Conservation

Through a unique collaboration with USDA’s Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production, food leftovers from six district schools in Prince William County, Virginia, are now being sorted, bagged, and collected before being mixed with organic yard waste and processed into compost at the county’s recycling center. In the first six weeks of the program, almost eight tons of food scraps have been recycled rather than buried in the county landfill.

Refugee and immigrant farmers newly arrived in Vermont are getting help from USDA to continue their agrarian traditions and learn about Vermont soils and growing conditions.

Bats aren’t just hanging around here for the boo’s. They play an irreplaceable role in our ecosystems.

Thanks to the NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) program, a coalition of partners including Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) and Sustainable Food Lab are tackling water quality, soil health and greenhouse gas issues in the Midwest.

The Municipality of Anchorage is the largest urban area in Alaska, with its close to 300,000 residents making up 40 percent of the state’s population. This makes Anchorage a prime area for urban agriculture.

A USDA Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) project is trying to reimagine how carbon markets can work with and for small landholders. The Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP), led by the American Forest Foundation (AFF) and The Nature Conservancy, bases carbon payments on specific forest management practices that have been scientifically shown to increase the amount of carbon that gets removed from the atmosphere and stored in the trees and soil. The project’s goal is to facilitate the participation of nearly 300 million acres of family-owned American forests in carbon markets

Wetlands are one of nature’s most important and productive ecosystems. They provide wildlife habitat, store floodwaters, filter pollutants, capture carbon, and offer recreational opportunities. Since 2016, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has spent $20 million to establish wetland mitigation banks to help restore and protect wetland ecosystems on agricultural land.

Did you know the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) soil scientists are playing an important role in saving Florida’s manatees?

Until now, only a single Harbison's hawthorn (Crataegus harbisonii) tree was thought to exist in the wild, growing in the limestone soils of Percy Warner Park in Nashville, Tennessee.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is the largest funder of conservation on private land in the United States, supporting producers’ transitions to beneficial farming and ranching practices. While these transitions can require an upfront cost, they also often lead to financial rewards. Healthy and resilient soils, rich with organic material, may lead to more productive crops requiring less fertilizer. And watersheds protected by forests and riverbanks with riparian habitat can lead to cleaner water downstream.