New initiative targets expiring CRP acres and sage grouse habitat
Washington Ag Today March 16, 2010 Washington’s agricultural producers with expiring Conservation Reserve Program acres in sage grouse habitat areas, need not “grouse” about a lack of land treatment options, thanks to a new initiative from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
According to Acting Asst. State Conservationist Jeff Harlow, producers may be eligible to receive up to three years of rental payments for retaining sage grouse habitat on expiring CRP contracts in Douglas and part of Lincoln counties.
Harlow: “Well, we are offering up $47 dollars an acre, which is the average CRP rental rate for the area, for that three year period.”
Harlow says there is no limit on the amount of acreage that may be enrolled in this initiative. He also says that additional practices to improve sage grouse habitat may be applied with funding through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program or the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, which typically pay up to 75 percent of the costs for those practices.
Harlow: “But we are only offering fence improvement practices, deferred grazing, those kind of practices for that program.”
The sign up deadline for the first round of rankings for this sage grouse initiative is April 23rd. For more information contact your USDA-NRCS Service Center Office.
USDA's sage-grouse initiative also will help the 11 western states respond proactively to a recent U.S. Department of Interior announcement that the greater sage-grouse warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act however it will not be listed because of the need to focus on other higher priority species.
I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today in the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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