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News and Events
Choose Delta Wildlife as your WRP Partner
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
As a partner with the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service, Delta Wildlife is fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work with many landowners who enroll and are accepted into the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP). Delta Wildlife’s roll in WRP is to work with the landowners to develop, design and implement a restoration plan on their property, within WRP program guidelines. This includes identifying the locations and construction of duck holes, food plots and access roads. It also includes things like tree planting and the selection of tree species.
Unfortunately, WRP enrollment has been very weak for 3-4 years. For this reason, Delta Wildlife and others have worked hard to strengthen the Wetland Reserve Program and make it a more economically feasible conservation option for landowners in the Mississippi Delta. As of February 1, 2010, WRP payments rate jumped to $1,700.00/acre for cropland and $1,200.00/acre for catfish ponds. This increase has and will continue to strengthen enrollment to levels never before seen.
Because of this tremendous influx of new WRP applications and predicted workloads associated with new WRP restoration, it will be very important for Delta Wildlife members who have or are planning to enroll in WRP to specifically request the assistance of Delta Wildlife for restoration plan development, design and implementation. We would also encourage our members to ask the same of friends and family who may be enrolling lands into WRP. If Delta Wildlife is not specifically requested to perform your WRP restoration work, another WRP partner will be assigned to perform your restoration work. While the other WRP partners do good work, it is certain that Delta Wildlife will work much harder than other partners to represent the best interest of its own members, supporters and friends.
For those of you who have questions about the Wetland Reserve Program and new developments in the program, please feel free to contact Delta Wildlife at (662) 686-3370 or your local county NRCS office.