Interior Secretary Gale Norton today announced a $50,000challenge cost-share grant to restore natural wetland hydrology at
A state-by-state breakout of the grants announced by Norton today is available on the Interior Department Web site, www.doi.gov.
Partners on the project at the Grand Cote National Wildlife Refuge include Ducks Unlimited, the Avoyelles Wildlife Federation and local donors. They are contributing $98,000, bringing the total to $148,000.
President Bush proposed the challenge cost-share grants in 2003 as a tool for federal land managers to use in creating cooperative conservation projects. Last year, the department awarded $12.9 million in grants in 40 states and Puerto Rico. For Fiscal Year 2004, the President proposed and Congress appropriated an increase of more than $8 million, or 62 percent, in the program.
Overall, the department has awarded nearly $34 million in grants over the past two years to help more than 1,500 partners complete 633 projects. These projects have conserved, restored or enhanced more than 700,000 acres of wildlife habitat.
The Cooperative Conservation Initiative challenge cost-share grants are part of an overall commitment by the Bush administration to support cooperative conservation efforts.Over the past three years, the Interior Department has provided more than $1.3 billion in grants to states, tribes, local governments and private landowners.
The projects supported by these grants have restored millions of acres of habitat, removed invasive exotic species, replanted native grasses, improved riparian riparian
Definition of riparian habitat or riparian areas.
Learn more about riparian habitat along thousands of miles of streams, conserved limited water resources and developed conservation plans for endangered species and their habitat.
The President is proposing to build on this success in his Fiscal Year 2005 budget, which includes more than $507 million to support Interior's cooperative conservation programs.
"The power of partnership produces results for conservation that far exceed the dollars we put into these partnerships," Norton said. "By empowering citizens, we are tapping into the greatest conservation resource we have ? the American people themselves ? and helping them to become citizen-conservationists.?
