Michigan Projects Selected - 2023
Alternative Funding Arrangement Projects
Project: Methane Avoidance on Dairy Farms in Michigan Milk Producers Association Region
Lead Partner: Newtrient LLC
The Methane Avoidance on Dairy Farms in Michigan project aims to drive high-yielding outcomes from Midwest dairy producers by increasing the adoption of methane-emissions-reducing NRCS conservation practices focused on manure management and feed management.
Michigan Projects Selected - 2021
Alternative Funding Arrangement Projects
Project: Climate Action and Reforestation in Northern Michigan
Lead Partner: Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) will leverage RCPP funding and partner resources to make progress toward afforestation and reforestation goals under the Michigan Climate Action Plan by planting hardwoods and conifers on approximately 16,400 acres. The project, focused on Michigan's northern Lower Peninsula, could serve as a model for large-scale forest restoration on private lands. MDARD will coordinate all technical assistance using State foresters and also contract directly with private landowners to incentivize forest restoration activities. Long-term stewardship and maintenance of private forest lands will be encouraged through the development of management plans for forests planted through the projects. Project partners will report on environmental outcomes related to sedimentation, nutrient loading and carbon sequestered.
Project: Saginaw Bay Watershed ASSET Program
Lead Partner: The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy and project partners will increase the permanent adoption of strip till and cover crops in the Saginaw Bay watershed, an area with almost 700 sugar beet farmers who typically use intensive tillage practices that are hard on soils. The Saginaw Bay watershed is also home to substantial impairments in local water bodies. The project partnership will offer producers a comprehensive package of adoption incentives to support transition to a strip till system, ultimately reducing nutrient and sediment loss to nearby waterways. Overall the partners aim to achieve a 2,000 ton sediment reduction and a 9,000 pound phosphorous reduction; water quality, economic and social outcomes will be reported to measure project success.
Traditional Funding
Critical Conservation Areas – Great Lakes Region
Project: Lake Erie Conservation Partnership
Lead Partner: City of Ann Arbor Greenbelt Program
The Lake Erie Conservation Partnership will protect and conserve working agricultural lands vital to the overall health of Lake Erie’s waters, while also enhancing productive soils vital to the regional food system's resiliency and security. Project partners intend to use the Great Lakes Water Management System to target conservation easement funding to prioritized lands and model the conservation outcomes of project activities. In addition, the partners intend to explore the potential to increase access to affordable farmland for Beginning and Socially Disadvantaged farmers.
Critical Conservation Areas – Great Lakes Region
Project: Upper Tittabawassee River Regional Conservation
Lead Partner: Gladwin County
Gladwin County, in collaboration with five partners, will work with landowners to address sediment impairment and degraded aquatic habitat associated with agricultural drainage channels. The project area targets Tittabawassee River tributary confluences located in economically depressed areas of Gladwin and Midland Counties in Michigan. Land management activities include the implementation of cover crops and the planting of herbaceous buffers comprised of cool and warm-season grasses and native nut and fruit-bearing trees.
Critical Conservation Areas – Great Lakes Region
Project: Farmland Water Quality Conservation Initiative
Lead Partner: Ottawa Conservation District
The Farmland & Water Quality Conservation Initiative aims to benefit the long-term economic, social, and environmental health of Ottawa County by protecting surface and groundwater quality and improving aquatic and wildlife habitat in the Macatawa, Lower Grand, and Pigeon River watersheds. Project partners plan to develop a watershed model using the USDA-developed Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework to identify lands where implementation activities targeting both surface and groundwater conservation would have the greatest impact.
Critical Conservation Areas – Great Lakes Region (Includes Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio)
Project: Tri-State Western Lake Erie Basin - Collaboration
Lead Partner: Indiana State Department of Agriculture
Funding Amount: $7,780,779
Indiana, Michigan and Ohio State Departments of Agriculture will join forces with over 30 partners to help participating farmers improve soil health and reduce nutrient loading impacts in the Western Lake Erie Basin. The partnership will use sophisticated targeting tools to work with producers and landowners operating near the Maumee headwaters, an area identified as a source of high levels of excess phosphorus, with technical and financial assistance opportunities.
Michigan Projects Selected - 2020
Critical Conservation Areas – Great Lakes Region
Project: Thornapple-Kalamazoo Water Quality Partnership
Lead Partner: Barry Conservation District
Funding Amount: $ 762,740
The Barry Conservation District aims to make measurable improvements and protect water quality and habitat for fish, wildlife, and invertebrates in the Gun, Rabbit, and Thornapple River watersheds. The local partners, including the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, plan to build on existing community partnerships to implement the first farmer-led and landowner-led conservation practice implementation initiatives in the region.
Project Eligibility Area Map
Eligible Practices
Michigan Projects Selected - 2018
Critical Conservation Areas – Great Lakes Region
Project: Maple Watershed Fish Habitat Improvement
Lead Partner: Institute of Water Research
The Maple River Watershed has experienced diminished fish habitat and degraded water quality as groundwater uses have expanded. Field crops in parts of the watershed require significant amounts of irrigation to produce maximum yields. Water withdrawals compete with subsurface flows feeding nearby streams impacting fish populations by changing stream temperature. Catchments in the Maple are in need of measures that offset the negative impacts of withdrawals on baseflow and temperatures. This project will improve fish habitat and water quality through a variety of conservation measures such as no till, buffer strips, and drainage management.
State Project
Project: Ann Arbor Greenbelt: Saving Michigan Farms
Lead Partner: City of Ann Arbor Greenbelt Program
Located near the struggling Western Lake Erie Basin and southeast Michigan’s rapidly growing Ann Arbor/Detroit metropolitan areas, the Ann Arbor Greenbelt: Saving Michigan Farms project provides an opportunity to protect agricultural lands key to food security and the local economies, preserve the agricultural heritage and quality of life of residents, and combat the NRCS resource concerns of water quality degradation, soil quality degradation and inadequate habitat for fish and wildlife.
