Willingness of Recreationists to Pay for AIS Management in MN

Reminder! Join us on Friday, April 10 at noon for a webinar from MAISRC research associate, Dr. Lucia Levers and senior research associate, Dr. Amit Pradhananga. They will be presenting on the willingness of recreationists to pay for aquatic invasive species management in Minnesota.

The webinar is free but registration is required.

While staff are currently working remotely due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we are still able to host online events and look forward to sharing our webinar with you next month!

Talk details
We estimate willingness to pay for local aquatic invasive species lake management in the form of a daily lake access fee by conducting summer lake surveys in Minnesota, USA. Similar pairs of lakes with differing infestations of zebra mussels, Dreissena polymorpha, and starry stonewort, Nitellopsis obtusa, were used as study sites to infer how being at an infested lake vs. being at an uninfested lake and different local species would impact responses. We also examined recreationists’ visit motivation, and aquatic invasive species perceived risk, knowledge, and awareness of problem. We estimate mean willingness to pay to be $10.41 per day, which did not differ significantly by lake. Perceived risk, awareness of problem, and visit motivation were significant in predicting willingness to pay, which could have important ramifications for aquatic invasive species management.

More information
Learn more about the study and watch a short video of Dr. Levers giving an overview of the project:

Click Here to Register

First I’ve heard about this!

These people are taking our grant money to figure out a way to take more money!

$10.41 x 190 = $1,977.90.

Let’s start this on Minnatonka and please don’t forget to charge the lake shore owners the daily fee as well.

Watch the video!

Funny enough, I’ve never had the opportunity to respond to a survey on the lakes that I’m fishing. Because they’d receive a whole lot of “zero” replies to this.

I’m speechless

Video sponsored by…. koronis lake association

Not surprised

So is that a $10.41 launch fee each time someone were to launch? I’m too ADD to understand what she’s implying in the video.

FF my take away was $10 per day.

After watching that video and reading the description, my running for Governor doesn’t seem so absurd.

What are they doing to manage it, other than talk about managing it?

So we have to pay them to talk about managing it, yet nothing is really done to manage it? Seems like MNFISH might want to get in on that money making deal to do the typical mn nothing.

I think they want to pay minimum wage to people to bother you until you don’t come back to their lake.

Ohhh ‘elllll naaaawwwww

That’s why I pay a registration fee already for my boat. $10 per day to launch? Lady you gotta be out your mind. She must have setup on a day that lakeshore owners were putting in their boats for the one time of the year, not on a typical fishing day.

I don’t mean to be a conspirasist, but who hired her? She seems like quite the greenhorn when it comes to recreation here in MN. Anyone who would’ve interviewed her would’ve seen that, and would foresee the eventual results that came from this study.

This IMO, was staged from the get go. The question now, is why?

iowa_josh wrote:

I think they want to pay minimum wage to people to bother you until you don’t come back to their lake.

X2

I’d love to know who the talked to that made them think anyone would be willing to pay $10 a day. What a joke. Is this meeting open to comments from the peanut gallery who will be watching Brian? (Respectful and constructive, obviously).

I’m not sure. I registered and there wasn’t anymore information given.

This email was sent to me yesterday. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard anything about this before.

Last year we had an AIS fee increase from $3. to $10.60 on boat registration. I wasn’t happy with that but it was done before most people knew about it.

I would like to know how much the MAISRC has cost the taxpayer and the benifets we’ve seen from those $,$$$,$$$.$$

Hey BK you get my vote! Lets get it started BK for Governor!! No one is going to pay to launch.

Isn’t “management” thrown around pretty loosely here?

As mentioned, I’d like to see the effectiveness of this so called “management”. Christmas lake was a failure. Any shiny spots to make people think more money would actually help?

Suppose these studies peoples get to keep working…..

mahtofire14 wrote:

Is this meeting open to comments from the peanut gallery who will be watching Brian? (Respectful and constructive, obviously).

I sent an email to to organizer asking the above.

“Most responses are answered within 4 business days.”

Beads, there has to be more to this grant money then to find out how much we are willing to pay…wouldn’t you think?

