--- title: who already funds the río grande cooter canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-already-funds-the-rio-grande-cooter markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-already-funds-the-rio-grande-cooter.md subtitle: a watershed initiative that already names the turtle category: ensurance --- # who already funds the río grande cooter *a watershed initiative that already names the turtle* The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has a request for proposals out for its next round. Between the upland grassland work and the aquatic species, there is a sentence about a turtle. It asks applicants to restore habitat for the Río Grande cooter and to monitor how that work changes the turtle. The money behind that sentence comes from the Bureau of Land Management and five oil and gas companies. One of them is Occidental. If you searched for the Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative, that is the short answer. People already fund this watershed. The turtle is already on the list. What follows is who pays, how much the program has moved, what the 2027 round asks for, and where a funder who already writes to this program might look next. ## what the pecos watershed conservation initiative is The **Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative** is a competitive grant program run by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) for the Pecos River watershed of New Mexico and Texas. The turtle's drainages also reach Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas, which this program does not cover. It began in 2017. Its funders are a federal land agency and a group of Permian Basin oil and gas operators. NFWF writes the requests for proposals, selects grantees, and reports results. The companies and the agency put money in. Conservation groups, universities, agencies, and landowners take it out as grants and do the work. By the July 2026 fact sheet, the program had awarded nearly **$14.9 million** across **66 projects** since 2017, matched by nearly **$28 million** from grantees and partners, for a total impact of **$42.8 million**. Those are whole-program numbers. They cover grassland, upland water, aquatic habitat, and species across the watershed. They are not a turtle budget, and no one should read them as one. The named partners in 2026 were Occidental, the Bureau of Land Management, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Apache. :::johnson **the funders already pay for the river. the turtle is how they will know whether it worked.** Since 2017 the Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative has moved nearly $14.9 million into 66 projects. Its 2027 request for proposals asks applicants to restore habitat for the Río Grande cooter and monitor the result. Occidental is one of the companies behind that sentence. [see what a corporate funder can add beside those grants →](/solutions/corporations?from=guide&topic=rio-grande-cooter) ::: ## what the 2026 round funded The 2026 round awarded nearly **$1.2 million** to **four** grants, with nearly **$1.5 million** in match, for more than **$2.6 million** combined. Those four grants were for upland habitat and aquatic species across the watershed. The $1.2 million was not spent on the turtle. Some of it may touch water the turtle uses; none of it was a cooter line item. If you see that figure quoted as turtle funding, the quote is wrong. This matters because the Río Grande cooter is easy to over-claim. It is a shy river turtle. It has no famous recovery program and no dedicated fund. What it has is a sentence in a request for proposals, and a program with a track record of funding the rivers it lives in. ## the sentence about the turtle The 2027 request for proposals, for awards announced in March and April 2027, names its funders as the Bureau of Land Management, Apache, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, and ExxonMobil. NFWF expects to make **three to five** awards. Applicants may request **$100,000 to $500,000** each, with a **1:1** match. Full proposals are due **12 November 2026**. Under species response and monitoring, the request asks for proposals that conserve the Río Grande cooter, including habitat restoration and monitoring of how those activities affect the turtle. The focal aquatic species list names the Rio Grande (western) cooter alongside the Pecos pupfish, Pecos gambusia, and Texas hornshell. Two labels belong on those numbers. First, the $100,000 to $500,000 band is what an applicant may ask for. It is not what any single funder pays, and it is not Occidental's share. Second, the same request has a separate category for species interventions, such as moving animals or managing disease, and that category names pupfish, gambusia, and hornshell. It does not name the cooter. The turtle's tools in this request are habitat and monitoring, not translocation. Do not blend the two. ## the program has already paid for turtle work This is not the first time the turtle has appeared. The program's 26 April 2022 fact sheet lists a project titled *Assessment of the Rio Grande Cooter population structure in the Delaware River, New Mexico*. The design was high-intensity trapping on that Delaware River, compared with the Black River, to learn where the turtle occurs and what habitat it uses. Two clarifications. The Delaware River here is a tributary of the Pecos in southeastern New Mexico, not the tidal river at Philadelphia. This post does not print a dollar for that survey. The title and the design are on the fact sheet. That is enough to establish the point: the Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative has funded Río Grande cooter fieldwork before, and its 2027 request asks for more. ## occidental is a funder, not a turtle department Occidental Petroleum is a founding partner of the Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative. It is named again on the July 2026 fact sheet and in the 2027 request for proposals. That is the extent of the claim this post makes about the company. This post does not assign Occidental a dollar, slice the grant band into a corporate check, or borrow Permian production figures as the turtle's exposure. A reader who wants the produced-water side of the Permian story can find it in [the Pecos River post on water and oil](/guide/pecos-river-water-security?from=guide). This post stays with the grant program. What a funder like Occidental gets from the program is clear: a foundation that runs the competition, selects projects, requires match, and reports. The public fact sheets report at the program level, and the grants are awarded by competition. A funder does not pick the reach from those sheets. That is not a flaw in the program. It is why a second