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USDA Program Prioritizes Habitat Enhancement

Farm Bill programs such as WHIP provide important resources so farmers and private landowners can conserve key fish and wildlife habitat for species like the lesser prairie chicken. Photo courtesy of USDA.gov/Marcus Miller.

Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership

WASHINGTON --(Ammoland.com)- Farm Bill programs such as WHIP provide important resources so farmers and private landowners can conserve key fish and wildlife habitat for species like the lesser prairie chicken.

Sportsmen are celebrating a victory with the announcement of new federal measures in support of private-lands conservation. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a final rule for the federal Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program that adds a new national priority to restore and enhance wildlife habitat – much of which is important to game species.

The new WHIP national priority is “to protect, restore, develop or enhance important migration and other movement corridors for wildlife.”

This new focus complements the four existing national WHIP priorities that focus on activities benefitting native fish and wildlife habitats, conservation of at-risk species, protection of declining or important aquatic wildlife and reducing the impacts of invasive species on fish and wildlife habitat.

Authorized under the 2008 Farm Bill, WHIP is a voluntary program for conservation-minded landowners who want to develop and improve fish and wildlife habitat on agricultural and private land. Since its establishment in 1997, the program has resulted in habitat improvements on approximately 6.5 million acres nationwide. The program provides cost-share funding to farmers, ranchers and private landowners for projects ranging from removing barriers to fish migration in New England to establishing native warm-season grasses in the Southeast.

The TRCP long has advocated for increased measures to conserve fish and wildlife habitat and hunter access in the Farm Bill and is pleased to see the USDA highlighting programs that improve fish and wildlife habitat, sustain our waters and conserve energy.

• Learn more about WHIP.
• Learn more about the TRCP’s work on the Farm Bill.

About:
The Mission of the Texas State Rifle Association is to protect and defend the inalienable rights of the individual Texan to acquire, possess, transport, carry, transfer ownership and enjoy the right to lawful use of firearms for self preservation, for the defense of family and property and the common defense of the Republic and the individual liberties of the people. Visit: www.TSRA.com

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Sportsmen Celebrate Conservation Of 4.3 Million Acres via The CRP
New CRP acres will enhance private-lands fish and wildlife habitat important to sportsmen.

Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership

WASHINGTON --(Ammoland.com)- On Sept. 14, the USDA announced a 4.3-million acre increase to the Conservation Reserve Program, a component of the Farm Bill that helps enhance private-lands fish and wildlife habitat important to sportsmen.

We want to thank those who made this possible by enrolling land in the CRP.

The addition of these millions of acres will maintain and enhance the landscape-level benefits that the CRP already has achieved over the past 25 years, including restoration of 2 million acres of wetlands and adjacent buffers and conservation of 170,000 miles of streams.

These activities have helped annually produce 13.5 million pheasants nationwide and 2.2 million ducks in the Prairie Pothole Region alone.

Under the CRP, farmers and ranchers implement conservation practices in previously cropped fields with highly erodible land and along streams or rivers, reducing the amount of soil and nutrients that wash into waterways, diminishing soil erosion that otherwise may contribute to poor air and water quality, and providing valuable habitat for fish and wildlife.

New CRP acres will enhance private-lands fish and wildlife habitat important to sportsmen. Photo courtesy of Missouri Department of Conservation.

At 31.2 million acres, the CRP program is nearing full enrollment – an outcome that the TRCP and our partners have advocated since the program’s inception.

The TRCP and members of our Agriculture and Wildlife Working Group are working to ensure the inclusion of the CRP and other conservation programs in the 2010 Farm Bill’s conservation title, the single-largest source of federal funding for private-lands conservation programs.

Learn more about the TRCP’s work to conserve private lands important to sportsmen through federal policy such as the Farm Bill.

About:
Inspired by the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, the TRCP is a coalition of organizations and grassroots partners working together to preserve the traditions
of hunting and fishing. Visit: www.trcp.org

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