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
The Fisherman as a Harvester of Nutrients
As freshwater fishers we have become efficient at catching them. It has become a passion for many taking a recreational activity to the level of a professional fisherman. As a commercial netter of fish, we also have become efficient in our pursuit that has been a profession since early man. Early man and now modern…
Wisconsin Conservation Congress Warm Water Committee
My name is Rand Atkinson, and I have spent fifty years working as a fish and aquatic biologist in Wisconsin. I previously served on this congress and was a representative during the development of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ first walleye plan in 1998. Currently, I represent the Walleye Restoration Foundation, Inc., an organization…
Conservation at Risk
Conservation in America started with movement over 125 years ago. Human pioneering had expanded from the East Coast to the West Coast and the Canadian border to Mexico. It was the vastness and fragility of the arid west that prompted the early conservationists to recognize the intricate relation between land use and abuse. A great…