layer, named in the last post, can sit beside the grants. ## what the turtle actually needs The Río Grande cooter (*Pseudemys gorzugi*) is a medium-to-large freshwater turtle of the Pecos and Rio Grande drainages, with a shell up to 372 millimeters. It prefers smaller tributaries, clear spring runs, and deep slow pools, and it is often absent from the Rio Grande mainstem. The Fish and Wildlife Service records a local name for it, jicotéa del Río Bravo. It needs four things. Water that keeps flowing through the dry months. Water that is not too salty; a 2022 paper in *Scientific Reports* tied an absence of about 390 kilometers on the Pecos mainstem to conductivity above 10,000 microsiemens per centimeter, which is a measure of how much dissolved salt the water carries. A tributary that stays connected to the river. And a sandy bank where a female can dig a nest. Those conditions exist whether or not anyone funds them. [Ensurance](/general?from=guide) is a way for a company that already pays into this watershed to fund those living conditions directly, with a record of what was funded and whether the turtle responded. It is a second layer beside the grants, not a replacement for them. It is not the turtle. The Rio Grande already has a live place agent, [`rio-grande-river.basin`](/rio-grande-river.basin?from=guide) — an on-chain account for the river, not a certificate. A line is a proposed certificate that would fund named conditions under that agent. One named `rio grande cooter` is in ideation, which means proposed, not live. You can [co-create it](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=rio-grande-river.basin&name=rio%20grande%20cooter&from=guide); a person reviews the suggestion, and the parent agent receives what the line raises. The turtle's holds are tributaries, so the line would fund tributary conditions through the mainstem's agent. The flow those tributaries need is also the work of [`water-abundance.ensurance`](/water-abundance.ensurance?from=guide). ## status, in one pass The IUCN assessed the species as Near Threatened in 2010. On 14 March 2022 the Fish and Wildlife Service found that listing under the Endangered Species Act was not warranted, writing that the species persists in all its historical river basins and that 10 of 16 population units were at moderate-to-low risk of extirpation. New Mexico lists it as threatened. Texas treats it as a species of greatest conservation need. Mexico lists it as amenazada. On 8 January 2026 the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Service over the 2022 finding. The case is filed and not decided. Whatever a court does with that finding, the flow, the salt, the connection, and the nesting banks the turtle needs stay the same. The turtle is often absent from the Rio Grande mainstem. A utility that drinks that mainstem is not the buyer in this series. ## frequently asked questions ### who funds the pecos watershed conservation initiative? In 2026 the named partners were Occidental, the Bureau of Land Management, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Apache. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation operates the program and makes the grants. ### does the pecos watershed conservation initiative fund the río grande cooter? Yes, by name. The 2027 request for proposals asks for projects that conserve the Río Grande cooter through habitat restoration and monitoring, and a 2022 project assessed the turtle's population structure on the Delaware River in New Mexico. Program totals are not turtle totals. ### how much can an applicant request in the 2027 round? Between $100,000 and $500,000, with a 1:1 match. NFWF expects three to five awards. Full proposals are due 12 November 2026. ### is the río grande cooter endangered? Not under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The federal finding in 2022 was not warranted, and a lawsuit filed in January 2026 challenges that finding. New Mexico lists it as threatened and the IUCN rates it Near Threatened. ## next step If your company already funds this program, the next question is what sits beside the grants: a funded reach, a monitored turtle, and a record you can report. The [corporations page](/solutions/corporations?from=guide&topic=rio-grande-cooter) names the services that do that work, restoration & stewardship and MRV & monitoring, and says plainly that ensurance can fund the watersheds a business depends on and generate auditable data on that funding. The next post in this series sets out the unit. If you would rather talk first, [reach us here](/contact?from=guide&topic=rio-grande-cooter). ## sources [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Rio Grande cooter species page](https://www.fws.gov/species/rio-grande-cooter-pseudemys-gorzugi) — range, description, and the recorded local name jicotéa del Río Bravo. [Federal Register, 14 March 2022, 87 FR 14227](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2022-03-14/html/2022-05331.htm) — the 2022 not-warranted finding; persistence in all historical basins; 10 of 16 population units at moderate-to-low risk. [Scientific Reports, 2022](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20199-3) — the roughly 390 km Pecos mainstem gap linked to conductivity above 10,000 µS/cm. [NFWF Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative fact sheet, 8 July 2026](https://www.nfwf.org/sites/default/files/2026-07/nfwf-pecos-20260708-fs-gs.pdf) — program totals since 2017, the 2026 round, and the named 2026 partners. [NFWF Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative fact sheet, 26 April 2022](https://www.nfwf.org/sites/default/files/2022-05/NFWF-Pecos-20220426-GS.pdf) — the Delaware River, New Mexico cooter population structure project, cited for its title and design only. [NFWF Pecos Watershed Conservation Initiative 2027 request for proposals](https://www.nfwf.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/pwci-2027-rfp_0.pdf) — funders, award count, request band, match, due date, and the species response and monitoring language that names the cooter. [IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group account](https://iucn-tftsg.org/pseudemys-gorzugi-100/) — Near Threatened assessment in 2010; Mexico and state statuses. ## the series - [what the río grande cooter depends on](/guide/what-the-rio-grande-cooter-depends-on?from=guide) - [the pecos goes quiet for a turtle](/guide/the-pecos-goes-quiet-for-a-turtle?from=guide) - [the black river still holds its turtles](/guide/the-black-river-still-holds-its-turtles?from=guide) - [who already funds the río grande cooter](/guide/who-already-funds-the-rio-grande-cooter?from=guide) - [fund the reach the cooter still uses](/guide/fund-the-reach-the-cooter-still-uses?from=guide)