The Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) helps landowners, land trusts, and other entities protect, restore, and enhance wetlands or protect working farms and ranches through conservation easements.
Pennsylvania NRCS Conservation Easements
Conservation Easements help landowners, land trusts, and other entities manage and protect working farms and ranches, forest lands and restore and protect wetlands. NRCS is now accepting applications for ACEP ALE, ACEP WRE, RCPP Kittatinny Conservation Landscape, and RCPP Farmland Preservation.
ACEP Agricultural Land Easements (ALE)
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) Agricultural Land Easements (ALE) offer private landowners across Pennsylvania the ability to protect private agricultural land from development.
Applications are taken by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) Bureau of Land Preservation, Lancaster Farmland Trust, Land Conservancy of Adams County, or the local county conservation district and/or county land preservation board.
Eligible land conservancies may apply to be holders of ACEP ALE easements.
ACEP ALE Easements are permanent Entity Held Easements with US Rights of Enforcement. The “Entity” is a state or local holder of the deed of easement. The federal government contributes a 50% cost-share match for the easement purchase price.
ACEP Wetlands Reserve Easements (WRE)
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) Wetland Reserve Easements (WRE) facilitate the restoration and protection of wetlands on private land.
Eligible land should have a history of crop production, contains hydric soils, and can be restored to natural wetland conditions.
Contact your local NRCS office to learn more about applying for ACEP WRE.
These are permanent US-held easements. USDA-NRCS pays the value of the easement, the cost associated with recording the easement (survey, appraisal, title insurance), and 75-100% of the restoration cost.
RCPP Easement Programs
Pennsylvania's two Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) Easement Programs enable private landowners to protect private agricultural land and forest land habitat from development.
RCPP Agricultural easements - applications are coordinated through the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) Bureau of Land Preservation and the local county conservation district and/or county land preservation board.
RCPP Forest easements - applications are taken by Berks Nature, Central Pennsylvania Conservancy, Clearwater Conservancy, Manada Conservancy, and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Opportunities for land conservancies to leverage federal cost-share for easements are announced in the annual RCPP Notice of Funding Opportunity (NFO).
Note. Landowners that apply for RCPP and ACEP Easements must be eligible for USDA programs and file eligibility paperwork at the local Farm Service Agency office.
Information about RCPP Projects in Pennsylvania.
Ranking Information
Contact
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Contact your local service center to start your application.
How to Get Assistance
Do you farm or ranch and want to make improvements to the land that you own or lease?
Natural Resources Conservation Service offers technical and financial assistance to help farmers, ranchers and forest landowners.
To get started with NRCS, we recommend you stop by your local NRCS field office. We’ll discuss your vision for your land.
NRCS provides landowners with free technical assistance, or advice, for their land. Common technical assistance includes: resource assessment, practice design and resource monitoring. Your conservation planner will help you determine if financial assistance is right for you.
We’ll walk you through the application process. To get started on applying for financial assistance, we’ll work with you:
- To fill out an AD 1026, which ensures a conservation plan is in place before lands with highly erodible soils are farmed. It also ensures that identified wetland areas are protected.
- To meet other eligibility certifications.
Once complete, we’ll work with you on the application, or CPA 1200.
Applications for most programs are accepted on a continuous basis, but they’re considered for funding in different ranking periods. Be sure to ask your local NRCS district conservationist about the deadline for the ranking period to ensure you turn in your application in time.
As part of the application process, we’ll check to see if you are eligible. To do this, you’ll need to bring:
- An official tax ID (Social Security number or an employer ID)
- A property deed or lease agreement to show you have control of the property; and
- A farm number.
If you don’t have a farm number, you can get one from USDA’s Farm Service Agency. Typically, the local FSA office is located in the same building as the local NRCS office. You only need a farm number if you’re interested in financial assistance.
NRCS will take a look at the applications and rank them according to local resource concerns, the amount of conservation benefits the work will provide and the needs of applicants. View Application Ranking Dates by State.
If you’re selected, you can choose whether to sign the contract for the work to be done.
Once you sign the contract, you’ll be provided standards and specifications for completing the practice or practices, and then you will have a specified amount of time to implement. Once the work is implemented and inspected, you’ll be paid the rate of compensation for the work if it meets NRCS standards and specifications.