MorrisonGrants

Welcome back to the ‘land of weird’ my friends. Oh, and before I forget: “Happy Egg Month.” 

People often ask us “Am I eligible for grants?”  The answer is a tough one since all grants have their own eligibility criteria.  In the case of the Flammulated Owl Surveys or the Vegetation Inventories, you need only be named “Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory” or the “University of Missouri” and suddenly you’ve got an extra $35,000 or $204,611 respectively in your pocket – piece of cake, right?

Meanwhile, Montana continues to have its wildlife issues.  Remember the Pygmy Rabbits? Well, now we’ve got Amphibian Surveys in Western Montana and Bullfrog Monitoring and Eradication in Montana. I hope Montanans are able to figure this all out--sounds like they've got a really problem over there.

Many of you know how much I love some of the PEPFAR grant titles. Well, how about this one: Are threatened high-elevation spruce-fir forest impacted by aluminum toxicity and calcium loss? Yes, that is a real title or at least I think it is; when I checked back recently the grant was gone, so maybe someone caught that an error had been made. 

Now, usually it’s the Department of Fish and Wildlife that has some of the most amusing grants, but this one comes to us courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management.  I give you the BLM WY Bluehead Sucker and Flannelmouth Sucker Genetic Analysis.  I’ve got to say, what is with those northern Midwest states? Now we have a Flannelmouth Sucker scourge plaguing Wyoming!

Speaking of scourges, the Rocky Mountains (again with the northern Midwest states) seem to have a problem and need your help for their National Park Service- Willow decline in Rocky Mountain National Park: Examining the Interactions of Drought, Ungulate Browsing, Sapsuckers and Cytospora Fungal Infection .  There is only $37,858 available here and you need to be in the National Park Service Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit in order to be eligible, but I think we can all agree that given the pressing issue of ungulate browsing, this project deserves more funding.

Finally, I give you The Real Deal.  This grant will fund “a study to combine the mining of water district billing data with irrigated landscaped areas.”  I don’t know about you, but “the mining of . . . billing data” sounds like an “audit” to me.  Kudos to you alert readers: you correctly identified “The Real Deal” as my wrestling stage name from my college days.  Ah, some memories never fade, do they?