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posted in: Farm Bill

February 23, 2024

What is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program?

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program is a crucial Farm Bill program focused on helping farmers, ranchers and forest landowners integrate conservation into their working lands.  But what exactly is EQIP and how does it benefit hunters and anglers? 

In this short video, we demystify a crucial Farm Bill conservation program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and shed light on its benefits to hunters and anglers.

EQIP is a voluntary conservation program that allows farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners to enhance water quality, strengthen wildlife habitat, and reduce soil erosion and sedimentation.  

The benefits of EQIP for fish, wildlife and agriculture are significant.

The Farm Bill is the largest piece of conservation legislation that will come before the 118th Congress.  You can help ensure that habitat and wildlife remain central to sensible farm policy in the United States here

Learn more about Farm Bill Conservation Programs here

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posted in: Farm Bill

February 15, 2024

What is the Conservation Reserve Program?

Since its introduction in the 1985 Farm Bill, the Conservation Reserve Program has been one of the nation’s most important conservation programs. But what is the CRP and how does it benefit hunters and anglers?

In this short video, we demystify a crucial Farm Bill conservation program, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and shed light on its benefits to hunters and anglers.

Introduced in the 1985 Farm Bill, the Conservation Reserve Program incentivizes landowners to put a portion of their land into conservation cover, particularly on acres that would be more productive as wildlife habitat than they are for crops.

Many of the species we love to pursue find habitat in farm country thanks to the CRP. Without the CRP, pheasant numbers would plummet, the northern plains states would lose much of their duck breeding habitat, sage grouse in the West would be at even greater risk, and brook trout would decline in Eastern headwaters. Put simply, without the CRP, 40 million sportsmen and women would lose hunting and fishing opportunities across rural America.

The Farm Bill is the largest piece of conservation legislation that will come before the 118th Congress.  You can help ensure that habitat and wildlife remain central to sensible farm policy in the United States here

Learn more about Farm Bill Conservation Programs here

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posted in: Farm Bill

January 25, 2024

Building Better Duck Hunting Through Working Lands Conservation 

Funding the Migratory Bird Resurgence Initiative will enhance critical habitat for migratory birds.  

Waterfowl hunters have worked for decades to ensure that ducks and geese have quality places to nest, raise their broods, and winter. Through nearly a century of wetland protection and restoration, we’ve made great strides toward ensuring the long-term viability of waterfowl populations. Much of this habitat is on private agricultural lands. For example, the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), an expansive area in the northern Great Plains, is where 50-70% of North America’s ducks are hatched each year. It is also about 90% privately owned, with over half of the region in crop production. 

Cropland wetlands, like those in the PPR, are protected from drainage through the wetland conservation compliance provisions of the Farm Bill, commonly known as Swampbuster, but they are typically not managed for waterfowl. Instead, they are usually farmed during dry years and left alone when flooded. This strategy can be successful for farmers when conditions are good, but it adds operational uncertainty and often leads to lost profit from flooding or soil salinity. 

Recognizing an opportunity, our partners at Delta Waterfowl and Ducks Unlimited worked directly with farmers, commodity groups, and state agencies to find ways to increase and enhance duck nesting habitat in the PPR. The solution they devised would be voluntary and incentive based, turning wetlands previously seen as an inconvenience into an asset. First piloted in North Dakota in 2015, this project became known as the Migratory Bird Resurgence Initiative (MBRI). The MBRI uses the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a Farm Bill Conservation program, to conserve the most important and most at risk small shallow wetlands. This practice provides a clear market signal to farmers that these small wetlands have value-not just to breeding ducks, but all people in the prairies and beyond. EQIP is well liked by farmers due to its numerous practice options and a great degree of flexibility. Thus, packaging a suite of EQIP practices into the MBRI makes it easier for farmers to enroll and for Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) staff to administer.  

It’s important to foster more and better habitat in the breeding grounds, but without adequate winter habitat we won’t increase duck populations. Again, working in partnership with farm groups, Delta Waterfowl, and Ducks Unlimited, biologists identified post-harvest flooding of rice fields as a cost-effective way to increase habitat in a way that works with, not against, farmers’ operations. Here’s how:  

Rice fields are engineered to be flooded during the growing season, which reduces weed pressure and increases yield. This design makes fields easy to flood in the winter too, during which time the flooding creates massive areas of winter habitat for ducks, geese, shorebirds, and more. These shallow water habitats also create public hunting opportunities, such as through the Arkansas Waterfowl Rice Program. 

