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THE Slash Site is set to open Friday April 17th
And new this year, we are debuting a website for the Divide Slash Site
Please forward this link to anyone who might be interested!!
Also, click here to check out our slash site brochure: slash-site-trifold
Welcome to the first NRCS blog relating to the Woodland Park Healthy Forest Initiative.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is a federal agency under the U. S. Department of Agriculture. We date back to the “Dirty 30’s” Dust Bowl days, and were created to assist landowners and landusers better manage their land to prevent air and water erosion (and pollution) on primarily privately owned land. We work as technical advisors, not regulators, to help Ag producers improve and maintain their economic sustainability while conserving their natural resources.
Our mission has been condensed down to the phrase “Helping People Help the Land”. One way we accomplish this goal is through our cost share programs from the periodic national “Farm Bills”. One such program, specifically geared toward the WPHFI goals of forest management and wildfire mitigation, is called the Environmental Quality Incentives Program–or EQIP, to use the government acronym. This program typically splits the cost of installing forestry practices, thinning diseased or insect infested trees, or performing wildfire mitigation, on a 50/50 basis with qualifying landowners. Refer to the “Notes on Forestry Management EQIP Contracts” for more information. Contact our local Woodland Park office for assistance in getting answers to questions about EQIP or how to sign up for an EQIP contract. The office voice phone number is 719.686.9405, the fax number is 719.686.9403, and my email address is: leon.kot@co.usda.gov
Phone: (719) 686-9405 Leon.Kot@co.usda.gov Fax: (719) 686-9403
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Teller-Park CD Office Tamarac Business Center 800 Research Dr., Suite 100 Woodland Park, CO 80863 |
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March 9, 2009
NOTES ON FOREST MANAGEMENT EQIP CONTRACTS
The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) first authorized forest management cost share funding following the 2002 wildfires in the state. Basically, the normal requirement for a landowner to be an agricultural producer who obtains $1,000.00 per year from Ag products is waived for the forestry resource category.
To be eligible for forestry issues EQIPs, a producer/landowner must either have a forest management plan in place or pending for the fiscal year funding cycle, or have performed some type of timber management in the past. This treatment could be the removal of mistletoe or insect infested trees, thinning for defensible space or for timber stand improvement, installing fuel or fire breaks, or the like. Forest Management Plans may be extensive consultant generated plans, or plans such as the Colorado State Forest Service’s Forest Ag Plans or possibly their Forest Stewardship Plans. EQIP also pays to plant trees for erosion control or wildlife habitat.
Typically, contracts are set up for 3-5 years but if it takes producers longer to thin their trees themselves if they don’t hire professional contractors, the contracts can run up to 10 years time.
Cost share is normally at the 50 percent level—half from the government and half from the landowner—but certain categories of participation pay more, and if producers do their own work they may yield more then the standard gov’t paybacks. Treatments are installed and if they pass inspection, the contract reimburses the landowner the gov’t share. Special categories of farm or ranch operators may be provided an advance payment to purchase supplies instead of waiting for the reimbursement after the work is done.
Producers may request the Technical Service Providers perform their timber planning, installation and design work under a separate funding mechanism which reimburses the contractors directly without the producer paying them and then awaiting gov’t reimbursement. This request needs to be made early in the EQIP application and contracting process, so inquire of me how this process works if this may be something that might be considered.
Thank you for your interest in the EQIP program,
Leon S. Kot
District Conservationist
The Natural Resources Conservation Service works hand-in-hand with the American People to conserve natural resources on private lands.
USDA/NRCS is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
Washington: On February 25th, the entire Colorado Congressional delegation and other elected officials from Colorado, along with U.S. Forest Service officials, held a meeting to talk about the current status of the bark beetle epidemic in Coloarado. The open dialogue included discussions of how the Forest Service and local communities are responding, funding options to combat the bark beetle problem and protect public safety, and potential legislation in the current Congress to provide help.
