USDA and Interior Department initiate joint conservation program

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a $33 million partnership today funded through the Wildlife Habitats Incentives Program (WHIP). They said the joint program, Working Lands for Wildlife, will allow landowners to benefit from conservation practices focused on seven specific species. “In return for voluntarily implementing conservation practices, the federal government will provide landowners with the regulatory certainty that they will not be asked to take additional conservation actions in the future,” Salazar said. Sign-up begins today for the program, which will initially focus on the following seven species: greater sage-grouse, New England cottontail, bog turtle, golden-winged warbler, gopher tortoise, lesser prairie-chicken and the Southwestern willow flycatcher...more

The last two are in NM.