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Critical fish habitat disappears under parking lots, gets cut off by culverts and polluted with contamination so frequently, it's sometimes surprising there's even an animal left to catch.

Local interest groups with a stake in maintaining healthy fish habitat are teaming up today to create a strategic plan for the Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Partnership.

The partnership will seek to tie stakeholders across the borough together in an effort to improve and protect fish habitat.

"This is based on a national effort to try to get groups that might not work together to try to come together to talk about fish habitat on a regional scale," said Sue Mauger, science director for Cook Inletkeeper.

The national effort Mauger refers to is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Fish Habitat Action Plan. Mike Edwards, a biologist with FWS, said that as fish populations across the country disappeared, it became clear that a unified grassroots effort was needed to maintain them.

NFHAP is modeled after the North America Waterfowl Management Plan. That partnership successfully brought together regional stakeholder groups to advocate waterfowl conservation on an international scale.

"I think the federal government is looking for a way to do a better job and these partnerships are a way to do it," said Robert Ruffner, executive director of the Kenai Watershed Forum.

The idea of a local regionwide partnership began to take seat in 2007 when the Kenai Peninsula Partnership submitted a letter of interest to the NFHAP board. After the application was approved, members from state, federal and local government agencies along with members of the non-profit community began laying the groundwork to devise a strategic plan.

The strategic plan will set guidelines for the partnership to follow when tackling habitat protection and restoration projects. While Ruffner and Mauger agree that interest groups have tried to work together in the past, a cohesive bond formed through the partnership would benefit the fish.

"This is an opportunity to formalize some partnerships and rethink the way we work and make sure were doing it in a more effective and efficient way," Ruffner said.

They said that now, when money becomes available for habitat protection, local stakeholder groups compete for it.

"Whenever money comes about," Mauger said, "there's a mad scramble and whoever has their ducks in a row first gets it."

As a result, there's no sense of prioritization, and projects are often attacked one at a time instead of comprehensively. A strategic plan will seek to look at some of the wide array of fish habitat concerns and manage the way funds are used to address them.

"This is for restoring habitat for the good of the fish, not the organization that's putting in the proposal," Mauger said.

Though NFHAP is a national plan, the partnership will not have any regulatory powers.

"The partnerships are grassroots based," Edwards said. "It's not the government coming in and saying, 'Do this.' It's just the opposite."

Ruffner agreed, saying, "We may prioritize the types of work that need to be done and encourage agencies to work on higher priorities."

Ruffner stressed that the primary objective of the organization will be habitat

"Working with habitat means making sure there's good high quality habitat, making sure there's sustainable fish populations, that there's good connectivity to get from spawning grounds to the ocean," Ruffner said.

What habitat issues the Kenai partnership focuses on await to be seen.

"It kind of depends on who comes together," Ruffner said.

On the central Kenai Peninsula, habitat issues are typically centered around fragmentation.

"A lot of development happened quickly and not a lot of culverts went in correctly," Mauger said, adding that improperly installed culverts can cut salmon off from critical rearing habitat.

While developers in the flats of the peninsula can sprawl out, Seward faces issues of confined development, said Matt Gray, project director for the Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance in Seward.

"In Seward, the geology has such a limited area it forces us to develop low lying areas which we're currently running short of. There's been more development in flood plain areas as a result," said Gray.

Other concerns on the peninsula could include controlling invasive species, protecting trout habitat and even near shore salt-water fish, to name a few.

"Nothing is off the table," Ruffner said.

The priority of these concerns will be hashed out in the strategic plan. It's immediately apparent with so many competing interests however, what benfits a partnership could offer.

"Everyone comes together, it's a way to leverage funds, it's a way to bring habitat restoration efforts together and have groups working together instead of independently," Edwards said.

Funding for the regional partnerships depends on money from state, local and federal agencies. No legislative appropriations have been made to fund NFHAP or its partnerships.

Ruffner said he hopes to have the strategic plan completed to submit for approval by the national board in May.

The meeting is from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association Building at 40610 Kalifornsky Beach Road in Kenai.

Dante Petri can be reached at dante.petri@peninsulaclarion.com.