This Week at Interior February 9, 2024

This Week at Interior  

Secretary Haaland visited North Carolina this week to spotlight the impact of the President’s Investing in America agenda and the Department’s ongoing commitment to funding ecosystem restoration and conservation efforts, including at the Pocosin  Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. She joined U.S. Geological Survey Director Dave Applegate to meet with scientists from the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center and later hosted a partner roundtable with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Elizabeth Klein to discuss the Department’s ongoing work to spur a robust offshore wind economy off the Carolina coast.

As part of the Secretary’s trip to North Carolina, the Department announced more than $157 million from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to restore our nation’s lands and waters through locally led, landscape-scale restoration projects. The funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will support 206 ecosystem restoration projects in 48 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Territories and will advance the Department’s ongoing work across several restoration and resilience programs, including a new sagebrush keystone initiative that aims to restore wetlands, reduce tree encroachment, and control invasive species threatening sagebrush ecosystems.  

Nearly $18 million in new investments from the President’s Investing in America agenda will ensure the ready source of native seeds to combat climate change and enhance landscape resilience. Native plant communities across the U.S. are threatened every day from habitat loss and other climate related impacts, such as longer wildfire seasons and other extreme weather events. The new investment will advance Interior's new National Seed Strategy Keystone Initiative, which Secretary Haaland and Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning unveiled this week during remarks at the National Native Seed Conference.  

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Michael Brain visited projects in Utah receiving funding from the Bureau of Reclamation from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law this week. The Davis & Weber Counties Canal Company project will enclose part of an open canal to more efficiently transport water. The Davis Aqueduct Parallel Pipeline project will install parallel pipelines next to Davis Aqueduct to allow for maintenance redundancy. Both projects aim to improve public safety.  

Interior this week announced nearly $7 million to advance climate resilience and restore lands and waters through impactful ecosystem restoration work in the U.S. Territories. A $3.8 million investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will support programs and projects in American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam to advance biosecurity efforts, restore coastal areas and flora ecosystems and support the eradication of invasive species. Another $3 million from the Inflation Reduction Act will help Puerto Rico in combatting climate change.  

Interior this week launched a pilot program to strengthen local governments’ wildfire response by converting vehicles to wildland fire engines. This program – funded with an initial $5 million investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – will help small, remote emergency response agencies quickly expand their wildfire response capacity as they continue to face the devastating impacts of climate change, drought and intensifying wildfires.  

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement this week announced more than $5.8 million in funding from the President’s Investing in America agenda to address dangerous and polluting abandoned mine lands in Missouri. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocates a total of $16 billion to address legacy pollution, including $11.3 billion for abandoned mine land reclamation.

Cold temperatures off the coast of Florida sent U.S. Geological Survey scientists into rescue mode. Together with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, USGS biologists and volunteers pulled more than 60 cold-stunned green sea turtles out of the water and off the beaches at St. Joseph Bay, transporting them to Gulf World Marine Institue for rehabilitation. Cold sea turtles can't swim, which makes them susceptible to drowning, or easy prey for predators. The turtles will be released back into the Gulf of Mexico once the water gets warm again.  

It was this week back in 1871 that Congress first established the U.S. Fish Commission, to study why the nation's fishes were decreasing, and recommend ways to reverse that decline. Over the 153 years since, that agency has continuously evolved, finally becoming what is today...the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the nation's oldest agency dedicated to species and habitat conservation.

And our social media Picture of the Week, they are among nature's most social and playful creatures. River otters have big personalities and even bigger appetites. Often seen in groups, called romps, they can be observed hunting and frolicking year-round at Missouri's Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge.

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That's This Week at Interior.