Restore America’s Estuaries seeks proposals for national conference

November 21, 2007, WAKEFIELD – Restore America’s Estuaries has released a Call for Dedicated Sessions, Presentations and Posters for the 4th National Conference on Coastal and Estuarine Habitat Restoration – Creating Solutions through Collaborative Partnerships.

Proposals for the conference are due January 31, 2008. The 4th National Conference will be held in Rhode Island, from October 11-15, 2008 at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence.

The 4th National Conference on Coastal and Estuarine Habitat Restoration will advance the science, pace, practice, and success of habitat restoration at all scales. Past conference locations include Baltimore in April 2003 (800 attendees), Seattle in September 2004 (1,000 attendees), and New Orleans in December 2006 (1,400 attendees). The conference brings together the entire coastal and estuarine habitat restoration community and provides a unique blend of people and policy, science and strategy, business and best practices.

The conference program will address all aspects of coastal and estuarine habitat restoration. Habitat restoration – manipulation of the physical, chemical or biological characteristics of a site with the goal of returning self-sustaining natural or historic structure and functions to former or degraded habitat – offers great promise for reversing trends of habitat loss and degradation and is a crucial component of comprehensive ecosystem restoration, protection and management.

This is the only national conference that focuses solely on coastal habitat restoration. It will bring timely national attention to the challenges to and opportunities for comprehensive coastal ecosystem restoration. Healthy coasts and estuaries are essential to the social, economic and ecological well-being of humans in the coastal landscape, according to Restore America’s Estuaries. Successful habitat restoration at all scales is critical to achieving this. The five-day Conference will explore the state-of-the-art in all aspects and scales of restoration, and will be comprised of field sessions, plenary sessions, expert presentations, special evening events, workshops, a poster hall, and a Restoration Exposition.

The conference is a national and international gathering of the coastal and estuarine habitat restoration community, including the public and private sector. Restore America’s Estuaries will work with 200 partnering and supporting organizations to develop and host the conference, including the CRMC.

Restore America’s Estuaries, established in 1995, is a nonprofit organization working to preserve the nation’s coasts and estuaries by protecting and restoring the lands and waters essential to the richness and diversity of coastal life. Restore America’s Estuaries and its affiliate members collectively represent millions of citizens in all coastal regions of the United States. Restore America’s Estuaries authored and championed passage of the Estuary Restoration Act of 2000 – groundbreaking legislation providing strong federal commitment and resources toward a goal of restoring function to one million acres of estuarine habitat by 2010. Restore America’s Estuaries led the design of A National Strategy to Restore Coastal and Estuarine Habitat, and defined and published the Principles of Estuarine Habitat Restoration in partnership with the Estuarine Research Federation.

For more information, contact Steve Emmett-Mattox at 303-652-0392 or program@estuaries.org. To download the Call for Dedicated Sessions, Presentations and Posters, go to www.estuaries.org/.