Salmon Valley Stewardship is pleased to announce it has received two grants from the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) for biodiversity conservation and trails accessibility. The first grant for $60,000 is a 2024 Biodiversity Conservation Grant from NEEF, with major funding support from Toyota Motor North America. The goal of this project is to engage the community in critical monarch habitat expansion along 20 miles of the Salmon River corridor. The project site falls within the Salmon River Breaks Project Area, an 11,000-acre tract that has been treated with prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and noxious weed removal for the last 13 years. Salmon Valley Stewardship (SVS) volunteers will make and plant seedballs, which are essential to reseeding the rocky, steep terrain and shallow soils of the river valley, in addition to hand-pulling invasive plants and planting milkweed and other native pollinator-friendly plants along the 20-mile corridor. This work will directly improve 1,625 acres of pollinator habitat—about twice the area of Central Park in New York City.
The second grant awarded is the 2024-2025 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Greening STEM Grant for $11,800 to support a Discovery Hill Trails Accessibility Study facilitated by SVS in partnership with the Salmon Field Office and local 8th-12th graders. SVS and BLM will collaborate to develop trail inventory assessment protocols, training students and staff in data collection techniques at the Discovery Hill Trail System. This initiative expands BLM's outdoor education beyond traditional natural resource stewardship to include citizen science and STEM components, providing students with hands-on learning experiences that bridge classroom learning with real-world applications in environmental conservation and public land management.
“The support from the National Environmental Education Foundation is outstanding. We are grateful for the financial support from NEEF, which further leverages resources from the US Forest Service, BLM, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and private funders who have supported our trails projects, milkweed and monarch monitoring partnership program, and the native plants restoration program. Increased funds allow us to add capacity and expand community engagement, helping us meet our mission to promote a sustainable economy and productive working landscapes because stewardship of natural resources is critical for community wellbeing,” says Executive Director Maggie Seaberg.
The National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) is the nation’s leading organization in lifelong environmental learning, creating opportunities for people to experience and learn about the environment in ways that improve their lives and the health of the planet. For over twenty years, NEEF has partnered with Toyota, the USDA Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management to provide a variety of grants and awards to support national and regional environmental preservation projects. Congressionally chartered in 1990 as a 501c3 nonprofit to complement the work of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NEEF is a non-partisan, non-advocacy organization working to make the environment more accessible, relatable, relevant, and connected to people’s daily lives. Learn more at NEEFusa.org.
Salmon Valley Stewardship works to promote a sustainable economy and productive working landscapes here in the Salmon River region of Central Idaho. Since 2004, SVS has brought people together to exchange ideas and knowledge, address community needs, and facilitate creative solutions. A few legacy projects include facilitating the Lemhi Forest Restoration Group and Salmon-Challis Trails Group, starting the Lemhi County Farmers Market, coordinating the Hands on the Land youth outdoor education program, and partnering with federal and state land management agencies to conduct natural resource inventorying and monitoring on public lands. Learn more at salmonvalley.org.
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