, including Wisconsin. Recent declines in walleye recruitment represent a significant concern for fishery managers in northern Wisconsin. These declines prompted significant changes in stocking strategies and harvest regulations for certain lakes or regions. Addressing this complex problem warranted a unified effort involving biologists, researchers, and students from federal, state, and university entities that represented a diverse array of expertise. This collaborative effort provided Wisconsin DNR fishery managers with direct answers to relatively simple questions (e.g., largemouth bass predation), while providing landscape-level tools to help managers in determining the “when”, “where”, and “how” of future management actions. More importantly, our unified effort provided an effective framework for addressing future concerns facing fishery and aquatic resources in the state of Wisconsin.