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The North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP), signed in 1986, is a joint Canada-United States agreement that seeks to reverse trends in declining populations of and habitats for waterfowl and other migratory water birds by facilitating conservation measures. In 1994, NAWMP was extended to include areas in Mexico. A primary objective of NAWMP is to maintain and enhance the habitat values of areas identified as internationally significant to waterfowl. Attaining this goal requires a cooperative initiative that allows participants to plan on a flyway basis and develop complementary programs. With that purpose in mind, "joint ventures" that bring together the fiscal resources and management capabilities of many diverse agencies and organizations have been formed across North America.

In 1991, the Pacific Coast Joint Venture (PCJV) was formed to help ensure the long-term maintenance of coastal wetland ecosystems from northern California north to British Columbia. In 2001, the PCJV management board voted to expand the joint venture area to include coastal Alaska. This action acknowledged that the Pacific Coast from San Francisco Bay to the Yukon River is an ecological continuum that share migratory bird populations, coastal habitat types and similar resource problems. Since the expansion, joint venture partners in Alaska have contributed more than $13 million in matching funds to successfully compete for North American Wetlands Conservation Act and National Coastal Wetlands Conservation grants.

A PCJV Alaska Steering Committee was formed, and Audubon Alaska is represented on the steering committee as well as on the PCJV-wide management board. In October 2003, the Alaska Steering Committee released a review draft of the Strategic Plan for the PCJV Alaska State Component (1.6 MB pdf). This strategic plan describes the objectives and initial recommendations for Alaska from the southeast border of Alaska with British Columbia, along Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska, to the tip of the Aleutian Islands, then north to Norton Sound.

The overall goal of the PCJV is to ensure long-term maintenance of wildlife habitat and sustain natural ecological processes within coastal wetland ecosystems. Moving toward that goal effectively means transcending political boundaries, agency jurisdictions, and public and private ownerships. Thus, close cooperation will be required between a broad range of groups, agencies and entities with a common interest in the future of coastal wetlands and the wildlife they support. The strategies adopted will emphasize cooperative approaches that accommodate historic human uses and diverse activites in concert with resource conservation.

The intent of the PCJV is to create partnerships in resource conservation. Joint venture partners will pursue opportunities to:

• protect and restore wetlands by seeking to involve private landowners in wildlife conservation;
• work with communities and developers to reduce the impacts of urbanization; and
• work with local industries to reduce the impacts of their operations on water quality and wetland habitats.

Joint venture activities are focused primarily on securing, restoring, and enhancing habitat - the essential foundation of diverse and abundant wildlife populations. Overall Joint Venture objectives are to maintain sufficient habitat to support wetland-dependent wildlife at existing population levels and to enhance these populations where desirable. Special effort may be directed toward helping species that are in serious decline or listed as endangered or threatened.

In the PCJV Strategic Plan, specific target habitat areas are identified, and recommendations are made for each area. However, for the Alaska region the relative lack of site-specific information on wildlife habitat use in many remote areas of the Alaska coast limits our ability to establish numerical habitat goals akin to those in use in the lower 48 states. During the next two years, the Joint Venture steering committee and its partners will reach out to the public and private landowners, boroughs, communities, and Alaska Native tribes and corporations in a deliberative process to prioritize habitat protection, restoration, and enhancement objectives by focus area.