[PCA] FUNDING: Native Plant Conservation Initiative Grant Program Cancelled

[Kwong, Olivia]

Native Plant Conservation Initiative Grant Program Cancelled

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has decided to dissolve the
Native Plant Conservation Initiative (NPCI) grant program as of 2013. NPCI
was started in 1995 when the Plant Conservation Alliance teamed up with the
Foundation to address the lack of funding available for plant conservation
work. The Federal funds for NPCI came primarily from the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and USDA Forest
Service (USFS). Over the course of nearly two decades, NPCI funded 315
native plant projects with 7.2 million dollars in federal investment used
to leverage 11.9 million dollars in matching funds.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s explanation for its decision
is: “Due to lack of operating funds, the Native Plant Conservation
Initiative has been retired at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will continue and strengthen its
investments in native plants and their habitats through other Foundation
conservation initiatives.”

NPCI was a great source of funding for native and rare plants which get
less than 2% of recovery dollars under the Endangered Species Act and less
than 2% of Federal biological research dollars. Peggy Olwell, the chair of
the Plant Conservation Alliance’s Federal Committee, noted that “The NPCI
grant program will be sorely missed by agencies and partners alike.”

NPCI addressed the conservation, maintenance, rehabilitation, and
restoration of native plants and their ecosystems on a national level, with
projects funded across the continental United States to Alaska and Hawai’i
and as far away as American Samoa. Projects addressed priorities
established by one or more of the funding federal agencies and fell within
at least one of six focal areas for plant conservation: partnerships,
education, restoration, research, sustainability, and creating data
linkages. NPCI-supported projects ranged from research on a single
imperiled plant species to multi-state broad-scale restoration projects;
habitat mapping to propagating native plants; assisting State-wide
conservation strategies to developing plant and pollinator monitoring
protocols; creating native plant curricula to restoration manuals; coloring
books to illustrated flora; preserving traditional knowledge to plant
salvages; germplasm preservation to native plant demonstration gardens. For
descriptions of the projects funded under NPCI, see the PCA website at
http://www.nps.gov/plants/nfwf

Highly competitive, NPCI grant requests often far exceeded the average
annual funding allotted to the program. Since 2009, for example, more than
100 NPCI pre-proposals were received annually and averaged $7,000,000 in
requests, while the annual funding allocated to the Program averaged
$400,000. The direct Congressional appropriation of Federal funding to the
Foundation remains at about the same level as in previous years (see
chart).

[image: Inline image 1]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service liaison to the Plant Conservation
Alliance will work with the Foundation to obtain archival information on
projects that were funded under the Program. To assist in ensuring that our
archives are complete, we would appreciate if NPCI Program grantees could
assist us by providing information about your endeavors that were funded
under this Program. Please include the funding year, a project title, and
any summaries, reports, or other outcomes that stemmed from the project to:

Patricia De Angelis
Patricia_DeAngelis at fws.gov
4401 North Fairfax Drive
Room 110
Arlington, VA 22203

If you have comments or questions regarding the termination of the Program,
please contact the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation directly:

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
1133 Fifteenth St., NW, Ste 1100
Washington, DC  20005
Telephone 202-857-0166
Fax 202-857-0162
info at nfwf.org
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