For its fiscal year 2024-25, the Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF) will direct $1.6 Million in Grant-In-Aid funding for wild sheep conservation and management projects, largely requested through its Chapter and Affiliate network.
“Our Grant-in-Aid conservation funding keeps growing every year and is a vital component of our overall Mission Program Funding,” said Gray N. Thornton, President and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation. “This $1.6 Million represents only a portion of our total annual allocations to wild sheep conservation.”
Twenty-two projects from the Yukon to Mexico, Arizona to Nebraska, and internationally in Central Asia were awarded grants. The largest single grant is $215,000 to help finance the continuation of a multi-year, tri-state, comprehensive disease surveillance/management project in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. All funded projects will benefit wild sheep populations in areas of critical need, including habitat management, water development, wild sheep nutrition, land acquisition, survey/inventory, and expanded pathogen surveillance and disease management.
“These Grant-in-Aid funds are but one ‘bucket’ of our total Mission program funding,” Thornton explained. “These GIA projects specifically address current areas of greatest need as identified by our Chapter and Affiliate network. Our state, provincial, territorial, tribal, and First Nation agency partners that do the work on the ground have requested and will receive these funds.”
In its past fiscal year from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, WSF raised and directed a record $11.09 Million to its Mission programs. In this total, WSF raised and returned $5.955 million to state, provincial, territorial, and tribal/First Nation wildlife agencies to help fund their wild sheep and wildlife programs by auctioning their conservation permits at the Foundation’s annual Sheep Show® in Reno.
“Over $11 Million for a wildlife resource is an incredible contribution for any organization, let alone one our size,” Thornton concluded. “We’re proud to be the facilitators that help make putting and keeping more wild sheep on the mountain possible. More wild sheep equals more interest, advocacy, and hunting opportunity, which drives more funding for even more wild sheep into the future.”
The Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF), based in Bozeman, Mont., was founded in 1977 by sportsmen and other wild sheep conservationists. WSF is the premier advocate for wild sheep, having raised and expended more than $150 million, positively impacting these species through population and habitat enhancements, research and education, and conservation advocacy programs in North America, Europe, and Asia to “Put and Keep Wild Sheep On the Mountain”®. In North America, these and other efforts have increased bighorn sheep populations from historic lows in the 1950s-60s of 25,000 to more than 85,000 today. WSF has a membership of more than 11,000 worldwide. www.wildsheepfoundation.org.
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