High Country Resource Conservation & D

High Country Resource Conservation & Development, a tax-exempt nonprofit based in St. Anthony, Idaho, receives federal cooperative agreements from the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture as a prime recipient, focusing on wildfire resilience, fuels management, and community fire adaptation in the rural West and wildland-urban interface.

HCRCD operates as a federally-recognized nonprofit organization with minimal federal contract footprint but a focused grant-recipient portfolio spanning the past two decades. The vendor has received ten total federal awards (nine as prime recipient, one as sub-recipient) with combined obligations of $2.7 million across five distinct federal customer agencies. Recent activity shows one award per year in 2023, 2024, and 2026, with minimal recompete pressure — only one award completing in the next twenty-four months.

The Bureau of Land Management Idaho Region anchors HCRCD's current work. The most recent award, effective January 22, 2026 through January 21, 2031, is a $350,000 cooperative agreement under BLM's Fuels Management and Community Fire Assistance Program Activities (CFDA 15.228) to implement six coordinated wildfire resiliency subprojects across Southeast Idaho. The project targets approximately 350 homes in and adjacent to Pocatello and 670 acres of rangeland, forest, and burn scar treatment spanning Menan Buttes, Sand Creek Desert Rangeland, Lemhi County, and highway corridors between Dubois and Sage Junction. Deliverables include mechanical treatments, vegetation management, defensible space improvements, and community engagement. An earlier cooperative agreement from April 2023, also from BLM Idaho Region, carries the same wildfire resilience mission through April 2028, with focus on education, defensible space, fuels reduction, and evacuation preparedness in the wildland-urban interface, plus cooperative rangeland and wildlife habitat improvement with ranchers, farmers, and federal agencies.

The Department of Agriculture Forest Service represents the second major customer, with three awards spanning the Northern Region (R1) and the broader agency. HCRCD also acts as a sub-recipient on grant work administered by the Idaho Department of Lands, providing technical assistance to NRCS on non-federal land wildfire risk reduction through the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) process. HCRCD's capability set centers on landscape-scale fuels management, community wildfire adaptation, cross-sector stakeholder coordination on federal and private lands, and technical assistance to ranchers and private landowners on mitigation and preparedness.