A Broad-Scale Approach to Management of Ontario's Recreational Fisheries

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Abstract
Sustainable exploitation of Ontario's aquatic resources calls for a new management approach. This vast resource includes more than 250,000 lakes and offers angling opportunities for many popular species (e.g., walleye Sander vitreus (formerly Stizostedion vitreum), lake trout Salvelinus namaycush, brook trout S. fontinalis, northern pike Esox lucius, smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu, largemouth bass M. salmoides, and muskellunge E. masquinongy). In pioneer days, the “apparently inexhaustible abundance of resources” fostered an open-access policy promoting the recreational use of these resources for the benefit of the economy. After World War II, there was a rapid increase in angling effort and by the 1970s many lakes were being overexploited. Clearly, an unrestricted, open-access policy was no longer appropriate. The result has been a rapid proliferation of fishing regulations as exceptions to divisionwide regulations that were created to protect lakes where problems were detected. The growing complexity of these regulations is the result of a management approach that has focused on individual lakes. This complexity is not popular with the angling public, and evaluation of its benefits has proven difficult because a change in regulations on one lake may affect fishing effort on other lakes. We argue that a larger spatial and temporal scale of management is needed when a resource is widely dispersed across a large population of lakes. This new approach should incorporate (1) consensus on biologically achievable objectives, (2) periodic, unbiased assessment of the state of the resource, (3) periodic evaluation to decide whether current management practices are meeting objectives, and (4) adaptive management in choosing among alternative management actions. Recent progress towards establishing this management approach in Ontario is discussed.

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