Summary of Project Proposal Awards 2010 Walton Family Foundation Conservation Grants Arkansas/Louisiana/Mississippi

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1 Summary of Project Proposal Awards 2010 Walton Family Foundation Conservation Grants Arkansas/Louisiana/Mississippi Project Proposal: Bayou Lafourche Bottomland Hardwood Restoration Project LA Lead Organization: Louisiana Dept of Agriculture & Forestry, Off. of Soil and Water Conservation Point-of-Contact: Michael Schooler; Ext. 19; Other Partners: USDA NRCS, Ducks Unlimited, Boeuf River Soil and Water Conservation District WFF Grant Amount: $335,000 Project Proposal Summary: This project will protect and restore 1400 acres of wetlands by securing funding from non-federal sources, enabling partners to restore more acres than would be possible with only funding from NRCS programs. The NRCS, DU and TNC propose to restore 400 acres of wetland habitat utilizing the NRCS WRP 30 year restoration agreement funding ($975/acre) and additional funding from TNC and the Walton Family Foundation to complete the restoration. TNC will place an easement on these tracts to protect the investment in restoration for perpetuity, and provide an additional $400 per acre above the 30 year NRCS WRP easement value and up to $250/acre to cover the cost of bottomland hardwood restoration. The Walton Family Foundation will provide an additional $200 per acre for the 30 year easement. The NRCS contract will cover the costs of hydrology restoration. Under this scenario the 400 acres of restoration will be protected in perpetuity. Furthermore, the partners propose to secure and restore an additional 1,000 acres in the target area with the standard WRP funding rate of $1,300.00/acre and the NRCS paying 100% of the restoration. Walton Foundation funds will add an additional $200.00/acre, raising the payment for the perpetual easement to $1,500.00/acre, thus making the WRP easement more appealing to landowners. Project Proposal: Restoration of Bottomland Hardwood Forests in the Cache River Watershed of Arkansas: A private lands Wetlands Reserve Enhance Project (WREP) AR Lead Organization: The Nature Conservancy Point-of-Contact: Roger W. Mangham, Director of Conservation Programs; ; mangham@tnc.org Other Partners: Ducks Unlimited (DU), USDA NRCS, Arkansas Forestry Commission (AFC), The Nature Conservancy WFF Grant Amount: $340,000 Project Proposal Summary: The primary focus of the proposed project will be to reforest riparian associated croplands in Culotches Bay, Bear Slough and Maloy Bayou sub-watersheds of the Cache River. All three of these sub-watersheds have been identified as conservation priorities by the LMVJV and create critical links between large and protected forest blocks. WFF funds ($550 / acre) will be spent to complete dirt work and/or tree planting, coordinated by TNC and DU, on tracts enrolled in WRP. The work will be performed between Oct 2010 and Oct The exact number of acres will be variable but will exceed 540 total acres. No real estate transactions will transpire under the constructs of the proposal, as acres planted will occur on lands that have been enrolled

2 in a WREP project that requires a permanent conservation easement held by NRCS. The mechanism for the balance of funding would be delivered through the Farm Bill. In summary, the proposed WFF project will enroll private lands in the Cache River watershed through a priority ranking system to include land occurring in three 12-digit sub-watersheds that allow for habitat corridors linking to the Cache River NWR through LMVJV bird conservation areas. Specifically, WFF funds will be used to fund on-the-ground activities such as dirt work and/or tree planting that will be supervised and contracted by TNC and DU. The grant funding be applied as match to a WREP project through the MRBI and will trigger another 5,000 acres of conservation easement acquisition and reforestation by NRCS, making this a highly leveraged project. Project Proposal: Restoring Bottomland Hardwoods/Wetlands in the Lower Mississippi River Valley MS Lead Organization: Wildlife Mississippi Point-of-Contact: James L. Cummins, Jr., Executive Director; (662) ; jcummins@wildlifemiss.org Other Partners: Lower Delta Partnership, USDA NRCS WFF Grant Amount: $325,000 Project Proposal