 So our next speaker is Brittany Veers. So Brittany is the Quell Forever and Natural Resource Conservation Service Tennessee State Coordinator and she's also a southeastern grasslands initiative liaison. And she'll be discussing some remnant grassland restoration projects on private lands. So Brittany is originally from northeast Texas in the Black Belt region, but grew up in southern Indiana for the most part she went to college at Murray State for undergrad and her masters and has a passion for remnant grasslands blades Baron so she's in good company here. Let's see. Yeah, and we're excited to have her tell us about some of the private land restoration projects that that she has been working on. Brittany. Thanks Tara. Thank you all for having me. I'm going to try to share my screen here really quick. Thank you for that great introduction Tara. I'll start by explaining a little bit about private lands work so it's pretty common. Sort of with our upcoming or today's management strategies and partnerships that private lands positions are often like a hodgepodge, they're funded by multiple agencies and organizations and nonprofits and it's just sort of like how it's been for probably the last 10 years and that's just going to continue as a trend and that's because the federal agencies really like partnerships because it's a honestly a cheaper way for them to achieve their goals. And also, you know, partnerships are just a great way to address conservation and everybody working together. So, a big part of what I do is to sort of bridge the gap between sort of plant conservation folks and more natural areas folks with wildlife managers. You know, as we all know, sometimes those groups and that those dynamics are not always on the same page and so our private lands team is is trying to be more cohesive and sort of establish, you know, friendships and working relationships with those schools of thought so I grew up on a row crop and cattle farm and but I'm extremely passionate about grasslands and remnants so it's it ends up working out a lot in our favor to sort of, you know, like for example, we'll work with cattle producers who are interested in planting native warm season grasses as a forage method to get over that summer slump so to speak so even though that's not necessarily remnant or restoration work it's still better than something like Bermuda grass or Bahia in their farming operations so Okay, so just a brief background about quail forever and our farm bill partnerships. This started back in 2003 with only four positions in South Dakota, we're now approaching probably 300 partner biologists nationwide within 24 states. So just wanted to give everybody a scope of how big our program has become. So, over 91,000 projects on private lands. And the funding sources are diverse. The backbone of our partnership is USDA NRCS the natural resources conservation service which is the private lands branch of the USDA. I would say nearly all of our positions have some NRCS involvement. And that's our model, our partner biologist are housed in NRCS County field offices, so that they're in the know, they know what's going on with programmatic updates and changes and they know how to implement them well they're working hand in hand with soul conservationist and district conservationists that are more, you know, soil health based and more ag based, but it's, it's really handy to have an actual wildlife biologist sitting right next to the other planners. We often have us fishing wildlife involvement national fishing wildlife funds. We have a private lands forester right now working on the Cumberland plateau, and even though his title is forester, his mission is really to address forestry on the plateau, really more as a restoration outlook. He's working with landowners and making those recommendations and helping with farm bill programs, implementing them to basically remove a lot of hardwood encroachment cedar encroachment, working on prescribed fire. So, even though forester is his title because he's also reviewing private lands like forest management plans to make sure that they're up to speed and up to our standards. He's also really looking at his position and what he's doing from, you know, Woodland and Savannah and he's also really looking at his role in the laid restoration outlook. So, and then also very importantly, we have. So this confuses folks a little bit, because there are pheasants forever and quill forever volunteer just everyday citizen chapters. We have a backbone of our nonprofit organization and a way to get private citizens involved in conservation and caring about quail and other grassland species. We have a chapter in Tennessee that are actually certified prescribed burn managers and so they actually provide that as a resource for our landowners in West Tennessee. But these chapters they hold fundraising events, similar to like, I'm sure you are familiar with like ducks unlimited and National Wild Turkey Federation but our model is a little different because everything that's raised with that specific local chapter stays with that chapter. So they're able to do what they want with it and like Chris was talking about Illinois, Illinois is a big business forever and quail forever state, and a lot of those folks use their chapter money for habitat projects grassland restoration projects they also do a lot of burning or they may plant back something that's been lost from row crop production. So anyway our chapters are a really important aspect to what we do. Okay, so I won't spend too much time on farm bill information but that this is what we're implementing for landowners. This is the funding that we are using to get our grasslands work completed. It's definitely a focused approach and you know when people think about farm bill. It's more of a big picture like folks think about ag practices and that's true but there's a ton of money that's designated specifically for wildlife every single year, like equip the environmental quality incentives program for example 10% of that like $10 million has to go specifically to wildlife every single fiscal year and that continues to get renewed. And it's not that it goes away if you don't use it but there's oftentimes a lot of states that don't come anywhere close to obligating what they've been granted from NRCS National so we're currently operating under the 2018 farm bill, which is a whole lot better. 