Michigan Projects Selected - 2017
Critical Conservation Areas - Great Lakes Region
Project: Lower Grand River Watershed Habitat Restoration - Farmland Conservation Project
Lead Partner: Grand Valley Metro Council
The Watershed Habitat Restoration - Farmland Conservation Project addresses priority resource concerns in the Lower Grand River Watershed of water quality degradation and inadequate habitat for fish, wildlife and invertebrates. The project will use innovative, creative designs to revitalize 2.5 miles of the river flowing through Grand Rapids. The project will encourage conservation practices, possibly through financial assistance or cost share funds, using new technology in managing large river systems to address resource concerns.
State Project
Project: The Huron River Initiative
Lead Partner: Legacy Land Conservancy
Through the Huron River Initiative, the Legacy Land Conservancy and partners will work with producers in the upper Huron River watershed to address soil quality degradation and water quality degradation – improving, sustaining and building upon the Emerald Arc of conserved lands in Southeast Michigan.
Michigan Projects Selected - 2016
Critical Conservation Areas - Great Lakes Region
Project: Tribal Stream and Michigan Fruitbelt Collaborative
Lead Partner: Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians
To achieve long term restoration and protection of a multi-tribal fishery, partners will address aquatic organism passage, aquatic habitat and water quality resource concerns at 66 stream crossings and dams throughout northwest Lower Michigan. To ensure conservation investments are long lasting and not undermined by drastic changes in watershed hydrology, land conservancies will preserve nearly 3,000 acres of unique, specialty-crop agricultural land with permanent conservation easements in one of the fastest developing areas in the project area and Great Lakes. This additional land protection and stream work will help protect a major portion of the network of globally rare, cold and cool water, groundwater input, sandy substrate habitats connected by large forested corridors that deliver the highest quality water inputs and comprise the backbone of resiliency for the Great Lakes. Protection of water quality and re-connection of
aquatic habitat in this region is vital as these natural resources underpin two major and interdependent portions of Michigan's economy - agriculture and tourism.
Michigan Projects Selected - 2015
State Project
Project: Training Foresters to Enhance Sustainable Management of Private Forest Land
Lead Partner: Michigan Department of Natural Resources - Forest Resources Division
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources will partner with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to enhance private forest land in the state by providing training to both public and private sector professional land managers. NRCS will provide conservation financial assistance to forest landowners and the Michigan DNR will provide training to about 450 professional land managers. The Michigan DNR will train their staff on NRCS conservation programs and provide technical training to conservation district and private sector foresters. Those receiving the training will be able to advise forest landowners on how to utilize NRCS programs for addressing a variety of resource concerns that adversely impact soil and water quality.
National Projects
Project: Improving Forest Health for At-Risk Wildlife Resources in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan
Lead Partner: American Bird Conservancy
Building on a strong existing partnership with NRCS, American Bird Conservancy (ABC) seeks to improve forest management on nearly 12,000 acres of nonindustrial forest land in order to provide essential habitat for the golden-winged warbler and other potential threatened and endangered species. Partners will implement additional forest management on at least 52,000 acres on public and private lands. Goals of the project include achieving a better distribution of forest habitat to benefit potential threatened and endangered species, increasing the population of golden-winged warblers on private lands, and, ultimately, avoiding its listing under the Endangered Species Act.
This project received additional funding and was expanded to include additional counties in northern Michigan and to address habitat needs for the Kirtland's Warbler.
Success Story: Little Traverse Conservancy
Project: Michigan/Indiana St. Joseph River Watershed Conservation Partnership
Lead Partner: Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
The partnership strives to find solutions to increasing groundwater withdrawals and sediment and nutrient loading that are economically good for the farmer but also have multiple conservation benefits, including optimizing groundwater use, improving infiltration, and reducing nutrients and sediment while also improving wildlife and fisheries habitat. Innovative methods to target high-priority areas and appropriate conservation practices will take an already developed watershed management plan to the next level. Monitoring will be used to adaptively manage this project at various levels, from the field-scale to the entire watershed. Partners have a strong history of working with both NRCS and producers.
Critical Conservation Areas - Great Lakes Region
Project: Saginaw Bay Watershed Conservation Partnership
Lead Partner: The Nature Conservancy
Saginaw Bay, an embayment of Lake Huron, hosts the largest coastal wetland in Lake Huron and faces numerous water quality challenges, including loss of habitat, excessive nutrients and sediment, and algal blooms. This project will set ecologically relevant implementation goals, track progress using new online tools, and harness the influence of agribusiness as a complementary delivery mechanism in order to reach goals of treating 55,000 acres with conservation practices through EQIP and restoring 400 acres of wetlands through ACEP by 2019. The partners will track effectiveness using the Great Lakes Watershed Management System to quantify acres implemented and total sediment and nutrients reduced annually while also working with project partners to monitor long-term trends in fish community health.
Project: Tri-State Western Lake Erie Basin Phosphorus Reduction Initiative
Lead Partner: Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
A diverse team of partners will use a targeted approach to identify high-priority sub-watersheds for phosphorus reduction and increase farmer access to public and private technical assistance—including innovative demonstrations of practices that NRCS does not yet cover—in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. Identified actions are coordinated with the Ohio Phosphorus Task Force Report and will move Lake Erie toward goals developed in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement Annex 4 Nutrient Strategies. The partners will gauge success and monitor results using project-wide water quality monitoring and watershed modeling conducted by national experts from multiple scientific entities and institutions.
