Wildlife on Conservation Reserve Program Lands: A Report to Cooperators

During spring and summer of 2006, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, in conjunction with the USDA Farm Service Agency, conducted surveys for wildlife on CRP lands across eastern Washington. This report provides a brief overview of results and progress of that research.

We would like to thank each of the more than 300 landowners and farmers who participated in this research and generously provided access to their fields during this study. We surveyed over 410 fields across 10 counties and are grateful for the cooperation and interest of all participants.

The CRP program is currently the only largescale effort to provide payments to farmers to take land out of production and achieve objectives of both soil conservation and wildlife habitat restoration. In order to assess how well the program is meeting the objective of providing wildlife habitat, we set out to survey a variety of fields enrolled in different practices and of different ages.