| Section 6 Grant Program |
News and Highlights |
Grants under Section 6 of the Endangered Species Act provide critical resources for implementing on-the-ground projects that help conserve and recover threatened and endangered species.
Under Section 6, grants are authorized to states through the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund. These funds may, in turn, be awarded to private landowners and groups for conservation projects.
States and territories must contribute a minimum non-federal match of 25 percent for the estimated program costs of approved projects, or 10 percent when two or more states or territories implement a joint project. A state or territory must have or enter into a cooperative agreement with the Service to receive grant funds.
For more information, contact the Northeast Region Section 6 Coordinator: Alison Whitlock, 413-253-8536, Alison_whitlock@fws.gov.
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The Conservation Grants program provides financial assistance to state projects that conserve listed and at-risk species. Funded activities include habitat restoration, species status surveys, public education and outreach, captive propagation and reintroduction, nesting surveys, genetic studies, and development of management plans.
Project selection is generally conducted by Service Endangered Species staff partnering with the states. Funding is allocated by formula to the Service's regions based on the number of species covered in the cooperative agreements with the states in that region. Regional offices then further allocate the funding to the states within that region by formula or through a competitive process.
The following three types of nontraditional grants are available:
Through the development of regional Habitat Conservation Plans, local governments incorporate species conservation into local land-use planning, which streamlines the project approval process and facilitates economic development. This program provides funding to states to support the development of HCPs.
Planning assistance grants may support planning activities such as document preparation, outreach, and baseline surveys, and inventories. The funding for the Habitat Conservation Planning Assistance Grants is competed for at the National level.
The HCP Land Acquisition program, established by Congress in fiscal year 1997, was designed to reduce conflicts between the conservation of listed species and land uses on specific parcels of land. Under this program, the Service provides grants to states for land acquisitions that are associated with approved HCPs. The Service considers the use of federal acquisition dollars by states for habitat protection within and adjacent to HCP areas to be an important and effective mechanism to promote the recovery of threatened and endangered species.
This program has three primary purposes: 1) to fund land acquisitions that complement, but do not replace, private mitigation responsibilities contained in HCPs, 2) to fund land acquisitions that have important benefits for listed, proposed, and candidate species, and 3) to fund land acquisitions that have important benefits for ecosystems that support listed, proposed and candidate species.
Loss of habitat is the primary threat to most listed species. Land acquisition is often the most effective and efficient means of protecting habitats essential for recovery of listed species before development or other land-use changes impair or destroy key habitat values.
Land acquisition is costly, and often neither the Service nor the states individually have the necessary resources to acquire habitats essential for recovery of listed species. These grant funds are matched by states and non-federal entities to acquire these habitats from willing sellers in support of approved species recovery plans. Because the existing HCP Land Acquisition Grants Program provides substantial funding for land acquisitions associated with HCPs, grants with this program are not used to fund land acquisitions associated with permitted HCPs.
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