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Card 34 · Federal programs

Environmental Quality Incentives Program

Pays private landowners directly to treat fuels. Reaches the parcels the District cannot touch, and costs the District almost nothing.

Funder
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
Route
Landowner applies
Status
Continuous, with ranking cutoffs
Program page
nrcs.usda.gov

Technical and financial assistance to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners to install conservation practices, including forest health and fuels management on privately owned forest and shrub land.

Applications are accepted on a continuous basis with periodic cutoff dates for a given funding year, and ranking is done through the Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool against national, state and regional priorities.

The District territory is largely rural residential with extensive native and invasive vegetation on private parcels, and the CWPP specifically notes multiple vacant and unmaintained properties carrying volunteer non-native fuel trees. This is one of the few programs that pays a private owner to deal with that.

The District contribution is organizing owners and hosting NRCS at a meeting. Low cost, and it reaches land the District has no other way to treat.