RESTORE Colorado Grant Program

The RESTORE Colorado Grant Program, administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, aims to enhance wildlife habitats across Colorado. With an expected funding of $4.5 million in 2025, the program focuses on critical habitats such as wetlands, grasslands, and sagebrush rangelands. It encourages cross-jurisdictional projects for effective landscape-level conservation, benefiting both wildlife and local communities. This initiative exemplifies a collaborative approach to proactive management of Colorado's natural resources.

Background
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is soliciting proposals for the annual Restoration and Stewardship of Outdoor Resources and Environment (RESTORE) Colorado Program. Grants made through the RESTORE Colorado Program will focus on the voluntary restoration, enhancement, and expansion of wildlife habitat throughout the state.
RESTORE Colorado is administered by NFWF and represents a unique partnership between Great Outdoors Colorado, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the Gates Family Foundation, OXY, Chevron, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
In 2025, NFWF expects to award approximately $4.5 million to projects focusing on the following habitats and statewide priorities:

• Watershed resilience (wetlands, riparian and upland habitats including forests)
• Eastern Colorado grasslands
• Sagebrush rangelands
• Big game winter range and migration corridors

The partners developed the program to accomplish wildlife habitat restoration, expansion, and improvement at-scale and provide opportunities for the proactive management of Colorado’s public and private conservation lands for the greatest benefit to wildlife and local communities. The concept of conservation at-scale refers to cross-jurisdictional projects that accomplish landscape-level benefits to wildlife habitat and ecological function over landownership and management. For example, a stream restoration project could incorporate upland forest pre- or post-wildland fire mitigation in order to accomplish watershed-level conservation or a project addressing big game migrations could cut across sagebrush, grassland and forest habitats to emphasize species benefits and ecological connectivity. Projects that address a single priority habitat will still be considered and could be competitive but are encouraged to emphasize cross-jurisdictional components.