A crowd of approximately 100 concerned residents and tourism-based business owners from western Kentucky and middle and western Tennessee gathered in Gilbertsville Tuesday evening to discuss the idea of putting together a festival to raise funding to assist the war on Asian Carp.
Matt Quinn, the brains behind the idea and owner of HITEC Outdoors in Benton, tells the News Edge the initial meeting goal was to try and recruit volunteers to begin thinking of ways to make the event possible.
Quinn adds any funding raised through the festival would go toward four on-going projects.
The other two projects could help increase tourism, which has decreased since the Asian Carp issue has been highlighted by national news sources.
During the meeting, Quinn presented his ideas for the festival and asked attendees to sign up for committees they could help in. Committees included entertainment, sporting activities like 3-D archery and golf, organizing a dinner, and more. He hopes the committees can come together to organize a two or three-day festival that would take place during a weekend in June 2020 in Marshall County.
Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Aquatic Nuisance Species Program Director Ron Brooks adds he thinks the event will take a lot of work and more people from the region will need to help.
For more information on the idea for the festival and what the money would go toward, click here.
