Guam Department of Agriculture

Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources

Project Descriptions 

Guam Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources (GDAWR) is the equivalent of a State Fish & Game Agency.  Specifically, GDAWR’s Wildlife Section receives yearly appropriations from Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration to monitor and manage game populations, and competes for Endangered Species Section 6 funding.  Congressional appropriations to the State Wildlife Grant have been $140K to $190K in the last three years.  The GDAWR Brown Treesnake (BTS) Control Project received funding from the Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs and US Fish & Wildlife.  In total GDAWR’s FY05 budget is just over $1.4 million.  There is also a pending US Fish & Wildlife Safe Harbor Grant.

These funds support the Wildlife Section’s mission to “manage Guam’s wildlife resources for the benefit of present and future generations” and the vision “to recover endangered animal and plant species, manage sustainable populations of games species, and promote public awareness of natural resources”.  The following paragraphs describe the FY05 DAWR wildlife programs on Guam.  Click here to down-load complete Project Descriptions: 6.2MB PDF

Technical Assistance

The Wildlife Section professional staff of the Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources (DAWR) devote a significant percentage of their time and effort to technical assistance. The pace of development on the island is requiring increasing amounts of time from the Section’s staff to fulfill its statutory responsibility to review and comment on development plans, rezoning applications, and various permit applications most of which are local Government of Guam or private sector. In addition, the Section also provides comment and review of numerous activities and proposals from the military bases on Guam that may affect Guam’s endangered species and wildlife resources and their habitat. Often this includes: 1) commenting on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Section 7 consultations concerning impacts of military projects on endangered species and 2) a continuing commitment of Section review responsibility beyond project completion, because of the size and complexity of some of these developments.

Wildlife section professional staff provide support to the DAWR technical assistance program and often take the lead in review of projects involving their particular expertise, such as those that may have endangered species impacts or those involving wetlands. This effort is extremely important for the management and conservation of Guam’s natural resources.