Deadline: 07-Feb-2025
The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service is requesting applications for its Bioacoustics Monitoring for Wildlife Management Program to increase capacity to monitor wildlife including potential response to management actions by engaging partnerships from local communities who have a vested interest in management outcomes.
This outreach of interest functions as an outreach mechanism to cultivate relationships and connect with potential partners. This OOI is intended to solicit responses to explore future projects meeting the needs and interests of potential partners through partnership agreements within legislative authority with USDA Forest Service.
The program reflects efforts to increase representation, including from diverse and underserved backgrounds. Future partnerships will help to address monitoring needs, adaptive management, and USDA Forest Service ability to course correct as needed. Partnerships will foster co-stewardship between the USDA Forest Service through better representation of the communities they serve and reflect a shared commitment to wildlife conservation on USDA Forest Service lands.
Your submission signals an opportunity for USDA Forest Service to explore with you your ideas/projects/programs and potential partnership opportunities. USDA Forest Service is committed to fostering a strong, collaborative partnership that benefits their fisheries, plants and wildlife resources, and their habitats. Collaboration is vital for collecting monitoring data that will inform management and wildlife conservation.
Aims
- The USDA Forest Service is tasked with maintaining ecological integrity to support diverse and viable wildlife species. One way this is achieved is through survey and monitoring, an important tool used in wildlife management and conservation. Robust information on species abundance, occupancy and habitat is an ongoing need for the agency. This need will only increase as the pace and scale of forest management actions (e.g., fuels reduction) accelerates under the Wildfire Crisis Strategy and related initiatives such as Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership and Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, among others. In addition to routine survey needs that document presence/absence and population trends, there is a growing need for effectiveness monitoring such as post-treatment assessments following restoration (or other) activities (e.g., recreation) across the country. Through adaptive management, monitoring data help guide and inform future management and also support and inform the agency’s Climate Adaptation Strategy and provisions of the 2012 planning rule.
- Advances in acoustical monitoring using automated recordings units (ARUs) provide unprecedented opportunities for the USDA Forest Service and partners to survey and monitor at broad, spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales through continuous recording of wildlife sounds. ARUs offer the potential to significantly increase staff capacity, coverage, and identification of a broad range of wildlife taxa including birds, bats, frogs, and more recently insects. This bioacoustics data can also complement other remotely based information such as vegetation structure/composition and climate across broad landscapes. Other benefits include minimizing safety risks associated with survey work in challenging terrain, season, or time of day (e.g., winter, night surveys). ARUs can be deployed during the day and programmed to record at night and can increase efficiency using standardized approaches over large areas.
- Proposed project scope and ideas would help the USDA Forest Service meets its stewardship responsibilities for conserving both common and at-risk species. The project would engage community members and cultivate a vested interest in long term success and shared “ownership” in final outcomes; provide opportunities for job training and using new technology, personal development, conservation service, and natural resource appreciation while cultivating the next generation of natural resource stewards.
Objectives
- The purpose of potential project scope is to increase understanding of wildlife occupancy, abundance, distribution, habitat use and management effectiveness. ARU placement and sample design would be informed by current science using statistically robust protocols and sampling frameworks developed and or vetted by the agency (e.g., North American Bat Grid). Data management and analyses would also be the responsibility of USDA Forest Service. Partner responsibilities would include navigating to predetermined locations to deploy and retrieve ARU units and swapping out data cards. Some general descriptive data collection may also be needed such as data on site conditions and pictures. USDA Forest Service would provide overall project oversight and facilitate cross program coordination with other program areas as needed such as forestry, fire, silviculture, rangeland management, tribal relations and with other relevant partners.
- The objectives for potential projects would include:
- Monitoring of certain USDA Forest Service focal species, at-risk species, or other species of interest to the agency and its partners.
- Monitoring for invasives (e.g., bullfrog) or incipient (early detection) or nuisance species (e.g., bark beetles) that may have negative effects on ecological integrity for desirable wildlife species and habitat.
- Surveillance or reconnaissance surveys for species of interest that may not have special protections but are still socially or ecologically important such as rare endemics, culturally important species, or species less commonly surveyed or otherwise typically difficult to survey.
- Effectiveness monitoring (before-after) in highly managed landscapes undergoing vegetation removal, terrestrial or riparian restoration, habitat enhancement, fuels reduction, and prescribed burning.
Priorities
- USDA Forest Service is interested in projects that:
- Support the conservation of indigenous species;
- Restore resilient landscapes; nurture thriving communities;
- Build diversity and inclusion; and identify workforce development opportunities in conservation stewardship and natural and cultural resources;
- Support, benefit, or engage communities that are historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality (pursuant to Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved
- Communities through the Federal Government).
- Informs fuels reduction activities under the Wildfire Crisis Strategy and re-vegetation under the Reforestation Act.
- Informs ongoing habitat enhancement work including projects supporting migratory joint ventures, grassland restoration, bat conservation and nonnative invasive species removal.
- Informs forest plan monitoring, special status species and or culturally significant species.
Duration
- Awards under this announcement are typically 1 to 5 years in length. Projects of greater complexity may be awarded for a longer period, not to exceed 5 years.
Eligibility Criteria
- Eligible applicants include for profit; non-profits; institutions of higher education; federal, state, local, and Native American tribal governments; foreign governments and organizations and special purpose districts (public utility districts, fire districts, conservation districts, school districts, and ports).
For more information, visit Grants.gov.