CONSERVATION CORNER
November 6,2006
The Landowner Incentive Program
by James L. Cummins

The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, in cooperation with Wildlife Mississippi, has developed a program to cost-share with landowners to help them conserve and restore the habitat of endangered species and other at-risk plants and animals. The program, part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Landowner Incentive Program started last year. It supports innovative partnerships in 40 states and the Virgin Islands.

State fish and wildlife agencies, landowners or non-profit groups must put up at least 25 percent of the cost of projects. With these grants, states will be able to provide financial and technical assistance to interested landowners.

The Landowner Incentive Program supports the administration's overall Cooperative Conservation Initiative, which includes a number of conservation grant programs to assist states, tribes, conservation organizations, private landowners and others in conservation projects and programs.

The program in Mississippi has three focal areas. These include restoring longleaf pine in South Mississippi, restoring native grasses in the Blackland Prairie region of Northeast and East Central Mississippi and protecting the bottomland hardwood areas of the Mississippi Delta.

The program is empowering landowners to undertake conservation projects of these types that they otherwise could not afford while restoring habitat on private lands that are vital to threatened, endangered and other imperiled species.

Potential projects are reviewed and ranked by a team of expert biologists with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks and Wildlife Mississippi.

The ranking is based on the following criteria: 1) practices must impact at least one threatened or endangered species; 2) landowner's willingness to cost-share on the practices; 3) the length of time the practices will be maintained; 4) the total number of acres enrolled; and 5) the landowner's willingness to enroll in a perpetual conservation easement.

These funds will cost-share practices such as site preparation, prescribed burning, tree and native warm season grass plantings and herbicide applications.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does its best work for at-risk species when they cooperate with state, local and private partners. Thanks to cost-share funding programs such as the Landowner Incentive Program, the Service is strengthening and expanding these vital conservation partnerships across the United States.

For more information about the Landowner Incentive Program or how you or a friend or neighbor can participate in it, call Daniel Coggin of Wildlife Mississippi at (662) 256-4486 or Russ Walsh of the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks at (601) 408-3399.

By participating, fish and wildlife resources are afforded a chance to thrive and prosper for generations to come.