Mission Statement

Within the NOAA Fisheries' Office of Habitat Conservation,
the Habitat Protection Division works with others to protect
and conserve habitats important to NOAA trust resources.
The Division's primary mandates focus on ensuring that
living marine resources have sufficient healthy habitat to
sustain populations. Those mandates emphasize wetlands,
anadromous fish habitat, and habitat of other marine and
estuarine species. These efforts frequently include close
partnerships with state and federal agencies, industry,
environmental groups, and academia.

What is Habitat?

Habitat has been defined as the structural component of
the environment that attracts organisms and serves as a
center of biological activity (Auster and Langton 1999).