University of North Dakota doctoral student John Leonhart has spent the past two summers in southwestern North Dakota, trapping everything from rattlesnakes and shrews to toads and sagebrush lizards.

Tom Serfass, a researcher at Frostburg State University in Maryland, is checking out river otters, fishers and spotted skunks in eastern North Dakota.

The two are among researchers from several states studying everything from big birds to tiny amphibians in North Dakota as part of a wildlife plan that recently won federal approval.

North Dakota has received more than $3 million in federal money over the past five years for projects through the State Wildlife Grant program, said Sandra Hagen, a biologist with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.

"One of the main themes is to prevent more species from joining the federal threatened and endangered species list," she said. "If we can be more proactive and figure out what's causing a species to decline before it gets to that point, that would work a lot better."

The money was awarded under the condition that each state develop a "wildlife action plan" to identify and help wildlife species that are in decline.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service so far has approved the plans of 41 of the 56 states, U.S. territories and District of Columbia, including North Dakota's this spring, said Genevieve Pullis LaRouche, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service's division of federal assistance.

With matching money from the state and such private organizations as Ducks Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department has received nearly $3.8 million for more than a dozen projects. Many of them are ongoing.

One involves the study of golden eagles in the western part of the state by UND doctoral student Margi Coyle. She has spent four years locating nest sites and trapping young birds so they can be fitted with satellite tracking units.

Researchers from Montana, in separate projects, are studying grassland birds habitat and black-tailed prairie dog colonies.

Another project involves the study of Swainson's and ferruginous hawks by St. Cloud State University graduate student Clara McCarthy and Marco Restani, a professor of wildlife ecology.

The hawks are declining in Canada's prairie provinces, and "North Dakota was being proactive in putting them on their watch list," Restani said.

McCarthy collected nest and habitat data throughout the state the past two summers - one summer east of the Missouri River and one summer west - and is working on her thesis.

"We're trying to develop habitat models, trying to decide what it is about the landscape" that the hawks prefer, Restani said.

North Dakota Game and Fish Director Terry Steinwand said projects funded through the State Wildlife Grant program enable the state to take a more active role in keeping such species as the hawks from becoming threatened or endangered. The plan will help preserve "an important part of our state's heritage for future generations," he said.

The federal grant program also is helping monitor American white pelicans, thousands of which have abandoned the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Medina in recent years, baffling scientists. The refuge is one of the largest nesting grounds in North America for the birds.

Other projects funded through the program involve things that scurry, hop, crawl and swim.

Leonhart, who plans to return to the region south and west of the Missouri River in June for his final summer of fieldwork, is updating a study done three decades ago to check for any changes in the populations of the snakes, toads and lizards.

"It is an interesting way to spend the summer," he said. "Hopefully we'll find out all kinds of interesting facts."

Leonhart said he would not have solid findings until his fieldwork is done and he starts "crunching numbers."

"The more we look at the data, the more we're going to find out," he said.

Hagen said federal approval of the state wildlife plan ensures North Dakota will be eligible for future money through a state grant program. She said the program has bipartisan support in Congress, and the support of conservation and wildlife groups.

Only about 5 percent of the total cost of the projects has been funded with state dollars, which amounts to less than $200,000, Hagen said.

She said the Wildlife Action Plan likely will be updated annually and revisited at least every 10 years.

"It's not another wildlife plan that just sits on the shelf and never gets looked at," she said.