What’s Next 

In 2024, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) and our partners are asking that NRCS allocate additional funds for the PPR (MT, ND, SD, IA, and MN) and for the wintering grounds (MS, AR, CA, TX, LA). Our partners at Delta Waterfowl estimate that investment in the MBRI would: 

  • Conserve more than half the region’s remaining small cropland wetlands. 
  • Create 500,000 acres of flooded rice winter habitat. 
  • Support more than a half million breeding pairs of ducks, countless shorebirds and other species. 
  • Store nearly 9.5 million tons of carbon annually  
  • Digest over 16 million pounds of nitrogen and 1.6 million pounds of phosphorus annually, improving water and air quality. 
  • Store more than 275,000 acre-feet of water, mitigating both drought and flooding. 

By using the voluntary, incentive-based framework of Farm Bill conservation, we can create these outcomes in places we could never reach with other strategies. So, what needs to be done to make this a reality?  

First, the NRCS needs to commit funds to the MBRI that reflect its innovative design and wide-ranging benefits. Restoring wetlands and creating wetland wildlife habitat fits squarely within the NRCS’ mission and few if any initiatives better meet NRCS’ stated objectives (even fewer were designed with as much intentional collaboration among hunters and farm groups). One way to financially support the MBRI would be by recognizing Wetland Wildlife Habitat Management as a climate-smart practice, which would make it eligible for funding through the Inflation Reduction Act. Wetlands are carbon storage powerhouses and restoring them only increases their capabilities. 

Second, Congress needs to pass a Farm Bill that ensures that conservation programs like EQIP continue to support both agricultural production and wildlife habitat.

Click here to learn more about the Farm Bill and get involved.

 

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posted in: Farm Bill

November 16, 2023

What is the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program?

If you’ve used a state walk-in access program to hunt or fish on private land, you’ve experienced what the Voluntary Public Access program can do. But what is VPA-HIP and how does it benefit hunters and anglers?

We know it can be challenging to break through the acronyms to understand why the reauthorization and improvement of Farm Bill conservation programs is a top priority.

In this short video, we demystify a crucial Farm Bill conservation program, the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program (VPA-HIP) and shed light on its benefits to hunters and anglers.

Championed by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s founder, Jim Range, VPA-HIP is the only federal tool aimed at increasing hunting and fishing access on private lands, yet it is probably the least well-known of Farm Bill conservation programs. Watch the short video below to learn more about VPA-HIP and how this crucial program benefits hunters and anglers.

The next few months will be critical for the Farm Bill and the conservation programs we cherish as hunters and anglers. In the face of gridlock, conservation is, and should be, a shared priority regardless of party affiliation or ideology. Click here to learn what’s next for the Farm Bill.

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posted in: Farm Bill

November 3, 2023

What is the Farm Bill?

With the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill in the news, you may be asking, what is the Farm Bill? Why does it matter to hunters and anglers?

We know it can be challenging to break through the alphabet soup of program acronyms to understand why the reauthorization and improvement of Farm Bill conservation programs is a top priority. In this short video, we demystify the Farm Bill and the crucial conservations programs that sportsmen and women should care about.

The next few months will be critical for the Farm Bill and the conservation programs we cherish as hunters and anglers. In the face of gridlock, conservation is, and should be, a shared priority regardless of party affiliation or ideology. Click here to learn what’s next for the Farm Bill.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

CHEERS TO CONSERVATION

Theodore Roosevelt’s experiences hunting and fishing certainly fueled his passion for conservation, but it seems that a passion for coffee may have powered his mornings. In fact, Roosevelt’s son once said that his father’s coffee cup was “more in the nature of a bathtub.” TRCP has partnered with Afuera Coffee Co. to bring together his two loves: a strong morning brew and a dedication to conservation. With your purchase, you’ll not only enjoy waking up to the rich aroma of this bolder roast—you’ll be supporting the important work of preserving hunting and fishing opportunities for all.

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