Forest Legacy Program

Forest Legacy Program

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report after this.

The U.S. Forest Service recently announced it’s granting more than $52 million for conservation projects across the U.S. this year through their Forest Legacy Program.

One of the 17 winning grants is located in Northern Idaho’s Boundary County It was awarded $3 million to purchase the conservation easements of approximately 1,700 acres of private timberland. These lands include important habitat for five threatened and endangered species, over two dozen species designated as greatest conservation need and six rare plants.

Harris Sherman, USDA’s Natural Resource Undersecretary, shares the resulting benefits of the Forest Legacy program.

Sherman: “This is a program that we can work with the states we can work with local communities to protect these working lands keep them in forestry with all the intended benefits. Sometimes people don’t understand that by keeping healthy forests together -- both public and private -- we can to a far greater extent protect our water resources, the diversity of our wildlife, we can provide important recreational values. We can help to protect local industries like logging in the future so they can be a part of the community and have hopefully a productive future.”

The Forest Legacy Program has protected 2.2 million acres through public-private partnership using federal and leveraged funds of more than $555 million since its creation in 1990.

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.