Swamped by proposals, USDA selected 115 “high impact” projects to receive $370 million in funding in the initial awards through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program. The projects range from improving habitat for endangered birds to preventing a “dead zone” in Long Island Sound and reducing runoff in the lush wheat-growing Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. Federal funds will be matched by $400 million from “partners” that include governmental units and conservation groups such as Ducks Unlimited.
“This is a big day for conservation,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in announcing the awards. Added Jason Weller, chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, “This is the first step. We’ll have additional opportunities in the future.” The next round of awards will be for fiscal 2016. USDA’s first round of awards covered fiscal years 2014 and 2015, which runs through Sept 30.
USDA made the awards a few days after the Des Moines Water Works board voted to sue three agricultural counties over excessive levels of nitrate in the Raccoon River, a source of drinking water for Iowa’s capital city. Vilsack said “it takes a while” for conservation projects to pay off. “We’re confident this (partnership) approach will accelerate that.”
Congress created the regional conservation program as part of the 2014 farm law and earmarked $1.2 billion for it over the five-year life of the law. It invited the top 210 projects, winnowed from nearly 600 “pre-poposals,” to submit requests. The proposals totaled $1.4 billion, or four times the available funds.
Among the winning “national” projects were three aimed at preserving threatened and endangered birds. American Bird Conservancy will try to improve habitat for the golden-winged warbler on 64,000 acres of forest in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan “and, ultimately, avoid its listing under the Endangered Species Act,” said USDA. A decision is due in 2017. (Last year, FERN published an in-depth story with the American Prospect on the Western Plains, where native grassland is being turned into farmland at a rate not seen since the 1920s, severely impacting bird populations.)
The bird conservancy also is leader of a project to enhance up to 27,000 acres of forest in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia to help the cerulean warbler, classified as an “at risk” species. The Oregon Association of Conservation Districts will work with private land owners to improve habitat for the greater sage-grouse.
The Connecticut Council on Soil and Water Conservation will lead a project in six Northeastern states to control nutrient runoff identified as the primary cause of a dead zone in Long Island Sound. On the other side of the country, the Palouse Conservation District anchors a project to improve water quality in the Palouse River watershed by steps such as planting buffer strips and establishing stream-side monitoring. The Palouse region of loess, or wind-blown silt, hills covers up to 4,000 square miles of southeastern Washington state, north-central Idaho and northeastern Oregon.