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

Conservation aquaculture is increasingly used in recovery planning to propagate donor populations sustainably for imperiled species' reintroductions. Frecklebelly Madtom is an imperiled species with highly fragmented populations throughout the Mobile River system. We are assisting with an experimental reintroduction effort and subsequent monitoring of Frecklebelly Madtom in a tributary of the Tombigbee River. This research is a collaboration among the Mississippi Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, USFWS Private John Allen National Fish Hatchery, USFWS Ecological Services in Mississippi, Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, and Mississippi State University. We are helping the USFWS with their reintroduction by incorporating detection probability when estimating survival of reintroduced individuals, which will help the USFWS adapt their reintroduction procedures.