The official start of the WRMP in 2016 is built on a foundation created by many current and former champions of the Program over the last several decades: 

• 1993: SFEI began implementing the Bay Regional Monitoring Program focused on Bay water quality. Since that era in the early 1990s, there was a recognition that the Estuary’s tidal wetlands also needed to be monitored to provide critical information for decision-making about effective wetland restoration and management.
• 1999: The “Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals” set tidal marsh acreage targets for the Bay and the 2015 follow-up report added key information about sediment supply needs for the Bay. These two regional goal setting documents galvanized support for wetland restoration and the subsequent passage of Measure AA (and associated creation of the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority). This influx of funding for restoration activities furthered the need for regional monitoring to assess restoration success.
• 2016: The WRMP was established and program planning was initiated.
• 2022: The WRMP officially started implementation as a co-administered program led by SFEI and the San Francisco Estuary Partnership. This work initially focused on developing the monitoring priorities and methods needed to start data collection.
• 2024: Data collection was initiated!

• Early advocates for a regional monitoring program identified the need to effectively assess restoration success and adaptively respond to the effects of landscape-scale drivers on restoration projects (such as sediment supply, sea-level rise, invasive species, and watershed-level hydrology). Regulators also identified the need for consistent monitoring across restoration projects to inform projects and their success in meeting project goals and permit requirements.
• The Integrated Regional Wetlands Monitoring Pilot Project (IRWM; 2003 – 2005) was an early effort to design large-scale and regional monitoring. It was designed to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of tidal marsh restoration efforts and their effects on ecosystem processes and to develop and apply different adaptive management approaches. IRWM monitoring focused on North Bay sites, many of which are now included in the WRMP monitoring site network. Lessons learned through this and other monitoring efforts in the Estuary helped shape the interdisciplinary and integrated approach for the planning and design of the WRMP program and further empowered the vision for a program that could monitor change at a regional scale. 
• Planning for the WRMP started in earnest in 2016-2017 with the establishment of:  

• • A Core Team to guide the early planning and prioritization process.
  • A Steering Committee comprising regulators, land managers, and scientists to serve as the decision-making body for the WRMP development process.
  • A set of four technical workshops (physical processes, vegetation, fish and wildlife, and vector control) to refine and inform the proposed science content of the WRMP Program Plan. 
  • A Science Advisory Team of technical experts to guide the science content and advise on the development of the Guiding and Management Questions. The Science Advisory Team was disbanded with the establishment of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) in May 2020, which now oversees the science of the program implementation through regular meetings and technical workgroups. 
• Technical workgroups were created beginning in 2022 to support and inform TAC decision making. Workgroups are focused on providing technical expertise on development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), monitoring design, and data analysis strategies.  Current workgroups are listed on our Workgroups page. 

The work of these early teams and committees led to the development of the underpinnings of the WRMP including the development of the governance structure, the Science Framework, a data management strategy, and an implementation roadmap all of which are described in detail in the WRMP Program Plan and which serve as the backbone of the current implementation efforts.