Summary: This proposal would utilize LMVJV biological and mapping information to identify land that would serve as wildlife corridors between existing protected habitat for the federally-threatened Louisiana black bear and enhance existing blocks of permanently protected wildlife habitat deemed high value for neotropical song birds. The project will target enrollment of 2,000 acres of lands in USDA conservation programs, with an emphasis on lands in the 2-year floodplain, riparian corridors and wildlife corridors, will restore bottomland hardwoods and wetlands in critical and priority areas for wildlife purposes. The majority of these lands are marginal, high-risk lands that are vulnerable both to the vagaries of floods and droughts because of the nature of hydric soils. These marginal lands detract from a farmer's cash flow and tend to experience repeated losses requiring disaster recovery assistance. According to research conducted by Miss. State University, many rental payments of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and easement payments of the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) are not high enough to result in individual landowner enrollment in the CRP or WRP. Under this proposal, a one-time signing bonus (ranging from $100/acre to $200/acre) would be offered to entice the landowners to enroll in the CRP or WRP. In addition to the signing bonus, participating landowners would receive a cost-share payment to restore bottomland hardwoods and/or wetlands, as well as $100/acre stewardship incentive payment and a rental payment from the Farm Service Agency (FSA) for the CRP. Land will be targeted in the South Delta (Sharkey, Issaquena, Yazoo, Holmes and Warren Counties), and along the Mississippi River (Coahoma, Bolivar, Washington, Issaquena and Warren Counties). This is a pilot project to test the feasibility of utilizing incentives to gain certain biologically high-value land on a limited basis throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley.

3 Project Proposal: Lead Organization: Point-of-Contact: Other Partners: Summary of Project Proposal Awards 2011 Walton Family Foundation Conservation Grants Arkansas/Louisiana/Mississippi Wetland Restoration in the Boeuf River Watershed of Arkansas: A private lands Wetland Reserve Enhancement Project (WREP) AR Arkansas Game & Fish Commission David Long; ; dlong@agfc.state.ar.us USDA s NRCS, The Nature Conservancy, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Audubon Arkansas, Arkansas Forestry Commission WFF Grant Amount: $115,000 Project Proposal Summary: The primary focus of the proposed WFF project will be to reforest croplands and catfish ponds in the Boeuf River watershed. The Boeuf River is a tributary to the Mississippi River within the larger Mississippi River Alluvial Plain Region. The portion of the watershed for this project proposal is found in HUC Land use in the watershed is a mix of cropland, catfish ponds, forest and pasture. However, much of the remaining forest is located within the fragmented blocks of the watershed. The primary goal will be afforestation of croplands and catfish ponds with BLH seedlings to connect key forest blocks identified by the LMVJV. A secondary goal will be to reduce sediment and other pollutant loads entering the Boeuf River, improving aquatic species of concern. This conservation practice will occur in the 8 digit HUC targeted for WREP through MRBI. At present, 15,350 acres of Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) protected land occur within the watershed. Under the proposal, grant funds (for BLH restoration) will provided required 5% match to restore bottomland hardwoods and wetlands under a proposed WREP project through the MRBI. Specifically, the WREP project will target 4,000 acres of private lands for restoration coupled with permanent conservation easements held by the NRCS. Project Proposal: Restoring Bottomland Hardwoods/Wetlands in the Active Floodplain of the Lower Mississippi River Valley AR, LA, MS Lead Organization: Mississippi River Trust (MRT) Point-of-Contact: James L. Cummins, Jr., Executive Director; (662) ; jcummins@wildlifemiss.org Other Partners: Lower Miss. River Conservation Committee (LMRCC), WFF Grant Amount: $100,000 Project Proposal Summary: This project will address the