Mission Statement
Within the NOAA Fisheries' Office of Habitat Conservation, the Habitat
Protection Division works with others to protect and conserve habitats
important to NOAA trust resources. The Division's primary mandates
focus on ensuring that living marine resources have sufficient healthy
habitat to sustain populations. Those mandates emphasize wetlands,
anadromous fish habitat, and habitat of other marine and estuarine
species. These efforts frequently include close partnerships with
state and federal agencies, industry, environmental groups, and academia.
What is Habitat?
Habitat has been defined as the structural component of the environment
that attracts organisms and serves as a center of biological activity
(Auster and Langton 1999).
