Habitat Conservation and Restoration

Speaker: Randy Runnels, Florida Department of Environmental Protection

My name is Randy Runnels. I work for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and I manage coastal conservation areas. I'm also a part time college professor. I represent Florida on the Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Habitat Conservation and Restoration Team and we've been active from the very inception of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, since about 2004. We began a series of state by state meetings to look at what we had in common and what we differed in. Those were very productive. We were able to bring in scientists and resource managers, and others who had interest and involvement with coastal restoration and conservation, and they were able to give us the state of the art information on what's going on. And so we got the big picture of trends and status of conservation and restoration of coastal habitats around the Gulf of Mexico.

Another interesting part of our team is that we truly made it a Gulf-wide alliance. We brought in people, our colleagues, from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, and we've genuinely tried to create a picture of the Gulf of Mexico as one big ecosystem. We're trying to take the big picture, to make sure we put together a holistic view and holistic approach to make preserving and restoring habitat for various species whose range is maybe across the Gulf and beyond. We're able to streamline things and exchange information from scientists and also getting information from scientists to resource managers who can use it, and we've also found it very necessary for resource managers to get information on real world questions back to scientists who are planning research so that those questions can be addressed in these research programs. So, the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, at least our team, and I'm sure the other teams have had similar experiences, appears to be something that will really save money in the long run. It will help to get more bang for the buck for tax dollars, and so we encourage conservation as the highest priority and when necessary we encourage restoration that's based on sound science.

Everyone in Florida regardless of whether they live right on the water's edge, or say, in the middle of Florida, the highest elevation, should consider themselves to be a coastal resident, they should consider themselves to have a direct stake in the health of the coastline. So every time you go out there, even on a day to day, or week to week basis, you never know what you're going to get, and you find some amazing things in places you never expected to. Many people don't even think about the environment too much until an environmental issue touches them personally. It may be something near where they live, or something they enjoy recreationally, or seafood, or things like that, and they, and as people learn more about their connection to the Gulf of Mexico, almost invariably become more engaged and more interested in doing what they can for the Gulf.