Our Approach

Since its inception in 1994, the IWJV has actively assisted our partners with on-the-ground habitat conservation delivery and a range of other services, including: assembling partnerships; forging lasting relationships among diverse interests; and helping our partners secure funding for habitat projects from federal programs. Our current objective of strengthening our science foundation will yield many benefits over the long term, yet we will remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering partnerships and securing funding for habitat work.

Early in its existence, the IWJV supported habitat work, offering seed money for habitat projects as early as the late 1990s and developing the formal IWJV Project Funding Program in 2002. From 2002-2007 we allocated $1.95 million in federal JV funding to 53 habitat projects spanning all 11 states. These projects helped create partnerships and developed local support for habitat conservation. Approximately 60% of these projects focused on wetlands, a priority habitat for the IWJV. Although this program was popular and produced some excellent habitat work, its effects were limited to the on-the-ground work that could be accomplished with about $300,000 in IWJV funds annually – and those effects were localized.

In the fall of 2007, the IWJV Management Board adopted a new habitat delivery approach that strategically offers JV staff expertise and capacity grant funding to help our partners access available federal and private conservation program funding. We believe that this new model and our subsequent investment of IWJV funds will eventually secure the funding and focus needed to conserve priority habitats at the landscape scale.

Our habitat delivery effort employs the following principles, established in our 2008 AOP:

Habitat delivery is the tangible process of improving the capacity of a habitat to sustain desired populations of priority birds through protection, restoration, or enhancement. JV partners cannot simply devise plans and schemes – they must take action.
Habitat conservation must be focused on priority habitats and landscapes.
The scale of habitat conservation needed to achieve IWJV objectives is massive; landscape-scale approaches must be utilized.
The primary role of the IWJV in habitat delivery is to increase the effectiveness of JV partners (organized through State Conservation Partnerships) in securing funding to deliver locally devised habitat projects.
The IWJV should emphasize habitat delivery efforts likely to result in significant allocations of federal, state, or private funding for priority projects or programs (e.g., Farm Bill, NAWCA, private foundations).

Our approach is composed of the following elements:

Farm Bill Initiative
NAWCA Assistance
Capacity Grants Program
State Wildlife Action Plan Implementation Initiative
USFWS Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program Partnerships
Private Funding
Public Lands Management