The National Fish Habitat Action Plan was conceived to bring new resources and re-align existing resources to address the nation’s fish habitat issues.  The backbone of this effort is a science based assessment process that is designed to link habitat quality from the mountains to the shelf, summarize large amounts of existing and new information to facilitate Board and Fish Habitat Partnership decisions on how to focus efforts, and ultimately track the progress of the plan’s habitat protection and rehabilitation efforts.  The initial national assessment is due for completion at the end of 2010.  This symposium will highlight the preliminary findings of the national assessment, provide examples of how Partnerships are executing finer scale habitat assessments, and show how such assessments are focusing efforts on habitat work.  The symposium will provide a forum for AFS meeting attendees to see and provide input on the science work of the National Fish Habitat Board, to interact with key individuals working on the Board’s National Assessment and the Partnerships’ finer scale assessments, and to see how habitat assessment contributes to on-the-ground conservation projects at this time in the National Fish Habitat Action Plan’s evolution.