Welcome to the Elkhorn Slough Coastal Training Program

With the significant development pressures on coastal communities and the resulting impacts to coastal resources, it is important that those individuals involved in coastal decision making and planning have the opportunity to improve their skills and scientific knowledge in order to address critical resource issues.

To answer this need, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System began its Coastal Training Program (CTP). The objectives of this program are to:

• Provide the best available science, tools, and techniques to those individuals and groups whose actions impact coastal watersheds, estuaries and near shore waters.
• Increase our understanding of the environmental, social, and economic consequences of human activity within the coastal landscape.
• Increase information exchange and collaboration amongst the many individuals and institutions who affect coastal ecosystems.

The Elkhorn Slough Coastal Training Program focuses on a variety of local and regional issues including those of particular significance such as

• habitat management
• sustainable agriculture
• clean water
• eco-tourism
• endangered and invasive species

We strive to provide useful courses that address high priority issues of local and regional importance to planners, managers and regulators of coastal area resources.

The Coastal Training Program brings diverse people together - farmers, fishermen, regulatory personnel, elected officials, landowners, and scientists - to define issues and explore solutions. We are able to build collaborative networks that teach and lead each other to conserve one of the biodiversity hotspots of the U.S.

As our program grows and develops, we are becoming the region's premier forum for people to go to when they need better information about coastal ecology.