NOAA has officially awarded Coral Restoration Foundation™ a grant of $2,575,016 as part of a new, cooperative, three-year agreement.
Coral Restoration Foundation™ (CRF™) manages the world’s largest coral restoration effort. They are now coming to the end of a previous three-year funding cycle of a total of just over two million dollars from NOAA that began in 2016. This previous round of funding contributed to a dramatic scaling up of CRF™ efforts; they returned more than 50,000 corals to Florida’s reefs in just three years. CRF™ has now returned a total of more than 100,000 corals to the degraded Florida Reef Tract.
“As some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, coral reefs are critical in supporting the well-being of our environment, our economy, and our coastal communities,” said Pat Montanio, director of the Office of Habitat Conservation in NOAA Fisheries. “NOAA is dedicated to collaborating with partners like Coral Restoration Foundation to address the urgent need for coral reef conservation and preserve the future of coral reefs.”
Coral Restoration Foundation™ CEO, R. Scott Winters explains what this second grant means for the organization, “This funding will allow us to demonstrate a paradigm shift in the restoration world. We are now looking at restoring coral at densities that exceed recommendations in NOAA’s Acropora Recovery Plan. This grant will support the inclusion of additional species and the development of revolutionary new techniques; it will allow us to make progress on a scale at which we can talk about habitat recovery in terms of acres of reef restored.”
For more information, please contact Alice Grainger at alice@coralrestoration.org
Coral Restoration Foundation™
Coral Restoration Foundation™ (CRF™) is a non-profit marine conservation organization dedicated to restoring reefs to a healthy state in Florida and globally. Through large-scale cultivation, outplanting and monitoring of genetically diverse corals, CRF works to support the reefs’ natural recovery processes. CRF engages and empowers others in their mission with dive programs, educational activities, scientific collaborations, and community outreach. www.coralrestoration.org
NOAA Restoration Center
NOAA’s Restoration Center, housed within the Office of Habitat Conservation in NOAA Fisheries, invests in restoration work that helps recover threatened and endangered species, support sustainably managed fisheries, and strengthen the resilience of coastal communities. For more information on NOAA’s 2019 Coastal and Marine Habitat Restoration Grants, please contact Jennie Lyons, NOAA Fisheries Public Affairs, at jennie.lyons@noaa.gov