Description

For information on how to apply, please see the attached 'Outreach of Interest Template Instructions' document.

This outreach of interest (OOI) functions as an outreach mechanism to cultivate relationships and connect with potential partners. This OOI is intended to solicit responses to explore future projects meeting the needs and interests of potential partners through partnership agreements within legislative authority with USDA Forest Service.

USDA Forest Service would like to increase capacity to monitor wildlife including potential response to management actions by engaging partnerships from local communities who have a vested interest in management outcomes. This OOI reflects efforts to increase representation, including from diverse and underserved backgrounds. Future partnerships will help to address monitoring needs, adaptive management, and USDA Forest Service ability to course correct as needed. Partnerships will foster co-stewardship between the USDA Forest Service through better representation of the communities we serve and reflect a shared commitment to wildlife conservation on USDA Forest Service lands.

Your submission signals an opportunity for USDA Forest Service to explore with you your ideas/projects/programs and potential partnership opportunities. USDA Forest Service is committed to fostering a strong, collaborative partnership that benefits our fisheries, plants, and wildlife resources, and their habitats. Collaboration is vital for collecting monitoring data that will inform management and wildlife conservation.

The USDA Forest Service is tasked with maintaining ecological integrity to support diverse and viable wildlife species. One way this is achieved is through survey and monitoring, an important tool used in wildlife management and conservation. Robust information on species abundance, occupancy and habitat is an ongoing need for the agency. This need will only increase as the pace and scale of forest management actions (e.g., fuels reduction) accelerates under the Wildfire Crisis Strategy and related initiatives such as Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership and Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, among others. In addition to routine survey needs that document presence/absence and population trends, there is a growing need for effectiveness monitoring such as post-treatment assessments following restoration (or other) activities (e.g., recreation) across the country. Through adaptive management, monitoring data help guide and inform future management and also support and inform the agency’s Climate Adaptation Strategy and provisions of the 2012 planning rule.

Advances in acoustical monitoring using automated recordings units (ARUs) provide unprecedented opportunities for the USDA Forest Service and partners to survey and monitor at broad, spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales through continuous recording of wildlife sounds. ARUs offer the potential to significantly increase staff capacity, coverage, and identification of a broad range of wildlife taxa including birds, bats, frogs, and more recently insects. This bioacoustics data can also complement other remotely based information such as vegetation structure/composition and climate across broad landscapes. Other benefits include minimizing safety risks associated with survey work in challenging terrain, season, or time of day (e.g., winter, night surveys). ARUs can be deployed during the day and programmed to record at night and can increase efficiency using standardized approaches over large areas.

Proposed project scope and ideas would help the USDA Forest Service meets its stewardship responsibilities for conserving both common and at-risk species. The project would engage community members and cultivate a vested interest in long term success and shared “ownership” in final outcomes; provide opportunities for job training and using new technology, personal development, conservation service, and natural resource appreciation while cultivating the next generation of natural resource stewards.