Building on ten years of support and partnerhip:
How can California sustain and improve the role of Community and Citizen Science in MPAs?
Together with our partners at the California Academy of Sciences, our MPAs team has submitted a public comment for the April 2023 meeting of the California Fish and Game Commission, urging the state to build on 10+ years of support and partnership, which brought more than 80,000 people into the process of marine protected area monitoring in California. You can find more information about that meeting (April 19-20) here, and read our comment here.
The upshot? The MPA program has had enormous success in supporting community and citizen science over the last decade, as outlined in our recent report. California now has an opportunity build on that success, deepening and broadening the impact of this public involvement. Our comment includes an overview of recommendations that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has made regarding community and citizen science in MPAs in the coming years. Chief among them is recommendation 14: Develop a comprehensive community science strategy for MPAs and better utilize community science to supplement core monitoring programs. We whole-heartedly support that recommendation, and are ready to help with that process.
To learn more about what we have found, and our ideas about the future role of CCS in MPAs, see also a presentation by Ryan Meyer, delivered at the annual meeting of the MARINE network in Sacramento, in April.
