AIS prevention guidelines focus group results summary

Hennepin County is updating its aquatic invasive species (AIS) prevention aid guidelines to be used from 2026 to 2030. These guidelines help direct how the county spends state funding to work on preventing the introduction or limiting the spread of AIS.

To inform the development of the new guidelines, the county is engaging with government partners, lake associations, non-profit organizations, volunteers and residents who use water resources. The first part of this public involvement process included two surveys to get feedback from these stakeholder groups. Learn more about surveys in the results summary.

The second part of the stakeholder engagement included small focus groups to dive deeper into some of the survey questions, to learn more about stakeholder survey responses, and to better understand the detailed perspectives from a wide variety of AIS prevention stakeholders. A separate youth-specific focus group was also conducted to engage young people and include their perspectives.

AIS funding approach

Focus group members were presented with 10 categories to consider as part of a comprehensive approach to prevent AIS introduction. Eight out of the 14 stakeholders (57%) think that the county should take a more focused funding approach rather than its current comprehensive funding approach. The remaining six out of 14 stakeholders (43%) think the county should continue distributing funding comprehensively across the categories it currently funds. This breakdown was the opposite in the survey where 51% of survey respondents think the county should continue distributing funding across the various categories of AIS prevention work and 34% think the county should focus funding on a few priority categories.

Most pressing AIS issues

Most participants felt that the “most pressing issues” were included in the county’s current guidelines. Most stakeholders focused on pressing issues that were “most important” to them. Analysis of the responses divided the most pressing AIS issues into the following buckets:

  • AIS funding
  • Early detection
  • Impact of AIS (water quality)
  • Management of AIS
  • Miscellaneous
  • Pathways (general)
  • Prevention
  • Public engagement
  • Watercrafts as a pathway

Read the full focus group results summary (PDF)