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The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is NRCS’ flagship conservation program that helps farmers, ranchers and forest landowners integrate conservation into working lands.
Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) is a competitive program that supports the development of new tools, approaches, practices, and technologies to further natural resource conservation on private lands.
The Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) is a partner-driven approach to conservation that funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural land.
The Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) helps you build on your existing conservation efforts while strengthening your operation.
The Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) Program, a federal emergency recovery program, helps local communities recover after a natural disaster strikes.
The Watershed Rehabilitation Program (REHAB) helps project sponsors rehabilitate aging dams that are reaching the end of their design life and/or no longer meet federal or state safety criteria or performance standards. Since 1948, NRCS has assisted local sponsors in constructing over 11,850 dams.
WATERSHED PROGRAMS - WFPO
The Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention (WFPO) Program helps units of federal, state, local and federally recognized tribal governments (project sponsors) protect and restore watersheds.
The Healthy Forests Reserve Program (HFRP) helps landowners restore, enhance and protect forestland resources on private and tribal lands through easements and financial assistance.
NRCS administers the Emergency Watershed Protection EWP Program, which is designed for emergency recovery work, including the purchase of floodplain property buyouts.
Wetlands Reserve Easements (WRE) help private and tribal landowners protect, restore and enhance wetlands which have been previously degraded due to agricultural uses.
NRCS uses Landscape Conservation Initiatives to accelerate the benefits of voluntary conservation programs, such as cleaner water and air, healthier soil and enhanced wildlife habitat.
The Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI) was developed as a coordinated effort to identify priority issues, find solutions, and effect change on private grazing land, enhancing existing conservation programs.
The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) On-Farm Energy Initiative helps farmers and ranchers make voluntary improvements that can boost energy efficiency on the farm.
The Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) helps landowners, land trusts, and other entities protect, restore, and enhance wetlands or protect working farms and ranches through conservation easements.
Agricultural Land Easements help private and tribal landowners, land trusts, and other entities such as state and local governments protect croplands and grasslands on working farms and ranches by limiting non-agricultural uses of the land through conservation easements.
The Agricultural Management Assistance (AMA) helps agricultural producers manage financial risk through diversification, marketing or natural resource conservation practices.
The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) provides a yearly rental payment to farmers who remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and quality.
A High Tunnel System, commonly called a “hoop house,” is an increasingly popular conservation practice for farmers, and is available with financial assistance through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP).
The National Organic Initiative, funded through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), is a voluntary conservation program that provides technical and financial assistance for organic farmers and ranchers, or those interested in transitioning to organic.
The NRCS National Air Quality Initiative helps agricultural producers meet air quality compliance requirements by providing technical and financial assistance for improving agricultural operations.
NRCS’s EQIP WaterSMART Initiative (WSI) is a collaboration with the Bureau of Reclamation to coordinate investments in priority areas for improving water conservation and drought resilience.
Since 2010, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) has served as a catalyst for unprecedented federal agency coordination to protect and restore the largest system of fresh surface water in the world.
The Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watershed Initiative (MRBI) is accelerating voluntary, on-farm conservation investments and focused water quality monitoring and assessment resources in the Mississippi River watershed.
As USDA’s premiere water quality initiative, National Water Quality Initiative (NWQI) provides a way to accelerate voluntary, on-farm conservation investments and focused water quality monitoring and assessment resources where they can deliver the greatest benefits for clean water.
Source water protection includes a wide variety of actions and activities aimed at safeguarding, maintaining or improving sources of drinking water and their contributing areas.
Best known for their dramatic courtship display, the lesser prairie chicken depends on prairie and grassland ecosystems that have evolved under the interaction of fire and large herbivore grazing over the years.
Longleaf pine forests once encompassed more than 90 million acres across the Southeast, stretching from eastern Texas to southern Virginia.
The sage grouse, a chicken-like bird uniquely adapted to this habitat, is the poster child of the sagebrush country.
Through Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW), USDA uses a win-win approach to systematically target conservation efforts to improve agricultural and forest productivity which enhance wildlife habitat on working landscapes.
The Monarch Butterfly is one of the most familiar butterflies in North America.
The Joint Chiefs' Landscape Restoration Partnership enables NRCS and the Forest Service to collaborate with agricultural producers and forest landowners to invest in conservation and restoration at a big enough scale to make a difference.
The threat of high salinity in the Colorado River and its tributaries is a major concern in both the Unites States and Mexico.
The intent of the Water Bank Program is to keep water on the land for the benefit of migratory wildlife such as waterfowl.
Watersheds impact everyone; every community, farm, ranch, and forest. They provide a vital resource for all living things to survive and thrive. All watersheds are interconnected, creating a land-water system that conveys water to its final destination such as a river, lake, wetland, or estuary.
The Wetland Reserve Enhancement Partnership (WREP) is a voluntary program through which NRCS enters into agreements with eligible partners to leverage resources to carry out high priority wetland protection, restoration, and enhancement and to improve wildlife habitat.
The Sentinel Landscapes Partnership is a coalition of federal agencies, state and local governments, and nongovernmental organizations that work with private landowners.
NRCS hydrologists manage a comprehensive network of manually-measured snow courses and automated Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) monitoring sites throughout the West, manage the data collection process, and estimate the runoff that will occur when it melts.
