Economic Value of Aquatic Vegetation to

Aquatic vegetation is important, both in terms of positive and nega-tive effects, to anglers, boaters, utilities, shorefront property own-ers, and waterfowl interests who utilize reservoirs. Multiple users of lakes and reservoirs complicate aquatic plant management deci-sions. Balancing limited funds for aquatic plant management is often difficult due to a lack of informa-tion about user preferences and the economic benefits of plant control. Such economic data are rare; pre-vious studies of group preferences and economic values at Lake Gun-tersville, Alabama, while quite important, were costly in terms of time, labor, and resources (Berg-strom et al.1993, Henderson 1996). The need for more efficient approaches led to adapting the creel surveys, used for fishery analysis, to obtain preference and economic information from anglers (Hudgins and Malvestuto 1996). This article reports on the first year’s progress of a study in South Carolina that evaluates the eco-nomic value of aquatic vegetation for fisheries. As time and funds become available, property owners, boaters, waterfowl hunters, utili-ties, and other interests will be sur-veyed. These data, when com-bined, should provide information needed to optimize aquatic plant management decisions and to pro-vide economic justification for future management efforts