News

Many of the results of our work are rolling in! Our new collaborator, North Joffe-Nelson, a master’s student at the University of Illinois, shared findings at the Illinois Chapter of the American Fisheries Society annual meeting on March 11th. His talk, entitled “Great Lakes Anglers’ preferences for future fishing scenarios influenced by the spread of aquatic invasive species” showed that minimizing impacts of invasive species and improving fish habitat quality are key priorities for anglers. Complete results will be shared in the coming months – stay tuned!

As we reach the end of 2020, we wanted to share one highlight from the past year: connecting with anglers to discuss invasive species! In early March, our team was invited to participate in a workshop hosted by IL-IN seagrant where we provided an overview of the project and engaged people in further discussion about invasive species across the state. We hosted additional workshops over zoom with anglers and boaters, and had a wonderful exchange of insights. We hope to continue these discussions in the year to come!

This summer, we have a new intern joining the AIS team. Alexa Smith is an undergradate at the University of Illinois whose interests broadly lie in sustainability in the corporate sector. She is excited to explore the issue of aquatic invasive species as well, and we are excited to work with her to develop project reports as we begin disseminating our results. Welcome, Alexa!

While we’re currently teleworking in line with public health guidelines, we wanted to reflect on some
presentation opportunities we had earlier this year. Our PhD student, Elizabeth Golebie, presented
some preliminary survey results at the Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in Springfield, Illinois, and
at the Academy of Leisure Sciences Symposium, in Champaign, Illinois. We appreciated the opportunity
to connect with other researchers and fisheries managers and hear suggestions of what types of
analyses would be most helpful. Stay tuned for project results!

 

Another one of our current interns, Seoyeon Jang, has been working on a literature review regarding the
human dimensions of AIS to analyze research trends and suggest guidance to future research
directions. She had reviewed 30 papers that were extracted from the AIS project and found the need
for further attention on diverse pathways, subject expansion, and effective attention-grabbing
methods to raise AIS awareness. Recently, she also started working on a new project about
accessing sampling bias errors of the AIS surveys conducted over the past months. She plans to
look further into three different surveys conducted in the United States and Canada to compare non-
response bias, completion rates, participation, demographic characteristics, as well as other factors
that display representations of anglers in Great Lakes Regions. More updates to follow!

One of our current interns, Meggie Gaddy, has been working on a spatial analysis as part of the systematic review of AIS literature. In total, she has produced 12 kernel density maps assessing the distribution of author institutions and the message frame and term usage each author employed in their study. This has led to interesting findings regarding the distribution of negative vs. neutral message frames, driver vs. passenger message frames, as well as the patterns associated with different terms to describe AIS– including: nuisance, alien, exotic, invasive, etc. She is currently working on writing up this portion of the project and initiating a new project stemming from the literature review. This new project will look to assess relationships between author place attachment, attitudes about AIS, and communication strategies through an online author survey. Keep a look out for more updates to come!

We’re excited to announce that our team is finally launching a survey of license-holding anglers in five US states and the Canadian Province of Ontario! Our team has been working very hard to get to this point and we’re looking forward to the responses we receive!

Our research team recently attended the Great Lakes Fishery Commission GLFC meeting. The meeting took place in Ypsilanti, Michigan and included presentations and updates from representatives of each of the five Great Lakes. We learned a lot about AIS research in the Great Lakes, efforts to minimize the impacts of sea lamprey and other invasives, as well as the challenges that lake managers are facing in regards to AIS issues. We’re looking forward to presenting findings from the angler survey at next year’s meeting!

Our Aquatic Invasive Species project was recently featured in ACES News! Make sure to check out the article to learn more about the project and its implications for future AIS management: https://aces.illinois.edu/news/deeply-held-environmental-beliefs-predict-whether-anglers-act-control-aquatic-invasive-species