Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative | F17AS00388

Opportunity Information: Apply for F17AS00388

This grant opportunity, titled "Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative" (Funding Opportunity Number F17AS00388), was issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Midwest Region, within the Department of the Interior. It is a discretionary natural resources grant (CFDA 15.678) with an award ceiling of $31,998 and an expectation of a single award. The notice was created on August 11, 2017, with an original closing date of August 18, 2017, reflecting a short window typical of awards that are already targeted and planned.

The funding was intended to be made as a single-source cooperative agreement without competition to Michigan State University (MSU), a public and state-controlled institution of higher education and the specifically named recipient. Rather than being an open solicitation, the project had already been selected by the Steering Committee of the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative (ETPBR LCC). In practical terms, that means the agency was signaling its intent to fund one identified partner for one defined project, using a cooperative agreement structure that typically implies closer collaboration and involvement by the federal agency than a standard grant.

The rationale for the project centers on major upstream drivers of ecological change in the Mississippi River Basin and their downstream consequences for the Gulf of Mexico. The opportunity highlights nutrient pollution as a core issue, noting that estimates of nutrient loading to the Gulf suggest nine states in the basin account for roughly 75 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus delivered to the Gulf. This framing ties local and regional land and water management decisions in the basin directly to Gulf outcomes, including water quality impacts and the broader concerns associated with excessive nutrients.

The notice also emphasizes the Mississippi River Basin as a nationally significant biodiversity stronghold for freshwater fish, stating that at least about 25 percent of all fish species in the contiguous United States occur within the basin. It underscores that fish communities are shaped by habitat conditions, human-caused landscape disturbance, and fragmentation of river networks by dams. That combination of stressors points to a conservation challenge that spans multiple jurisdictions and sectors, because nutrient sources, habitat alteration, and connectivity barriers often arise from different land uses and infrastructure decisions across a very large geography.

Climate is presented as another key driver influencing aquatic habitat and fish community composition. The opportunity notes that climate change is expected to further alter stream habitats by changing thermal characteristics (water temperature patterns) and flow regimes (the timing and magnitude of streamflow). Those shifts can affect everything from species distributions and reproduction to habitat availability and water quality dynamics, and they can interact with existing pressures like nutrient enrichment and fragmentation. The notice ties these upstream changes back to downstream effects on the Gulf of Mexico, reinforcing the idea that basin-scale conservation and management actions are important not only for inland ecosystems but also for coastal and marine conditions influenced by river inputs.

Overall, the opportunity can be summarized as a targeted, single-recipient cooperative agreement intended to support an MSU-led project chosen by the ETPBR LCC Steering Committee, focused on understanding and addressing interconnected basin-wide issues: nutrient loading to the Gulf, freshwater fish biodiversity and habitat fragmentation in the Mississippi River Basin, and the compounding effects of climate-driven changes in stream temperature and flow.

• The Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.678.
• This funding opportunity was created on Aug 11, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 18, 2017 Single Source Notification of Funding. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $31,998.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education.

Apply for F17AS00388

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