The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (Service) mission is to work with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The International Affairs Program delivers on this mission through its financial assistance programs by supporting strategic projects that deliver measurable conservation results for priority species and their habitats around the world.
Wildlife trafficking is estimated to be a multibillion-dollar business involving the unlawful harvest and trade of animals and plants (including timber). It has broad security implications, with corruption and sophisticated transnational crime syndicates at the center of some poaching and trafficking. Wildlife trafficking removes hundreds of thousands of animals and plants from wild populations each year and further increases the extinction risk for threatened and endangered species, which are often the target of wildlife crime because of their rarity and increased economic value.
The Service’s Combating Wildlife Trafficking Program’s Species Conservation Catalyst Fund (SCCF) is a new initiative that aims to reduce wildlife trafficking within complex socialecological systems by supporting recipients to (1) provide a more empirical understanding of the contexts in which species are trafficked, and/or (2) develop, implement, and evaluate activities that reduce the threat of trafficking to species populations. The SCCF is designed to support capacity building among project partners to sustain conservation impact by attracting additional funding, attention, and other resources for the species. The first species supported through the SCCF are (1) saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica and Saiga borealis) in Central Asia and Mongolia, and (2) cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) in the Horn of Africa.
This new fund is envisioned as a ‘conservation accelerator’ that will enable project teams to launch or grow projects, support opportunities for grantees to build skills relevant to their work, and develop networks of researchers and practitioners. Projects supported through the SCCF will help build a body of evidence to guide future conservation and counter-trafficking efforts. Funding levels and timelines will vary for each species based on conservation need, funding availability, and the receipt of suitable proposals, but in general for each species, approximately $2-4 million is expected to be available and proposals will be invited through multiple funding opportunities over 3-5 years.
Deadline: May 9, 2022
Applicants can be individuals, multi-national secretariats, foreign, national, and local government agencies, non-profit non-governmental organizations, for-profit organizations, and public and private institutions of higher education.
Proposals should be two to five-year projects with a range of $50,000 to $200,000 per year for no more than $1,000,000 total over five years. The amount of funding requested must be clearly justified by the scope of the activities, anticipated results, and length of the project period. For multi-year projects, budgets and activities should be clearly articulated by year.