This new federal assistance program is designed to increase readiness for wildlife agencies to protect against future pandemics and encourage them to coordinate their efforts across jurisdictions in a seamless manner.
Donor Name: Fish and Wildlife Service
State: All States
County: All Counties
Territory: Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 04/20/2023
Size of the Grant: $775,000
Grant Duration: 3 years
Details:
The American Rescue Plan provides financial assistance “for research and extension activities to strengthen early detection, rapid response, and science-based management to address wildlife disease outbreaks before they become pandemics and strengthen capacity for wildlife health monitoring to enhance early detection of diseases that have capacity to jump the species barrier and pose a risk in the United States.”
Assistance will be available for a range of activities with the goal of the program being to strengthen the foundation of an interjurisdictional landscape-level wildlife health and disease network to protect wildlife, ecosystems, economies, and the American public. This goal will be supported through the following objectives:
- Wildlife managers have a current, evidence-based wildlife disease plan which considers:
- Disease surveillance and techniques for surveillance strategies
- Diagnostic pathology, microbiology, virology, parasitology, toxicology,, and biosafety
- Outbreak response
- Wildlife population management
- Regulatory and policy response
- Data management
- Risk assessment and decision support
- Training
- Communication plans so that key stakeholders receive and understand information about wildlife diseases in a timely manner.
- State, territorial, and Tribal managers in the same regions are connected in an interjurisdictional network of practitioners, including public health and veterinary services.
- Wildlife managers have access to diagnostic services for wildlife disease.
- Wildlife managers have capacity to manage wildlife health data, data sharing, and communication.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $4,500,000
- Maximum Award Funding: $775,000
- Minimum Award Funding: $75,000
Use of Fund
Funding will be used to establish and enhance State and Territorial fish and wildlife agencies’ capabilities to effectively address health issues involving free-ranging terrestrial, avian, and aquatic wildlife and minimize the negative impacts of health issues affecting free-ranging wildlife through surveillance, management, and research to protect the public against zoonotic disease outbreaks.
Project Duration
Project length is one to three years.
Eligible Applicant
State Government
Eligible Activities
- Best management practices for fish and wildlife diseases
- Biosecurity & biosafety
- Communications, internal and external
- Disease forecasting, risk assessments, horizon scanning
- Disease management planning
- Disease surveillance design
- Emergency response
- Hire staff dedicated to fish and wildlife health duties
- Human dimensions
- Increasing resilience and protecting environmental services to decrease the impact of disease
- Information management M systems
- Jurisdictions & authorities
- Laboratory network and services
- Partnerships and networks
- Policy and regulation development
- Public and occupational health
- Research to develop disease detection and management tools
- Tools and management strategies development for climate adaptation and mitigation for disease impacts
- Training
- Wildlife rehabilitation
For more information, visit Grants.gov.