Two key senators want to reauthorize a slate of conservation grant programs that fund Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts, assistance for producers that lose livestock to endangered predators, and wetlands conservation projects.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., and ranking member Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., have introduced the America’s Conservation Enhancement Reauthorization Act, which is backed by wildlife, conservation and livestock groups. It aims to continue and, in some cases, expand these programs before they expire at the beginning of Fiscal Year 2025.
Grants under the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, for example, would be authorized at $65 million annually through 2030, a $5-million-per-year increase from its current amount. The program, which was first authorized in 1989, provides nonfederal entities with a one-to-one match for wetland restoration projects. More than 200 grants funding projects spanning more than 1 million acres were awarded through the program in fiscal 2020 and 2021, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s most recent biannual report on the program.
“It’s basically priority one for Ducks Unlimited,” Kellis Moss, the organization’s director of public policy, said of reauthorizing NAWCA. “This is hugely important.”
Demand for the program is “always much higher than available NAWCA funding,” according to Kurt Thiede, government affairs director for the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. Applicants filed $132.6 million in requests under the 2024 U.S. standard grant program, about $30 million above the program's budget, he said.
The program, Thiede added, tends to see several partners providing cost share.
Kurt Thiede, AFWA“You might have a private landowner, you’ve got (a nongovernmental organization) like Ducks Unlimited, you’ve got a state involved,” Thiede said. “Leveraging all of the funds and resources to do that wetland restoration work — I think that’s really what helps this program be so successful.”
The ACE Reauthorization Act would also bolster the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program, which serves as one of the primary federal funding sources for states and organizations involved in the Chesapeake Bay Partnership. The program is currently authorized at $92 million annually, a figure that would grow to $100 million under the new bill.
The states involved in the partnership committed to put reduction strategies in place by 2025, said Keisha Sedlacek, federal director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. But she stressed that continuing to provide federal funds would make it easier for these states and their local and nonprofit partners to “get their restoration practices on the ground.”
“More funding is especially important now if we're going to essentially put the lessons we're learning into practice moving forward,” Sedlacek said.
Sedlacek said she doesn’t know what the additional $8 million that is being proposed for the program would be used for, but she hopes some of it goes into grants to states and localities for restoration projects. She also said some of it could be put toward bolstering the EPA and other federal partners’ capacity for collaborating with states.
The ACE Reauthorization Act also renews the $15-million-per-year Chesapeake Watershed Investments for Landscape Defense (WILD) program, which provides $75,000 to $750,000 worth of grants for conservation projects in the watershed. Funding has previously gone to easements, culvert replacement projects and wetland restoration plans, among other things.
Reps. Rob Wittman, R-Va., Bobby Scott, D-Va., and Jon Sarbenes, D-Md., the co-chairs of the House Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force, also proposed a set of bills on Tuesday to reauthorize both the Chesapeake Bay and Chesapeake WILD programs. They also propose extending the National Park Service's Chesapeake Gateways and Water Trails Network and the Chesapeake Gateways grants program, which are also part of the original ACE Act.
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In addition to reauthorizing the Chesapeake Bay grant programs, the ACE Reauthorization Act would also continue to operate the entity charged with distributing the funding. The nonprofit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, first chartered by Congress in 2004, would continue to operate until 2030. The organization handles the grant-making for several EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service conservation programs and helps coordinate cost-shares with participating agencies.
Programs that pay producers for livestock killed by federally protected species would be extended under the ACE Reauthorization Act, too. The $15 million annual Grant Program for Losses of Livestock Due to Depredation by Federally Protected Species authorizes $10 million for state fish and game agencies, livestock loss boards, or agriculture departments to compensate producers for livestock losses from predators such as wolves or grizzly bears.
The remaining $5 million in authorized funding can be put toward “proactive and non-lethal activities” meant to reduce predator-caused livestock deaths.
Implementation of program funds varies across states, according to Thiede. Some states run their own programs reimbursing farmers, or even pet owners, for losses. Others contract program administration to USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's Wildlife Services division, he said.
The program has been seen as essential for producers in states that don’t have many other livestock depredation resources available. A group of Idaho landowners, for instance, urged their state's congressional delegation last October to ensure the program received a full $15 million appropriation in the FY2024 spending bill. The program, they wrote, is “particularly important for producers and landowners in Idaho,” who lack state-level resources to help with wildlife conflicts.
Raylee Honeycutt, the executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association, told Agri-Pulse that depredation due to grizzly bears, currently listed as a threatened species, has been a challenge for livestock ranchers in her state, which heightens the importance of compensation and prevention-focused programs.
“Tools like this, where producers are getting funding for non-lethal and mitigation and things like that are a really important tool for them, because we don’t have options for hunting or things like that,” Honeycutt said.
According to the Montana Livestock Loss Board, producers in the state were confirmed to have lost 66 cattle, 39 sheep, 29 goats and four horses due to predators. Twenty-five additional cattle, one sheep and two horses are believed to have been lost due to depredation.
The ACE Reauthorization Act also includes a program allowing states to grant depredation permits for black vultures, seen as a threat to livestock throughout the southern United States. The bill would require the Interior and Agriculture departments to conduct a study on whether current black vulture take limits could be increased.
Other provisions of the bill would approve another five-year term for the federal Chronic Wasting Disease Task Force, authorize $10 million annually for fish habitat conservation, and authorize the Army and Interior Secretaries to put up to $2.5 million each year toward countering the spread of invasive species.
In addition to Carper and Capito, the legislation is supported by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., John Boozman, R-Ark., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
The ACE Reauthorization Act has only been introduced in the Senate, though Thiede told Agri-Pulse he’s “encouraged” by the conversations he’s had in the House about a companion bill. The three Chesapeake Bay Task Force co-chairs, all members of the House, have filed bills to extend the programs related to the bay, however.
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