Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention (SFLR) Program

The SFLR Program is a collaboration of federal, state, local, and community-based organizations to help stem the loss of land and eliminate barriers to African American forest landowners to help keep private forest land in the family. This program is a partnership between the SFLR Network, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Endowment, the USDA Forest Service, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, The JPB Foundation, and American Forest Foundation.

The purpose is to restore, and conserve threatened, African American-owned forestland in the southern United States and enhance family wealth by increasing forest-owner income and land asset value through forest management.

NRCS can help landowners inventory, analyze, and evaluate the potential of their forest land to produce lumber, wildlife habitat, and other environmental benefits.

Through the SFLR- (EQIP) Environmental Quality Incentives Program, NRCS provides technical expertise as well as financial assistance to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners to implement conservation practices that help them thrive. Financial assistance under SFLR prioritizes applications where forest management is planned and heirs’ property has been identified using alternative forms of documentation supported by the 2018 Farm Bill.

SFLR-EQIP is available to producers working with Prairie View A&M University in the following east Texas counties: Anderson, Angelina, Bowie, Camp, Cass, Chambers, Cherokee, Franklin, Freestone, Galveston, Gregg, Grimes, Hardin, Harris, Harrison, Henderson, Houston, Jasper, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty, Madison, Marion, Montgomery, Morris, Nacogdoches, Newton, Orange, Panola, Polk, Red River, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, Shelby, Smith, Titus, Trinity, Tyler, Upshur, Van Zandt, Walker, Waller and Wood.