Coastal Program
Partnering for Coastal Conservation

What's New:

Notice of Availability of Federal Assistance for FY 2004.

The Coastal Program is developing a Strategic Plan. Over the next year the Service will be working on the development of a strategic plan for the Coastal Program. We are planning informational meetings with stakeholders as part of this process. For more information...

Coastal conservation info:

• To find out more about the Estuary Restoration Act and the Estuary Habitat Restoration Council.
  
  
• The "What's An Estuary...Now You Know " campaign's goal is to make "estuary" a household word.

The Coastal Program focuses the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's efforts in bays, estuaries and watersheds around the U.S. coastline. The purpose of the Coastal Program is to conserve fish and wildlife and their habitats to support healthy coastal ecosystems. The Service provides funding through the program to 16 high-priority coastal ecosystems.

The program is guided by 4 goals:

• Serve coastal communities by providing assessment and planning tools to identify priority habitats that should be protected and restored.
• Conserve pristine coastal habitats through voluntary conservation easements and locally-initiated land acquisition.
• Restore degraded coastal wetland, upland, and stream habitats by working with partners to implement on-the-ground projects.
• Focus resources through conservation alliances that leverage the financial and technical resources of our partners and multiply the impact of the taxpayer's dollar.

Since 1994, the Coastal Program and its partners have:

• reopened 3,608 miles of coastal streams for anadromous fish passage
• restored 89,107 acres of coastal wetlands
• restored 24,076 acres of coastal upland habitat
• restored 912 miles of riparian habitat
• protected 1,066,460 acres of habitat through conservation easements

For more information about the Coastal Program take a look at our fact sheet.overview fact sheet [in PDF]