Conservation Reserve Program at the Crossroads: What's Next?

Posted: 24-Feb-2005; Updated: 16-Apr-2007

One of the Conservation Reserve Program's most significant achievements is restoring declining grasslands, as on this Wisconsin site. (Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment)

Nesting duck populations in the United States plunged to a 30-year low in the mid-1980s. In the prairie pothole region of the Upper Great Plains, an area dubbed "the nation's duck factory," breeding ducks declined along with the isolated wetlands and surrounding grasslands where they breed and find food and shelter. Much of this habitat vanished when high commodity prices encouraged farmers to expand their croplands.

Twenty years later, over 3 million more ducks populate the central flyway of the Great Plains. Their numbers rose after farmers enrolled about 8 million acres -- an area roughly the size of Maryland -- in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The USDA program offers payments to landowners and producers who volunteer to take highly erodible or environmentally sensitive land out of crop production for a 10- or 15-year term and plant it with grasses or trees

CRP was launched in 1985, but its roots are in the 1958 Soil Bank Act. Congress enacted that law to combat soil erosion and thus avoid repeating the disastrous 1930s Dust Bowl that robbed the Great Plains of billions of tons of topsoil and blackened skies as far east as Washington, D.C. Over two decades, CRP has evolved into a program that also improves water quality and restores wildlife habitat. It is the nation's largest federal program for private lands conservation, with an annual budget of roughly $2 billion and a current enrollment of approximately 34.7 million acres, twice the combined acreage of the National Wildlife Refuge system and all state-owned wildlife areas in the lower 48 states.

Unfortunately, the program's success in the Great Plains hasn't been replicated elsewhere. Although USDA has focused some CRP enrollments on environmentally sensitive lands and important wildlife areas -- such as grasslands where songbird populations are declining -- the program can accomplish far more.

Over half the threatened and endangered species in the United States are affected by agriculture, yet significant discrepancies exist between areas needed by these species and CRP acreage. Furthermore, in most of the nation CRP lands are highly scattered, making it more difficult to restore wildlife populations and improve water quality in important watersheds. Many enrolled lands are planted to inappropriate cover types with limited wildlife benefits such as dense pine plantations or fescue grasses. Other CRP plantings fragment surrounding wildlife habitat and, in some cases, include invasive species that spread to nearby wildlands.

A new 250,000-acre CRP initiative is directed toward the declining northern bobwhite quail and other upland wildlife species. Grassland buffer work will be done in midwestern and southeastern states, which have the greatest potential to restore habitat for these species. (Copyright Bill Horn)

The time is right for change. CRP is at a crossroads, with contracts covering more than 28 million acres set to expire in FY2007-FY2010. How those lands are treated, and, in particular, whether they are automatically re-enrolled will have an enormous impact on private lands conservation. Thus conservationists were pleased when USDA opened a public comment period for CRP last fall.

Environmental Defense's Center for Conservation Incentives and The Nature Conservancy submitted joint comments advising USDA on how to address this massive turnover in CRP acreage. It is vitally important not only to retain the significant benefits for wildlife and other environmental concerns in existing CRP contracts, but also to extend enrollment to other critical lands. The two organizations advocated that USDA increase CRP's environmental benefits, particularly for wildlife, in several ways:

• Re-enroll the expiring acres with the highest environmental value;
• Bring in new enrollments that significantly benefit wildlife;
• Manage all CRP acres to maximize wildlife benefits and to control invasive species; and
• Stop inappropriate CRP plantings.

Most landowners enroll in CRP through a competitive general sign-up. USDA ranks applications based on benefits to wildlife, water quality, erosion control, air quality and cost. This process needs to be overhauled to better select enrollments important for wildlife, particularly at-risk species.

CRP enrollments can also be better directed by increasing acreage enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) and through the continuous enrollment program. Under CREP, states develop geographically focused programs that address water quality, erosion and wildlife habitat issues of state and national concern. USDA provides 80% of the funding, and a non-federal entity (typically the state) contributes the remainder. States may automatically enroll up to 100,000 acres, thereby avoiding the need for landowners to compete in the general sign-up. Unlike the general sign-up, CREP both encourages landscape-scale conservation efforts and offers the flexibility to address local needs such as wider buffers for wildlife corridors in Minnesota and incentives to create wetlands to improve drinking water quality in Iowa.

The northern pintail (Anas acuta) is one of several duck species that rebounded after landowners enrolled 8 million acres of Great Plains prairie pothole land in the Conservation Reserve Program. (Dave Menke/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Similarly, CRP's continuous enrollment program offers increased environmental benefits by allowing automatic enrollment of lands that perform important environmental functions, such as riparian buffers, filter strips, floodplain wetlands and bottomland hardwood forest. As with CREP, eligible landowners do not need to compete in the general sign-up. In addition to cost-share and rental payments, landowners can receive enhanced incentive payments for enrolling land and carrying out conservation practices that produce significant environmental benefits. For example, in 2004 the Bush Administration announced a continuous enrollment initiative of 250,000 acres to benefit the declining northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) and other upland wildlife.

Encouraging appropriate management of CRP lands is also critical. Although CRP has helped restore nearly 200,000 acres of longleaf pine in the southern coastal plain, this ecosystem is fire-dependent and CRP longleaf acres would benefit from periodic prescribed fire. The program can do a better, more consistent job of providing financial and technical assistance to implement such management.

Realizing the enormous potential of CRP depends upon carefully choosing lands to be enrolled, using appropriate cover plantings and improving land management. If USDA refocuses the program as recommended, the success story of ducks in the Great Plains may no longer be the exception but the rule.

- Robert Bonnie
Managing Director
Center for Conservation Incentives
Environmental Defense