It's time for the Lone Ranger to join the posse: Using the power of partnerships for fish and their habitats

The coalescing of diverse and nontraditional partners is one of the greatest needs to successfully conserve, restore and enhance fish habitats.    Partnerships are the future.  In the past, fisheries projects were often designed, led, funded and implemented alone by fisheries agencies – the Lone Ranger approach.  While this approach will remain important for some activities, much of the high impact work in the future will be accomplished with partners.  Partnerships bring synergy, clout and buy-in through teamwork and cooperation, more ideas and manpower and they are able to leverage more project funding.  Project planning in the future will be less linear and look more like a spider web of interconnected partners.  Sometimes biologists will lead a project, sometimes follow, and sometimes stand on the sidelines and cheer a project forward after they have had their input.   Learning how to function more effectively as a team partner on a routine basis is today’s challenging and exciting paradigm shift.