Sustaining Fisheries and Human Communities: Refining the Vision for Implementing the National Fish Habitat Action Plan

The National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP) was enacted in 2006 by an unprecedented coalition of over 375 state, federal, tribal, academic and non-governmental partners. Since then, seventeen Fish Habitat Partnerships (FHP), encompassing all fifty states, have been approved and over $42 million in federal and partner funds invested in 257 projects nationwide.  A systematic condition assessment of all major habitats has been completed and federal legislation has also been introduced in Congress to expand funding.  As a capstone to this progress, a first-ever “Status of Fish Habitats” report will be released nationally in April 2011. Yet much remains to be done.  In response to a 2010 survey of the FHPs, the National Fish Habitat Board is formulating criteria to better allocate and target project funding, measure and report success, and evaluate performance of individual partnerships. This symposium was organized to summarize and build on these substantial accomplishments by inviting presentations to report on progress in implementing the NFHAP goals and identify unmet needs to guide revisions to the Action Plan in 2011. The overview and evaluation presentations by regional groups of FHPs (East, Midwest, West, Alaska/Hawaii) suggest different and additional data are needed for more technically efficacious national assessments of fish habitat status and identification of trends at the regional and ecosystem level.  Other presentations emphasize that adapting to changing climate, urbanizing landscapes and non-traditional constituencies, and similarly broad societal trends affecting the sustainability of fisheries must also be addressed. Promising developments and recommendations include landscape-level research collaboratives, more adaptive ecosystem-based monitoring and decision support systems, and expanded outreach and social marketing strategies aimed at educating and mobilizing traditional and non-traditional constituencies alike. Survey and symposia results further demonstrate both the need for, and potential benefits of, continued coordination of national and individual FHP efforts in developing and implementing a unified and consistent approach to fish habitat assessment. Overall, the challenge in refining the Action Plan will be to clarify the aforementioned science and management needs and then implement effective, integrated strategies and actions that will best address the factors limiting the ecological, socioeconomic and institutional sustainability of the nation’s fisheries and the human partnerships upon which they ultimately depend.