NCCP: the likely medium- to long-term ecological outcomes of major carp population reductions
NCCP: Building community support for carp control: understanding community and stakeholder attitudes and assessing social effects
The National Carp Control Plan (NCCP) will be delivered over a large geographic area in waterways used by, among others, thousands of farmers, fishers, tourists, boaters and nearby residents. Achieving high social acceptance of the NCCP requires understanding the attitudes held by different community members and stakeholder groups towards potential virus release and other carp control measures, and why these attitudes are held. In particular, it is critical to understand perceptions of the potential positive and negative social, environmental and economic effects of proposed carp control measures, and to use this understanding to design (i) strategies that can maximise potential positive outcomes and minimise potential negative impacts, (ii) ensure accurate and effective communication with the wide range of groups potentially affected by, or interested in, the NCCP, and (iii) through this build trust in the process and actions involved in eventual implementation of carp control measures as part of the NCCP. This requires engaging not in a ‘one-off’ assessment of community attitudes and potential effects of carp control measures, but using an action research approach in which community and stakeholders views are regularly assessed and analysed in the period in which the NCCP is developed (2017-2018), with this understanding used to actively inform the design of both the proposed plan of action for virus release or other potential control measures, and communication strategies about actions proposed as part of the NCCP. This pro-active approach can enable design of a plan for carp control that incorporates actions that reduce potential for negative impacts and increase community trust in the process.