FY 2027 National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program (F27AS00007)

FY 2027 National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program (F27AS00007)

Coastal wetlands are not only ecological systems; they are the practical insurance policy for coastal communities facing stronger storms, faster shoreline change, and expensive water-quality stress. The FY 2027 National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program (F27AS00007) is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funding line that gives state and territory governments financial support to keep coastal wetlands from fragmenting, flooding, salinizing, or being converted beyond practical recovery. The program was posted on April 10, 2026 and last updated on May 13, 2026. It remains listed as open through the Grants.gov ecosystem with a closing date of July 9, 2026.

This is a high-structure conservation grant, and it is easier to win than many broad environmental solicitations because its scope is clear: fund projects that conserve measurable coastal wetland resources with long-term outcomes. That clarity is helpful to applicants, but it also means weak proposals that are generic or weak on metrics fail fast. If your team has a concrete land-based intervention, a protected coast management component, and the ability to prove long-term stewardship, this can be one of the strongest coastal funding pathways in the federal portfolio for this cycle.

In plain language, the program exists to provide eligible agencies with cost-share grants that support

• acquisition of real property interests in coastal wetlands,
• restoration of wetland functions,
• enhancement and habitat quality improvements,
• active management or long-term stewardship planning for coastal ecosystems.

The official page frames this as a conservation and public benefit pathway for fish, wildlife, communities, and recreation economies.

At a glance

Who this is for and who it excludes

The eligibility section is narrow on purpose. The call is not for individuals, nonprofits, universities, or commercial firms as primary recipients. The official eligible applicant class is state governments; for practical terms this means the funded entity is usually a state or territory fish and wildlife or natural-resource agency that has been designated as eligible by the Governor in the relevant jurisdiction.

The listed eligible states and territories are:

• Alabama
• Alaska
• American Samoa
• California
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Florida
• Georgia
• Guam
• Hawai’i
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New York
• North Carolina
• Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
• Ohio
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Puerto Rico
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• Texas
• U.S. Virgin Islands
• Virginia
• Washington
• Wisconsin

Louisiana is explicitly excluded because it receives separate statutory funding through the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act.

Applicants should not treat this as a local discretionary grant lottery for any government unit. The program rules make designation by governor and alignment with state territorial eligibility foundational. If your agency is not explicitly designated, the application is likely rejected early. So the first step is not a narrative draft; it is confirmation that your institution qualifies. If uncertain, the official process is to contact the Regional Office of Conservation Investment before preparing a submission.

What the program is trying to fund

The program has three practical lenses:

1. Habitat protection and recovery

Projects should address measurable wetland decline, whether from erosion, habitat conversion, pollution pressure, storm damage, or fragmented ownership and management systems.

2. Long-term public value

The NOFO requires that projects show at least 20 years of conservation benefit. This is central. Proposals should be written as long-horizon public infrastructure for ecological function, not as one-season restoration experiments.

3. Community and economic interface

The program language explicitly ties ecological restoration to communities, fish, wildlife, and recreation. Applicants should show not only biodiversity outcomes but how restoration supports broader recovery and resilience outcomes for people, fisheries, and public use.

The conservation portfolio often favors projects with multiple layers:

• direct wetland recovery or management activities,
• evidence-informed planning and monitoring,
• public-use or recreation integration that does not degrade conservation goals,
• partnership structures that expand conservation scale across agencies and local collaborators.

The 13 merit criteria support this multi-dimensional scoring model. You do not need to maximize every criterion equally, but you should build your narrative around the criteria and link each claim to evidence.

Application timeline and process

The official timeline is straightforward but operationally demanding:

• Closing date: July 9, 2026, 11:59 PM Eastern Time
• Submission format: electronic through Grants.gov or GrantSolutions
• Application package: available as listed documents on the listing page
• Backup or supporting submission: PDF can also be emailed to regional office only as described in the NOFO

The NOFO includes practical setup requirements that often trip teams:

• Confirm your entity has a valid SAM.gov registration and Unique Entity Identifier (UEI)
• Review and complete SAM.gov Financial Assistance General Representations and Certifications
• Register with Grants.gov and allow up to 30 days for Workspace setup
• For GrantSolutions, request new organization support, assign roles, and ensure the ADO and PI/PD are configured

This is where many otherwise strong teams lose timing. Registration in SAM.gov and Grants.gov can require weeks. Start early, especially if your state team has limited federal administrative bandwidth.

