FY 2016 Rio Grand Joint Venture Base Operations Support

Joint ventures, the partnerships that were originally formed to implement the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, are regional, self-directed organizations involving Federal, State, and local governments, corporations, and a wide range of non-governmental conservation groups that have proven to be a successful means of developing cooperative conservation efforts to protect waterfowl and other bird habitats. Joint ventures address multiple local, regional, and continental goals for sustaining migratory bird populations by developing scientifically based landscape conservation plans and habitat projects that benefit migratory birds and other wildlife populations. Using the products of biological planning, joint ventures create landscape conservation designs that can direct individual habitat management actions to where they have the greatest effect. These conservation designs are used in turn to enable and encourage partners to focus their conservation programs and resources on the highest priority areas in the amounts needed to sustain healthy populations of migratory bird species. The joint ventures incorporate biological planning, conservation design, and conservation delivery with monitoring and research in an adaptive resource management framework (i.e., strategic habitat conservation) to create the biological-science and conservation-partnership base which will allow the joint venture partners to pool resources for regional projects in critical habitats for priority bird species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently provides base operations support for 21 joint ventures. **PLEASE SEE FULL TEXT NOFO FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION***