2023 Schedule – Pacific Time

NRCS staff will provide an update on RCPP Easements. The Inflation Reduction Act will provide enhanced opportunities for easement holding entities and we will discuss those, too. Additionally, agency representatives will discuss changes to RCPP, specifically those that are easement-related.

We are excited to share special funding opportunities created by the Inflation Reduction Act to increase the diverse projects completed with the Forest Legacy Program.

Now that the Land and Water Conservation Fund is permanently and fully funded, the land conservation community has the unique opportunity to achieve enormous land protection gains, especially through public/private partnerships.

Do you have questions about how to strengthen your Agricultural Conservation Easement Pogram (ACEP) application packages? Is your land trust expanding its ACEP Program work? Join NRCS Easement Program Division team members for Acing your ACEP application package. During the session, you'll learn how to develop a strong ACEP application package, hear examples of successful projects and clarify areas where your land trust can improve your applications

Land trusts and conservation organizations play a critical role in supporting the climate resilience goals of military installations and their surrounding communities. Recent federal legislation has generated unprecedented levels of funding across federal resilience programs, which the Department of Defense Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program catalogues in its annual Resilience Project Funding Guide. This session will explore federal funding opportunities from this guide that have been underutilized by the land conservation community, including programs from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Environmental Protection Agency. A panel of experts will discuss how these agencies evaluate nature-based solutions approaches to climate resilience and share insights about how to build relationships with these agencies to create competitive funding proposals. This session will focus on specific funding strategies for land trusts and conservation organizations who partner with military installations as well as provide broader lessons learned about landscape-level approaches to climate resilience in the context of defense communities.

This session will introduce the land trust community to the Recreation Economy for Rural Communities (RERC) program and community planning process along with the technical requirements to make a planning committee and be competitive applicants for the next application cycle. The session will also share some success stories from Thompson Falls, MT and Cambridge, NY – two communities who have participated in the RERC program. Come for an interactive and fun session to learn about the RERC program and ways to boost outdoor recreation in your community.

In 2021, Congress provided up to $284 million in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) for coastal and estuarine protection, including for land conservation through NOAA’s Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program (CELCP - pronounced “kelp”). NOAA announced a portion of these funds in summer 2022 and we expect another round in early 2023, with more funding rounds planned. Attendees will learn about this new coastal land protection funding opportunity: How the funds have been distributed to date, lessons learned to date, how to prepare for the next funding rounds and what makes a successful CELCP project. In its previous iteration, CELCP funding was an important source of matching funding for land trust priorities in coastal areas, ensuring permanent protection of more than 110,000 acres from 2002-2019. This new infusion of IIJA funds into the CELCP program is a renewed conservation tool that will support additional coastal and estuarine protection in priority conservation areas. Discussion will include reflections on a project on the central Oregon coast, where a regional land trust, a federally recognized tribe, county planners and state agency staff collaborated on the acquisition of an ecologically and culturally important headland.

This session will highlight three programs within the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water that can be used for financing land conservation projects. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (SRFs) are federal-state partnerships that provides states, tribes, territories and communities low-cost financing for a wide range of projects that result in the protection or restoration of surface water. Land conservation projects are eligible for funding because they protect the quality of water sources and lessen the need for wastewater treatment through traditional methods. In this workshop, EPA will provide an overview of the SRFs, discuss borrower and project eligibilities for land purchases, and provide case study examples. Under EPA’s Clean Water Act Section (§) 319 Nonpoint Source Management grant program, EPA works with partners to address water pollution and to protect and restore waterbodies by managing the areas of land draining to them in a watershed approach. EPA will discuss this program and how to access funds through the development of a watershed plan. Lastly, this session will discuss the funding available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). With the injection of $43 billion over the next five years, the SRFs have the opportunity to dramatically increase financing for eligible projects including land conservation and other nature-based solutions. This session will provide a break-down of the portion of BIL water infrastructure dollars that will flow through the SRFs and which can be used for land conservation and to assist disadvantaged communities.