When Do Two Hours and 20 Million Dollars Come Together?
For two hours each year, Wisconsin landowners (including you) are invited to guide the spending of millions in federal Farm Bill funding for conservation practices on private lands – practices that include tree planting, invasive brush control, management plans, and many others.
The Driftless landscape is equal parts agriculture and woods (approximately 40% of each); yet, these funds gravitate toward agriculture. While agriculture is undoubtedly a worthy cause, someone (maybe you) needs to speak for the trees – to speak for harboring and feeding most of the wildlife diversity, for maintaining clean water and air, for building and holding soil, and for creating economic value.
What natural resource concerns do you have? The federal government is asking your opinion, and the money is to follow.
Local Working Groups
Local Working Groups (LWG) is a welcoming, two-hour discussion hosted by the federal agency holding the purse strings. Your local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) wants to hear what conservation practices and natural resource issues are important to you.
The LWG discussion will focus primarily on the NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a Farm Bill program that secured 25 million for Wisconsin landowners in 2014 and nearly 20 million through May of this year. This voluntary program provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers and private woodland owners to help plan and implement conservation practices on their lands.
Give them credit for asking your opinion regarding local natural resource concerns and funding priorities before the money is spent.