In November 2023, the CRC conducted an online global survey of reef restoration practitioners to better understand the primary issues they are facing and their most pressing learning needs. THANK YOU to all who participated - the survey received a robust set of responses from over 240 practitioners across 70 countries!
The results have been published in a CRC white paper Results of the 2023 Survey of Coral Restoration Practitioners Needs, now available (linked below), and are helping the CRC (and others!) support the global coral restoration community.
What did the CRC learn?
While the prevailing threats to coral reefs globally include effects of climate change, the CRC learned from the survey that issues affecting reefs at the local level (practitioner level) vary greatly by region, reinforcing the CRC’s focus at the regional level. The CRC will continue to expand and deepen its network of Regional Groups, which were also identified by the survey responses as the most-desired type of engagement from the CRC followed by a desire to continue CRC webinars, and using social media to communicate the latest techniques in coral restoration.
The survey also provided a list of the most pressing learning needs for practitioners. The top three learning needs identified are:
• Learning the latest techniques in coral interventions and restoration
• Learning how to scale up to meet ecological restoration goals
• Learning how to incorporate sexual reproduction into projects
The CRC will use the learning needs to decide what products to focus on and will use the responses by region to provide context for how restoration practitioners may utilize CRC products based on issues at the local level. The survey results also highlighted particular CRC products, like the CRC Monitoring Guide (Goergen, E.A. et al., 2020) and the CRC Bleaching Guidance (2023) that have been the most useful to practitioners, providing some context for which types of products and/or topics resonate most with our audience. Additionally, of respondents that had attended a Reef Futures Symposium, 77% indicated that their attendance impacted their organization’s coral reef restoration practice, providing further confidence that large scale, in-person knowledge exchanges can be an effective tool to support practitioners in scaling up restoration and sharing the latest techniques in coral interventions and restoration.
Many thanks to the CRC team who worked to develop the survey, review and analyze the results of the survey, and write the white paper. Be sure to download the paper for the full set of results and more regional insights of the results!