Effects of wetland restoration on fish communities in western Kentucky

Private-public partnership programs, like the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), are designed to restore critical ecological function and wildlife habitat in wetlands, however, these projects are rarely monitored long-term. The objective of our study was to quantify and compare fish communities in wetlands across a gradient of disturbance: cultivated, restored, reference, to examine the success of wetland restoration. From spring 2019 to summer 2020, we performed monthly electrofishing surveys of fish communities in wetlands (n=12) throughout western Kentucky, USA. 11,687 individual fish were collected across 58 species. Species richness and non-metric multidimensional scaling were used to quantify fish communities present and determine differences between wetland types. Restored and reference wetlands had significantly greater richness than cultivated wetlands, however, fish abundance in all wetlands was not significantly different. Our findings suggest that fish communities in WRP and reference wetlands are more diverse than cultivated wetlands, several taxa are more likely to dominate communities in cultivated wetlands, and fish communities in most wetlands responded positively to longer hydroperiod and warmer minimum temperatures. This research suggests that current WRP hydrologic restoration should continue to be implemented to improve diversity in fish communities