Grants Available to Help with Habitat Restoration

The FishAmerica Foundation, through its partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Restoration Center, has $1 million available for marine and anadromous sportfish habitat restoration projects in the coastal United States, the Great Lakes region and the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

These grants will be awarded to community-based, on-the-ground projects to restore marine, estuarine and riparian habitats including salt marshes, mangrove forests and freshwater habitats important to anadromous fish species such as salmon and striped bass that spawn in freshwater and migrate to the sea.

Projects in the Great Lakes must restore habitat for diadromous sportfish such as lake sturgeon, walleye and brook trout in the Great Lakes and applicable tributaries. Projects that will benefit both sportfish and threatened and endangered fish species under NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service’s jurisdiction may receive additional consideration.

The FishAmerica Foundation will accept grant proposals up through May 16, 2011. Grants of up to $75,000 each will be awarded in October 2011. Anticipated awards, however, are contingent on the provision of federal funding to the FishAmerica Foundation.

Since 1998, FishAmerica and NOAA Restoration Center have invested in more than 270 projects, leveraging $6 million in funds into more than $14 million in vital fisheries habitat conservation in 25 states.