Sentinel Sites of the Western Hemisphere: connecting the conservation dots along the mountains of the Americas to improve protected area resiliency & biological diversity | P17AS00385

Opportunity Information: Apply for P17AS00385

The National Park Service grant opportunity "Sentinel Sites of the Western Hemisphere: connecting the conservation dots along the mountains of the Americas to improve protected area resiliency and biological diversity" (Funding Opportunity Number P17AS00385) is a small, targeted cooperative agreement designed to help park managers strengthen protected area resilience by learning across borders. The core idea is that many on-the-ground management challenges in protected areas are shared, even when the parks sit in very different countries, climates, and political contexts. By comparing real management issues across a set of strategically chosen parks, the project aims to produce practical insights that can improve adaptive management, support biodiversity conservation, and build longer-term networks among protected area professionals.

The project is framed around the National Park Service being in a moment of transition, where its role is being re-examined by the public and where conservation work increasingly requires both local credibility and international awareness. Rather than focusing on abstract policy debates, the opportunity emphasizes "where the rubber meets the road": day-to-day decisions, constraints, and opportunities that protected area managers face. The grant’s purpose is to bridge national and international perspectives by documenting and analyzing management efforts across multiple sites, identifying both the unique features of each place and the common patterns that can be leveraged for stronger conservation outcomes.

Five parks and park systems form the backbone of the effort, serving as "sentinel sites" along the mountainous spine of the Western Hemisphere. These include Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, parks within Costa Rica’s Arenal-Tempisque Conservation Area, Huascaran National Park in Peru, and Bernardo O’Higgins National Park in Chile. Collectively, these sites are meant to tell a connected story that scales from local realities to a broader hemispheric view of conservation challenges, highlighting how management decisions interact with ecological conditions and sociopolitical contexts across the Americas.

A major theme is comparative analysis that blends ecology with human dimensions. On the ecological side, the project builds on comparative ecology to understand how different ecosystems, stressors, and conservation strategies play out across latitudes and elevations. On the sociopolitical side, it examines how governance structures, community relationships, public expectations, and institutional capacities shape what protected area managers can realistically do. Importantly, the opportunity does not treat differences as problems to be ironed out; instead, it positions differences among the sites as a way to "celebrate the power of place" while still extracting shared issues and opportunities that can strengthen conservation through connectedness and collaboration.

The intended outputs are both narrative and practical. The "story" referenced throughout the description is not just public-facing messaging; it is meant to become a foundation for engaging communities around more sustainable futures for the protected areas they care about. At the same time, the project is expected to generate actionable items for park managers, along with a network of support and mutual understanding that helps managers learn from counterparts facing similar pressures in other regions. In other words, the grant is aimed at producing usable management insights and professional linkages, not simply a descriptive report.

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, offered as a cooperative agreement under CFDA 15.945 in the Natural Resources activity category. Eligibility is limited to public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, reinforcing that the work is expected to be carried out through a university-led partnership model with active involvement from the NPS (consistent with the cooperative agreement structure). The funding is modest, with an award ceiling of $50,000 and an expectation of one award, indicating a focused, pilot-style project rather than a large multi-year research program. The opportunity was created June 16, 2017, with an original closing date of June 26, 2017, reflecting a short application window typical of some targeted federal partnership calls.

• The Department of the Interior, National Park Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Sentinel Sites of the Western Hemisphere: connecting the conservation dots along the mountains of the Americas to improve protected area resiliency & biological diversity" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.945.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jun 16, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 26, 2017. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $50,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education.

Apply for P17AS00385

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