- Shelterbelts - Shelterbelts are one of the most common projects picked by landowners. Shelterbelts provide winter habitat, escape cover and travel corridors to adjacent habitats by establishing tree and shrub cover. While providing needed habitat, shelterbelts provide aesthetic values to land, protects land from wind erosion, and provide a windbreak.
- Food plots - Landowners can earn money by providing standing grain near winter cover for wildlife; landowners can receive as much as $300 an acre for corn, and $250 an acre for wheat.
- None farmable areas - Grass corridors, roadsides, and pivot corners provide nesting and brood rearing habitat for a variety of wildlife. This program can help landowners manage weeds, control erosion problems and also adds aesthetic values to the land.
- Winter cover - Stubble management provides residual crops for forage and cover for wintering wildlife. Landowners can receives as much as $20 an acre for leaving stubble standing in the fall. This will reduce erosion created by wind and water runoff.
- Cost share programs - Landowners interested in several of the NRCS programs, like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Wetland Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), Continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CCRP) or the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) can also receive money for cost share assistance from the Fish and Game Habitat Improvement Program.
Building a home for wildlife
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JEROME - To survive wildlife need habitat. Just like humans; wildlife need food, water, shelter, and space to survive.
As the population in the Magic Valley Region continues to grow, agricultural land is gobbled up by subdivisions, farming methods change, and bird habitat shrinks.
Sportsmen who want to hunt wild pheasants in Idaho head to areas with good habitat, more specifically Idaho's farmlands. Some of the most important wildlife habitat in the state is located on private lands. Throughout Idaho many species of upland game animals spend all or part of their lives on these islands of habitat, rock piles, pivot corners, riparian zones, fence lines and ditch banks. The combination of farm crops and cover that are found in agricultural based communities offers year-round habitat for upland birds and other wildlife species.
Private landowners, sportsmen, and wildlife biologists have expressed concerns over the decline of pheasants in the last two decades. Farmers, who enjoy seeing wildlife while working in their fields, no longer see the number of birds of yesteryear. Hunters are spending more time in the field and harvesting fewer birds for their efforts.
To help bolster bird populations, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and Farm Service Agency (FSA) have developed several plans to help wildlife by building or restoring lost habitat.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game's Habitat Improvement Program (HIP) was started in 1987, it provides cost-share opportunities for private landowners for projects such as construction of ponds and wetlands, planting farmstead and field windbreaks, planting small winter food plots, and establishing areas of grasses and legumes for nesting cover. The programs are designed to help both upland gamebirds and waterfowl.
Many of the programs offered by the Fish and Game's Habitat Improvement Program can be joined with programs offered by the NRCS and the FSA.
Some are cost share programs between the agencies and landowner, with landowners receiving 50 to 100 percents of the money needed to improve habitat for wildlife. Along with providing new habitat, the programs help landowners reduce erosion, enhance land values, and restore land health.
Some of the programs landowners can take-part in provide benefit for wildlife, and protect fragile soils.