(USDA/NRCS) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking public input on Nonindustrial Private Forest Land (NIPF) related to technical and financial assistance available through conservation programs of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
“We want to ensure we continue program consistency across USDA agencies with how we are defining nonindustrial private forest lands,” said Juan Hernandez, NRCS State Conservationist in Florida and Terrance O. Rudolph, state conservationist for NRCS in Georgia. “It’s important that our conservation assistance reach all eligible lands in accordance with proper criteria to ensure we enroll eligible lands that hold meaningful opportunities.”
NRCS welcomes input from stakeholders across the nation, including those in Florida, to assist with the development of guidance about how to identify NIPF for program enrollment purposes. NRCS must ensure that such guidance is consistent with how other USDA agencies identify NIPF under identical or similar programmatic frameworks. This request for input is to improve transparency about how NRCS makes land eligibility determinations with respect to forest lands.
Nonindustrial private forest land criteria will be adopted after the close of the 30-day period and after consideration of all comments.
Submitting Comments
NRCS invites input on this technical guidance through January 19, 2021. Electronic comments must be submitted through regulations.gov under Docket ID NRCS–2020–0009. All written comments received will be publicly available on http://www.regulations.gov.