The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) continues to award grant funding for the Wetland Mitigation Banking Program (WMBP). The latest one announced this week is nearly $5 million and will support development of mitigation banks for the restoration, creation or enhancement of wetlands to compensate for unavoidable impacts to wetlands at another location.
This latest announcement adds to the more than $12.4 million that has been provided to 13 partners in 11 states since 2016. This year’s awards prioritized projects in states with large amounts of wetlands as well as large numbers of producers with wetland determination requests.
The seven newly awarded projects includes one here in the Southeast, as a grant for $496,000 will go to the Corblu Ecology Group, LLC in Georgia. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has partnered with the environmental consulting firm since 2016 to develop multiple mitigation bank sites to sell credits to producers statewide.
The WMBP helps agricultural producers comply with wetland conservation provisions and conserve ecologically important wetlands by allowing for off-site mitigation through the purchase of credits from wetland banks established and run by local partners.
Click here for more information about the WMBP program.