Notice of Intent: Leigh and String Lakes Visitor Use Study | P17AS00040

Opportunity Information: Apply for P17AS00040

The Notice of Intent: Leigh and String Lakes Visitor Use Study (Funding Opportunity Number P17AS00040) is a National Park Service cooperative agreement opportunity focused on understanding and managing rapidly increasing recreation pressure at String Lake and Leigh Lake in Grand Teton National Park (GRTE). String Lake has become especially heavily used for paddling, swimming and wading, picnicking, and day hiking, while Leigh Lake draws paddlers, day hikers, and backcountry campers. Park staff have documented a substantial rise in visitation in recent years, and that surge is showing up in very practical management problems such as overcrowded parking areas as well as on-the-ground resource damage, particularly along String Lake shorelines and in areas adjacent to existing parking lots.

The public purpose of the project is to produce usable, decision-ready information that helps GRTE manage visitor use while protecting natural resources and maintaining a quality visitor experience. Although the core study area is the String and Leigh Lakes vicinity, the scope may expand to nearby connected destinations that experience related use patterns, including northern Jenny Lake, Bearpaw Lake, Trapper Lake, Paintbrush Canyon, and Holly Lake. In other words, the study is meant to look at how people actually move through this part of the park, where congestion and impacts are occurring, and what conditions visitors and managers consider acceptable or desirable.

The work is organized around three major lines of investigation. First, the project will examine vehicle dynamics in the String and Leigh Lakes parking areas. This typically implies documenting how vehicles arrive and depart across the day and season, where bottlenecks occur, how quickly lots fill, how turnover works, and what spillover behaviors show up when lots are full (for example, illegal parking, unsafe roadside stopping, or vehicles circulating in search of spaces). Second, it will assess ecological resource impacts associated with increased visitation, with attention to the zones most likely to be affected: parking area edges, shorelines, trail systems, and campsites. This component is aimed at identifying and characterizing issues like shoreline trampling, vegetation loss, soil compaction, informal user-created trails, erosion, campsite expansion, and other indicators of degradation that track with heavy use. Third, the project will document current and desired social conditions in the study area, meaning how visitors experience crowding or conflict, what levels of use feel acceptable, and what kinds of conditions the public and the park would like to sustain in the future (for example, perceptions of congestion, noise, wait times, and the overall sense of recreation quality).

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, under the Natural Resources funding activity category (CFDA 15.945). The intended funding instrument is a cooperative agreement, which generally signals substantial involvement by the NPS in shaping, coordinating, or participating in the work as it proceeds rather than simply issuing a hands-off grant. The opportunity anticipated a single award (Expected Awards: 1) with an award ceiling of $463,485. Eligible applicants include public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, along with other eligible entities as clarified in the opportunity materials. The notice was created on December 19, 2016, with an original closing date of December 23, 2016, indicating a short application window typical of certain targeted or pre-competed partnership announcements.

In practical terms, the deliverable implied by the notice is a set of findings that park managers can use to respond to increased visitation with strategies grounded in evidence. By pairing parking and traffic patterns with measured ecological impacts and visitor-experience data, the study is designed to help GRTE identify where management interventions may be needed most, what kinds of impacts are linked to particular use behaviors, and what management targets could be set for both resource protection and visitor experience in the Leigh and String Lakes area and potentially the surrounding connected destinations.

• The Department of the Interior, National Park Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Notice of Intent: Leigh and String Lakes Visitor Use Study" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.945.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 19, 2016.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Dec 23, 2016. (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 $463,485.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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