conservation

Every year USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in South Dakota joins partners to coordinate a bird watching tour on a farm or ranch that participates in one of our voluntary conservation programs.

Terry Bachtold is proud of what the Indian Creek Watershed Project is doing for water quality in north central Illinois.

“When we started, there weren’t any other farms locally doing what we were doing,” says Ryan Casey, of Blue House Farms, outside of Pescadero, Calif.

On July 11, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan and I traveled to Richmond, Virginia to represent USDA at the annual Chesapeake Bay Executive Council (CBEC) meeting. The CBEC is the governing body of Bay restoration and protection efforts, and it includes leaders from federal agencies and states across the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Although raging waters had subsided at Deanna Young’s home in Ponca, Ark., a flood of emotions hit her when she found out USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) would pay 100 percent of the cost of protecting her home from falling into Adds Creek.

For 25 years, the conservationists at the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources’ (BWSR) have been cleaning the state’s water, improving soil productivity and restoring wildlife habitat on private lands.

And for much of that time, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has been a partner to the state agency.

Working together with local offices, the two agencies assist private landowners with conservation practices that reduce soil erosion, improve water cleanliness and enhance habitat in Minnesota’s lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands.

This spring, Earth Team volunteers with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) surveyed approximately 300 hundred acres of remote Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and private lands north of Villa Grove, Colo., looking for Gunnison sage-grouse, a ground-dwelling bird considered a keystone species in this habitat.

Tommy Berend, ranch operator at the 9,000-acre Circle A Ranch in Archer County, Texas, wanted to eliminate mesquite, restore open spaces and plant native grasses on the ranch.

The mesquite consumed large amounts of water in areas where Berend wanted to create habitat for quail and other wildlife. Quail is an important, yet dwindling species in Texas.

Two weeks ago, I received a call from my brother and sister-in-law. They had just found out that their home might be impacted by the Missouri River flooding.

No matter where you live in the United States, you’ve probably noticed that the weather just hasn’t been “normal” in recent months.  Our nation has experienced widespread flooding, relentless drought, expansive wildfires, and devastating tornadoes – sometimes all at once.

Some of the blame has to be directed at La Niña, a cooling of the waters of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.  La Niña developed during the summer of 2010, leading to a profound influence on North American weather from the autumn of 2010 through the spring of 2011.  In typical fashion, La Niña forced the subtropical jet stream northward, resulting in drought development, expansion, and intensification in the South.  At the same, time jet stream disruptions induced by La Niña led to persistently cool, wet conditions across roughly the northern half of the U.S.