BLM-(Arizona), BLM Arizona, Restore Arizona
Description of Program and/or Project a. Background: The Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Arizona State Office is implementing integrated multiple resource restoration across public and private landscapes that involves multiple partners and stakeholders. The BLM proposes awarding a federal financial assistance agreement to a non-federal recipient in order to accomplish the public purpose of this effort. BLM has begun the landscape restoration planning process through multiple initiatives such as Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) and work with collaborators such as the Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative (DLCC). This initiative is an aggressive partnership to begin the restoration process on our state's grasslands, woodlands and riparian areas to a healthy and productive condition. In many areas, historic overuse of the land has transformed fragile desert grasslands and open woodlands into areas of little biodiversity dominated by creosote and mesquite, and once diverse streamside vegetation into barren monocultures of salt cedar. These gradual changes have damaged the land's biological productivity, resulting in less wildlife, degraded water quality and decreased supplies of groundwater. This effort will focus on landscape-scale restoration efforts on federal, state, Tribal and private lands, targeting invasive and exotic brush species, including mesquite, juniper, creosote, cheatgrass, sagebrush, noxious weeds and salt cedar. b. Objectives: The Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Arizona State Office, proposes to make a competitive federal financial assistance award to a non-federal entity in order to continue the public purposes of reclaiming and restoring wildlife habitat and impaired watersheds in Arizona, developing range improvement projects on public, private, Tribal and state lands in Arizona, and to monitor all reclamation and restoration to ensure that they are meeting our desired goals. Funding shall be used to develop and implement projects that foster consultation and cooperation among stakeholders, interested parties, and the public and to organize, finalize, and implement projects to carry out the public purposes and project objectives spelled out in this announcement and the cooperative agreement award document. Many of the lands that will benefit by the projects funded through the cooperative agreement contain habitat for several Federally listed and candidate species as well as habitat for numerous big game and migratory bird species. All of the projects necessarily involve overlapping ownership boundaries on allotments along with surface management issues and invasive shrub encroachment within native grasslands or other grazing issues or a combination of such factors. The Recipient chosen through this competitive award process is in a unique position to garner the support and cooperation of the public and other partners for the public purposes being served and in project specific endeavors. This includes, enlisting the support of members of the public from the areas impacted, stakeholders, affected landowners, governmental entities, and public land permittees to to carry out the specific projects improvement projects that overlap ownership boundaries. The Recipient will receive funding from the Bureau of Land Management for its public outreach, partnership coordination, and project development activities in addition to receiving pass-through project-specific funding to be expended for the approved reclamation and restoration projects that overlap ownership boundaries. The lands that will benefit have been previously disturbed by activities associated with development that have no record of responsible parties, are lands that are within habitat for Federal Special Status Species, and/or are lands that have been impacted by historical grazing practices that altered the natural vegetation communities.
Office: Bureau of Land Management
ebell@blm.gov
