Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership
The Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP; http://southeastaquatics.net/) was formed in 2001 around a vision of healthy and diverse aquatic ecosystems supporting public use. It includes partners from conservation organizations, government agencies, and private corporations from 14 states. SARP focuses its efforts on six key areas; aquatic habitat conservation, public use, imperiled fish and aquatic species recovery, fishery mitigation, interjurisdictional fishes, and aquatic nuisance species. The founders saw the value of agencies and organizations working together to effectively meet the region’s aquatic resource management and conservation challenges on a landscape scale. Previous efforts to halt the decline of aquatic resources in the southeast have been conducted independently on federal, state, and local scales. SARP is addressing the conservation of aquatic resources on multiple scales and working to strengthen the efforts of partners regionally. SARP was one of the first regional partnerships to be recognized as an official partnership of the National Fish Habitat Action Plan. The goal of SARP is to conserve and restore aquatic wildlife and habitats in the southeastern United States. The level of involvement of SARP ranges from partnering on individual projects to regional leadership.