Submission mechanics snapshot

Use the checklist as a planning baseline. The NOFO caps the full application at 85 pages, and several components have fixed page and form limits:

• Project Narrative: 7-page limit
• Ranking responses (50 CFR 84.32): 20-page limit
• Drawings/maps/photos: 20-page limit
• All forms: SF-424, budget form, budget narrative, required attachments
• Third-party cost-share letters: required where applicable

Critical operational detail: all components including letters of commitment must be submitted by the due date. You cannot treat the application as “under revision” after the cutoff except in narrow cases that do not change scoring or scope.

Cost sharing, match, and financial planning

This program is explicitly cost-share. The common misunderstanding is that “cost share required” means you always need equal 50% match. That is not correct, and this is where the call is precise and financially sophisticated.

The NOFO sets Federal participation caps by whether the state has an established coastal conservation fund:

• With qualifying fund: Federal share may not exceed 75%
• Without qualifying fund: Federal share may not exceed 50%

This means non-federal share can be as low as 25% in some contexts and 50% in others, depending on jurisdiction and fund structures. The call also allows cost sharing to include third-party and in-kind contributions, but for scoring, some criteria explicitly require part of that match to be in cash.

For applications planning a real-property-heavy project, include a robust cost-share valuation narrative:

• describe each parcel in sufficient detail,
• clarify whether parcels are proposed with grant funds or as match,
• attach signed letters of financial commitment,
• tie in-kind and in-cash components clearly to budget sections,
• avoid mixing unallowable expenditures into cost-share assumptions.

A major evaluation point is Criterion 11 (Federal share reduction). Teams that document meaningful cash match above minimum thresholds gain points. In practice, this can affect competitiveness in a crowded competition because many projects meet technical requirements.

Common cost-share mistakes that weaken scores

1. Treating non-allowable costs as match

If it is not clearly needed and documented for project outcomes, it will not pass administrative or merit scrutiny.

2. Under-valuing match documentation

A list of intended partners without signed monetary commitment letters is usually insufficient.

3. Ignoring Federal share ceiling logic

Some teams submit budgets that appear realistic on paper but violate capped federal participation once a different fund status is applied.

4. Not planning regional office pre-screening for eligibility

If your team assumes designation, you lose by default when the application is non-responsive on eligibility.

What reviewers care about (and how to write for it)

The scoring framework has 13 criteria under 50 CFR 84.32. The first 12 are technical; criterion 13 gives credit for additional policy and conservation value. You do not have to be a full policy legal team to be competitive, but you must map your proposal to reviewer language.

At a practical level:

• Criterion 1 (7 points): Show how the project reverses wetland loss and identify measurable wetland types.
• Criterion 2 (7 points): If applicable, explain clear maritime forest benefit.
• Criterion 3 (7 points): Prove long-term conservation outcomes for 20 years.
• Criteria 4–9: Link project activity to watershed plans, threatened species, fisheries, birds, contamination control, and catalytic effects.
• Criterion 10 (4 points): Make partnerships concrete. Vague “partnership intent” is weaker than documented partner obligations.
• Criterion 11 (5 points): Demonstrate federal share reduction via cash match above minimum.
• Criterion 12 (3 points): Keep recreation/education tied directly to mission and cap out-of-scope costs to the allowed level.
• Criterion 13 (4 points): Include one or two genuinely unique factors (rare habitat, invasive-species management, local benefits, cost effectiveness).

Tie-breakers also matter when multiple applications score similarly, including:

• avoided habitat destruction from immediate threats,
• unique habitat value and biodiversity,
• lower costs per acre conserved,
• acquisition of new real property as cost share.

Review readiness that improves decision quality

To maximize review quality:

• Include explicit acres and unit-based performance metrics,
• show maps and delineations where possible,
• describe contamination controls if applicable,
• include pre-award planning evidence,
• show a clear, defensible budget narrative linked to scope,
• include conflict-of-interest management and compliance posture in clean form,
• provide measurable monitoring outputs not just outputs promises.

In other words, your narrative should make reviewers work less. The difference between average and competitive submissions is often the depth of implementation detail, not the idea itself.

