Summary

Description

In 1981, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge NWR staff distributed a questionnaire to the National Wildlife Refuges in the lower 48 states to determine the scope of the carp problem in the National Wildlife Refuge System. Of 162 refuges surveyed, only 54 32 percent indicated no carp problems. Nearly half of the stations which reported no problem were either upland or coastal refuges without freshwater impoundments, while more than 80 percent of refuges with impoundments reported carp to be a management problem. Several methods have been employed by refuges to harvest and control carp with mixed success, but little has been reported in the literature on the effectiveness of these efforts. This paper describes longtenn efforts toward carp control at Malheur NWR and the response of waterfowl to those efforts.