Leveraging national support for local land protection
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About This Saving Land
To combat the loss of farmland, land trusts are working to build capacity and leveraging tools like the Alliance's NRCS Conservation Acquisitions Team to take on new easements and preserves.
Josh Holmes and Dyan Holt are project specialists with NCAT.
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Leveraging national support for local land protection
When a conservation-minded family in Wisconsin asked Kettle Moraine Land Trust to partner with them on an application for federal conservation easement funding that would help protect their farm from future development, the land trust wanted to say yes—but knew it needed support.
“When we learned about NCAT from an Alliance e-mail newsletter, we were thrilled to leverage this national resource for our local project,” says Doug Marconnet, vice president at Kettle Moraine Land Trust.
“NCAT” — NRCS Conservation Acquisition Team — is the Alliance’s special-ops force for helping land trusts apply for funding through Natural Resources Conservation Service programs. Comprised of a senior project manager, two project specialists and a project assistant, NCAT supports land trusts from application all the way to closing, helping prepare strong project documentation for submission while maintaining data and analytics crucial for tracking projects and identifying process issues and bottlenecks within the programs. So far, NCAT has helped land trusts apply for $8.2 million in funding to permanently conserve working lands across the country.
“Our county is approximately 60% farmland, and we hold two agricultural easements already,” says Marconnet. “As we grow, we recognize local farm fields are increasingly being developed into new subdivisions, and we are losing our open space.”
To confront this loss, land trusts like Kettle Moraine are working to build capacity to take on new easements and preserves. In the meantime, leveraging tools and resources like NCAT can make all the difference.
“After careful consideration of the effort involved, and especially knowing we had the full support of the Alliance’s NCAT staff, we decided to proceed with an application only two weeks before the deadline,” says Marconnet. “The tools, insight and assistance we received were invaluable. We submitted our application on time, and we could have never accomplished that without the support of NCAT.”
While the land trust is still waiting to hear the results of its application, successful submission — on time and with proper documentation — is the first step. In the 2025 cycle, over half of the projects NCAT assisted with were ultimately awarded funding.
History of a growing partnership
Kettle Moraine Land Trust’s story is one of many that Alliance staff could tell about its NRCS partnership work.
“It’s really exciting to see how this support is helping land trusts. In less than two years, NCAT has assisted on applications in 17 states, and our overall NRCS partnership has demonstrated significant impact in 46 states,” says Justin Merrifield, senior project manager for NCAT.
For nearly two decades, NRCS — an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture — has worked in partnership with the land trust community to protect America’s working farms and ranches through the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program: Agricultural Land Easements and, more recently, the Regional Conservation Partnership Program. These two conservation easement programs play a vital role in allowing farmers and ranchers across the country to permanently protect their land and keep it in production.
In 2018, NRCS and the Alliance partnered to develop new trainings, enhance technical resources, and create opportunities to facilitate and expand access to ACEP-ALE and RCPP for land trusts. The partnership kicked off with a summit held in Austin, Texas, for land trust practitioners, NRCS and the Alliance. This summit established new communication channels between senior agency officials and land trusts, and two subsequent summits have been held, in 2022 and 2024, yielding new initiatives such as working groups and national online resources like the ACEP-ALE Toolkit.
The NRCS-Alliance partnership also resulted in a growing presence at Rally: The National Land Conservation Conference. NRCS has served as a lead sponsor since 2022, offering tailored workshops and one-of-a-kind events including the annual summit roundup and, in 2025, the first-ever (sold out) Mastering NRCS Entity-Held Easements seminar. The need for land trust-focused programming has only increased over time, with the Alliance receiving regular requests to expand these opportunities.
In response, the partnership has grown, with the Alliance adding an RCPP program manager in 2023 and the four NCAT staff in 2024.
‘I jumped at the opportunity’
Nevada Land Trust was one of the first land trusts to contact NCAT.
“It [had been] a few years since our land trust had the capacity to pursue any NRCS applications, so when NCAT was formed and the land trust community was invited to come on board, I jumped at the opportunity,” says the land trust’s conservation manager, Samantha Wagner.
Wagner explains how NCAT helped her fast-track her learning and skills development around the NRCS program. “I consider Josh [Holmes, NCAT project specialist] a mentor, and am grateful for his support, from double checking applications and answering multiple questions, to helping me navigate the many nuances of this work.”
Nevada Land Trust’s executive director, Alicia Reban, agrees, noting how NCAT support helped the entire organization.
“NCAT helped us become better partners to our landowners and to our state NRCS office in a relatively short amount of time,” says Reban. “We are so grateful!”
Looking ahead, the team hopes to continue the momentum in 2026. With an RCPP Notice of Funding Opportunity on the horizon, the team stands ready to provide continuing support to its members. If interested in support, please reach out to NCAT@lta.org.
“NCAT helped us become better partners to our landowners and to our state NRCS office in a relatively short amount of time. We are so grateful!”