Conservation Technical Assistance in Pennsylvania
The Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA) program helps people voluntarily conserve, improve and sustain natural resources by planning and implementing conservation practices that address natural resource issues.
Conservation Technical Assistance
The Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA) program helps people voluntarily conserve, improve and sustain natural resources by planning and implementing conservation practices that address natural resource issues.
The program aims to:
- Assist individual land users, communities, conservation districts, and other units of State and local government and Federal agencies to meet their goals for resource stewardship and comply with State and local requirements. NRCS assistance to individuals is provided through conservation districts.
- Assist agricultural producers to comply with environmental provisions, such as highly erodible land (HEL) and wetlands. NRCS makes HEL and wetland determinations and helps land users develop and implement conservation plans to comply with the law.
- Provide technical assistance to participants in USDA cost-share and conservation incentive programs.
- Collect, analyze, interpret, display, and disseminate information about the condition and trends of the Nation’s soil and other natural resources so that people can make good decisions about resource use and about public policies for resource conservation.
- Develop effective science-based technologies for natural resource assessment, management, and conservation.
Benefits of CTA:
Technical assistance is for planning and implementing natural resource solutions to:
- Reduce erosion
- Improve soil health
- Improve water quantity and quality
- Improve and conserve wetlands
- Enhance fish and wildlife habitat
- Improve air quality
- Improve pasture and range health
- Reduce upstream flooding
- Improve woodlands
- Address other natural resource issues
Natural Resources Inventory
The CTA program supports the National Resources Inventory (NRI). The NRI is a statistically based survey to assess conditions and trends of soil, water, and related resources on non-Federal lands in the United States. USDA, other Federal agencies, State and local governments, and other organizations to support agricultural and conservation policy development and program evaluation use this information.
Summary
The working relationships that landowners and communities have with their local NRCS staff are unique. One-on-one help through flexible, voluntary programs occurs every day in local NRCS offices across the country. It is the way NRCS does business, and it works. To obtain conservation technical assistance, contact your local NRCS office. (See below)