Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology awarded $130,000.00 to the University of Notre Dame under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) beginning May 1, 2026, through April 30, 2031. This Project Grant supports years 31-35 of the Kenya Long-Term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE), a controlled replicated study examining the separate and combined effects of livestock, wildlife, and fire on savanna rangeland ecosystems. The research utilizes semi-permeable barriers to create six treatment combinations involving cattle, meso-herbivore wildlife, and mega-herbivores (elephants and giraffes) to evaluate ecosystem stability and resilience in the face of multiple interacting disturbances including drought and fire.

The funded research delivers critical scientific products and management applications for rangeland conservation and restoration, including empirical baseline data on livestock-wildlife competition and coexistence dynamics, molecular techniques and remote-sensing analyses quantifying the impacts of herbivory, drought, and fertilization on ecosystem function, and landscape-scale rangeland management recommendations applicable to U.S. restoration efforts involving large herbivore reintroduction. The award supports career development for early-career researchers and graduate students, produces peer-reviewed scientific outputs, and provides outreach to stakeholder communities managing rangelands, addressing the significant knowledge gap regarding ecosystem effects of defaunation and multiple disturbance interactions in grassland systems.