April 4, 2012
Dear Stakeholders:
I am happy to present our national and
division enforcement priorities for FY
2012. This document represents input
from many interested people across the
country: commercial and recreational
fishermen, fishery management councils,
state enforcement partners, and nongovernmental
organizations to name a
few. Thank you all for your comments.
Creating these priorities collaboratively was a first for us. We started with
NOAA's National Enforcement Summit in August 2010, when more than
60 stakeholders from around the country came together to discuss how
we could improve our enforcement program. After the summit, our six
Special Agents in Charge and our partners in the NOAA Office of General
Counsel's Enforcement Section reached out to fishery management
councils, interstate commissions, and others to solicit even more input.
We used all these recommendations to draft our enforcement priorities,
which we published in November 2011 for 60 days of public comment. We
also held seven calls during that time to outline the draft priorities, answer
your questions, and get your thoughts on them. When the comment
period ended in early January 2012, our national directors and Special
Agents in Charge gathered to review the comments and incorporate them
into this document.
As with any new approach to management, we are always improving the process. We will seek input into our priorities each year, so let us know if
you have suggestions for improvements. We'll be coming back to you for
comments on our FY 2013 priorities later this year.
Looking to the future,
Bruce Buckson
Director, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement
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