A new fisheries management-driven framework for Great Lakes fish habitat management

Session: Great Lakes Fish Habitat Priorities Development, Implementation, and Adaptive Management (1)

Jeff Tyson, Great Lakes Fishery Commission, [email protected]
Roger Knight, Great Lakes Fishery Commission, [email protected]
Christine Mayer, University of Toledo, Lake Erie Center, [email protected]

Abstract

The Great Lakes Fishery Commission facilitates coordinated inter-jurisdictional fisheries management across the Great Lakes basin through Lake Committees of fisheries agency managers, who interact across lakes as a Council of Lake Committees (CLC).  Each Lake Committee has adopted shared objectives that describe desired fish community structure and environmental impediments to their achievement. However, progress on addressing impediments has been slow, largely because remedial actions require the use of ‘levers’ that are typically out the control of fishery management agencies and specific priorities have not been developed.  To facilitate progress, the CLC identified several “environmental principles” to help frame an approach for protecting and improving aquatic habitats, tied to a fundamental premise that management is necessary at scales that affect fish production in concert with the fish community objectives of each lake committee.  Ultimately, the principles support a new framework to help fisheries managers identify actionable priorities, e.g., habitat management levers, which may be used by environmental managers in the Great Lakes basin. Moreover, the principles encourage fisheries management agencies to develop testable working hypotheses that, using science, will guide adaptive habitat management in the future.