The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is advising several groups to stop working on some projects funded by the Agriculture Department amid an ongoing federal freeze, according to emails viewed by Agri-Pulse and interviews with recipients.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which was chartered by Congress in 1984, is a private foundation that helps channel funding from both federal and non-federal sources to conservation projects. It is currently working with USDA on several initiatives, including a $97.8 million Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities project that pays farmers to plant cover crops.
An email sent by NFWF on Wednesday morning recommended individuals involved in administering the PCSC project cease all activities, according to a source familiar with the email. The organization warned them it would not be able to reimburse them for costs associated with “projects that include funding from one or more frozen accounts,” according to a sentence of the email the source read aloud to Agri-Pulse.
“Basically as I understand it, they're not getting reimbursed by USDA, so they don't have the money to turn around and pay organizations that they have grants with, in the sense of some of their pass-through projects,” the source said. “Because NFWF, as you know, is primarily a pass-through funding organization."
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On Tuesday, other organizations received emails from NFWF informing them that their grants were frozen at the federal level and could not be processed, according to three copies of these emails reviewed by Agri-Pulse. These emails pertained to projects funded by programs outside of PCSC.
Representatives for two organizations that received such emails, both of whom spoke to Agri-Pulse on the condition of anonymity, said projects involving Inflation Reduction Act funding likely received the emails.
“We write to you today to inform you that the funding account associated with your grant … is currently frozen at the federal level and therefore we cannot process disbursements related to your grant until the federal government unlocks the account,” the emails said. “We have no information at this time on how long it will take before the account is unlocked. We advise you to cease all activities on your grant.”
“At this time, we have no information on when the federal accounts will be unlocked,” the emails went on. “We realize that you may have questions regarding this notice. We will continue to provide additional updates as soon as that information becomes available.”
NFWF did not respond to multiple requests for comment by press time.
Some halted funds were supposed to go toward providing conservation advice to farmers, while others are intended to pay farmers for implementing practices, one of the sources said.
"We're kind of the middleman in this,” the source said. “In a lot of ways, the real brunt, in my opinion, will fall on the producers themselves. If they're not able to get technical assistance for a period of time, that's one thing and surely very inconvenient. It may be financially costly as well.”
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Steve Davies and Phillip Brasher contributed to this report.
