Sentinel Landscapes Initiative

The Sentinel Landscapes Partnership is a coalition of federal agencies, state and local governments, and nongovernmental organizations that work with private landowners to advance sustainable land management practices around military installations and ranges. Founded in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, and Department of the Interior, the partnership’s mission is to strengthen military readiness, conserve natural resources, bolster agricultural and forestry economies, and increase climate change resilience.

Sentinel Landscapes accomplish their objectives by connecting private landowners with voluntary state and federal assistance programs that provide agricultural loans, disaster relief, educational opportunities, financial and technical assistance, and funding for conservation easements.

Once the partnership designates a location as a Sentinel Landscape, local partners work with federal agencies to support private landowners in accessing the resources necessary to carry out sustainable management practices on their properties. Sustainable management practices, such as farming, ranching and forestry, not only offer economic and ecological benefits, but also protect defense facilities from incompatible development that can constrain the military's ability to carry out training and testing activities.

Since 2013, Sentinel Landscapes have worked with private landowners to permanently protect more than 515,000 acres and implement sustainable management practices on an additional 2.7 million acres around military testing and training areas. These efforts have preserved wildlife habitat, bolstered agricultural and forest production, and reduced land use conflicts around military bases.

Conservation Tools

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and other partners work jointly to identify natural resource needs in Sentinel Landscapes and reach out to eligible landowners and offer voluntary technical and financial assistance to address resource concerns. Conservation tools include conservation easements and many other conservation practices.

Conservation Easements
NRCS acquires conservation easements under the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP). ACEP has two components—agricultural land easements and the wetland reserve easements.

• ACEP's agricultural land easements not only protect the long-term viability of the nation's food supply by preventing conversion of productive working lands to nonagricultural uses, but they also support environmental quality, historic preservation, wildlife habitat, and protection of open space. ACEP now focuses on the protection of grasslands of special environmental significance, which are high-quality grasslands that are under threat of conversion to cropping, urban development, and other nongrazing uses.
• ACEP’s wetland reserve easements allow landowners to successfully enhance and protect habitat for wildlife on their lands, reduce impacts from flooding, recharge groundwater, and provide outdoor recreational and educational opportunities.

NRCS also acquires easements or works with entities to acquire easements through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). RCPP is a partner-driven approach to conservation that funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural land, which includes easements. Easements meet both the program goals and the partner’s project goals.

• Easements held by eligible entities include RCPP agricultural land easements that protect the agricultural use and future viability and related conservation values of eligible land by limiting nonagricultural uses of the land and protect grazing uses by restoring or conserving eligible land.
• Easements held by the United States include RCPP wetland reserve easements that restore, protect, and enhance eligible wetlands, and RCPP healthy forest reserve easements that restore and enhance forest ecosystems for at-risk species, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration.

    
Conservation Practices
NRCS offers technical and financial assistance to eligible agricultural producers through various conservation programs to address soil, water, air, and related natural resource concerns on agricultural land and nonindustrial private forestland. Those conservation programs include:

• Environmental Quality Incentives Program helps farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners integrate conservation into working lands.
• Conservation Stewardship Program builds on existing conservation efforts and helps landowners take their conservation efforts to the next level while strengthening their operations.

For more information about Sentinel Landscapes, visit sentinellandscapes.org.