2014 farm bill kind of got stripped from a wildlife standpoint so we're really glad that we've got better funding for some of our farm bill programs notably the conservation reserve program, which is our 10 year program sometimes 15 years in certain years, but we really love this one because at least something is putting is being put back in habitat for at least 10 years and sometimes 15 and you can plant trees, and there is a tree planting option in this program but most of what we're doing are things like Cp 42 pollinator habitat field borders for Bob White quail. We also have a new practice called prairie strips, and where some folks might have used like a fescue cool season grass waterway now that they can actually do a wide strip of prairie plants. And, you know, dependent on the state and like how technically sound and educated your private land staff is. Sometimes folks will just sort of, you know, use like a blanket pollinator mix but I'm proud to say that I hold our staff at a really a higher level and I do a lot of training with native plants with them as they are hired so that they understand if they're creating a native seed mix, and it's being planted into a real crop or an old pasture scenario that they're putting the right species back with what historically occurred there so that's really important to us to have that native plant integrity. So we also implement what's called the environmental quality incentives program. This one is popular and highly desirable with a lot of landowners because it's it's a quick contract it's usually only two years. And it's pretty simple, they do their practices or tasks, such as targeting invasive species. You know, like I said, planning a pollinator mix or doing a thinning in a degraded woodland or Savannah targeting certain hardwoods with either hack and squirt or selective thinning, and then they get their payment. And certainly well it's based on 75% cost share. Oftentimes it's more than that because we do work off of flat rate payment schedule. So this is just, it's really beneficial as long as a landowners have the funding upfront, they will get their flat rate payment reimbursement after those conservation practices are completed. So we also have CSP the conservation stewardship program. This one is more complicated and sometimes hard for landowners to understand and so it's more cumbersome from that standpoint, but it is desirable to some folks because it's a five year contract and they get annual payments during that five year time span, just like with CRP, they get an annual payment for 10 years. So CSP, like the whole rationale is to reward landowners for already being good stewards. So let's say somebody's already started tackling bush honeysuckle or microsteegeum, they're already starting that process and then maybe the landowner gets to the point where he or she's like, well I'm running out of funds. I'm doing all this work on my own, but I've got the point where I need a little help. And so that's great CSP would be a great option for them. Okay, now the one that I'm mainly going to talk about. This is our regional conservation partnership program. And I encourage any of you that are doing private lands work. You could easily put a proposal together with partners and apply for RCPP. And if especially if you are looking at a broad scope of grassland conservation or plank or whatever your focus is, your chances of getting approved with a more of an eco region approach is much better than small like a couple of counties or something like that. You know, Chris was talking about all of southern Illinois I mean that would be a great example, you know maybe targeting glades of southern Illinois something like that, you know, and there may already be an RCPP there I'm not sure but just using that as an example and so that's the reason why our RCPP has got funded. We have a four and a half million dollar RCPP for Kentucky and Tennessee, and I'll get more into detail about that but this just shows some examples of some successful RCPP's hours for example, think of it as like an umbrella. Our RCPP has other farm bill program specific funding underneath it. So underneath ours, we have equip CSP and WRE. Our RCPP now is a standalone program, which is a lot less cumbersome and more. It's easier to work with, but we're ours was approved under the 2014 farm bill so that's the reason why ours is more like that umbrella approach. So we spend a lot of time marketing like pushing our programs we do a lot of outreach, we do field days, we have landowner meetings where we scrounge up the money and ask for donations for supper so that people will have a good hot meal while they're listening to us talk about grasslands. We've had a lot of success with those so it's very much like a boots on the ground grassroots approach and as you can see the picture on the left I'm speaking in the middle of the corn corn and soybean and cotton field and in my own Tennessee, which is heavy row crop country, but it also happens to be a grassland remnant county. And so to explain what we're doing when that process gets started. After someone applies or they come to us and say I need assistance then we start planning. You know we're going out to the sites, determining what's there we also look at the surrounding landscape to see what native plants are still hanging on. And if we have to do a planting we use that to help us as a guide to know what to put in our seed mixes. Now, in a perfect world, I would love for us to just utilize that native seed bank, but we all know, especially in western Kentucky and West Tennessee which is where I spent a ton of time. It's you have to rely on that historical information to basically recreate that prairie. Now we do