Wildlife Management Institute, Incorporated

Wildlife Management Institute, Incorporated, a Vermont-based nonprofit tax-exempt entity, receives federal grants as a prime recipient to deliver wildlife conservation coordination, research, policy analysis, and hunter recruitment-and-retention services to state fish and wildlife agencies and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Institute operates exclusively as a grant recipient; it holds no federal contracts and does not pursue set-asides.

The Institute's grant portfolio centers on multistate conservation initiatives funded through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Multistate Conservation Grant Program and regional cooperative agreements. Recent representative work includes a $5.225 million cooperative agreement with the Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region (awarded August 2026, running through August 2031) to enhance active forest management capacity on National Forests under the Forest and Grassland Collaboratives program (CFDA 10.737); a $1.228 million cooperative agreement with Fish and Wildlife Service Region 5 (October 2024–September 2027) to support the North American Bat Monitoring Program, conducting acoustic surveys, colony counts, and data management to strengthen bat distribution models; and a $369,179 NASA grant (October 2024–October 2026) to assess barriers preventing wildlife conservation agencies from using NASA Earth observation data for biodiversity and landscape conservation. Smaller awards fund market research into hunter recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3)—including studies of adult-onset hunters, non-resident hunter motivations, and marketing effectiveness via YouTube and regional campaigns—as well as technical assistance to state agencies implementing the Fish and Wildlife Relevancy Roadmap to engage underserved constituencies. The Institute also hosts staff positions within joint ventures (Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, Intermountain West Joint Venture, Upper Mississippi Great Lakes Joint Venture) and coordinates multistate working groups on topics including white-nose syndrome in bats, chronic wasting disease, feral swine policy, and at-risk species conservation across the Northeast.

Customer concentration is sharp and skewed toward Fish and Wildlife Service regional offices. FWS Region 9 Headquarters accounts for 79 awards (combined potential value $3.2 million) from the top five customer agencies, which together represent 79% of all recent awards. FWS Region 5, FWS headquarters (national), APHIS, and USGS round out the active set. The two rankings diverge modestly—Region 9 dominates both volume and dollars—but Region 4 and NASA carry outsized potential value relative to award count, reflecting individual grants of substantial size. Awards cluster in administration of conservation programs, scientific and technical consulting, and professional training.

Activity has remained stable with modest fluctuation: twenty awards in 2022, seventeen in 2023, twenty-six in 2024, twenty-three in 2025, and thirteen recorded through October 2026. Eight awards (combined potential value $369,000) face ultimate completion in the next twenty-four months and therefore signal recompete opportunity. The Institute's sub-award footprint is large in absolute terms—37 sub-awards total across the 246-award portfolio—but the prime-vs-sub split shows the Institute operates predominantly as a grant recipient to federal agencies, with sub-awards flowing outward to state fish and wildlife agencies, nonprofit conservation partners (Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation), academic institutions, and regional associations (Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies).

SCI-reportable service-contract activity is minimal and does not reflect the Institute's true federal grant footprint: four prime records across FY2022–FY2025 generated $231,000 in invoiced revenue, with government-paid rates ranging from roughly $284/hr at the tenth percentile to $1,359/hr at the ninety-fifth percentile. The SCI dataset captures a small slice of compliance, training, or administrative contracts; it does not represent the Institute's core federal work, which flows through cooperative agreements and project grants under CFDA 15.628 (Multistate Conservation Grants) and regional cooperative agreement authority. The Institute's federal footprint is substantially larger in grant dollars than SCI would suggest.