Land Trust Alliance applauds announcement of $500 million to fund working lands conservation
Funding will benefit wildlife while supporting agriculture and rural communities.
Washington — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced a $500 million investment over the next five years that will leverage all its conservation programs, including the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Reserve Program, through Working Lands for Wildlife. The announcement includes $250 million from ACEP and $250 million from EQIP of which $40 million would be directed to the conservation of big game migratory habitat. As noted by USDA, these commitments will ramp up the conservation assistance for farmers, ranchers, private forest owners and tribes with a focus on working lands in key geographies across the country.
“The Land Trust Alliance applauds today’s announcement, which acknowledges the crucial role private lands play in supporting wildlife,” said Jennifer Miller Herzog, chief program officer at the Land Trust Alliance. “With approximately 60% of all U.S. land privately owned, several species, including many that are federally protected, depend on private land and the habitat and migration range it provides. We must empower private landowners to conserve their natural and working lands at a much greater pace and scale. Leveraging programs such as the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, EQIP and CRP will help land trusts work with landowners to conserve species through increased habitat acquisition, conservation easements, conservation partnerships and application of conservation practices.”
About the Land Trust Alliance
Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization that works to save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation across America. The Alliance represents approximately 950 member land trusts supported by more than 250,000 volunteers and 6.3 million members nationwide. The Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., and operates several regional offices.
About USDA’s Working Lands for Wildlife
WLFW is USDA’s premier approach for conserving American working lands to benefit people, wildlife and rural communities. While NRCS and FSA work every day at all levels to assist producers, states, tribes and other conservation partners with their conservation priorities, WLFW steps in to facilitate their work on cross-cutting, national priorities that can only be addressed through coordination at an ecosystem scale.
Established in 2010, WLFW has teamed up with leading scientists and conservation partners as well as more than 8,400 producers to conserve or restore nearly 12 million acres of working lands, with tremendous benefits. WLFW has helped many sensitive species in their recovery, including the greater sage-grouse in the West, New England cottontail in the Northeast, golden-winged warbler in Appalachia and gopher tortoise in the Southeast. In large part because of the voluntary conservation efforts on private lands though WLFW, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has in some cases determined that species listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was no longer warranted thanks to recoveries made possible by these WLFW efforts.
Through WLFW, NRCS also partners with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide participants with regulatory predictability under ESA. Similar to an insurance policy, predictability provides participating landowners with peace of mind that no matter the future legal status of a species, they can keep their working lands working with an approved conservation plan in place.