Center for Aquatic Technology Transfer (CATT) Fiscal Year 2020 Report

Fiscal Year 2020 won’t soon be forgotten. We began the year by saying good-bye to a long-time colleague and CATT advocate, Regional Fisheries Program Manager, Leigh McDougal. Leigh recognized early in her tenure the valuable link CATT provided between managers and researchers, and we experienced significant growth and diversification of our program under her leadership. Southern Region Aquatic Ecologist Kevin Leftwich both continued his role with CATT and assumed Leigh’s duties early in FY20. At mid-year, we welcomed Leigh’s replacement Amy Carson as she joined the BPR Team in Atlanta as the Regional Fisheries Program Manager. We are excited by Amy’s selection and together we look forward to the many opportunities we will have to maximize the value of CATT in FY21 and beyond.

Of course, by far the most significant event of 2020 was the pandemic. COVID-19 severely impacted our field operations throughout the majority of FY20. Beginning in March, we paused all field work for several months. During the pause we kept our team members busy working on data QA/QC, updating field manuals, and developing a new data collection tool. We also developed COVID safety plans in collaboration with our internal and external partners so we could hit the ground running when we returned to the field, which happened in July. We started small and cautiously, focusing on high priority, relatively local projects that posed minimal risk to the health and safety of our crews and partners. Despite the COVID-related limitations and delays we provided several partners (details in the following pages) with the information and tools they need to and increase the pace and scale of forest restoration, make informed management decisions, and connect people to the outdoors.

View all CATT annual reports here.