Perceptions of Landscape Transformations and the Conservation Reserve Program in the Southern U.S. Plains

Keywords: Southern Plains, CRP, conservation, ecosystem services
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 66

Abstract

The southern Great Plains region is the site of some of the highest concentrations of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the US. The program is designed to incentivize rural land managers to conserve their privately-owned land for the purpose of maintaining or improving ecosystem services such as providing habitat for endangered species, protecting soils, sequestering carbon, and preserving hydrological systems. While this program has provided many benefits towards conservation, discussion about unintended impacts on the environment and local livelihoods and how they shape the rural landscape is lacking in scholarly literature. This paper draws from over 60 interviews with farmers and ranchers from southern Kansas and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas to highlight the major challenges with the conservation reserve program including perceptions about drawbacks to local livelihoods and the environment as a result of CRP. While these drawbacks do not appear to heavily influence enrollment decisions, they also shed light on how the broader landscape of the southern Plains is influenced by incentive-based conservation.