Daniela Arce at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
My practicum is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the federal agency tasked with the administration of the Endangered Species Act. I am working out of the Ecological Services office in the Sacramento regional office. My project is to create a program that partners the USFWS with academic institutions to meet the research needs of federally listed species outlined in their Recovery Plans and/or Five Year Reviews. The program will include projects for federally listed species as well as at-risk species. These will come from actions outlined in recovery plans (for listed species) but for those species that do not have recovery plans yet, research needs (and project proposals) will most likely come from species leads and/or field offices which have jurisdiction over them.
The program I'm working on is specific to the region (Legacy Region 8 - CA, NV, and Klamath Basin in OR) but my hope is that this idea will catch on with other regions in the Service. I've been able to recruit universities throughout California but would like to expand and include universities in Nevada and Oregon. I've put an emphasis on facilitating research for students. For example, while some of the projects are meant to be for graduate students, there are other projects that could be done by groups of undergraduate students in a classroom setting.
My program will use permitting strategies, internal tools (contact lists, proposal, etc.), a public facing website, outreach events, and workshop events to increase participation at academic institutions. My deliverables will be a proposal I've written for this program to be used as a guideline, a presentation, a temporary website on ArcGIS StoryMaps, and a PDF compiling the contacts for this program.
My program will use permitting strategies, internal tools (contact lists, proposal, etc.), a public facing website, outreach events, and workshop events to increase participation at academic institutions. My deliverables will be a proposal I've written for this program to be used as a guideline, a presentation, a temporary website on ArcGIS StoryMaps, and a PDF compiling the contacts for this program.