North American Great Plains Temperate Grassland Landscape Conservation

THE RECIPIENT HAS BEEN SELECTED.The US Fish & Wildlife Service is committed to landscape-scale conservation projects. This project is to utilize previously gathered data on the North American Great Plains temperate grasslands to develop landscape conservation designs and create alternatives for creating resilience within those designs using data previously analyzed under this award.The recipient will engage the expert community to complete a series of analyses centered on conservation and restoration of major North American grassland types and associated species of the Great Plains, extending from the Canadian Prairies south through the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico; identify Grassland Priority Conservation Areas (GPCA) to address Northern American Inter-Governmental Committee on Cooperation for Wilderness and Protected Areas Conservation (NAWPA) objectives for representation and resilience of the each of the 12 major North American grassland types in the project geography; document conservation values associated with newly identified GPCAâ¿¿s; coordinate rapid expert review of draft GPCAâ¿¿s by local wildlife biologists, ecologists, botanists or other experts and then incorporate recommendations to finalize proposed areas; and produce a conservation atlas as input to subsequent agency and partner decision making processes.Authorizing statues for this program include The Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 (16 U.S.C. 742a-742j, not including 742 d-1; Stat. 1119), as amended; The National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-57).; Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531-1544, 87 Stat. 884); Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act (16 U.S.C. 2901-2911; 94 Stat. 1322).