USDA is awarding $1.5 billion for 92 Regional Conservation Partnership Program projects across the country, including efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and improve water quality from agricultural operations.
USDA said 16 projects address western water conservation and 42 projects “promote terrestrial wildlife habitat conservation and restoration, as directed by the recent USDA Secretarial memo: Conserving and Restoring Terrestrial Wildlife Habitat Connectivity and Corridors.”
About $94 million of the funding is going to six projects “that support use of innovative technologies to reduce enteric methane emissions in livestock,” USDA said. At least three of those are identified as using the feed additive Bovaer to cut methane from enteric emissions (belching).
Partners are contributing $968 million “to amplify the impact of the federal investment,” USDA said.
The Biden administration has so far spent more than $3 billion on 334 highly coveted RCPP awards. The latest funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided $4.95 billion for the RCPP, and the farm bill.
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“Projects are being awarded under both RCPP Classic and RCPP Alternative Funding Arrangements,” USDA said. The “classic” projects use NRCS contracts and easements with producers, landowners and communities in collaboration with project partners. Under the alternative agreements, “the lead partner works directly with agricultural producers to support the development of innovative conservation approaches that would not otherwise be available under RCPP Classic.”
Here are summaries of some of the awards, which are going to 40 states and Puerto Rico:
- The Navajo Nation, $25 million to “improve livestock water distribution, conserve water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on 35 tribal ranches by replacing existing windmill pumps and water hauling with remote managed solar pump technology.”
- The InterTribal Buffalo Council, $21.25 million, to “restore and manage native grasslands ecosystems utilizing buffalo and conservation practices on 83 member tribal nation’s lands across three projects in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico.”
- Mississippi River Trust, $25 million to convert about 7,500 acres of “vulnerable bottomland hardwood and wetland Conservation Reserve Program tracts to permanently protected, U.S.-held conservation easements within the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.”
- Resource Conservation & Development for Northeast Iowa, $25 million for the Iowa Driftless Floodplain Resilience and Restoration Project, which “will reduce field sediment and nutrient loss by taking marginal floodplain agriculture land, susceptible to extreme sediment loss, out of production through floodplain easements.”
- West Virginia University, $7.8 million for a project “to protect watersheds of the West Virginia Appalachian Plateau and restore the land by improving soil fertility using conservation land management contracted practices of managed grazing and nutrient management, which will sequester carbon across 100 farms."
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