Description
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is providing a notice of intent to issue a single-source award to Mississippi State University for the project "Modeling Species at Risk to Support State Wildlife Action Plans in the Southeast." The project aims to develop species distribution models and other applications to support species status assessments in the southeast. The award will be made under the authority of various federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. The project will provide the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with much-needed capacity to address the immense workload in the southeast, where 60% of recently petitioned species reside. The products of the project will include best-available science on where species likely need to be included in land management considerations and what practices are where they likely do not need to be considered in regulatory processes.
• The project will develop empirically-driven, high-resolution information on distributions of species and their likely responses to landscape changes.
• The project will provide a bridge between species location information and species status assessments.
• The project will guide status surveys, which will provide data for species status assessments and may provide evidence supporting removal of the species from the petition.
• The project will contribute to FWS Core Priorities, including striking regulatory balance, strengthening ESA implementation, accelerating recovery and delisting, and strengthening state and tribal partnerships.