The Healthy Watersheds Consortium Grant Program, co-funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the U. S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment), which also manages the partnership.
selects projects from across the country and developed at the local level to protect water quality, to benefit rural jobs associated with agriculture, ranching, and forestry, and to provide measurable benefits for fish and wildlife. The Lower Shore Land Trust was among the 22 recipients to receive a combined $4.168 million to accelerate the pace of watershed protection.
The Chesapeake Bay region is an important focus for conservation and the project will support efforts to build and strengthen partnerships which will collectively protect 11,000 acres with conservation easements across Delaware, Maryland and Virginia by 2020. Watershed land protection will increase stream buffers, forest protections, and water quality and soil conservation throughout the region. This program will help deliver 10% of the acres needed in the Delmarva states to reach the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement goal of 2,000,0000 acres conserved by 2025. This area includes one of seven designated Sentinel Landscapes in the U.S., a collaboration involving the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Interior.
Since 1990, the Lower Shore Land Trust has worked with communities and landowners across the Lower Shore to conserve wildlife habitat, to protect working landscapes, to protect drinking water supplies and to provide water quality protections to key tributaries of the Chesapeake and Coastal Bays. The Trust is committed to conserving natural resources and resource-based industries for strong local economies.
To learn more about the Lower Shore Land Trust and available land conservation programs, visit their website at www.lowershorelandtrust.org or call Jared Parks at 443-234-5587.
