F23AS00171 Zoonotic Disease Initiative - States and Territories | F23AS00171

Opportunity Information: Apply for F23AS00171

F23AS00171, the Zoonotic Disease Initiative (ZDI) for States and Territories, is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discretionary grant funded through the American Rescue Plan. The program is built around a public health and wildlife conservation premise: strengthening early detection, rapid response, and science-based management of wildlife disease outbreaks so they can be contained before they escalate into broader crises, including diseases capable of crossing the species barrier and creating zoonotic risk for people in the United States. In practice, the funding is meant to help State, Territorial, and Tribal fish and wildlife agencies build and modernize the core capacities needed to monitor, investigate, and manage health issues in free-ranging terrestrial, avian, and aquatic wildlife, while reducing negative impacts to wildlife populations, ecosystems, and the public.

A central theme of the opportunity is readiness and coordination at scale. The initiative is designed to make wildlife agencies more prepared for future pandemics by encouraging seamless collaboration across jurisdictional boundaries and by strengthening an interjurisdictional, landscape-level wildlife health and disease network. The grant emphasizes that effective prevention and response depend on shared planning, consistent methods, reliable diagnostics, and timely information exchange among wildlife agencies, public health partners, veterinary services, and other stakeholders operating within the same regions.

The program objectives focus on building a complete, evidence-based wildlife disease management foundation within participating jurisdictions. This includes ensuring managers have up-to-date wildlife disease plans that address surveillance design and techniques; access to diagnostic capabilities spanning pathology, microbiology, virology, parasitology, toxicology, and biosafety; clear outbreak response procedures; wildlife population management tools; regulatory and policy pathways; data management and decision-support approaches such as risk assessment; training and workforce readiness; and communication plans that get accurate, actionable information to key stakeholders quickly. The opportunity also explicitly prioritizes practical access to diagnostic services and the ability to manage, share, and communicate wildlife health data in a modern and interoperable way. Projects can last from one to three years.

Eligible work under the grant is broad, covering the full cycle of disease preparedness, detection, response, and long-term management. Applicants can develop best management practices (BMPs) for wildlife disease issues (either comprehensive BMP sets or targeted guidance on topics like wildlife feeding, water management, and pest management). They can strengthen biosecurity and biosafety through protocols and training for field operations, animal handling, and captive or rehabilitation facilities. They can improve internal and external communications by establishing rapid notification structures for routine and emergency events, and by creating ready-to-use public communication templates that can be deployed during outbreaks.

The funding also supports proactive science and planning, including disease forecasting, horizon scanning, and risk assessments that identify current gaps and anticipate future threats, including those influenced by climate change, environmental persistence of pathogens, and changing exposure pathways. This can include identifying spillover hotspots, mapping highly susceptible species or locations, evaluating human health and economic implications, and assessing risks such as reverse zoonotic transmission (pathogens moving from humans or domestic animals to wildlife). Agencies can build or update disease management and contingency plans, incorporate wildlife disease into Wildlife Action Plans, and create practical field response playbooks, including carcass disposal protocols and agreements that are often critical during mortality events.

A major eligible area is surveillance design and implementation, with an emphasis on enhanced, statistically meaningful surveillance systems at biologically relevant scales. This includes environmental surveillance approaches such as aquatic monitoring for waterborne pathogens. On the response side, the program supports emergency response planning and capacity-building across jurisdictions, including mutual aid agreements, clarified agency roles and funding streams, tabletop and field exercises, incident management capacity (including an all-hazards incident management team with wildlife disease expertise), and after-action evaluations to improve future performance. It also supports long-term monitoring that follows response actions to detect recurrence or lasting population impacts.

The opportunity allows agencies to hire or support dedicated fish and wildlife health staff to expand real-world operational capacity, such as biologists and technicians for detection, sample collection and processing, data entry, and response, as well as specialized professionals (veterinarians, ecologists, social scientists, and other experts) who can strengthen wildlife health programs. Human dimensions work is also explicitly eligible, reflecting the reality that disease management depends on public understanding and acceptance. This can include research into risk perceptions, tolerance for interventions, message testing and outreach strategy development, knowledge translation, stakeholder engagement, and conflict resolution training and processes.

