TWRA Receives Grant to Work With Landowners To Conserve At-Risk Species

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) will receive $849,510 to continue a large-scale landowner incentive program in nine ecologically distinct provinces, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced.

On average, each landowner project impacts at least seven at risk species and at least four federally designated species. Many projects address degraded water quality in streams with high biological diversity. The agency expects to add at least 60 participating landowners.

The grant to the TWRA is among the nearly $13 million in competitive funding granted to 17 state fish and wildlife agencies across the country under the Landowner Incentive Program. The competitive grants are funded through the Land and Water Conservation Fund and establish or supplement existing landowner incentive programs that provide technical or financial assistance to private landowners. All grants need to be matched by funding of at least 25 percent from a non-federal source.

The program supports cooperative efforts with private landowners interested in conserving natural habitat for species at risk, including federally listed endangered or threatened species and proposed or candidate species.
The Landowner Incentive Program will not be funded next year. While cooperative conservation remains a significant part of the service’s efforts, recent evaluations have indicated that this program is duplicative of other programs. At-risk species will benefit by shifting resources from this program to others that can demonstrate results such as the National Wildlife Refuge System, Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act programs.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The service manages the 97-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System, which encompasses 547 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 69 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resources offices, and 81 ecological services field stations.

The agency enforces federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign and Native American Tribal governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Assistance program, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.

For more information about the grant programs, please visit http://federalaid.fws.gov/lip/lip.html. The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance reference number is 15.633.