During the meeting, the Colorado Congressional delegation agreed to sign a letter to the secretaries of the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Homeland Security that requests the departments use all tools available to them to help alleviate the hazard of catastrophic wildfires caused by the bark beetle infestation
The delegation’s letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is included below:
February 25, 2009
The Honorable Ken Salazar, Secretary, Department of the Interior; The Honorable Tom Vilsack, Secretary, Department of Agriculture; The Honorable Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary, Department of Energy; and The Honorable Janet Napolitano, Secretary, Department of Homeland Security
Dear Secretaries Salazar, Vilsack, Chu, and Napolitano:
We are writing to urge your agencies to do what they can to help us address the serious bark beetle infestation affecting our forests in Colorado—an infestation that impacts the state’s economy, environment and water supplies. Two million acres of Colorado’s high-elevation lodgepole pine forests are dead or dying. Municipal and county governments of the region and the state of Colorado are extremely concerned about the hazards of wildfire and falling trees to the health and safety of citizens, their homes and communities, vital public infrastructure such as power lines, and critical water supplies.
Now that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has been signed into law, we urge your agencies to seriously consider applying those funds to address the threats of wildfire and falling dead trees. In northern Colorado, the Forest Service alone has NEPA-ready projects valued at $57.4 million ready to go if and when money is made available through the ARRA. (Over ninety percent of the forests in northern Colorado are public lands, almost all managed by the U.S. Forest Service; The Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service also manage some lands.) These projects will create jobs, produce renewable energy from the removal of insect-killed trees, and protect watersheds that provide water to ten states.
In the five-county epicenter of the dead and dying forests there are:
In addition, the Colorado River rises and flows through these forests, supplying the metropolitan areas of Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Southern California. Major electrical transmission lines that feed the Western Grid (which serves the entire western United States) run directly through the heart of these forests.
We, the members of Colorado’s congressional delegation, strongly urge you to:
Jobs created in the public and private sectors to respond to the enormous task of implementing hazard mitigation projects will provide significant stimulus to our state and national economy. We cannot overstate the threat to communities and our fellow Coloradans’ way of life posed by these dead and dying federal forests. We urge you take decisive actions within your authorities to avert potential disaster.
Respectfully,
Senator Mark Udall, Senator Michael Bennet, Representative Diana DeGette, Representative Mike Coffman, Representative Doug Lamborn, Representative Betsy Markey, Representative Ed Perlmutter, Representative Jared Polis, Representative John Salazar
FRRT Meeting, February 5, 2009
Last week’s Front Range Round Table (FRRT) meeting was in the FEMA building at the Denver Federal Center. Security was intense entering the circa-1960s nuclear-attack resistant building, but the meeting room could easily hold the large crowd that attended. We had three commissioners attend, including Teller County’s Jim Ignatius (who is also a member of our Leadership Committee), as well as commissioners from Boulder and Gilpin counties. Other WPHFI members attending included Carol Ekarius and Jonathan Bruno of CUSP, and Mike Smith of the Colorado Renewable Resource Cooperative.
Spirits at the FRRT were running high. Our efforts at collaboratively building approaches to forest health and wildfire mitigation seem to be paying off. The WPHFI was held up as a model of where such efforts are going. In a nutshell, these kind of focused and community-driven programs are where work will be happening in the future.
State Forester Jeff Jahnke updated the group on possible funding that may come from the economic recovery legislation to help with our work. And, Jim Ignatius and Paige Lewis (of The Nature Conservancy) discussed activities and plans coming out of the Governor’s Forest Health Advisory Council. Thanks to efforts of the 24-member council, the State Legislature is considering 11 bills this session that will help Coloradoans address issues such as mountain pine beetle.
And speaking of pine beetle, the ecological committee is going to be sending out drafts of a document on scientists’ understanding of the pine beetle impacts to lodgepole pine, and the potential for it to explode into the ponderosa pine. We will send the document to all our members as soon as its available.
As you’re driving down Hwy 24 toward Colorado Springs look to your right around the historic Wishing Well motel, and you may notice the hillside taking on a more open look. Much of the deadwood—killed by the beetles over the last few season—has already been removed, with lots of it distributed to needy residents by Teller County Help The Needy, a nonprofit that provides a number of services to folks facing hard times and personal challenges. Cutting is just starting on the green trees in which the beetle larvae are overwintering (aka, brood trees). The brood trees are either chipped, or solar treated, to destroy the larvae before they fly. Work will continue in this area over the next few months.
