Deadline: 14-Feb-25
The Bureau of Land Management is seeking applications for its Alaska Aquatic Resources Program to protect and restore riparian and wetland areas, aquatic habitats, and water resources to provide functioning ecosystems for a combination of balanced and diverse uses including fish and wildlife, and for the long-term needs of future generations.
The issues the Program addresses are diverse and include restoration, habitat fragmentation and degradation, drought resiliency, water availability, and aquatic invasive species. Program staff provide professional expertise and policy guidance to BLM managers, Federal, State, Tribal, and local governments, and non-governmental partners on these issues, and implement the best management practices to minimize or avoid impacts to water resources, riparian and wetland areas, and aquatic habitats on public lands.
The BLM Alaska Aquatic Resources Program continues to advance the Department of the Interior’s priorities to address the climate crisis, restore balance on public lands and waters, advance environmental justice, and invest in a clean energy future.
Goals
- Ensuring water availability to sustain healthy riparian and wetland areas and aquatic habitats.
- Restoring degraded water resources, riparian and wetland areas, and aquatic habitats, with a focus on process-based approaches and promoting riverscape health.
- Advancing decision support models, and the inventory, assessment, and monitoring information that feeds such models, to inform the protection of remaining high quality habitats and the strategic restoration of degraded systems.
Priorities
- Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad
- Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government
- Economic Relief Related to the COVID-19 pandemic
- Ensuring the Future is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers
Opportunities
- The BLM Alaska Aquatic Resources Program has an opportunity to work with partner organizations to assist with:
- Combating climate change and habitat loss impacts to aquatic resources.
- Restoring and connecting degraded aquatic resources.
- Increasing ecosystem resistance, resilience, and adaptability to drought, wildfires, and floods.
- Determining acceptable levels of hydrologic and ecological change given BLM management objectives.
- Advancing inventory, assessment, and monitoring activities and tools.
- Preventing the establishment and spread of invasive species.
- Increasing public knowledge of aquatic habitats on BLM managed lands, including with a targeted focus on communities of color, low-income families, and rural and indigenous communities.
Functions
- The BLM Alaska Aquatic Resources Program’s core functions include:
- Ecosystem Structure and Function: Protect and restore the physical and ecological processes of functioning riparian and wetland areas, aquatic habitats, and water resources.
- Water Quality: Protect and restore the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of surface water and groundwater.
- Water Availability: Ensure that water is legally and physically available for beneficial uses, including protection and restoration actions.
- Riparian, Wetland, and Aquatic Habitat: Proactively protect and restore riparian, wetland, and aquatic habitats to ensure the presence, abundance, and diversity of healthy, self-sustaining, and desirable riparian, wetland, and aquatic species and other wildlife and plant populations that depend upon these habitats, including special status species.
- Decision Support: Inventory, assess, and monitor aquatic resources to inform their understanding of condition and trend, guide the BLM’s management activities, and assess regulatory compliance.
- Environmental Compliance: Ensure full compliance with applicable federal law, Executive Orders, regulations, and policy and with state law to the extent consistent with federal law.
- Internal & External Involvement: Consult, coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate with federal, state, tribal, and local governments and other programs, partners, and communities, to foster adaptive approaches to protection and restoration and implement education and outreach programs.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $500,000
- Award Ceiling: $100,000
- Award Floor: $5,000
Eligibility Criteria
- State governments
- County governments
- City or township governments
- Special district governments
- Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
- Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized)
- Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
- Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Private institutions of higher education
Ineligibility Criteria
- Individuals and For-Profit Organizations are ineligible to apply for awards under this NOFO.
- This program NOFO does not support entities hiring interns or crews under the Public Lands Corps Act of 1993. The Public Lands Corps Act of 1993, 16 USC, Chapter 37, Subchapter II-Public Lands Corps, is the only legislative authority that allows BLM to “hire” interns under this authority. Therefore, eligible Youth Conservation Corps may only apply for projects developed under NOFO 15.243 – BLM Youth Conservation Opportunities on Public Lands.
Application Requirements
- (Suggested format, Attachment A Project Proposal template may be used when submitting your proposal.) The project proposal must be no longer than 15 pages, with a typeface no smaller than 11-point, and have at least one (1) inch margins on all sides. The 15-page limit includes all text, figures, references, and vitae, but does not include the Budget Detail (Attachment B). Application narrative requirements may include:
- Project title
- Statement of need
- Goals and objectives
- Public benefit and program interest of the BLM
- Technical approach
- Timetable or milestones
- Information to support environmental compliance review requirements. (NOTE: Projects under aquatic and wildlife management, the native plant program, threatened and endangered species habitat conservation – the narrative should provide enough detail so that reviewers are able to determine project compliance with Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973)
- Description of stakeholder coordination or involvement
- Required project monitoring and evaluation plan, including how you will measure project performance and assessment tools to be used
- Information on key project personnel
- Anticipated future funding needs
- Details and supporting documentation on the project location
- Other program or project-specific narrative requirements
For more information, visit Grants.gov.