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ESTABLISHING A NATURE CONSERVANCY GULF OF MEXICO INITIATIVE MX974946
Impact/Purpose:
This Gulf of Mexico Initiative would help TNC focus on the most important conservation areas, identify the most important threats within and among conservation areas, develop high leverage conservation strategies to address those threats, and increase personnel and financial capacity to successfully address the conservation challenges within each priority conservation area. A TNC Gulf of Mexico Initiative would support EPAs Gulf of Mexico Program objective of involving communities, businesses, universities and local governments in protecting, restoring and enhancing important ecological sites on the Gulf of Mexico.The information will be utilized by numerous environmental agencies and organizations across the Gulf.
Description:
The Conservancy will initiate a three-year pilot program to create a Gulf of Mexico Initiative within TNC to coordinate and enhance site-based conservation work at priority Gulf coastal sites. TNC would hire an ecologist to serve as the director of TNC's Gulf of Mexico Initiative. The director would be hired in late summer or fall of 2003. Within six months of the director's starting date, the director will have selected and presented to EPA at least six priority sites on the Gulf of Mexico for further investment and enhancement. The director would select these priority sites based on the ecoregional plan for the northern Gulf of Mexico (funded in 1999, by the EPA Gulf of Mexico Program), other coastal ecoregional plans prepared by TNC, priority gulf stopover sites identified by TNC's Migratory Bird Program, EPA's Gulf Ecological Management (GEMS) Sites, and site visits. After identifying the initiative's priority sites, the director will work with local TNC staff and partners to more fully understand the threats facing each site and to develop high-leverage strategies to advance protection, restoration and enhancement efforts within those priority sites. The director will coordinate conservation area planning, lend his or her ecological expertise to the local priority sites, and find new financial and non-financial resources to support the priority sites. During this three year pilot phase, the director will work with TNC's Migratory Bird Program to refine our understanding of conservation priorities in the Gulf of Mexico by supporting radar telemetry work along the Gulf to better identify priority migratory bird stopover areas. Coastal habitat on the Gulf of Mexico is critical to the survival of many species of North American birds in their migration over and around the Gulf of Mexico. This research will help us better identify the most critical areas of this stopover habitat.
