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Kilili says the NMI to get $897,986 in 3 coral reef conservation grants
Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) said over the weekend that the Northern Marianas will be awarded three fiscal year 2021 coral reef conservation grants totaling $897,986.
In his e-kilili newsletter, Sablan said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week that the Coastal Resources Management is receiving $652,529 to help fund the Northern Marianas Coral Reef Conservation Cooperative Agreement to sustain coral reef management and monitoring.
He said the Johnston Applied Marine Sciences was awarded $169,082 in a second tranche of funding for a three-year, $975,944 project to scale up coral restoration efforts through the outplanting of juvenile corals in the Marianas.
Sablan said the project will also build local capacity to implement coral sexual propagation methods as part of a broader restoration strategy.
He said third grant, Oregon State University’s Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, is receiving $76,375 for its coral conservation and science project in the Marianas titled Bathymetric Lidar Waveform Analysis and Algorithym Development for Characterizing Coral Reef Morphologies.
Appropriated annually by U.S. Congress, NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program received $33 million in fiscal year 2021.
