Xerces Society Inc.

Xerces Society Inc., doing business as The Xerces Society For Invertebrate Conservation, is a Portland, Oregon–based nonprofit organization that operates as a federal grant recipient, delivering invertebrate conservation science, pollinator habitat restoration, and species monitoring services to natural-resource agencies across the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Xerces functions almost exclusively as a prime recipient (86% of recent awards) on cooperative agreements and project grants rather than as a subcontractor; it has no federal contract prime awardees and does not hold seats on government-wide acquisition vehicles. The organization specializes in field-based invertebrate ecology, with concrete capability areas spanning bumble bee and butterfly distribution surveys and monitoring, habitat restoration and species identification training, pollinator conservation planning for agricultural and public lands, and technical guidance on invasive species management and prescribed-burn impacts on pollinators. Representative prime recipient work includes a $2.1 million cooperative agreement (fiscal 2021–2025) from the Natural Resources Conservation Service for the NRCS-Xerces Society Partnership for Pollinators, providing conservation technical assistance across a national network to private landowners and conservation districts; a $524 thousand cooperative agreement (fiscal 2023–2026) under USDA's Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production program (CFDA 10.935) to expand pollinator and beneficial-insect outreach to community gardens and urban agriculture sites; and a $300 thousand cooperative agreement (fiscal 2021–2026) from the Fish and Wildlife Service Region 6 under the Candidate Species Conservation program (CFDA 15.660) for the Great Plains Bumble Bee Atlas, a survey and monitoring program documenting bumble bee distribution across five national parks and monuments in the Northern Great Plains Network.

Customer concentration centers on USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (22 awards), which accounts for the plurality of recent activity, followed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management Oregon-Washington region (8 awards) and Fish and Wildlife Service regions across the country (6 awards in Region 1, plus regional offices in Regions 3, 4, and 6). The top five customers by award count represent 59% of awards. Potential-value rankings diverge slightly from award-count rankings; while NRCS dominates by frequency, the Forest Service R6-Pacific Northwest Region and EPA Region 7 carry higher per-award dollar values, though the overall portfolio shows combined potential value of $180 thousand across all 76 awards (prime and sub combined), with $19.1 million obligated to date, indicating substantial multi-year funding relative to potential-value ceilings.

Activity has remained steady across fiscal 2022–2025 (5–8 awards annually) with five awards facing ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months. Xerces also operates in a secondary subrecipient capacity (14% of awards), receiving subawards through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, state wildlife agencies (California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington State University), nonprofits (Pheasants Forever, Monarch Joint Venture), and university research foundations (University of Georgia, University of Connecticut) on bumble bee atlases, monarch butterfly habitat management on Department of Defense installations, and regional conservation initiatives across the Southeast, Great Plains, California, and Pacific Northwest.

The organization's federal grant profile reflects its domain expertise: recent awards target species petitioned for Endangered Species Act listing (rusty-patched bumble bee, monarch butterfly subspecies), threatened bees in the Southeast, and western monarch overwintering-site restoration. Work is geographically distributed across CONUS with administrative and core operations in Portland. Xerces does not compete for federal contracts or vehicle-based task orders; its federal revenue streams flow through cooperative agreements, project grants, and subaward channels with natural-resource agencies at USDA and Interior.