New Agreement for Tall Timbers Research Station To Enhance Fire Training and Prescribed Burning Support | F18AS00365

Opportunity Information: Apply for F18AS00365

The grant opportunity titled "New Agreement for Tall Timbers Research Station To Enhance Fire Training and Prescribed Burning Support" is a Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funding action in the form of a cooperative agreement (Funding Opportunity Number F18AS00365). It was posted as a discretionary opportunity under the Natural Resources category (CFDA 15.608), but it is explicitly not a competitive solicitation. Instead, it serves as a formal notice that the Fish and Wildlife Service intends to make a single-source award, meaning the agency plans to fund one specific recipient rather than inviting applications from the public. The notice was created on September 19, 2018, with an original closing date of September 21, 2018, reflecting the administrative nature of the announcement rather than a typical open application window.

The purpose of the planned agreement is to support the Southeast Region Fire Management Division by providing funding to deliver a broad package of wildland fire and prescribed burning capacity. The work described centers on classroom-based wildland fire training, hands-on field training, prescribed fire research, and the development of new tools to strengthen prescribed fire planning and smoke modeling. In practical terms, this is aimed at building skills, standardizing training, improving applied fire science, and creating or refining decision-support resources that help managers conduct prescribed burns effectively while anticipating smoke impacts.

The intended audiences are diverse and include Department of Defense personnel, other federal agencies, non-federal partners, and private landowners. A key geographic and operational emphasis is support for activities on or adjacent to U.S. Army IMCOM-supported installations, along with Southeast Region National Wildlife Refuges. This focus suggests the agreement is meant to improve coordination and operational readiness for prescribed fire in landscapes where military training needs, public safety considerations, habitat management goals, and interagency fire management priorities overlap.

Financially, the opportunity lists an award ceiling of $3,755,000 and anticipates a single award. While the eligibility field is marked as "unrestricted" in the general database sense, the text makes clear that the agency is proceeding via a single-source intent to award, so it should be interpreted as not open for new applicants to compete for the funding. The cooperative agreement structure also signals that the federal government expects to remain substantially involved in the project, which is common when the agency anticipates ongoing collaboration in technical work like training delivery, research coordination, and tool development.

The legal authority for the funding is supported by a set of statutes that collectively underpin Fish and Wildlife Service conservation, coordination, and management activities. These include the Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Sikes Act (often relevant to conservation and natural resources management on military lands), the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act, and the Lacey Act and related regulations. Taken together, these citations indicate the agency views the work as fitting within its broader mandates to conserve fish and wildlife resources, coordinate with other land management entities, and support management practices that protect ecological values and comply with federal conservation law.

Overall, this notice describes a targeted, pre-identified partnership intended to expand and strengthen prescribed fire training, applied research, and planning and smoke modeling tools in the southeastern United States, with a strong emphasis on benefiting military installations and National Wildlife Refuges and on serving a wide mix of public and private land management stakeholders.

• The Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "New Agreement for Tall Timbers Research Station To Enhance Fire Training and Prescribed Burning Support" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.608.
• This funding opportunity was created on Sep 19, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Sep 21, 2018 THIS IS A NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD TO A SINGLE SOURCE ANNOUNCEMENT ASSOCIATED WITH THIS NOTICE.. (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 $3,755,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• 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.

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