An Analysis Of Issues Affecting The Management Of Coral Reefs And The Associated Capacity Building Needs In Florida

"This capacity assessment is a component of the coral reef management priority setting process facilitated by the NOAA CRCP and initiated in 2009. The stated purpose of this process is 'to develop place-based, local coral reef management priorities' for the seven United States (U.S.) state and territorial coral reef jurisdictions, including Florida. In Florida, the priorities were identified in the 2010 publication of 'Florida's Coral Reef Management Priorities.' A key purpose of this strategy was to create priorities for management recognizing that resources were limited and the management challenges were increasing. Thus the publication that was generated was referred to as a priority setting document, henceforth, the acronym "PSD" will be used to relate to this document. The Florida PSD forms the lens for the capacity assessment process although it is important to underscore the importance of the FDEP Coral CRCP Strategic Plan that was prepared in July 2011, as another priority setting document and thus adds an additional layer to the capacity assessment process. While the geographic scope of the Florida PSD encompasses the entire Florida Reef Tract, for the purposes of this capacity assessment the area of focus was determined to be the SEFCRI region. This four county region that includes Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties, includes the northern one third of the coral reef tract from the northern border of BNP to the St. Lucie Inlet. The PSD includes, in Appendix Three, a brief summary of governance capacity issues in Florida entitled 'Preliminary Identification of Capacity Gaps.' In September 2011, NOAA CRCP selected SustainaMetrix as part of a competitive bid process to conduct a more detailed assessment across all seven jurisdictions including Florida, which expands on this initial intent to address capacity gaps in ecosystem governance for coral reef management in Florida. This report summarizes the findings of our capacity assessment conducted in Florida between September 2013 and February 2014, including a seven-day site visit to the SEFCRI region in South Florida from October 20th to 26th, 2013, a subsequent three-day site visit to Tallahassee from November 14th to 16th, 2013 and review of over 100 background documents, over 50 interviews, and ongoing collaboration with an ad-hoc steering committee established to help inform this process named the Florida Jurisdictional Capacity Assessment Team or J-CAT"--Page 15 (Introduction).