Background and Justification

An innovative habitat enhancement project was completed on the White River tailwater downstream of Beaver Lake, Arkansas. This ambitious effort was initiated and implemented by Arkansas Trout Unlimited and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and included input from a number of other individuals and organizations. The objective of their project was to enhance and restore the riparian and instream habitat to improve the quality of the existing trout fishery to conditions prior to a catastrophic flood that occurred in 1990.

This project has national significance, because previous habitat enhancement work of this type has largely been implemented on smaller trout streams. The results of this work will serve as a model to guide future habitat enhancement efforts in tailwater and other large rivers in Arkansas and the United States. A considerable amount of effort and expense has been allocated to this habitat project. Thus, it is wise and efficient to evaluate the biological effects of this experimental habitat management project in an unbiased and scientific framework to provide recommendations and guidelines for future habitat management.

Objectives

An evaluation of the Beaver Tailwater habitat enhancement project was conducted to address the following questions:

1. Are the habitat modifications successful in supporting greater densities and biomass of trout?

2. What are the effects of the habitat modifications on nongame fishes?

3. What aspects of the habitat modifications and which physical structures are most (and least) effective in supporting fish?

Results and Application

The results of this research directly addressed the three objective questions using quantitative data and analyses to provide an unbiased, scientifically sound, biological evaluation of the Beaver Tailwater habitat enhancement project. Our microhabitat analyses precisely identified which aspects of the modifications are effective in supporting fish populations. These findings will provide the information necessary to guide future planning of habitat enhancement work on other tailwater rivers. It will also provide a means to further refine the techniques used in the Beaver Tailwater project, so that they may be more effective in achieving the desired result on other rivers. Finally, the research will improve our ecological understanding of fish-habitat relationships and interactions, which will ultimately lead to improved management of fishery resources.

For details of results, see

Quinn, J.W. 1998. Fish populations and trout microhabitat use of rehabilitated habitat in an Ozark tailwater river. Master of Science Thesis, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. 118 pages.

Quinn, J.W. and T.J. Kwak. 2000. Use of rehabilitated habitat by brown trout and rainbow trout in an Ozark tailwater river. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 20: 737-751.

Quinn, J.W. and T.J. Kwak. 2003. Fish assemblage changes in an Ozark river after impoundment: a long-term perspective. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 132: 110-119.

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