When I read the post title, I thought to my self, yeah are we paying for this problem? The shipping industry brought the invasive critters. Shouldn’t they be the one’s picking up the tab?

-J.

Deuces wrote:

Isn’t “management” thrown around pretty loosely here?

As mentioned, I’d like to see the effectiveness of this so called “management”. Christmas lake was a failure. Any shiny spots to make people think more money would actually help?

Suppose these studies peoples get to keep working…..

Christmas Lake that they tried for years to make private suddenly became “public” once they realized the yuppies infected their own lake. Stuff like that makes me wonder if they just want a slush fund to try and fix lakes for the type of people who could afford to pay for it themselves but would rather steal public money? Lake associations are absolutely out of control in this state, constantly looking for new ways to push normal people off “their lake.”

mahtofire14 wrote:

Is this meeting open to comments from the peanut gallery who will be watching Brian? (Respectful and constructive, obviously).

I’m impress with the response time….

“Hi Brian –

We will not have microphones turned on for the audience, however the chat box will be open to accept questions.

We are having a record number of registrations for this event, so I will say that it’s likely we will not be able to answer all questions during the Q & A session. But we’ll do our best to get through what we can. We typically aim for about 30 min of presentation time and 30 min of Q&A — but it varies slightly depending on the presenter.
———————————————-
Megan M. Weber
Extension Educator, Aquatic Invasive Species | Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center | maisrc.umn.edu
Assistant Extension Professor | Extension | extension.umn.edu
Bunker Hills Activities Center
550 Bunker Lake Blvd Suite L1, Andover, MN 55304
University of Minnesota | umn.edu
[email protected] | 763-767-3874 “

I wasn’t able to attend the webinar so I missed it. BK, or anyone else, what was covered in the webinar?

“We are going to take your money to eradicate and prevent AIS….< That’s a false statement right there! Not that you want more money, but no one can eradicate or prevent AIS! Slow it? Maybe… You people should be ashamed of yourselves!”

Reply:

“Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center
Hi Brian, thanks for reaching out. Minnesota’s lakes are treasured resources. At MAISRC, we are looking for ways to prevent, manage and eradicate aquatic invasive species. We don’t have all the answers, but we are working hard to find scientifically proven, effective methods of treatment. If you have questions or concerns about a specific species or management tactic, we’d love to talk more in-depth. Shoot us an email at [email protected]. Have a great day!”

The other question I asked was who/what organization coughed up the grant money for this? No Reply.

Brian Klawitter wrote:

“We are going to take your money to eradicate and prevent AIS….< That’s a false statement right there! Not that you want more money, but no one can eradicate or prevent AIS! Slow it? Maybe… You people should be ashamed of yourselves!”

Reply:

“Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center
Hi Brian, thanks for reaching out. Minnesota’s lakes are treasured resources. At MAISRC, we are looking for ways to prevent, manage and eradicate aquatic invasive species. We don’t have all the answers, but we are working hard to find scientifically proven, effective methods of treatment. If you have questions or concerns about a specific species or management tactic, we’d love to talk more in-depth. Shoot us an email at [email protected]. Have a great day!”

The other question I asked was who/what organization coughed up the grant money for this? No Reply.

Thanks for the update Brian. It needs to be known that charging the public to use public waters is not the way to do this. Also even if they put this into effect they STILL would not have the funds to have stations/people set up at every launch in the state. It’s just not feasible.

Finally whittled to cost of this out of them.

“The project was awarded a total of $242,090 from the ENRTF.”

Wonder how much I could get to find out how much people are willing to pay for a Hamm’s??

Shocked that money didn’t get moved into the walleye stocking budget…..

Pardon me, but was is ENRTF?

From their website
The Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF) was established following voter approval of a constitutional amendment in 1988. The money in the Trust Fund is generated by the Minnesota State Lottery. The Trust Fund holds assets that can be appropriated, “for the public purpose of protection, conservation, preservation, and enhancement of the state’s air, water, land, fish, wildlife, and other natural resources.”

Since 1991, the ENRTF has provided approximately $500 million to approximately 1,000 projects around the state.