Florida NRCS Leadership Participates in CIG Project Field Tour

Florida NRCS State Conservationist Carlos Suarez and other staff joined about 60 local producers and employees from various State and local governmental agencies to tour the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) in Okeechobee County.  This project is the result of a nationally-funded NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) that was awarded to the World Wildlife Fund. 

The FRESP CIG project began in 2005 as a partnership between four ranchers wishing to proactively address water quality concerns on grazing lands in the northern Everglades.  Together with the South Florida Water Management District, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, University of Florida IFAS, Archbold Biological Research Station, and the Kellogg Foundation, water management alternatives were developed to determine water quality benefits and the associated costs of generating these benefits.  The objective of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of a market-based environmental services program based on the concept that reducing surface water drainage into Lake Okeechobee would reduce phosphorous pollution levels entering the lake and thereby benefit water quality concerns related to the Everglades.  The alternatives needed to be practical, cost-effective, and allow ranching to continue as a feasible agricultural enterprise.

“We want to reverse the 'draining' with 'retaining' of surface waters from our ranches to generate these environmental benefits,” explained World Wildlife Fund project coordinator Dr. Sarah Lynch.  Each site-specific approach will be unique in both environmental benefits produced and their costs to annual carrying capacity for the ranch.  One of the project's contributions will be the development of an evaluation model that will assist market-based program leaders and rancher candidates in calculating the cost and benefits of enrolling lands into the environmental services program.  In 2007, Phase II of FRESP began with an additional four ranches were added to the evaluation project.  Combined with the water quality objectives from this market-based program to reduce phosphorous (P) loads, improved wildlife habitat and sequester carbon are also anticipated.  Results of the pilot will be used to design a scalable version of the program that could be used on a total watershed scale and would be applicable anywhere in the State.

Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, at the heart of the Everglades system, suffers from excessive P loads and unnatural lake levels due in part to rapid runoff from its surrounding watershed.  Beef cattle ranching is the dominant land use within the northern Everglades watershed and although these lands contribute low levels of phosphorous to surface waters, due to the large extent of these lands within the watershed, total loads from all ranchlands is significant.  Ranchers, along with other agricultural lands within this region, are under regulatory requirements to reduce P loading.  New approaches to managing surface water runoff like those being studied through the FRESP project will help improve water quality, mediate water level changes in Lake Okeechobee, and provide private landowner incentives.

The FRESP vision is a fully operational program that could provide as much as a third to half of the estimated one million acre-feet of water retention needed north of Lake Okeechobee.  The public will benefit when additional water management services are provided in the areas of regional water storage and water treatment facilities.  Ranchers who face low profit margins and fluctuations in the price of beef, will be provided with another source of income creating a financial incentive for land to remain in ranching rather than be converted to more intensive agriculture and urban development – land uses that will further aggravate the water problems of the lake and increase habitat losses.
Your contact is NRCS visual information specialist Gail Hendricks at 352-338-9560.