need to restore limited, high biologicalvalue lands in the active floodplain (batture) of the Lower Mississippi River Valley in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi and will focus on lands that would have difficulty being accepted into USDA rental and/or easement conservation programs for a variety of reasons. Specifically, the project will target the 573-river-mile reach of the LMR from the northern boundary of Arkansas to the Upper Limit of the Port of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The river s batture land within this reach is comprised of approximately 1.14 million acres between the U.S. Corps of Engineers mainline levee system and the Mississippi River and other lands unprotected by the levee system. Based on

4 2008 National Agricultural Statistics Service data, the area within the batture contains approximately 164,405 acres of agricultural land, 948,877 acres of forests/non-agricultural land and 28,378 acres of land enrolled in the WRP. According to research conducted by Miss. State University, many rental payments of the CRP and easement payments of the WRP are not high enough to result in the landowner enrolling his/her land in the CRP or WRP. Under this proposal, a one-time signing bonus (ranging from $50/acre to $100/acre) would be offered to entice the landowners to enroll in CRP or WRP. In addition to the signing bonus, the landowner will receive a cost-share payment to restore the bottomland hardwoods and/or wetlands along with the $100/acre stewardship incentive payment and rental payment from the Farm Service Agency (FSA) for the CRP. Conservation easements will be utilized to provide perpetual protection on land restored through the CRP. Assistance with the cost of baseline, appraisal and monitoring fees will be offered to enable significantly more landowners the ability to afford placing a conservation easement on his/her property. Conservation easements will be targeted on all land in the active floodplain. Project Proposal: Incentivizing Permanent Protection of Federal Reforestation Efforts MS Lead Organization: Ducks Unlimited Point-of-Contact: Stacey Shankle; ; sshankle@ducks.org WFF Grant Amount: $400,000 Project Proposal Summary: This proposal would establish a program to incentivize permanent protection of Farm Bill funded bottomland hardwood reforestation projects located within high priority geographies of the LMVJV. Beginning in 1996, significant acreage was annually enrolled in the WRP throughout the MAV. However, as county acreage caps were reached in some areas and eligibility requirements were modified, annual enrollment in some LMVJV priority areas decreased. With recent changes in incentive structures, some of this demand has been met through CRP. However, despite significant federal investment in restoration and rental payments, lands reforested through CRP are not permanently protected and are able to be reverted to agriculture at the contract expiration. Throughout the MAV, it is believed that significant acreage reforested through the CRP is located within the high priority geographies of the LMVJV. The proposed program would provide funds for the transactional costs associated with permanent protection of restored bottomland hardwood habitats. Landowners eligible for the program would typically have completed reforestation work through enrollment in the Conservation Reserve Program. Tracts qualifying for this proposed program will be evaluated and prioritized using the WFF conservation grant decision support tool, based upon LMVJV priorities. Upon determination of eligibility and a landowner s decision to participate, an agreement will be entered to reimburse, from the requested WFF funding, the landowners transactional costs upon closing of a conservation easement instrument. These costs include the baseline documentation, boundary surveys, and associated legal and accounting expenses, and will be capped at $20,000 per landowner. The requested WFF funding also will cover direct expenses for the evaluation, approval and closing of the conservation instruments, which includes DU s calculated actual liabilities associated with accepting the perpetual conservation instrument. These costs are estimated not to exceed $30,000 per conservation instrument plus allowed overhead expenses.