push those tree thinning and fire practices heavily. I'm hoping that we can see more of a transition to utilizing those instill intact seed banks as opposed to doing so many plantings I'm trying to get our bios to really push those practices because what we have found is that thinning and burning is still, even though those are sometimes difficult tasks more the low hanging fruit because we still have some seed bank left, where if we could get more sunlight and fire through those communities. We see that natural response. So, like I said, we assist with a lot of prescribed fire. We work jointly with our private lands biologists partners in Tennessee. Our TWA PLBs, they often will be the serve as the burn boss and then we assist. So, okay now switching gears a little bit and tying in SGI to what we're doing. We work day to day with the southeastern grasslands initiative, our executive director Dwayne Estes. I'm sure a lot of y'all know Dwayne Thea Witzel from Arkansas Dr. Allen weekly from North Carolina Botanic Garden. So, we're using these maps to help us determine where we're focusing and as you can see, even though SGI. We're new and continuing to build our partnerships and our footprint everyone has to start somewhere. So, we have a stronger presence in Kentucky and Tennessee and Alabama right now. But as we expand our partnerships we actually have a coordinating biologist based out of UGA and Athens in Georgia now. You know, some folks get a little confused when we talk about our 23 state, you know, focal region, and no we're not there yet but we are going to get there with the help of our conservation partners. So, and this is what we're relying on. Oh, sorry. Gosh, we wouldn't be anywhere without Dwayne and Theo. They have done so much work and spent so much time looking at these old historical maps and looking at these clues and then helping us make those grassland maps Cooper breeding my SGI colleague with the Tennessee Plant Conservation Alliance, I'm going to head out to Cooper because he's wonderful too. And he has made some of these maps, and it's just vital like we could not do our basically our recreation work without these clues and as so many of y'all can relate a lot of times especially when you're stepping into these encroached glades encroached woodlands and savannahs. Even a regular wildlife biologist a standard wildlife biologist may not have any idea without knowing those plant clues that that historically was much more open. So, this is really key information. Here are the grasslands that we consider that we focus on I mean as you can see prairie savannahs, you know those mountain boulds in eastern Kentucky East Tennessee. That's our scope and our focus. So, here are the things here some species that we're primarily targeting. Okay, now tie in the SGI work into our specific RCPP. SGI is one of the main funders and really like the backbone of this RCPP you know like I said that's where we're getting most of our information from. They have also housed us provided us office space. Just great partners, but the American bird conservancy, which is tied with the central hardwoods joint venture. That's the basically the the grant holder, they are housing the funding, and then we are the subcontractors, which isn't important all that matters is that we're getting the work done but just to give you perspective on how many we've got 11 partners on this RCPP. Now, that does make reporting a little challenging, but do whatever you can to get your RCPP approved that would be my message. Okay, so the whole rationale behind our grasslands RCPP, because it's American bird conservancy grant are three grassland focal birds northern bob whites his low sparrows and eastern metal arcs. And as we all know, Bob whites and metal arcs used to be common is dirt. And, you know, I was doing grassland, or bird surveys in college, you know, 15, 18 years ago, and even back then metal arcs were so common and not it's just sad to see how much they've declined in that relatively short time span. And handsless barrels are a little challenging for us to really help on private lands just because they need such a large home range. But again, we're doing the best we can for all of them. So, when we're meeting with landowners we're explaining to them that, you know, if grasslands restoration is suitable for your property and we know that it was a remnant. We really try to push our specific funding option with RCPP and explain to them that the birds are really the birds and the rare plants are what we're trying to save and we've had really good luck and success with the landowners that we've worked with and it's been kind of refreshing in a way because we've still been working with our traditional more ag background, and maybe game species focus type landowners but then we've also had a lot of landowners that really have cared more about biodiversity. So that's been really cool. So we relied on those maps, like I mentioned earlier to decide where our focal counties were going to be areas that still contain significant remnants and where we knew remnants occurred and then also areas where we felt like landowner cooperation and interest were strong. And then here this just gives you a perspective on how much our funding is like how much we've got. This is kind of nuts but in our CS somehow missed how much CSP funding we had in the beginning and so we ended up getting over $300,000 of CSP for per state. And we didn't know that until after a year into the RCPP it wasn't really anybody's fault it's just sometimes things get lost in the shuffle. Great news and in Tennessee we've obligated 90% of that CSP is a little harder push in Kentucky. It's not as favored of a program, just because like I said it's cumbersome and a little bit harder to implement with the NRCS folks so it's just a cultural thing some programs are just stronger in some states and others. So we've obligated most of our equip funding for each state. So here is our grassland map for Tennessee. So this determined a lot of our, you know, focal county selection. Here are some