USDA Awards Grant to Reward Land Stewards in Mokelumne River Watershed

Sustainable Conservation, in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Incentives, Protected Harvest and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, was awarded a $372,000 Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a pilot program to measure environmental benefits in California's Mokelumne River Watershed.

The pilot program’s funding will pay farmers, ranchers and foresters to enhance nature's benefits like water purification, erosion control and wildlife habitat. The program will also develop uniform standards and payment mechanisms that allow private utilities, government agencies, communities, foundations and nonprofits to pay landowners and land managers to enhance and manage their land in beneficial ways.

"Typically farmers and ranchers are paid to grow crops and raise livestock," said Ashley Boren, executive director of Sustainable Conservation. "But many of these individuals who manage their land responsibly provide important services that benefit nature and human well-being. We need to create ways to pay farmers and ranchers for these services."

The Mokelumne River begins high in the Sierra Nevada, flows through the foothills across the Central Valley and into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and empties into the San Francisco Bay. This watershed provides numerous environmental and economic benefits to the region. For example, the Mokelumne River delivers water to 1.4 million people in the East Bay, and provides agricultural water supply and storage to irrigate more than 800,000 acres of vineyards and other crops.

The Mokelumne faces multiple threats including groundwater overdraft, degradation of some managed lands, increased danger of uncharacteristically large fires, and climate change that reduces the snowpack that supplies water for the region. Landowners and land managers within the area are looking for ways to protect the existing natural resources and restore many of the watershed functions. The pilot program intends to devise ways to compensate the good land stewards.

Regional Director of the Working Lands Program for Environmental Defense Fund Belinda Morris said “This innovative pilot project will demonstrate that a watershed-wide approach to compensate landowners for conservation actions is the best way to achieve conservation goals that support local communities and provide environmental benefits to people outside the watershed by improving water quality and water storage and increasing habitat for wildlife.”

Source: Sustainable Conservation