Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP)

The WRP is a program that assists landowners in restoring, enhancing and protecting wetlands. Options available to landowners include cost-share agreements, permanent and 30-year easements. The goal of WRP is to achieve the greatest wetland functions and values while restoring at least 70 percent of a project area to its original natural condition.

WRP benefits fish and wildlife habitat, improves water quality by filtering sediments and chemicals, reduces flooding, recharges groundwater, protects biological diversity, and provides opportunities for educational, scientific and recreational activities.

To be enrolled, land must be a wetland farmed under natural conditions, farmed wetlands, prior converted cropland, farmed wetland pasture, farmland that has become a wetland as a result of flooding, riparian areas which link protected wetlands, lands adjacent to wetlands that contribute to the wetlands functions and values, and previously stored wetlands. Pasture, range land and production forest are also available for enrollment where the hydrology has been degraded.

QUOTES:

"Keeping wetlands along the Mississippi River corridor healthy will ensure robust populations of waterfowl continue to visit the area each year." Gar Lile, Arkansas resident and real estate broker
AUSTIN GELDER - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (AK) - "11,000 acres to see return to wetlands" - October 30, 2004

Fast Facts:

Timeline:
1990 - Establishment of the WRP through the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act with a cap set at one million acres
1992 - First acres are enrolled in the program
1996 - Reauthorization of the WRP with the cap reduced to 975,000 acres
2002 - Reauthorization of the WRP with the cap at 2,275,000
2005 - 1,470,000 acres currently enrolled.