Programs for Protecting Scenic Views

Federal easement programs, facilitated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) are available to help preserve and protect our most beautiful and inspiring views. The list below includes descriptions of these programs, plus a state-by-state look at how these programs are used.

• Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP): A USDA program that provides financial and technical assistance to help conserve agricultural lands and wetlands and their related benefits. There are two components to the program – the Agricultural Land Easements (ALE) and the Wetlands Reserve Easements (WRE).
• Emergency Watershed Protection Floodplain Easement Program (EWPP-FPE): A USDA program which provides an alternative for farmers with frequently flooded and damaged farmland. The program’s primary emphasis is to retire frequently-flooded bottomland from agriculture uses, allowing the unimpeded reach and flows off floodwaters. It also eliminates the need for future disaster payments on frequently flooded cropland.
• Emergency Wetlands Reserve Program (EWRP): An NRCS program authorized in 1993 under emergency supplemental appropriations to respond to widespread floods in the Midwest, provided payments to purchase easements and partial financial assistance to landowners who permanently restored wetlands at sites where the restoration costs exceeded the land’s fair market value.
• Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program (FRPP):  A USDA program that provides matching funds to help purchase development rights to keep productive farm and ranchland in agricultural uses. Working through existing programs, USDA partners with State, tribal, or local governments and non-governmental organizations to acquire conservation easements or other interests in land from landowners. USDA provides up to 50 percent of the fair market easement value of the conservation easement.
• Grassland Reserve Program (GRP): An NCRS program that helped landowners and operators restore and protect grassland, including rangeland and pastureland, and certain other lands, while maintaining the areas as grazing lands. The emphasis for enrollment into the program is on support for grazing operations, plant and animal biodiversity, and grasslands under the greatest threat of conversion.
• Healthy Forests Preserve Program (HFRP): An NRCS program that helps landowners restore, enhance and protect forestland resources on private and tribal lands through easements and financial assistance.
• Other Stewardship Land Easements (OSL): A category of land easements not funded through NRCS programs
• Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP): An NCRS program that offers a partner-driven approach to conservation that funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural land. By leveraging collective resources and collaborating on common goals, RCPP demonstrates the power of public-private partnerships in delivering results for agriculture and conservation.
• Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP): This program, administered through the Natural Resource Conservation Service, seeks to secure conservation easements and provide cost-share assistance to restore, protect and enhance wetlands and eligible buffers.

Program Usage by State (2022)