Analysis of a Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) Wildlife Water Development Pilot Study | P21AS00425

Opportunity Information: Apply for P21AS00425

This grant opportunity from the National Park Service focuses on helping Mojave National Preserve (MOJA) make better, data-driven decisions about Small Game Guzzlers (SGGs), which are human-built wildlife water catchments installed across the Mojave Desert mainly between 1948 and 1980. These structures were originally put in place by volunteers working with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to improve habitat and hunting opportunities for upland game species like Gambel's quail, cottontail rabbits, and introduced chukar. Over time, it became clear that the guzzlers are used by a much wider range of wildlife, including sensitive and at-risk species, which raises important questions about whether removing, maintaining, or modifying these water sources helps or harms desert ecosystems.

The core management problem behind the funding is a set of legal and policy conflicts created when large areas became part of Mojave National Preserve and were also designated as wilderness under the California Desert Protection Act of 1994. Wilderness designation generally discourages permanent human structures and emphasizes natural processes and minimal human manipulation, but in a changing climate and with increasing conservation needs for sensitive species, managers may also be pressured to intervene to prevent declines. MOJA's Management Plan for Developed Water Sources calls for evaluating developed water structures like SGGs to determine how important they are for wildlife and whether continued management is justified. The challenge is that there is limited guidance on how to evaluate the ecological consequences of keeping versus dismantling these waters, especially for birds and bats, which are a major concern at MOJA given the park's high diversity and the presence of species with special conservation status.

To address that gap, MOJA launched a pilot Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) study designed to measure wildlife use of SGGs and how wildlife responds when water becomes unavailable. The pilot study selected 12 guzzlers that were relatively isolated, each at least 3.2 km from other known water sources, so that changes in wildlife activity could more plausibly be linked to the status of the guzzler itself rather than nearby water. Monitoring tools included acoustic recorders for bats and birds deployed at set intervals, remote cameras to document wildlife visits, and quail trapping to estimate age ratios; a small number of quail were also fitted with solar GPS loggers to get movement data. In 2020, MOJA implemented the "impact" part of the BACI design by draining and blocking six of the twelve guzzlers while leaving the remaining six as controls, then continuing monitoring through 2021 to capture before-and-after patterns across both treatment types.

The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity is not to fund new field deployment, but to bring in university-based expertise to synthesize, analyze, and interpret the data already collected through 2021. MOJA states it does not have sufficient internal capacity to complete the analysis needed to translate the pilot results into practical management direction. The requested work is fairly specific: applicants are expected to process bat and bird acoustic recordings to determine species presence, calculate diversity indices, and potentially derive other useful ecological parameters; analyze camera spreadsheet data to summarize what species were detected, how often, and when (timing patterns); compile and provide an initial interpretation of the limited quail age-ratio information and the available GPS location data; and assess how results differ among guzzler sites based on factors such as climate conditions, vegetation cover, and whether water was available or removed. The deliverable is meant to go beyond descriptive summaries and include recommendations for how MOJA should interpret the pilot results, how a fuller future study could be designed, and what evaluation criteria could be used to rank the status and management need of individual SGGs, including how guzzlers might function as climate-related mitigation while still accounting for wilderness policy constraints.

Administratively, this is a discretionary cooperative agreement (Funding Opportunity Number P21AS00425) under CFDA 15.945, listed in the environment activity area, with an award ceiling of $30,000. The opportunity is limited to non-federal members of the CESU Network (Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units), emphasizing collaboration with university faculty and student programs. The original closing date was July 15, 2021, and the expectation was to support work that turns the pilot BACI dataset into usable management guidance for MOJA's decisions about maintaining, modifying, or potentially removing guzzlers in a landscape where wilderness requirements, species conservation, and climate pressures all intersect.

• The National Park Service in the environment sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Analysis of a Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) Wildlife Water Development Pilot Study" 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 2021-05-14.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-07-15. (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 $30,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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