Improving the ecological status of fish communities in inland waters
International Symposium and EFI+ Workshop
30th March to 3rd April 2009, Hull, UK
CALL FOR PAPERS
Conference and one-day workshop held in the frame of the EU-funded project
EFI+ - Improvement and Spatial extension of the European Fish Index
Rationale and background
Current world-wide developments in the legislative basis of the management of water resources (e.g.
WFD, EU Habitats Directive, Clean Water Act [USA]) have underpinned the importance of conserving
or improving the ecological status of rivers, lakes & estuaries in the face of increasing human
pressures and impacts on natural systems. These changes in legislation have also reinforced the
importance of fish assemblages as key indicators of the ecological and conservation status, given the
temporal and spatial scales over which fish interact with catchment processes and human impacts.
However, whilst these changes in legislation have been widely supported they have raised a number of
issues and difficulties for stakeholders to address. For scientists and managers working on fish these
issues relate to both assessing current ecological status and to developing suitable rehabilitation
programmes to improve the status of degraded systems. Much work is currently being undertaken at
an international level to address these issues. Therefore, The University of Hull International
Fisheries Institute and the EFI+ project are coordinating an international symposium which addresses
current status of fish-based ecological assessment and rehabilitation and considers what aspects are
still to be addressed for successful implementation of recent environmental legislation.
Aims
Along with disseminating the results of the EFI+ project to the scientific community, administrators,
and stakeholders; the symposium will extend the discussion on the strategies needed to implement
successfully current environmental legislation with respect to improving the status of fish
communities. Selected presentations will be published in peer-reviewed proceedings.
In addition to the symposium a one-day workshop (3rd April 2009) for managers and end-users will be
held to present and use the tools produced in the EFI+ project.
Themes
 Defining management and stakeholder targets for fish communities in natural and heavily
modified systems
 Tools for assessing ecological and conservation status of fish assemblages
 Standardising sampling effort for assessing fish assemblages
 Scales of fish-based monitoring and assessment - integration into management plans
 Developing appropriate rehabilitation programmes and predicting and measuring the results
Oral presentations (20 min) and posters are welcome. Deadline for abstract submission is 14
November 2008. Please visit http://www.hull.ac.uk/hifi/events/index.html for details and information
regarding submission of abstracts.
Conference Organiser: Prof. Ian Cowx, University of Hull International Fisheries Institute, Hull, UK,
HU6 7RX (hifi@hull.ac.uk)
The EFI+ Consortium acknowledges the financial support of the European Commission, within the Scientific Support of Policies
of the 6th Framework Programme (contract no: 044096) http://efi-plus.boku.ac.at/. EFI+ project: Prof. Stefan Schmutz,
Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences,
Vienna, Austria (stefan.schmutz@boku.ac.at)
Hosted in collaboration with the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission (EIFAC)