Application strategy: practical sequence

If your deadline is under a year out, work backward from this sequence:

1. Eligibility confirmation (Weeks 1–2): verify agency designation in your state/territory and registration status.
2. Internal package design (Weeks 2–4): define scope, site list, wetland type, and restoration outcomes by tract.
3. Financial plan (Weeks 4–6): decide cost-share architecture and cash/in-kind split that supports scoring objective.
4. Regional alignment (Weeks 6–8): map project to one or more regional coastal plans and partner commitments.
5. Draft package (Weeks 8–10): write ranking response first, then budget and appendices.
6. Quality control (Weeks 10–11): verify page limits, signatures, letters of commitment, and technical form completeness.
7. Submission readiness (final 7–10 days): submit early, validate receipt, and capture confirmation artifacts.

A useful principle: use the NOFO as a table-driven template. Every line your application includes should correspond to one requirement in the solicitation.

Risk, award, and post-award obligations

Once selected, the review does not stop at award selection. The NOFO includes post-award compliance requirements that are operationally meaningful:

• eligibility and financial risk review under 2 CFR 200.206,
• potential additional risk conditions for larger awards,
• SAM exclusion checks,
• formal award notice through GrantSolutions/e-mail,
• compliance submissions, anti-fraud/conflict reporting, SF-425/CFI financial reporting,
• progress updates and TRACS/GS reporting,
• real property records and Notice of Federal Participation where land is involved,
• final financial report within 120 days after performance end, unless specific terms differ.

The anticipated project period in this NOFO is listed as 1/8/2027 to 1/11/2030. That means implementation planning cannot stop at award receipt; agencies should budget internal reporting and staff capacity for monitoring, periodic reporting, and stewardship obligations across several years.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Mistake: Submitting before eligibility certainty

Even excellent ecological proposals fail early if the applying entity is not in the eligible set. Always confirm designation before finalizing documents.

Mistake: Underdeveloped cost-share structure

Cost-sharing is central and technical. A strong story with weak cost-share arithmetic is a weak application.

Mistake: Missing 20-year conservation evidence

Criterion 3 is explicit and reviewable. If your design cannot show sustained effect over two decades, say how adaptive management extends benefits.

Mistake: Weak site-level specificity

Reviewers score against wetland type, habitat context, and land parcel specifics. General statements like “improve coastal resilience” do not score in place of site evidence.

Mistake: Late filing or incomplete pre-award registrations

Grants.gov and GrantSolutions registration is often longer than teams expect. Missing a completed SAM.gov compliance field can sink timing.

Mistake: Treating outreach as a separate budget side-project

Outreach and education are allowed but must remain subordinate to wetland conservation outcomes and within the expected limit. If outreach dominates budget, reviewers may interpret it as mission drift.

Frequently asked questions

Can non-federal third parties provide match as in-kind?

Yes, third-party contributions can qualify as cost share, but if you want maximum scoring, include meaningful cash contributions as well.

Do Louisiana agencies qualify?

No, Louisiana is excluded in this funding line due to separate statutory channels.

Can territorial agencies apply without match?

Some territories may have match waivers under federal policy notices, but your application still should include clear matching logic and signed commitments where applicable.

Can pre-award costs be reimbursed?

Pre-award costs may be supported only when explicitly documented and approved in advance through the required channels.

How should changes after submission be handled?

Only non-scoring or non-substantive changes may be accepted; avoid relying on post-deadline edits.

Can this support project construction?

Yes, where within scope of coastal wetlands conservation and where relevant criteria are met. Construction-related components must still support long-term conservation outcomes.

Official links and references

• Official listing: https://simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/e3189942-95a7-4798-9afb-ada9bf1b2be8
• Full NOFO PDF: https://files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunities/e3189942-95a7-4798-9afb-ada9bf1b2be8/attachments/532f0e55-9e88-4448-9387-c04c2bca1776/F27AS00007_FY_2027_National_Coastal_Wetlands_Conservation_Grant_Program_Notice_of_Funding_Opportunity.pdf
• Grants.gov listing and update metadata: https://www.grants.gov

Next steps

If your team is in an eligible state or territory, this is a high-signal opportunity because it combines significant funding with strict but manageable criteria. The biggest determinant of competitiveness is not whether your concept is interesting, but whether your package is internally consistent: designation, cost-share, long-horizon conservation logic, and review-ready evidence. Use the NOFO as your document blueprint, do early technical registration, and submit with at least one internal compliance review before the final deadline.