Prairie Pothole Conservation

Prairie Pothole Conservation

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
I will never forget my first encounter with CRP land. The best pheasant hunting trip I ever went on was on CRP land in South Dakota. It turns out there are many different programs under USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP. One example is the continuous CRP program.

FSA Administrator Richard Fordyce: “Those are practices that are more focused to specific resource concerns, primarily water quality. So those would be riparian buffers, filter stress and those kind of things. Those are available for sign up at any time.”

We have our programs kind of across the country. The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, we have the CRP grasslands sign up that is ongoing and right now the deadline is May 15th.” Continuous and grasslands enrollments are available nationwide.

“And then we have a pilot. It's the SHIP program, Soil Health and Income Protection Program.” SHIP is available to all counties located within the prairie pothole region. The Prairie Pothole Region is the core of what was once the largest expanse of grassland in the world, the Great Plains of North America. The potholes are rich in plant and aquatic life, and support globally significant populations of breeding waterfowl. Ducks Unlimited is very active in that region in terms of vimplementing conservation practices.

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