Our Mission
The Walleye Restoration Foundation mission is to protect, conserve, and restore the Upper Midwest’s Walleye (Stizostedion vitreum) resources for the public benefit by bringing together diverse interests to care for lakes and rivers so our future generations can experience the joy of fishing for walleyes and other fish.
Why A Walleye Restoration Foundation, Inc
We are in a time of natural resource management when there is a collision between protection of our natural resources and providing recreational opportunity. A collision between enhancing our natural resources and causing harm to our healthy environment. We are at a time where Aldo Leopold’s question” When will government conservation become like a mastodon and be hampered by its own dimensions” is defined in failure to adapt the ecological principles he developed.
Walleye Restoration Foundation, Inc Founder
Rand Atkinson
The Walleye Restoration Foundation, Inc. was founded by Rand Atkinson, an aquatic ecologist who has had a career and a past professional association with fish, water law, and lake management in Wisconsin.
Rand's earliest association with the Wisconsin DNR walleye management program was when he was relocated in 1982-84 from the cold-water rainbow trout facility at Oceola Fish Hatchery to the Spooner warmwater fish management program.
Our Approach
Our methods are to approach restoration of the walleye resources ecologically by:
Essays on Walleye Management
A Beautiful Northern Lake
I spent several hours with an old fellow that has been experiencing a beautiful lake in the Northwoods for a long time. He raised his children to love fishing and the outdoors on this lake. This lake is a pristine one that so far has resisted the most visible effects of humans. Yet slowly, he…
Water Level Ecology in the Northwoods
Water makes our Planet Earth. Frozen, vapor, or liquid water determines what and where organisms survive. Weather follows water around the globe from our oceans to land and back again. Water creates a crisis after crisis. Droughts and floods. Feast and famine. Peace and war. This is how it affects man’s actions with or without…
Walleye World
Walleye is the species of the Northwoods fishery that represents the connection between the recreational world of fishing and the food world of sustenance. Its history spans thousands of years of human culture following geological time. It is a species that is both predator of other species and prey in the aquatic world including humans…