Grassland Reserve Program Should Benefit Cattlemen

The U.S. Senate has approved the Agriculture Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2004, which included necessary adjustments to the Grasslands Reserve Program (GRP).  NCBA members and the Public Lands Council have been working with other interested parties for more than two years to conceive, create and build support for a program to conserve grasslands.  As a result, the Grasslands Reserve Program was added as a new program in the 2002 Farm Bill. 

Ranchers and other private grassland owners who enroll in the program agree to place temporary or permanent easements on their land, prohibiting development and other activities incompatible with conserving grassland ecosystems. In return, landowners receive annual payments for short-term contracts or either a one-time payment for permanent easements or up to 10 annual payments for easements. The program also makes additional resources available to assist landowners in restoring enrolled grasslands.

“This important program was designed to keep large grass landscapes intact for our ranching operations and best conservation priorities,” explains Jeff Eisenberg, executive director of the Public Lands Council and NCBA director of federal lands. “It will be an essential buffer against the loss of grasslands to a variety of sources.”

Especially important to cattle producers, this new voluntary program imposes no regulation on grazing and allows private entities, such as rangeland land trusts, to own easements under the program.

The ecological status of many existing grassland systems are heavily influenced at the local level by combinations of habitat fragmentation, undesirable habitat changes due to fire exclusion, declining range conditions due to improper grazing management, and loss of habitat values due to the spread of invasive and non-native plants. The Grasslands Reserve Program will help address these disturbing trends by providing grassland owners with financial incentives to conserve and restore important grassland ecosystems.

“Cattlemen have a strong commitment to keeping working lands as working lands,” says Eisenberg. “Doing so helps ensure a viable and strong rural economy and helps conserve one of our nation’s most threatened species — ranchers.”

The Grasslands Reserve Program supports the private property interests of participants by limiting only those uses of land that thwart accomplishment of program purposes. Eligible land includes restored, improved, or natural grassland, rangeland, pastureland and prairie. Common program practices include: grazing management, prescribed burning, range seeding, fencing, and brush management.

“The law enacted by the Senate reinforces the importance of cattle producers and conservation,” says Eisenberg. “In particular, the Senate passed language to make clear that private organizations may own the title interest in a program easement if the organization is otherwise qualified under the law. 

 “The GRP will, in this time of uncertainty and change, help continue the ranching tradition by preserving the open spaces for future generations,” Eisenberg says.

 For more information about the GRP and other conservation programs, contact your local USDA Service Center, or online at http://offices.usda.gov/. Information, including Federal Register notices and rules, also is available at http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/farmbill/2002.