Wildlife Management Institute Grant – Science Applications

2.14 Single Source Determinations.

A. In excess of $25,000;
(2) Prepare a written justification and document the file to explain why competition is not practicable, including a statement of which criteria described below justify the action and why. The justification will include a discussion of the program legislative history, unique capabilities of the proposed recipient, and cost-sharing contribution offered by the proposed recipient, as applicable.

B. Criteria for Justifying Award without Competition. In order for an assistance award to be made without competition, the award must satisfy one or more of the following criteria:

(1) Unsolicited proposal – was an unsolicited assistance application which represents a unique or innovative idea, method or approach which is not the subject of a current or planned contract or assistance award, but which is deemed advantageous to the program objectives;
(4) Unique Qualifications – The applicant is uniquely qualified to perform the activity based upon a variety of demonstrable factors such as location, property ownership, voluntary support capacity, cost-sharing ability, if applicable, technical expertise, or other such unique qualifications;

Criteria #1 – Unsolicited Proposal: As the GCP LCC was being established, WMI offered “unsolicited” voluntary support capacity, cost-sharing ability, and applicable, technical expertise to successfully provide the landscape scale capability of developing, managing and competing a process of priority conservation actions based on over half-century of experience in working with agencies; with experience nationally and internationally to deliver successful conservation products. The need to work in Mexico and most importantly the US Fish and Wildlife Service through this long history is significant.

Criteria #4 – Unique Qualifications: WMI has almost a century of conservation experience successfully working with states and federal agencies. The funding obligation in FY 2011 is expected to total $550,000.00. WMI has developed a unique skill of facilitating the prioritization of science needs for state and federal agencies to further landscape conservation. WMI has managed the Regional Conservation Needs (RCN) program in the Northeast Region for years. They were selected to be the administrator of the RCN program based upon a history of working with the 13 northeast states and the District of Columbia on regional projects. WMI provides financial management for the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative and the Appalachian Mountain Landscape Conservation Cooperative; for these LCC’s, WMI provides facilitation to set conservation priorities, solicitation of priority project proposals, facilitation of decision making, creation and management of grant contracting, grant management, disbursement of funds, report generation, invoicing, financial management and A-133 Audit.