5 Project Proposal: Lead Organization: Point-of-Contact: Other Partners: Mississippi Delta Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program MS The Nature Conservancy Jim Murrian, (601) ; MS DEQ, Delta Wildlife, MS FWP, Mississippi State University, USDA FSA, Yazoo Water Management District WFF Grant Amount: $88,877 Project Proposal Summary: The proposed project will use grant funds to leverage USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) resources, authorized under the Farm Bill, which implements desirable conservation practices on existing cropland through direct payment incentives to producers. The Nature Conservancy and Delta FARM propose a two-phase, three-year project capable of restoring as much as 4,000 acres or more in the LMVJV Priority Area of the Mississippi Delta through the establishment of a Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). A Mississippi Delta CREP would be the first such Farm Bill program in Mississippi and would match WFF grant funds with other project partners at a ratio of 4:1 (CREP:Partners) and represent more than $2 million in new restoration resources. Other Farm Bill programs have been extensively used in the region, but their enrollment limits have been effectively reached in many areas. Under the CREP agreement process, partners would craft a custom conservation program tailored to the needs of both of landowners and the ecosystem. With the flexibility associated with CREP, incentive payments can be structured to be economically competitive with, if not equal to, WRP incentive payment schedules. Combined, these new resources would restore between 2,600 and 4,000 acres depending on per-acre incentive payments provided ($150 or $100 per acre, respectively). In addition, the first-ever MS CREP would complement the existing $12 million (estimated) NRCS MRBI. The MRBI Program being administered in the Yazoo River Basin of MS allows for targeted agricultural best management practice implementation in three major tributaries including Steele Bayou, Big Sunflower and the upper Yazoo River. Within these main tributaries, 17 subwatersheds were selected for implementation. Thirteen of these 17 sub-watersheds contain more than 500,000 acres of LMV-JV All-Bird Priority Areas. We propose targeting these areas of program overlap for CREP implementation which would restore up to 4,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest, wetland, and riparian habitat in the Yazoo River Basin. Further, enrolled acreage would be initially protected for 15 years by a contract between the volunteering landowner and USDA-FSA. The state and partners will provide an additional incentive payment, using WFF grant funding, to either acquire an additional 15-year agreement or establish a permanent easement likely to be monitored by Delta FARM (easement monitoring costs to be covered by the applying landowner). Project Proposal: Restoring Bottomland Hardwood Forest and Corridors Connecting Occupied Habitat for the Louisiana Black Bear LA Lead Organization: Black Bear Conservation Coalition (BBCC) Point-of-Contact: Paul L. Davidson; (225) Other Partners: USDA NRCS, Apache Foundation, USFWS WFF Grant Amount: $330,000 Project Proposal Summary: The BBCC will utilize grant funding to support on the ground bottomland hardwood restoration projects while building on our network of individuals and organizations to work on additional projects. The proposed strategy will begin with BBCC sponsored meetings to bring together stakeholders in the region to begin a landscape scale effort to address habitat conservation issues. These meetings will be regional in scope, hopefully

6 engaging active participants from throughout the Lower MS Valley and will serve to assess and coordinate available conservation initiatives. Initially, the BBCC on the ground projects will focus on the areas delineated in the Louisiana Black Bear Habitat Restoration Planning Maps for Louisiana which directly overlaps LMVJV grant priority areas. The BBCC will seek to add a $100/acre incentive to potential WRP enrollments in priority areas in the coming year. The NRCS has indicated that enrolling up to 600 additional acres is likely in Pointe Coupee Parish this year, with potential for an another 1,500 acres next year with the incentive. The area is essential for the development of contiguous forested corridors required in the USFWS Recovery Plan for the delisting of the Louisiana black bear. Pointe Coupee Parish is one of the few parishes in the habitat planning maps for the bear that is not capped or close to being capped for USDA conservation programs. The area has better quality farmland than many of the other river parishes and landowners have not shown a great deal of interest in USDA programs in the past. The BBCC has been planting hardwood seedlings on private lands in Louisiana bear habitat zones for the past 8 years, utilizing funding from State Wildlife Grants, USFWS Private Stewardship Grants Program, and 650,000 donated hardwood seedlings from the Apache Foundation. Over 3,000 acres have been planted under a 25 year partnership agreement with landowners not to harvest or clear the trees. The BBCC plans to expand this program with support of the proposed grant, $35,000 remaining from USFWS Private Stewardship Grant funds, and 200,000 seedlings from the Apache Foundation. Expanding this strategy through the WFF grant would support the restoration of an additional 750 acres with these leveraged resources. Through this approach the BBCC will use existing network of partners to identify additional landowners interested in restoring their property to BHW, identify existing programmatic opportunities in their area, and then work with them and other organizations and agencies to get the project implemented. This will result in restoration of habitat that will improve water quality, benefit bears, birds, bats, and the hundreds of other species dependent on the bottomland hardwood forest resource.