NOAA's Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grants Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Round 3 | NOAA NMFS HCPO 2025 29526

Opportunity Information: Apply for NOAA NMFS HCPO 2025 29526

NOAA's Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grants (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Round 3) is a discretionary funding opportunity that supports large, high-impact habitat restoration projects in marine, estuarine, coastal, and Great Lakes systems. The core goal is to fund "transformational" restoration work that not only improves ecosystem health, but also strengthens community and ecosystem resilience to climate-related hazards like hurricanes, coastal storms, flooding, and longer-term pressures such as sea level rise. The program is administered by NOAA's Office of Habitat Conservation and is authorized under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law).

NOAA expects up to $100 million to be available under this round. Within that total, up to $15 million is specifically set aside for direct awards and/or subawards to Indian tribes (as defined in 25 U.S.C. 5304(e)) and Native American organizations that formally represent tribes through legal agreements (for example, tribal commissions, consortia, conservation districts, or cooperatives). The remaining funds are open to the broader pool of eligible applicants. Across the program, NOAA emphasizes habitat restoration actions that produce significant, measurable outcomes such as rebuilding productive and sustainable fisheries, supporting recovery of threatened and endangered species, promoting climate-resilient ecosystems (especially in tribal, indigenous, and/or underserved communities), and improving economic vitality, including local jobs.

The opportunity is positioned as part of NOAA's broader national effort to enhance coastal resilience, recognizing that coastal areas contain major population centers and high-value natural assets. A key theme is that habitat restoration and natural or nature-based infrastructure can protect lives and property while sustaining commercial, recreational, and subsistence fishing, supporting species conservation, and maintaining strong local economies. The solicitation is also aligned with the Biden-Harris Administration's Ocean Climate Action Plan and explicitly advances the Justice40 Initiative goal of directing 40 percent of benefits from certain federal climate and environmental investments to disadvantaged communities that have been historically overburdened by pollution and underinvestment.

Applications are expected to respond to four main program priorities. First is sustaining productive fisheries and strengthening ecosystem resilience. Second is enhancing community resilience to climate hazards while delivering co-benefits. Third is fostering regionally important habitat restoration, meaning projects should matter at a meaningful scale for a region, watershed, or coastal system. Fourth is delivering clear benefits to tribal, indigenous, and/or underserved communities, often through strong partnerships rather than purely top-down project designs. Competitiveness is tied to how well a proposal matches these priorities and how "transformative" it is in terms of scale, durability, and positive impact within the project region.

NOAA will fund a range of project phases, including planning and assessments, feasibility studies, engineering design and permitting, on-the-ground implementation, and pre- and/or post-implementation monitoring. Capacity-building and community engagement can also be included when they directly support the restoration work. Even so, proposals that include on-the-ground implementation are prioritized over proposals that only cover pre-implementation steps, and NOAA indicates it will favor activities with a high certainty of being completed within a typical 2 to 3 year award period. For proposals that bundle multiple restoration sites, applicants need to show how the sites collectively advance the priorities within the same geographic area or watershed and demonstrate the capacity to manage multiple concurrent projects over several years.

Equity and meaningful community involvement are central expectations, not side notes. NOAA encourages applicants to build diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility principles into project identification, design, and implementation through proactive and equitable engagement. Projects are strengthened when they demonstrate benefits flowing to tribal, indigenous, and/or underserved communities and when they appropriately incorporate local or Indigenous knowledge into design, implementation, and evaluation. If an applicant is proposing work intended to benefit underserved communities, the partnership must be credible and documented: the application is expected to include evidence of endorsement (such as letters of support) from the relevant tribe(s), tribal entities, and/or underserved community partners for the specific work proposed, and the strength of these partnerships is part of the evaluation.

Awards will be made as cooperative agreements, which generally means NOAA will have substantial involvement during the project period compared with a standard grant. NOAA encourages periods of performance up to three years, with the possibility of extending up to five years if needed. Typical award sizes are anticipated to be about $4 million to $6 million over three years. The federal funding request must be at least $750,000 and no more than $10 million total per award, and NOAA expects only a small number of awards (roughly 3 to 5) to be funded near the $10 million cap.

Eligibility is broad and includes state, local, and tribal governments; U.S. territories; institutions of higher education; nonprofits (both 501(c)(3) and non-501(c)(3)); and commercial/for-profit organizations, including small businesses. Federal agencies and federal employees cannot apply or receive funds under this solicitation, though they may participate as unfunded partners. Foreign entities are not eligible as prime recipients, but they may participate as partners (for example, as contractors or subrecipients) to a U.S.-based prime applicant. Projects must be located in eligible coastal, marine, or estuarine areas, or in the Great Lakes basin. Great Lakes proposals must be within the basin and located in one of the eight U.S. Great Lakes states (New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, or Minnesota). Projects in U.S. territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico) are eligible, while the Freely Associated States are not eligible to submit applications.

Key administrative details include the opportunity number NOAA NMFS HCPO 2025 29526, CFDA 11.463, and a closing date of April 16, 2025. The award ceiling is $10,000,000, and the funding instrument is a cooperative agreement.

• The DOC NOAA - ERA Production in the environment, natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "NOAA's Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grants Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Round 3" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 11.463.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-12-06.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2025-04-16. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $10,000,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for NOAA NMFS HCPO 2025 29526

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: