Full Proposals Are In!

                This week at NFWF, we’ve finally gotten all of our full proposals in! It’s exciting to see all of the agencies taking NFWF’s comments into consideration and how these projects are coming together. Last week we had a meeting in New Orleans with people who work with the funding from the RESTORE Act. Similar to NFWF, RESTORE received funding from civil penalties paid after the BP oil spill, and this money is used to finance different restoration projects along the Gulf Coast. When agencies send proposals to NFWF, we provide them with a program that has a clear set of metrics (or ways that they can standardize their data), and we even suggest to them which ones they should use. For example, if a project consists of marsh restoration , then the metric used would be “acres restored.” This is a way for NFWF to uniformly organize these projects and it has proven to be very successful. The meeting in New Orleans was a way for us to explain how this metric system works and how the people with RESTORE can effectively use the program for their own proposals. 

I have had the chance to go through many of the proposals and make my own comments on some of the changes that I thought were good and some things that may have still been left out (but are important!). This week we also had Bridget Collins in the Baton Rouge office. She is in charge of all of the land acquisitions along the Gulf Coast that we get through these projects. I was able to talk to her about how she got her job and what she does for NFWF. She works very close with state agencies to help acquire lands from people (farmers especially) in order to use best management practices in agricultural areas.

Today, I got to listen in on a few phone calls, one of which had to deal with a project occurring in Alabama. A breakwater is being built along a shoreline to help protect and build marsh and the conference call was among the project leaders and engineers. They were working together to suggest some of the best ways to monitor each part of the project. NFWF’s role is to make sure they stay on track and within the budget. I am definitely anticipating looking deeper into our new proposals, especially one in particular on artificial reefs. I have been in contact with Mike Sharp, the GEBF director for Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi, and he has been pointing me in the right direction with this reef research. Next week, we should get a proposal in for an oyster reef project, so I'm excited to see how that turns out!