15.658 | F19AS00149

Opportunity Information: Apply for F19AS00149

The grant opportunity under CFDA 15.658 is titled "Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration" and is administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. It is listed as a discretionary funding opportunity, meaning the agency has discretion over whether and how funds are awarded within the bounds of the program and applicable laws and policies. The funding activity category is Natural Resources, which signals that the work supported typically relates to protecting, assessing, repairing, or restoring fish, wildlife, habitat, and related ecological resources that may have been harmed by contamination or other damaging events.

The award mechanism is a Cooperative Agreement. In practical terms, that usually indicates a more hands-on relationship between the recipient and the federal agency than a standard grant, with substantial federal involvement anticipated during the project. This can include technical coordination, shared planning, approvals of key steps or deliverables, or ongoing collaboration as the assessment or restoration work proceeds. Cooperative agreements are commonly used for complex natural resource efforts where the agency expects to stay actively engaged to help ensure the work meets scientific, regulatory, and programmatic requirements.

Although the eligibility field is marked as "Unrestricted" (open to any type of entity), the notice is explicitly not a competitive solicitation. The closing information states it is a notice of intent to award to a single source and not a request for competitive proposals. In other words, even though many entity types might be eligible in theory, the agency is not inviting applications from the public for competition under this posting. This kind of announcement is typically used to document and justify an intended direct award to a specific organization based on unique qualifications, continuity of work, statutory or programmatic reasons, or an existing relationship that supports the particular project goals.

The listed award ceiling is $200,000. The posting shows "ExpectedAwards: 0," which often appears on notices that are not structured as a typical competitive grant round; it can reflect that the agency is not projecting a standard number of awards available to applicants, or that the award is already intended for a particular recipient and the posting is primarily informational. The creation date for the opportunity is March 18, 2019, and the funding opportunity number is F19AS00149, which serves as the identifying reference for the announcement.

Substantively, the topic "Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration" generally refers to the process of evaluating injuries to natural resources and the services they provide, and then planning and implementing actions to restore, rehabilitate, replace, or acquire the equivalent of those resources and services. In many federal contexts, NRDAR work is associated with investigating impacts from oil spills, hazardous substance releases, or other events that harm ecosystems, and then using scientific assessment and restoration planning to make the environment whole. Projects under this umbrella can include field studies and monitoring, injury determination, restoration design, habitat improvement, species recovery actions, and long-term stewardship or performance tracking, depending on the specific incident and restoration plan. This particular notice, however, provides only a high-level description and does not include detailed project scope, deliverables, or a statement of work, which is consistent with a single-source intent-to-award posting rather than an open competition.

• The Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "15.658" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.658.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 18, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by This is a notice of intent to award to a single source. This is not a request for competitive proposals.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $200,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for F19AS00149

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