Easement Program Deadline

The deadline for comments is rapidly approaching for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. The program will provide financial and technical assistance to help conserve agricultural lands and wetlands and their related benefits. Jessica Groves of the Natural Resources Conservation Program says the new program is a merger of several easement programs.

GROVES: It's a new easement program that was developed in the 2014 agricultural act and consolidates three of our previous easement programs. It consolidates the Wetlands Reserve Program, the Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program and the Grassland Reserve Program. The new ACEP program has two components then, it has the Wetland Reserve easement component which takes in the purposes and functions of the former Wetland Reserve Program and it has an agricultural land component.

Easements protect the long-term viability of the nation's food supply by preventing conversion of productive working lands to non-agricultural uses. Land protected by agricultural land easements provides additional public benefits, including environmental quality, historic preservation, wildlife habitat and protection of open space.

GROVES: There's a new provision for example on grasslands of special environmental significance that those lands that have grasslands of special environmental significance can receive a higher cost share rate and in the regulation we've provided a definition for what constitutes a grasslands of special environmental significance and those are the completely new features that we would like to have comments back in on in the regulation.

And that's Colorado Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.