conservation

Written by Fay Garner, Public Affairs Assistant, NRCS, Alabama

The National Academy of Sciences last week released a set of three new reports on advancing the science, adapting to the impacts, and limiting the magnitude of climate change. These peer-reviewed reports reconfirmed that there is a strong, credible body of evidence documenting climate change, its correlation to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use, and its association with impacts. Many of these will affect forests and grasslands including increases in intense rainfall, decreases in snow cover, more intense and frequent heat waves and drought, increases in wildfires, and longer growing seasons. Many impacts of a changing climate are already showing up. Projections anticipate an additional warming of 2 to 11.5 degrees F over the next century, on top of the 1.4 degrees F already observed over the past 100 years.

By Michael Jones, Rural Development Public Affairs Director

Ivy Allen, New York NRCSThe Watershed Agriculture Council (WAC) hosted a tour of three farms in the New York City watershed that received American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) funding. Putting conservation on the ground in this watershed will result in more than 1 billion gallons of clean drinking water for 9 million New York residents every day. Projects featured on the tour included waste storage facilities, compost structures and stream fencing.

By Liz Purchia, Press Assistant

A crowd of all ages gathered in the Jefferson College Field House this morning for the Obama administration’s National Rural Summit.  The audience listened as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, along with several other esteemed panelists, took the stage to discuss the silent crisis facing rural America today. On a beautiful June day, more than 400 people listened intently as industry and community leaders outlined a roadmap for revitalization in rural communities.

By Phil Sammon

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even bats and small mammals do it. So it’s only natural that the Conservation Education Department of the USDA Forest Service worked with other conservation education partners to do it – pollinate!

By Suzanne Pender, NRCS

On a tour of Gully Branch Tree Farm, in Bleckley, Georgia, NRCS leaders and partners witnessed first-hand the benefits of the new Forestry Incentives Initiative of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Through conservation activities including woodland management, prescribed burning, cultivation of native plants, and pond management, Earl and Wanda Barr have created habitat for diverse wildlife species on their land.

By Suzanne Pender, NRCS

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution recognizing the 75th anniversary of the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS).

NRCS joined the Ohoopee Conservation District and the Pine Country Resource Conservation and Development Council (RC&D) to celebrate and honor Mr. Jim L. Gillis, Jr., -- at 93, the longest serving conservation district board member in the Nation. NRCS Regional Assistant Chief Leonard Jordan presented Mr.

Mary Ann McQuinn, Georgia NRCS
NRCS Regional Assistant Chief Leonard Jordan, NRCS Georgia State Conservationist James E. Tillman, Sr., and others including Alice Rolls, the Executive Director of Georgia Organics toured Whippoorwill Hollow Farm with certified organic farmer Andy Byrd.  The group discussed the new Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) Organic Initiative successes and opportunities for improvement.