Service Announces $7.4 Million in Grants to Help Protect Imperiled Species.
M2 PRESSWIRE-October 22, 2021-: Service Announces $7.4 Million in Grants to Help Protect Imperiled Species
(C)1994-2021 M2 COMMUNICATIONS
RDATE:21102021
Imperiled wildlife across the nation will benefit from approximately $7.4 million in grants thanks to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Competitive State Wildlife Grant (C-SWG) program. The program supports projects led by state, territory and commonwealth fish and wildlife agencies protecting vulnerable wildlife and their habitats.
This year's primary grantees include agencies in Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawai'i, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. Additional state agencies will receive grant funds through partnerships with these grantee agencies. The funds will be used to implement a total of 21 conservation projects.
"The Competitive State Wildlife Grants provide a proactive, collaborative and innovative mechanism for addressing significant threats to our nation's cherished wildlife and their habitats. Stemming the crisis of species extinction is a central component of the Biden-Harris administration's America the Beautiful initiative," said Martha Williams, the Service's Principal Deputy Director. "One of the initiative's goals is to enhance wildlife habitat and improve biodiversity to keep species from reaching the point where they are too far gone to save. In addition, these grants provide support for State Wildlife Action Plans that underpin important efforts to conserve imperiled species and their habitats."
These projects include timely actions, such as range-wide species assessments and habitat improvements, that may help avert the need for new federal endangered species listings and that help states implement Service recovery plans to cooperatively protect and conserve species that are currently listed. The FY 2021 projects also include efforts to implement improvements to State Wildlife Action Plans through increased use of climate science, mapping technologies, and shared data-bases that improve states' abilities to conserve species at regional or landscape scales.
The C-SWG program employs a nationally competitive process to select and fund projects that conserve species listed in State Wildlife Action Plans. All 56 state, territorial and commonwealth wildlife agencies have such plans, which target state-identified Species of Greatest Conservation Need. The program facilitates...
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