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

Dozens of freshwater fishes will undergo formal Species Status Assessments under the Endangered Species Act over the next decade. However, most freshwater fishes are data-deficient, which creates uncertainty when evaluating species’ status. Therefore, we are developing an analytical framework and easy-to-use tools that integrate available data on species’ life history, distributions, and population trends for petitioned species. This work is a collaboration among Mississippi State University, USGS Mississippi Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and biologists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This decision-support tool will help the USFWS structure available information on petitioned fishes, thereby leading to more transparent, quantitative, and reproducible status assessments.