grassland remnants. I mentioned about just knocking on doors and like approaching random landowners we do a lot of that. And it's, I would say the majority of the time thankfully, they are at least willing to hear what we have to say and to be cooperative, or at least like delay their mowing, you know mowing is an issue that we all address and face everywhere and definitely a big obstacle we face but if we could just talk them into just waiting, you know until those seeds are fully mature to do any cutting. A lot of times folks are willing to wait. So some cone flowers in Rutherford County. The Bamburin County is on the plateau. There's a wet seepage glade there. Okay, so you know, you might remember that the grassland map I just showed so now this gives you perspective of why we chose the focal counties we did. So this is for equip and CSP and then in Tennessee, we also had $2 million allotted for WRE, our wetland reserve easement program. This is this one was pretty tough, because we're almost trying to find needles in a haystack so to speak we're trying to look for wet prairies and convince landowners to enroll in either a 30 year or permanent easement. There's a lot of WRE interest overall in both states, but most of the time folks just want to plant trees and be done with it. They don't want to manage it like the wet prairie that it truly is. So, of the $2 million we have obligated $400,000 of that and honestly, we're just happy that we got three easements out of it and those are in White County, Henry County and Bedford so two in Middle Tennessee and one in West. Okay, so here's our Kentucky. Tara I'm sure you've seen this map. Our grassland map here and the yellow polygons are our quail focus areas or quail focal areas for that Kentucky Fish and Wildlife designates and so we in Kentucky we also use that to determine where we wanted to put our focal counties now Kentucky has a whole lot more focal counties than Tennessee, which is good and bad. It's good because you have a lot of area to obligate your funding but it's less of a focused approach. So, you know, that's been, for the most part, advantageous. We've had some really good contracts in the Jackson Purchase region we've had a lot over in those eastern counties. We have a really great Farm Bill liaison over there, Randall Alcorn who helps implement our CPP. We love Randall. So anyway, so and then just to give you a little more perspective. We call these practice codes. These are our conservation practice codes which, you know, doesn't really mean much to the landowner it's more for us to be able to designate what we're implementing. But as you can see, you know, we've got brush management on there, early successional habitat. For our livestock folks. Now they have to apply for native warm season grass pasture plantings in order to be eligible for the secondary livestock practices such as fence waters and pipeline. But as you can see we've got prescribed burning in there and prescribed grazing, riparian forest buffers, tree and shrub establishment. You know, we spend a lot of time recreating what were natural hedgerows for bob whites. They have to have escape cover or they will not make it. So we try to push native shrubs where they naturally occurred a lot so. Okay, so our summary of what we've this is a little bit behind but it just shows you. We've got about 250,000 remaining for equip in both states. And this gives you some acreage perspectives to most of our contracts are 10 acres or less, but we do have some really big like substantial 50 to 100 acre blocks which is, you know, really what we'd like to say. But anyway, just gives you some perspective on how many acres we've been able to implement of these programs on private lands so any questions. Thank you Brittany that was awesome. We do have a couple questions for you. From West Cunningham. Yes, what was the name, for example, CP 42 of the pollinator habitat replacement for the cool season vegetated swales. Okay yeah so that one is it's it's actually CP 43 it's called prairie strips. I hope that answers your question. It's that's the brand new practice under CRP that I mentioned. We've we've got a couple of those in West Tennessee I'm not sure if they've used any of those in Western Kentucky yet or Kentucky. But, you know, again, I love those because especially if the landowners is comfortable with you going above and beyond the minimum like nine species seed mix we often do like a 15 to 20 species seed mix. And we of course try to balance costs so that they're not, you know, breaking their bank so to speak with their out of pocket expenses even though they're getting reimbursed. We really try to push and strive for a lot of Forbes and native grasses that are site specific and really try to address that from more of like a diverse standpoint. And then our second question was from Wiley Paxton, who is in charge of the fire effects monitoring for prescribed fire initiatives at the big south fork. Do you have a counterpart that works with the National Park Service in Kentucky for native grassland restoration. So, not specifically that's just like primarily focusing on on burning necessarily but I should have said that under this RCPP. I've been the coordinator and then there are two grasslands Farmville biologist underneath me. So I have one for Tennessee and then we just replaced the lady that we had before. So Cody Jarrett will be starting January 3 and he is working out of Kentucky Fish and Wildlife WMA. I can't remember which one but I know he's going to be in central Kentucky and he is basically going to be pushing the same stuff that we are. If that helps at all and then we also have Zach Iric, who's a coordinating biologist over in Chattanooga, but most of our SGI partner positions are more eco region based, which is why I work in Kentucky and Tennessee both. So Zach also covers the plateau in the region Valley and parts of Appalachia. So, Zach might be someone that might be helpful if you don't know him and I'd be glad to like share anybody's information, like points of contact and stuff.