conservation

“The streams of a watershed are like the body’s circulatory system,” says Todd Warner, Natural Resources Director of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), in the northwest Upper Peninsula of Michigan, along the Keweenaw Bay of Lake Superior.

KBIC and USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are partnering on a project to improve the health of that circulatory system on KBIC tribal lands and surrounding areas as part of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

During S.E. Felter’s early teen years, he baled hay a few miles from his Adams County, Miss. home. But now the land Felter worked as a youngster is a lake, after the Mississippi River swelled its banks and pushed water inland along creeks and rivers.

The views are breathtaking in what’s known as the “driftless area” in the upper Midwest, which encompasses parts of southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin, northeast Iowa and northwest Illinois. This unique area was bypassed by retreating glaciers during the end of the last Ice Age several thousand years ago, leaving a steep, rugged landscape in their wake. It also inspired at least one local, Caryl Radatz, to pursue a career in conservation.

Cross-posted from FEMA's Blog

For weeks, we have been monitoring the potential for significant flooding in Louisiana, along with the other states currently being impacted by the Mississippi River flooding and historic water levels. And similar to their actions to mitigate the impacts of flooding in Missouri several weeks ago, today the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway in Louisiana to help minimize damage to property, structures, and to protect millions of people from historic flood levels.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which has protected the nation’s natural resources since 1985, is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

CRP was signed into law by former President Ronald Reagan – who’s centennial is being celebrated this year – as part of the 1985 Farm Bill that was reported to be one of the most massive agricultural reform bills in the nation’s history. It was touted by then Agriculture Secretary John Block as the “agricultural recovery program to put this industry back in the business of prosperity in the years to come.”

When young people set out to find a job, they usually don’t think, “What am I going to do for the next 50 years?” Instead, they tend to ask themselves, “What is something I would enjoy doing right now?”

Every year a low-oxygen, or hypoxic, area forms in the northern Gulf of Mexico, just below the mouth of the Mississippi River. Fish and other wildlife often avoid hypoxic zones, which can be deadly to marine organisms. Known contributors to the Gulf’s hypoxic zone include runoff from urban areas, land development and agriculture.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) works with farmers and ranchers to help reduce agricultural runoff that may contribute to the hypoxic zone, in part through the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative (MRBI).

So far this year, Texas has lost more than 256,000 acres and 147 structures, as well as livestock, to 511 wildfires.

Fortunately, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Texas is now making $400,000 available through its Environmental Quality Incentives Program to those who have suffered from the year’s wildfires to help them reestablish conservation practices on Texas rangeland.

NRCS provides technical help, and in some cases, financial assistance, to install measures that reduce post-fire damage and aid in the rehabilitation process, restoring plant health and preventing erosion.

With an increased demand for locally grown food, many farmers are finding new markets for their products that are closer to home. But what some New Jersey farmers are doing to expand their market base is strictly for the birds!

Minor Morgan has promoted organic farming for decades. And since the early 1990s, Morgan, executive director of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Community Farm, has been working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to develop a farming process that is economically and environmentally sustainable. Through its innovative use of well and surface water to support a certified organic drip irrigation system year-round, the Rio Grande Community Farm stands alone in the state as a model for sustainable farming.