General TRACS Q&A

1. What is Wildlife TRACS?

Wildlife TRACS, which stands for Tracking and Reporting Actions for the Conservation of Species, is the tracking and reporting system used by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) Office of Conservation Investment to capture conservation and related actions funded by its grant programs - including Wildlife Restoration, Hunter Education, Sport Fish Restoration, Aquatic Education, Boating Access, Clean Vessel Act, Boating Infrastructure, National Coastal Wetlands Conservation, and State Wildlife Grants.

TRACS is used by grant recipients and Federal grant managers to create, manage, review, and approve the administrative and mandatory components of grant proposals and performance reports to document the progress and completion of grant objectives. TRACS also serves as the official repository for grant-funded Facility and Real Property (lands) records, as well as the system for entering annual license certification of hunting and fishing license holder data, which is used in the apportionment calculations for grant funding available to each state, territory, and insular area. Note that TRACS is not a grant application or management system. GrantSolutions is the Federal financial assistance management system used for grant approval and management throughout the life cycle of the award.

2. Does the new version of TRACS include legacy grants from the old version of TRACS or other discontinued systems, such as FAIMS? 

No, the updated TRACS (also known as TRACS Version 2 or TRACS Enhancement) does not include grants from before the new version of TRACS went live in June 2020, with data entry required for all included grant programs (Wildlife Restoration, Hunter Education, Sport Fish Restoration, Aquatic Education, Boating Access, Clean Vessel Act, Boating Infrastructure, National Coastal Wetlands Conservation, and State Wildlife Grants) with a start date on or after January 1st, 2021. If you need to access an older/legacy grant record from the old TRACS system, contact the TRACS Help Desk for assistance.

3. Does TRACS include historic/legacy Real Property Records? 

Yes. TRACS serves as the official Real Property Repository for the Office of Conservation Investment, including "legacy" real property (lands) records going back into the historic record that still have a Federal nexus, which have been imported into the Real Property Inventory in TRACS for monitoring and status reporting purposes.

4. Do I need to enter Endangered Species (Section 6) grants or Migratory Bird Grants into TRACS?

No, Endangered Species (Section 6) grants and Migratory Bird grants are not reported in TRACS at this time.

5. Is everything we enter into TRACS publicly available?

No, TRACS has restricted access only for approved State and Federal users. The TRACS Working Group will be carefully vetting which data fields may be available in future reports.

6. Are Word template available for the TRACS entry?

Yes, Word templates are available for the Grant Proposal & Project Statement(s), the Performance Report and the Performance Questionnaire. A template is available for the CMS (Comprehensive Management Grant) Grant Proposal and Project Statement as well.  The templates are available to be downloaded from the TRACS Resources and Job Aids page in the ‘Grant Translation Templates’ section (located below the Matrix toolbox).

7. Can I practice in the training environment come before I register for the live TRACS system?

No. Users must have an approved account in the live system before they can access the training environment (login with the same credentials). We periodically import approved users from the live system into the training environment.  It is important for user administrators to review approval requests in a timely manner so staff can get into both the live and training environments. To learn more, visit the TRACS Training Environment page.

8. When entering data in TRACS, do I need to enter everything at once or can I save and return to it later?

Users have the option to work on their TRACS entry over time, and save as you go before you submit it for approval.