Vulnerable wildlife across the nation will benefit from more than $7.4 million in grants thanks to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Competitive State Wildlife Grants (C-SWG). Since 2008, the C-SWG program has provided over $103 million in federal grant funds to states, commonwealths, territories, and the District of Columbia to benefit fish and wildlife and their habitats, especially species at risk of declining or becoming threatened or endangered.
“State and territory fish and wildlife agencies are essential partners in protecting America’s wild places and wildlife for future generations,” said Service Director Martha Williams. “These grants will help them conduct important work to promote recovery of wildlife and their habitat for those most in need of help and we are proud to support their work.”
This year’s projects will fund a variety of conservation activities including translocating the federally endangered Hawai’ian honeycreeper ʻākohekohe, expanding a network of automated radio telemetry receiving stations to track species like butterflies and bats, implementing conservation efforts for vulnerable turtle species, and assessing species’ climate vulnerability.
These projects will help support the America the Beautiful initiative by working to conserve, connect and restore our nation’s lands, waters, and wildlife with locally led and locally designed conservation efforts and restoration approaches.
The Service’s Office of Conservation Investment, which administers the C-SWG program, will fully fund 15 projects that advance conservation and species recovery. The projects were selected from a nationally competitive slate of proposals to address priorities identified in each agency’s Wildlife Action Plan. Every state, commonwealth, territory, and the District of Columbia develops and maintains these plans to manage species and meet local and unique stewardship needs. These plans identify and prioritize actions to conserve species most in need of conservation measures, termed species of greatest conservation need, which often include those at risk of population decline or becoming listed as threatened or endangered.
The C-SWG program facilitates interstate collaboration and species conservation at regional and national levels, encouraging recipients to collaborate with tribal and nongovernmental fish and wildlife managers and other experts to create landscape and nationwide conservation networks. The 2024 primary recipients include fish and wildlife agencies in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Hawai’i, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Carolina and Wisconsin. The Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies also received an award that will be distributed to California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. These state fish and wildlife agency recipients and their partners will contribute $2.4 million in non-federal funds to support the selected projects. With these combined funds nearly $10 million in total will help conserve and protect declining species and their habitats.
Examples of this year’s funded projects include:
- The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and Georgia Department of Natural Resources will, along with their partners, evaluate the taxonomic and conservation status of crayfish Species of Greatest Conservation Need in the Coastal Plain, including several listed as state threatened or endangered. They will assess threats through fieldwork and surveys, with an emphasis on identifying potential pathways for invasive introductions. In addition, the cooperators will develop a data portal that will allow agency staff and partners to query and visualize spatial genetic structure coincident with occurrence data. This will help guide management and conservation planning for these declining species.
- The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and Delaware Natural Resources and Environmental Control will investigate spawning of American horseshoe crab in marshy areas. Previous research has shown that horseshoe crabs spawn regularly in salt marsh habitat. However, more information is needed to understand if marsh spawning has impacts on the migratory and nesting success of shorebirds such as the federally listed rufa red knot, which feeds on the crab’s eggs. Project objectives include: identifying salt marsh areas where the crabs are spawning, quantifying environmental conditions in marshes where crab eggs are found, and quantifying whether migratory shorebirds preferentially use marsh areas where the crabs spawn.
The C-SWG program is part of the larger annual State Wildlife Grant Program, which in April apportioned a total of a $59 million in funding to every state, commonwealth, territory and the District of Columbia to advance conservation and protect vulnerable wildlife according to a formula based on geographic area and population size. For more information, visit: www.fws.gov/program/state-
