We seek prescott assistance to expand our manatee field response team staffing to 2 full time positions for 2 years which will ensure our team s availability to support FWC s needs 7 days a week…

We seek prescott assistance to expand our manatee field response team staffing to 2 full time positions for 2 years which will ensure our team s availability to support FWC s needs 7 days a week throughout the state we are requesting prescott support for 50 of the personnel costs of those two positions, and we commit to funding the other 50 as our cost share further, we will continue to cover the travel and per diem costs associated with supporting FWC s field operations we applied successfully in april 2020 to the new prescott marine mammal rescue assistance program to establish a field response capability to better support FWC s manatee stranding and rescue needs from 1991 until august 2020 when our current grant started, we supported FWC primarily by providing critical and rehabilitative care for manatees from any part of the state beginning in august 2020, we acquired and outfitted a manatee transport vehicle 16 ford E450 box truck and purchased 2 kayaks for local in water verifications in november 2020, we hired two manatee field response team members, 1 full time and 1 half time, with extensive stranding experience to establish the new program and recruit and train volunteers to date, our manatee field response team, including 8 volunteers recruited and trained for the project, has responded to 88 FWC requests for assistance throughout florida, logging 311 75 hours in the field and 7,796 vehicle miles activities include rescue and transports, verifications, carcass recoveries, releases and transfers as manatee deaths began to increase on the east coast, and USFWS declared the UME in march 2021, FWC requested additional support from its partners for east coast stranding response, transporting manatees to critical care facilities, carcass retrieval, necropsies, and in water and land based verifications to date, our manatee field response team, including staff and volunteers, has logged 50 75 hours and 2,207 vehicle miles supporting FWC on the east coast alone we currently respond with at least 2 staff to each FWC request for assistance, including one of the field response team members and either a manatee care team member or one of the trained volunteers field response and manatee care team members are cross trained to maximize our capacity to support FWC requests volunteers recruited and trained as part of our initial project will continue to respond as requested and in accordance with their training at least 1 trained manatee field response team member or trained volunteer will perform requested in water and land based verifications activities proposed for this project reflect a continuation and expansion of our existing manatee field response program they include 1 increase manatee field response team staffing to 2 full time positions, ensuring we can support FWC 7 days a week anywhere in the state 2 continue cross training of manatee field response and manatee care team staff to optimize the capacity of both teams 3 continue to recruit and train volunteers to assist with loading at stranding sites, transporting rescued manatees, in water and land based verifications, and releases 4 continue to develop and or update written protocols for field response activities 5 continue to conduct in water and land based verifications per FWC request 6 continue to respond as requested by FWC for rescues, transport, releases, carcass retrieval, and necropsy assistance 7 continue to record and report data to FWC in accordance with their data protocols 8 continue to design and implement outreach activities 9 continue to develop and use project evaluations and maintain the project schedule 10 continue to manage project activities according to the grant terms