Excerpt

From the landowner’s house, we walked across a hayfield to the small wetland. At the edge of the swamp, the landowner pointed out where the beaver had been active, where he had flushed a woodcock, and where he had harvested a deer. After explaining how he managed its water levels, he asked for our opinion—did his restored wetland really have conservation value? What could he do to make it even more valuable as a natural resource?

We were part of a team investigating the ecological value of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), a public–private partnership—currently integrated into the Agency’s Agricultural Conservation Easement Program—that restores wetlands on private property where they had been lost due to agriculture, and protects them under permanent conservation easements. During that site visit and others like it, we inventoried biodiversity, assessed water quality, and documented hydrology and landscape context to evaluate whether the restored wetlands had ecological composition and functions similar to their original counterparts. We also surveyed and interviewed landowners, to find out why they decided initially to participate in the WRP, and whether they were now satisfied with the outcome.

Residents in the St. Lawrence River valley of New York State, like many rural areas in the US, are generally opposed to private-property land use regulation and to acquisition of private land by the government for conservation. Nevertheless, public–private conservation programs are popular, with over 150 landowners participating in the WRP within this region alone.

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