Index to USA

In the USA, as elsewhere, population growth along the coast has brought increased development, new homes, jobs, and recreational opportunities. Development in the watersheds surrounding estuaries has created polluted run-off that degrades and in many cases destroys estuarine habitats including saltmarshes. This has caused major habitat loss and degradation, notably of coastal wetlands. Other factors including pollution from the sea, sea level rise and invasive plants have also taken their toll. Losses of other key coastal habitats from development (including building on barrier islands) and the associated coastal protection activities have also played a major part in depleting natural resources. These factors and the related impacts on some commercial activities, such as fisheries and the loss of wildlife, habitat restoration has become an especially live issue. Chesapeake Bay provides probably the single largest and integrated approach to restoration in the USA.

Key organisations

Today there are a number of key Governmental organisations are actively involved in funding and coordinating restoration projects (Ardito & Finch 1998) these include:

• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (http://www.fws.gov/), has a Coastal Habitat Conservation Programme that includes the Coastal Ecosystems Programme and the National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grants Programme. The service administers America's National Wildlife Refuge System which encompasses over 94 million acres on 538 refuges and thousands of waterfowl production areas (http://refuges.fws.gov/index.html);
  
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, www.noaa.gov), which has several programmes that undertake coastal habitat restoration through a National Habitat Plan. The National Estuarine Research Reserves System helps to fulfill NOAA's mission to sustain healthy coasts by improving the nation's understanding and stewardship of estuaries. Established by the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, as amended, the reserve system is a network of 25 protected areas (see http://www.ocrm.nos.noaa.gov/nerr/);
• The US Army Corps of Engineers has principal responsibility for regulating and maintaining the Nation's
  waterways. In addition, the Corps designs, constructs, and maintains flood control and other water resource development projects. It undertakes coastal habitat restoration under a variety of laws and programs (http://www.usace.army.mil/);
• US Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.epa.gov/). EPA's National Estuary Program (http://www.epa.gov/nep/) promotes coastal habitat restoration amongst other things.

A full list and links to the national organisations involved in coastal habitat restoration activities can be found on the http://restoration.nos.noaa.gov/htmls/resources/links.html

Legislation and related information

In the USA there is legislation which relates specifically relate to the coast. At the same time Restore America's Estuaries together with the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (www.noaa.gov) jointly produced "A National Strategy to Restore Coastal and Estuarine Habitat". This sets out to provide the basis for redressing some of the losses which have occurred over the last 200 years, including the implementation of the Estuaries Restoration Act 2000. There is a Society for Restoration Ecology, though this appears to have little coastal information at present.

Publications: Restore America's Estuaries (http://www.estuaries.org/index.html, a voluntary organisation) has an extremely useful web site. A useful list of wetland restoration publications from the USA is also available through the Wetlands International Web Site at http://www.wetlands.org/ (Erwin 1996) though any of the above links are useful.

References

Ardito, T. & Finch, D. 1998. Restoring Coastal Habitats. NOAA's State of the Coast Report National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, MD. Abstract...

Erwin, K.L. 1996. Wetland Creation and Restoration Literature. Wetlands International and the Association of State Wetland Managers Inc., USA.