The Interior Department announced $9.5 million in funds for wildlife corridors and habitat conservation projects in seven states and three tribal nations. The funding will support 13 projects aimed at improving big game migration corridors. Interior framed the announcement as a key component of the Biden administration’s “America the Beautiful” initiative to conserve 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland trumpeted the funding announcement during a virtual presentation, saying, “To be successful, we must knit together our resources, our science, our various tools, our patchwork of lands and our collective will to do our part in ensuring the best habitats for wildlife.” The funding announcement coincided with a new agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society to coordinate habitat conservation projects.
The term wildlife corridors refers to the routes that wildlife use to move across the landscape between significant habitat areas. Animals of all types, from robins to trout and salamanders to grizzly bears, need to move to complete their life cycles and find resources. To learn more, check out the Center for Western Priorities’ interactive wildlife corridors storymap.
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Quote of the day
Far from “slipping away,” our ability to lower atmospheric temperature has thus far been flung to the four (now regularly hurricane-level) winds, because a few of us are making too much money from fossil fuels and the rest of us are busy weighing in on things like “cancel culture” or what the film academy should do with Will Smith to notice that we are boiling ourselves to death.”
Picture this
They grow up so fast! The pups, born in August, are old enough to be pulling dog sleds! Blitz and the rest of the siblings did their first full patrol last month, accompanied by our seasoned adult dogs. Denali still has lots of snow on the ground, lucky for the canine rangers!
(featured image: Pronghorn. Photo by Ryan Howell, BLM Flickr)