Monitoring use of wildlife drinkers | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

This grant opportunity, titled "Monitoring use of wildlife drinkers" (Funding Opportunity Number 20181AJ855), is a discretionary cooperative agreement under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Region 2, within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category. The project is designed to produce practical, science-based information that managers can use to improve how artificial wildlife drinkers are operated and maintained in desert environments. The central management goal is to better provide water access for desired species, particularly desert bighorn sheep, while reducing or limiting use by non-target species such as mountain lions, which may increase predation risk or otherwise create management concerns around concentrated water sources.

The core work involves field deployment and monitoring using camera trap technology. The Arizona Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (based at the University of Arizona) will deploy roughly 75 camera traps at artificial drinkers located across three major desert ecosystems: the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Mojave deserts. These cameras will passively collect images of wildlife visiting drinkers, creating a large, standardized dataset that can capture both frequent visitors and less commonly detected species. A significant part of the effort is also data management: the research unit will gather, collate, and organize the imagery produced by these camera traps so the information is usable for analysis and decision-making rather than sitting as unprocessed photos.

Analytically, the project focuses on understanding when and how key species use artificial water. Using the imagery, the research team will quantify patterns for both mountain lions and desert bighorn sheep, especially the time of day these species visit drinkers and how visitation changes across seasons. The intent is to reveal whether there are predictable daily or seasonal windows where bighorn sheep use drinkers more heavily, and whether those windows overlap with mountain lion activity. The study also calls for comparisons across sites and ecosystems, looking for similarities and differences among drinkers in different deserts and local conditions. Those comparisons can help managers avoid assuming a one-size-fits-all approach and instead tailor drinker placement, operation schedules, or design features to local wildlife behavior.

Beyond the focal bighorn sheep and mountain lion work, the agreement also supports broader inventory and monitoring objectives. Specifically, it includes using camera traps to detect meaningful changes in the status or presence of medium and large vertebrates over time. In other words, the camera network is not only about water-use behavior at drinkers, but also functions as a monitoring tool that can track community-level wildlife patterns and potentially flag shifts that might reflect drought effects, habitat changes, population trends, or other ecological pressures.

Administratively, the opportunity anticipated a single award (Expected Awards: 1) and did not require cost sharing or matching funds. It was explicitly identified as a sole-source award, meaning it was not an open competition and was intended for the named partner organization. The posting date was September 17, 2010, with an original and current closing date of September 23, 2010, and an archive date of October 23, 2010. The listed award ceiling was $61,000 (award floor $0), and the opportunity references a modification dated November 8, 2010 that added $95,000 to an existing agreement with the University of Arizona to extend the work. The CFDA number associated with the program is 15.650 (Research Grants - Generic).

For further information, the announcement lists a USFWS contact: Grant Harris, Chief Biological Services, reachable at 505-248-6817 or grantharris@fws.gov, particularly for access issues with the electronic announcement.

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