Role of Local Integrating Organizations in the Puget Sound Partnership Action Agenda

The Puget Sound Partnership is charged with coordinating development and implementation of an Action Agenda to recover a healthy Puget Sound. Puget Sound has 17 Treaty tribes, 12 counties, 100 cities, and countless non-profit and special purpose district groups that are working on important aspects of Puget Sound recovery. In 2008, the Puget Sound Partnership, along with Washington Department of Ecology, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in collaboration with tribes, the Washington State Association of Counties, and the Association of Washington Cities, formed the Local Integration Task Force to recommend ways to enhance the capacity of local organizations to take on the challenge of integrating efforts and implementing the Action Agenda. This presentation will include an overview of the local integrating organization concept, how these organizations are currently organized and operating at the watershed/marine basin scale, and the opportunities and challenges involved in making the promise of an integrated local management structure operational