I'm referring to the spread of freshwater species that are attractive aquarium/angling fishes such as the sunfishes, catfishes and snakeheads in European waters (aliens!!!). Europeans will continue to keep them in captivity and will use them as angling attractions or to stock their big mouth bass fishing areas. Please, any innovative ideas would be very much appreciated!
I don't know if any are innovative. Require pet stores to sell sterile fish, and especially if they tend to be invasive species. Possibly an education program or regulations against might help. Require a license to breed and sell fish or use them for bait. Provide some options for pet fish lovers who cannot bear to kill their pets, to perhaps repurpose fish, and prevent wanton disposal. Stories about the effects of your question may help show how native habitats and desired fish for sport or food can be reduced, difficult to catch or become more expensive if purchasing. Mussels may also be reduced too if their host fish are reduced.
Showing the damage caused by invasive species can educate and convince many people.
I work as technician in the conservation project LimnoPirineus (http://www.lifelimnopirineus.eu/en). We are removing invasive fish from eight high mountain lakes in the Pyrenees. After three years of work we are getting some nice results such as the recovering of the natural transparency and the increase of abundance or the natural recolonization of many species of amphibians, invertebrates and crustaceans.
I have experienced that showing these milestones to the local people and pupils in local schools and high schools is convincing most of the audience.
Also, I have to recognize that a few people is not convinced anyway. However, I can see a very good progress at community scale.
Thank you both William and Alexandre for your ...innovative responses. Very helpful for me.
Stam
We have embarked on a large scale project to restore a watershed from the top of the mountain into the coral reef ecosystem which in this case includes the famous Waikiki Beach. We are engaging and empowering the community to take ownership of the watershed in which they live and to take a systems thinking approach in addressing all of the environmental and broader socio-economic issues that impact the watershed. However, the most impactful members of the community in this effort are the K-12 students who have been collecting and monitoring water quality data, AND ALSO, capturing and removing alien fish species from the stream systems that flow into the ocean that front the south shoreline of the island. They learn to identify and distinguish between alien and native macrobiota, remove the aliens and replace the native species.
Florida this August anyone?
147th Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society
Tampa, Florida
August 20-24
Getting from concept to reality – Innovative techniques and technologies for control of non indigenous fish
Sponsored By: The Introduced Fishes Section of the American Fisheries Society
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
http://introducedfish.fisheries.org/ifs-symposium-2017/
Here's the link to a successful eradication event of an alien fish which had a huge bonus to native fish.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfb.13214/abstract
David Lloyd Morgan this is an excellent paper - I have thought of reservoirs as refuges if managed with knowledge and sensitivity (especially in our summer-arid conditions that stress waters all around). Get rid of your non-native piscivorous fishes...
Many thanks, Stam
Hi again Stamatis, on the reservoirs as refuges thought line, here is another paper about the potential of some reservoirs to serve as refuges for native fishes in a drying climate and where alien fishes are not present.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320716304104
All the best
Dave
Really appreciate your help David!!! (...we probably share a very similar climate - our eastern Med Athenian landscape and your exotic Murdoch area....).
All the best,
Stam