Photo courtesy The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Vermont Business Magazine The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a list of projects, including the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge Complex Aquatic Connectivity and Forest Restoration project in Vermont, to support climate resiliency and ecosystem restoration in a landscape called the northern forest. This area encompasses 12 states, including nearly 450,000 forested acres of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administered land in the Midwest and Northeast regions.
Through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, this $1.3 million investment in Essex County is part of a $25 million allocation through the Inflation Reduction Act — the largest climate investment in history.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has received this funding to address the following objectives:
- Create green infrastructure to restore the natural flow of water on northern forest refuges and state managed lands — benefitting fish, wildlife and people
- Establish and conduct forest inventory to fill in critical information gaps that currently prevent forward-looking and evidence-based decision-making
- Build an inclusive, collaborative, conservation community in the northern forest region and develop a landscape conservation design to meet current and future ecological and social needs
In the first phase, nearly $8 million in IRA funding will be used for nine projects on refuge lands to reduce the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on fish and wildlife habitat. Another $4 million in IRA funding will be used on state wildlife management areas.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge
5396 Route 105, Brunswick, VT 05905
