Organization: Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)

Website: nrcs.usda.gov

EAC-KY Partner Contacts: Tony Nott, Sam Miller, and Lucas Foster

Bio: The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) helps people help the land by offering technical assistance, educational resources, financial incentives, and bridging gaps for landowners and land users. Some of the NRCS’s most prominent benefits for landowners are their federally funded cost-share programs and their longstanding connections with local partners for technical and education assistance. 

2020 KFAP Tags: 

• Forest Health
• Forest Management
• Funding

Program or Services Spotlight: 

• Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)

Ways Forward:

• Driving impact THROUGH technical assistance opportunities and cost share

  • The NRCS offers and promotes technical assistance first (i.e conservation plan, forest management plan) and then financial assistance if recommended by the land management plan.
  • If recommended by a management plan, the NRCS has unique access to funds for management practices, operating under the 2018 Farm Bill to administer programs like EQIP and CSP
  • Backed by federal cost share dollars, these programs can operate on a large scale and with greater capacity
  •  Each land area that has a forest management plan implemented contributes to larger regional impacts on forests and woodland owners
  • Cost share programs can help overcome the need for immediate returns, helping to minimize harmful practices like high grading, by balancing the benefit of long-term gains with a reduced total financial investment

   

• Increasing education and awareness THROUGH collaborative involvement
  
  • NRCS works with many partners to administer technical assistance, provide education opportunities, and share information in Appalachian Kentucky
  • NRCS has found success working with local conservation district offices to get the word out about opportunities, because they run their own social media channels that can provide locally relevant information to landowners
  • Landowner peer-to-peer education can increase awareness, with farms opted-in to conservation practices setting examples for and sparking conversations with nearby landowners
  • Generally abundant opportunities in Appalachia for more education on forest resources and forest potential, given that forests are currently underutilized relative to their resource prevalence

Ongoing Concerns:

• Forest Degradation
  
  • The NRCS employees operating in Appalachian Kentucky reported presence of invasive species, as well as legacy effects from high grading and mine land reclamation practices effecting the woodlands
  • A general lack of continual forest management, outside of selective harvesting for the best trees, has likely exacerbating ongoing issues with invasive species and mesophication
• Addressing social and economic circumstances Appalachian Kentucky
  
  • Overcoming the longstanding distrust of government entities in Appalachia
  • With an aging landowner population, many landowners cannot go out onto their land and handle to conservation work themselves
  • Even if landowners can employ professionals to write a management plan, implementing those plans requires forestry workforce power that is diminished in this Appalachian Kentucky; these workforce issues (lack of people, lack of training, etc.) are long-standing and difficult to amend 
  • Heirs’ property legal hurdles to developing conservation plans persist, due to the need to establish legal land control to take advantage of cost share opportunities and implement management plans

EAC-KY can facilitate:

• Promotion of opportunities on a more regional scale
• Coordination with partners on local engagement efforts
• Partner networking and opportunity sharing