Description
The FY 2021 Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program provides financial assistance to eligible marine mammal stranding participants to support response, care, treatment, rehabilitation, and release of stranded marine mammals, as well as related scientific research. The program aims to enhance the marine mammal response community's ability to assist stranded and injured marine mammals, and to improve the community's knowledge on the treatment and care of distressed marine mammals. The program will provide support for response to the stranding of wild populations of species under the Department of the Interior's management authority. Some key areas of focus include:
* Enhance capability of stranding response, including training, planning, outreach, and improvement of equipment and resource availability
* Transport for live strandings of marine mammals, including equipment costs, rescue transport trucks and contracts for transport
* Increase response efforts for marine mammals in distress in areas of low rescue capacity
* Improve and expand existing facilities for medical treatment, rehabilitation, and/or necropsies
* Enhance access for veterinary care, including on-site equipment or instruments for more rapid assessment of medical condition or monitoring of treatment response
* Improve collection and archiving of specimens to support studies of life history parameters, threats, and overall population health
* Enhance post-release monitoring of survival for individuals released from rehabilitation or on-site from strandings