Additional eligible efforts include resilience-building actions that reduce disease impacts by decreasing risky human and domestic animal interactions with wildlife, strengthening environmental quality, and addressing invasive or injurious species that may serve as disease reservoirs, including work coordinated with partners such as EPA where relevant. Agencies can invest in information management systems to improve reporting, mapping, visualization, database capability, and conversion of legacy records into usable electronic formats, along with data sharing strategies across wildlife, agriculture, and public health agencies. Work on jurisdictions and authorities is eligible as well, such as inventories of existing statutory and regulatory frameworks, gap analyses from detection through recovery, and development or refinement of laws, regulations, ordinances, and organizational capacity needed to sustain wildlife health programs.

Laboratory capacity and diagnostic networks are another key pillar. Funding can be used to establish or strengthen diagnostic networks, expand diagnostic services, join regional diagnostic lab partnerships (such as cooperative wildlife disease study models), and improve logistics and equipment for sample collection, testing, archiving, and storage. The grant also encourages formal partnerships and networks, including governance structures and memoranda of understanding, and even approaches like engaging citizen scientists for detection and reporting. Policy and regulation development to prevent introduction, reduce transmission, respond effectively, measure success, and support adaptive management is eligible, along with public and occupational health activities that improve biosafety guidance and coordination with local, State, Territorial, and Tribal public health offices, including hiring public health expertise. Applied research to develop better detection and management tools is allowed, as are climate adaptation and mitigation strategies that integrate health data with climate and environmental information to identify at-risk species and populations. Training is strongly supported, ranging from classroom to hands-on instruction for biologists, veterinarians, law enforcement, volunteers, rehabilitators, and partners, with an emphasis on consistent interjurisdictional practices, incident management, and PPE and biosecurity use. Wildlife rehabilitation improvements are eligible when focused on strengthening biosecurity and biosafety, improving release protocols, and increasing diagnostics for animals entering rehabilitation systems.

There are clear restrictions and operational requirements. Award funds cannot be used for real property acquisition or construction. On data management, States and Territories that accept ARP ZDI funds are required to store wildlife disease data in the USGS WHISPers database. WHISPers is structured to allow agencies to control how their data are used and who can access it (including the concept of defined sharing circles), but participation and data entry are mandatory. Each funded agency must produce a data management plan, due with the first annual report. The required WHISPers data elements generally cover the essentials of morbidity and mortality event tracking and investigations: event locations and land ownership context, optional geospatial fields, dates of onset and cessation, affected species and demographics, counts of sick and dead and population at risk estimates, diagnostic findings and causative agents when known, testing/assessment counts, the diagnosing laboratory, and relevant field observations. The program also encourages entry of historical events if they have been captured.

Reporting is structured to be regular but relatively lightweight in narrative length. Recipients must submit annual financial and performance reporting, including the SF-425 financial report and a short (about 1 to 2 page) narrative describing progress, accomplishments relative to the proposal, and remaining work. At project closeout, the same two elements are required but summarizing the entire award period. Reports are due 120 days after the reporting period ends. The opportunity also requires letters of support from any organization that will be taking action as part of the proposal, reinforcing the program’s emphasis on real, operational partnerships rather than informal coordination.

Administratively, the funding opportunity number is F23AS00171, the CFDA number listed is 15.069, the funding instrument is a grant, and the eligible applicants specified are State governments. The posted award ceiling is $775,000, the project period is one to three years, and the original closing date listed is April 20, 2023. The Fish and Wildlife Service also scheduled informational webinars (noted for February 22, March 13, and April 5 at 3 pm Eastern) to walk prospective applicants through the program and expectations, reflecting that the agency anticipated multi-partner proposals and questions around planning, data requirements, and interjurisdictional coordination.

• The Fish and Wildlife Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "F23AS00171 Zoonotic Disease Initiative - States and Territories" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.069.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2023-02-16.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2023-04-20. (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 $775,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments.

Apply for F23AS00171

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: