Florida Conservation Group, Inc.

Florida Conservation Group, Inc., doing business as Florida Ecology & Conservation Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in Nokomis, Florida that serves as a prime recipient of federal conservation grants focused on natural resource management, agricultural stewardship, and landscape conservation planning in Florida. The vendor operates exclusively in the grant space — no federal contracts — and works directly with the Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service as prime grantee on cooperative agreements, with occasional sub-award participation.

The vendor's federal grant footprint centers on two core conservation competencies. As prime recipient of an NRCS cooperative agreement awarded September 2021 and completed in December 2023, Florida Conservation Group provided outreach assistance to support Natural Resource Conservation Service delivery of Farm Bill conservation programs on Florida's private agricultural, range, and forest lands — a direct capacity-building role for USDA's field implementation network. As prime recipient of a larger Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service Region 4 cooperative agreement running September 2021 through August 2026, the vendor assists USFWS planning for the proposed Southwest Florida Conservation Area through GIS analysis and landscape conservation design across a 7 million-acre study region encompassing the Fisheating Creek, Peace River, and Myakka River watersheds. That work includes threat assessment, identification of conservation priorities aligned with federal and state listed species protection (including the Florida panther and 74 additional listed species), identification of willing-seller tracts, and support for USFWS refuge and Endangered Species Act coordination with federal, state, and local conservation partners.

As a sub-recipient, Florida Conservation Group participates in a January 2025 National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant, where it provides technical assistance to private landowners across north and central Florida for forest management planning and longleaf pine restoration implementation, promoting NRCS financial programs to support prescribed burning and habitat improvement for gopher tortoises and northern bobwhites across more than 10,000 acres. The vendor has received three awards totaling $574 thousand, split between two customer agencies, with activity concentrated in 2021 and recent sub-award work in early 2025.