Wetlands Reserve Enhancement Program (WREP) - Reserved Rights Pilot

Waterfowl Habitat Conservation Proposal for Southern Oregon

Within the intermountain west, the Southern Oregon and Northeastern California (SONEC) region is a critical staging area for spring and fall migrating waterfowl.

A 2000-2003 study found that eighty percent of all pintails marked in the Central Valley migrated through SONEC where they relied on a combination of public and private habitats. The region is now recognized as the most important staging area for pintails in the Pacific Flyway.

Landscapes devoted to ranching provide a complexity of foraging and breeding habitats for waterfowl.

Maintaining these landscapes in their current form is the first and most important step to ensure healthy populations of waterfowl

Why Reserved Rights?Unique landscape on which traditional agricultural practices are essential to producing crucial habitat for migratory waterfowl during the spring/fall migrations.

Habitat conditions would not exist without active management by agricultural producers. Like most managed wetlands, these wetlands require regular operation and maintenance activities to provide desired habitat values.

Ranchers have an economic incentive to manage and enhance these wetlands based on the forage they produce. Keeping these wetland systems intact in working landscapes not only helps ensure maintenance of ecological function but also results in the least costly alternative for long-term conservation.

Habitat values on southern Oregon’s flood-irrigated pastures are far from secure. Long-term threats include changing demographics of rural communities and the subdivision for rural residential use, conversion to more efficient forms of irrigation, changes in crops and agricultural practices, and the loss or deterioration of irrigation infrastructure.

Traditional WRP easements acquire all of the agricultural production rights, which leaves little incentive for agricultural producers to remain engaged in land management.

The WREP Reserved Rights Pilot provides the incentives necessary to protect these working lands from future fragmentation and loss of function while encouraging ranchers to continue being the primary stewards of the land. By allowing producers to retain grazing rights, the Reserved Rights Pilot program may generate more interest in long-term wetland conservation among rural communities

Proposed Criteria for Reserved Rights Pilot in Oregon

Eligible Lands: Flood-irrigated pastures, hay lands, and meadows in high priority Bird Habitat Conservation Areas (IWJV, 2005) identified as having high value for waterfowl habitat located in Klamath, Lake and Harney counties.

Enrollment Options: Permanent easement only.

Easement compensation: 75% of NRCS geographic area rate cap ($300 to $2800 per acre under current market values).

Reserved rights: Utilization of livestock forage production at specific levels necessary to sustain targeted wetland habitat values, to be determined by NRCS and partner biologists.

Enrollment target: 2,000 acres by end of FY 2012

Estimated cost: $2 million