Gulf Coast Joint Venture - UAV Waterbird Monitoring

***NOTICE OF SINGLE SOURCE GRANT AWARD*** The Gulf Coast Joint Venture���s Monitoring Coordinator works with the Joint Venture���s waterbird, shorebird, landbird, and waterfowl technical working groups; Joint Venture staff; and others to identify and advance monitoring in furtherance of Joint Venture objectives. That series of consultations identified a need to develop and test colonial waterbird population monitoring platforms and protocols that are less biased by access and that explicitly incorporate detection probability. The careful application and rigorous evaluation of unmanned aerial vehicles as a potential waterbird monitoring platform was therefore identified as a priority pursuit. The Southwest Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hereby provides NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD TO A SINGLE SOURCE WITHOUT COMPETITION for a single season evaluation of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveying waterbird colonies.