A new conservation initiative in the United States will help to improve water quality, restore wildlife and support additional sustainability practices in agricultural production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The initiative, known as Clean Lakes, Estuaries and Rivers (CLEAR), will offer farmers and ranchers more opportunities to participate in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which is designed to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production in order to plant species that will improve environmental health and quality.
CLEAR will assist landowners with the cost of building bioreactors and saturated buffers that filter nitrates and other nutrients from tile-drained cropland. Estimates indicate that CLEAR could help to reduce nitrate runoff by as much as 40 percent over traditional conservation methods.
The USDA will also add an additional 1.1 million acres to a number of key CRP practices that are important to wildlife and conservation. These include 700,000 acres for State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE) efforts, which restore high-priority wildlife habitat tailored to a specific state’s needs. In addition to SAFE, 300,000 acres will be added to target wetlands restoration that are nature’s water filters and 100,000 acres for pollinator habitat that support 30 percent of agricultural production.