Economic, market-based grassland conservation approaches are needed for expired Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands. This proposal describes a new Avoided Grassland Conversion Program that will provide a new private market driver and income stream from private sources for landowners of expired CRP looking for alternative programs to maintain grass cover. An innovative economic alternative to the Conservation Reserve Program will be piloted in portions of the Prairie Pothole Region in 2013, utilizing over $3 million in Federal and private dollars to develop fencing and livestock infrastructure on at-risk of conversion expired CRP lands, requiring an additional $140,000 in financial support to perform necessary soil carbon measurements for the transaction of the resultant carbon credits.
This project will help provide for the release of additional private and public funds ($3 M) to further advance the Avoided Grassland Conservation Program. There are four existing and fundamental pillars to this proposal: (1) Land-owner outreach and relationship-building;
2) Science-based soil carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) analyses at a field-scale for the PPR landscape;
(3) Field and landscape-level carbon and GHG simulation modeling; and
(4) Carbon marketing for avoided grassland conversion. The infrastructure is in place to build upon these pillars, which will engage and educate stakeholders across the broader PPR landscape.
