fws-report

Unofficial template; not an official FWS publication standard.

Overview

A Quarto PDF, DOCX, and HTML format extension that provides an unofficial U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) report layout.

What you get:

• Cover page with banner, title, authors, cover image + credit
• “How to cite this report” page
• Running headers and Word-like heading styles
• Citeproc bibliography under # References
• Support for rendering the same report as PDF, DOCX, or HTML

Example output

Rendered PDF cover page:

Usage

Installing the extension

Depending on your use case, here are some Quarto CLI commands to get started.

If you would like to add the fws-report extension to an existing directory:

# In the Terminal:

quarto add USFWS/fws-report
# or
quarto install extension USFWS/fws-report

Alternatively, you can use a Quarto template that bundles the fws-report format plus a starter .qmd document. This is a better option if you are starting a new project from scratch, since it will automatically create a new directory with all of the necessary scaffolding in one go.

# In the Terminal:

quarto use template USFWS/fws-report

Rendering to a PDF

---
title: "My Report Title"
author:
  - "First Last"
year: 2026
report-number: "01"
cover-image: "images/cover.jpg"

format:
  fws-report-pdf: default
---

Rendering to a DOCX

---
title: "My Report Title"
author:
  - "First Last"
year: 2026
report-number: "01"
cover-image: "images/cover.jpg"

format:
  fws-report-docx: default
---

Rendering to an HTML

---
title: "My Report Title"
author:
  - "First Last"
year: 2026
report-number: "01"
cover-image: "images/cover.jpg"

format:
  fws-report-html: default
---

Rendering to a PDF, DOCX, and HTML

---
title: "My Report Title"
author:
  - "First Last"
year: 2026
report-number: "01"
cover-image: "images/cover.jpg"

format:
  fws-report-pdf: default
  fws-report-docx: default
  fws-report-html: default
---

Then, from the command line:

# Render all formats listed in YAML
quarto render template.qmd

To render only one format from the command line, use --to:

quarto render template.qmd --to fws-report-pdf
quarto render template.qmd --to fws-report-docx
quarto render template.qmd --to fws-report-html

The DOCX format uses the bundled Word reference document to control styles and layout. The HTML format uses the bundled stylesheet to provide a matching report structure and cover layout in the browser. The same report metadata can therefore be rendered to PDF, DOCX, or HTML with extension-provided formatting.

Including references

Cite sources with [@key]. Provide bibliography: (and optionally csl:) in YAML.

Add a bibliography file in YAML:

---
bibliography: references.bib
format:
  fws-report-pdf: default
  fws-report-docx: default
  fws-report-html: default
---

Then, cite sources with @key or [@key] in the main body of the document:

This report follows standard wildlife monitoring methods [@usfws2024].

Narrative citation example: @smith2023 found that wetland occupancy increased
after habitat restoration.

## References

Example of how to format references in your references.bib:

@report{usfws2024,
  author       = {{U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service}},
  year         = {2024},
  title        = {Annual Waterfowl Habitat Status Report},
  institution  = {U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service},
  address      = {Washington, DC}
}

@article{smith2023,
  author       = {Smith, Jane A. and Lopez, Marco R.},
  year         = {2023},
  title        = {Wetland restoration effects on migratory bird occupancy},
  journal      = {Journal of Wildlife Management},
  volume       = {87},
  number       = {4},
  pages        = {455--468},
  doi          = {10.1002/jwmg.12345}
}

Bibliographies are handled through citeproc in PDF, DOCX, and HTML output. Visit the Quarto website for more information about using citations.

Getting help

Contact the project maintainer for help with this repository. If you have general questions on creating repositories in the USFWS DGEC, reach out to a USFWS DGEC owner.

Contribute

Contact the project maintainer for information about contributing to this repository. Submit a GitHub Issue to report a bug or request a feature or enhancement.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Zero Universal v1.0 License.