Institute For Applied Ecology

Institute For Applied Ecology, a tax-exempt nonprofit based in Corvallis, Oregon, provides native seed collection, habitat restoration, species monitoring, and ecological research services to federal land management and conservation agencies as a prime recipient on federal cooperative agreements and contracts. The organization holds no federal procurement prime contracts but operates as the primary recipient on a portfolio heavily weighted toward competitive federal grants from the Department of the Interior — chiefly the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service — and competes full-and-open without set-aside designations.

The mission, as stated in the source materials, is to conserve native species and habitats through restoration, research, and education. Concrete capability work includes native plant seed collection, propagation, and storage using the Seeds of Success protocol; habitat restoration for federally listed and bureau-sensitive species including endangered butterflies (Fender's blue, Taylor's checkerspot) and threatened plants (Kincaid's lupine); population monitoring and species recovery assessments; and landscape connectivity and climate resilience planning. Representative grants include a $1.816 million EPA Region 4 Project Grant (CFDA 66.475) awarded January 2026 to develop and demonstrate native crop technologies and farmer-led adoption in the Rio Grande-Albuquerque Watershed; a $290 thousand BLM National Office delivery order (awarded June 2022, completion August 2025) for New Mexico State Office botanical services including native plant seed collection and monitoring; and a $243 thousand BLM National Office delivery order (awarded August 2022, completion September 2025) for Las Cruces Field Office botanical support on BLM lands. The organization also operates the Sagebrush in Prisons Project, a cooperative agreement awarded October 2022 (completion September 2027) partnering with state prison facilities to grow sagebrush seedlings — over 2.1 million plants to date — for post-wildfire habitat restoration across BLM public lands, while providing vocational training to incarcerated adults.

Customer concentration is heavily skewed toward interior Department agencies. The top five customers by award count account for 63% of recent awards, led by BLM Oregon-Washington (77 awards), Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1 (54 awards), BLM National Office (40 awards), the broader BLM organization (29 awards), and Fish and Wildlife Service (24 awards). By potential value, BLM National Office dominates with $28.9 million combined potential value across 40 awards, while FWS Region 1 follows at $176 thousand across 54 awards — a pattern reflecting the source of larger, longer-term delivery orders and cooperative agreements from BLM's centralized contracting authority versus the smaller, shorter-duration grants that constitute the FWS footprint. The organization has worked with 23 distinct federal agencies, but Interior accounts for the vast majority of activity.

Institute For Applied Ecology operates primarily on BLM delivery orders issued under a series of Indefinite Delivery Contracts: IDC 140L0618D0031 (13 task orders, $2 million combined potential value), IDC 140L0618D0062 (9 task orders, $1.7 million), and three smaller vehicles. Activity has been volatile in recent years — 31 awards in 2022 dropped to 14 in 2023, recovered to 19 in 2024, then fell to just 3 in 2025 and 3 in 2026 — signaling either portfolio churn or delays in renewal cycles. Only six awards (combined potential value $131 thousand) have ultimate completion dates within the next twenty-four months, indicating limited near-term recompete exposure at the prime level. The organization holds one named subsidiary, Applied Habitat Ventures LLC, a for-profit limited liability company not detailed in the award record.

The source material shows 354 prime awards (99%) and only 3 grant sub-awards (1%) recorded under Oregon State University and Montana State University as prime grantees, indicating Institute For Applied Ecology functions almost entirely as a direct recipient rather than a downstream subrecipient. Federal obligated dollars ($39.3 million) exceed potential value ($30.4 million) by 29 percent, a ratio typical of mature, long-running grant portfolios where actual spend regularly tracks against ceiling values and adjustments accumulate. Work is performed across the western United States, with geographic concentration in Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, and Arizona, aligned to BLM and FWS field office jurisdictions and endangered species recovery zones (Willamette Valley prairie species, sagebrush steppe, Southwest seed partnerships).