Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Mississippi
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Organizing and planning are among the most demanding tasks of fisheries professionals. Often this process is overwhelming and clear linkages between agency-wide goals, management plan objectives and actions, and monitoring metrics are non-existent. We are developing an online computer application for MDWFP to support structuring and regimentation of management plans. The tool steers the user through a series of menus to build a management plan that outlines objectives, management actions, monitoring protocols, and outcome evaluation. This system uses existing monitoring data, conditional logic, and user input to provide the user with up-to-date, lake-specific information. While still in early development, the application is designed to link monitoring to agency-specified objectives and actions. This coordination can help fisheries professionals more efficiently and effectively organize and plan management activities and pave the way for management decision optimization.