Zoonotic Disease Initiative - States and Territories | F22AS00309

Opportunity Information: Apply for F22AS00309

The Zoonotic Disease Initiative - States and Territories (Funding Opportunity Number F22AS00309) is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discretionary grant program funded through the American Rescue Plan. Its central purpose is to help prevent wildlife disease events from escalating into broader public health threats by improving early detection, speeding up response, and strengthening science-based management of diseases that can move between wildlife, domestic animals, and people. The program is framed around pandemic prevention and preparedness, with a strong emphasis on building durable, repeatable capability inside fish and wildlife agencies rather than funding one-off efforts.

Funding is intended to establish or expand the ability of Tribal, State, and Territorial fish and wildlife agencies to address health issues in free-ranging wildlife, including terrestrial mammals, birds, and aquatic species. The practical aim is to reduce negative impacts to wildlife populations and ecosystems while also protecting the public by improving surveillance, management, and applied research tied to zoonotic and wildlife health risks. A key theme is that diseases do not respect borders, so the program pushes agencies to coordinate across jurisdictions and operate more like a connected, regional network during both routine monitoring and emergency outbreaks.

Program objectives focus on building a strong foundation for an interjurisdictional, landscape-level wildlife health and disease network. One major objective is ensuring wildlife managers have current, evidence-based wildlife disease plans that cover core elements such as surveillance strategies, diagnostic capacity (including pathology, microbiology, virology, parasitology, toxicology, and biosafety), outbreak response, wildlife population management, regulatory and policy actions, data management, risk assessment and decision support, training, and communications plans that get timely, understandable information to key stakeholders. A second objective is strengthening connections among State, Territorial, and Tribal managers within regions, specifically including ties to public health and veterinary services so that wildlife, agriculture, and human health partners can coordinate effectively. A third objective is improving access to diagnostic services and improving the ability to manage, share, and communicate wildlife health data.

Projects are expected to last one to three years. Awardees must complete a survey at the beginning and end of the project; this is described as a program evaluation tool for the overall American Rescue Plan Zoonotic Disease Initiative and not as a scoring tool for individual proposals. The survey link provided in the notice is hosted on Microsoft Forms.

The opportunity supports a broad set of eligible activities that collectively strengthen readiness and response capacity. On the planning and prevention side, funding can be used to develop best management practices for fish and wildlife diseases (either comprehensive or issue-specific), create or improve biosecurity and biosafety protocols for field staff and facilities, and build internal and external communication systems that can be activated quickly in both routine and emergency situations. It also supports forward-looking work like disease forecasting, horizon scanning, and risk assessments, including assessments related to climate change, pathogen persistence, exposure pathways, spillover hotspots, susceptible species, and even reverse zoonotic transmission (movement of pathogens from humans or domestic animals into wildlife).

On the operational and response side, the program can fund disease management planning and contingency plans, surveillance system design (including environmental surveillance such as aquatic monitoring for waterborne pathogens), and emergency preparedness activities like mutual aid agreements, tabletop and field exercises, and development of all-hazards incident management capacity that includes wildlife disease expertise. It also explicitly includes after-action reviews of disease responses, structured decision-making and adaptive management approaches under uncertainty, and long-term monitoring to detect recurrence or lasting population-level impacts after an event.

Capacity building is a major allowable use of funds. Agencies can hire dedicated wildlife health staff, including biologists, technicians, veterinarians, ecologists, social scientists, and other relevant expertise to improve detection, sampling, processing, data entry, and response capability. The grant also recognizes the importance of human behavior in disease outcomes by supporting human-dimensions work such as risk perception research, message testing, education and outreach strategies, knowledge translation, and conflict resolution with stakeholders when disease interventions are controversial or disruptive.

Additional eligible investments include efforts that reduce disease pressure by increasing ecological resilience and protecting environmental services, such as projects that reduce risky human or domestic animal interactions with wildlife, address invasive or injurious species that may serve as reservoirs, and improve environmental and water quality in ways that reduce disease transmission. Funding can also be used to modernize information management systems, convert legacy records into usable electronic formats, create data management plans, improve reporting and visualization, and develop data-sharing strategies across wildlife, agriculture, and public health agencies.

The program also supports work on governance and authority, such as inventories and gap analyses of statutes and regulations related to wildlife disease response, resolving interjurisdictional issues, and developing policies, regulations, or ordinances that enable sustainable wildlife health programs. Laboratory and diagnostic network strengthening is another major category, including establishing or expanding diagnostic services, joining regional diagnostic efforts, creating agreements with state or national labs, and purchasing logistics and equipment for sample collection, testing, archiving, and storage. Partnership development is encouraged through formal agreements like MOUs, creation or strengthening of networks and communities of practice that include Federal, State, Territorial, and Tribal partners, and even engagement of citizen scientists for detection and response where appropriate.

Public and occupational health elements are also eligible, such as developing biosafety guidance for personnel, volunteers, and visitors, and building working relationships with public health offices for routine coordination and emergency response; proposals can include hiring public health expertise. The initiative allows applied research focused on practical tools for detection and management, and it supports development of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies that integrate wildlife health data with climate and environmental information to identify at-risk species and populations. Training is an explicit eligible activity, including didactic and hands-on courses for a wide range of personnel (biologists, veterinarians, law enforcement, volunteers, rehabilitators, and partners) in areas such as disease response, incident management, and PPE and biosecurity practices, with an emphasis on consistent, collaborative training across jurisdictions. Wildlife rehabilitation work is included to the extent it improves biosecurity, strengthens diagnostics for animals entering rehabilitation, and improves release protocols to limit ecological impacts.

Key constraints include that award funds cannot be used for real property acquisition or construction. The notice also indicates eligible applicants include state governments and other eligible entities, with specific mention of U.S. Territorial governments in the text. The listed award ceiling is $775,000, and the original closing date shown for this opportunity was June 27, 2022 (creation date April 13, 2022), indicating this particular posting reflects a specific funding round under the broader initiative.

• The Fish and Wildlife Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "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 2022-04-13.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2022-06-27. (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, Others.

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