 Yeah, whoever I guess I'm, I'm fine by whoever starting it. It started very good. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. So welcome everybody. I want to take a couple of minutes here at the start of this meeting to introduce you to our new state conservationists. Tony Sonseri. Tony is joining us today for California and I'll let him introduce himself and kind of give you an update on what his plans are. So Tony, I'll turn it over to you. All right. Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, folks. Just a quick introduction. I'm Tony Sonseri. I'm the new state conservationist for South Dakota. I've been working in the natural resources conservation field for right around 20 years and I'm excited to be a part of South Dakota agriculture and to be carrying on the mission of NRCS here. I am still working on getting up to speed on South Dakota and will be focusing on just listening and taking notes today. I would be remiss though if I didn't take the opportunity to mention that this week is Soil Health Awareness Week and that Governor Christie Nolan will be making a proclamation to that effect tomorrow at the Capitol. With agriculture being South Dakota's most important industry, we rely on healthy soils to remain economically viable. The goal of this week is to spread awareness of the importance of Soil Health, build community support for the adoption of Soil Health practices by producers, landowners and homeowners. I encourage everybody to visit the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition website if you want more information on Soil Health Awareness Week. Ultimately, I appreciate everyone being here this morning. I look forward to today's discussion and with that, Jeff, I'm going to hand it back to you. All right. Thank you, Tony. Next on the agenda, we like to give our congressional representatives an opportunity to share any updates that they might have. And I haven't scrolled through the list, so there we go. Mr. Donnelly popped on the screen right away. I'll let you give an update quick. Hey, good morning, everyone. I don't have much to note today, but we are kicking off efforts on the next Farm Bill and conservation is always a high priority for Senator Thune, so we'll be thinking of things in the CRP space, areas for improvement there, especially related to hanging, grazing, flexibility and grazing infrastructure. So I would just welcome any ideas that anyone may have. CRP or conservation more generally, as we gear up for the Farm Bill, and I look forward to working with you all. Thanks. All right. Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate the update. I do believe I saw Jim on from Senator Rowan's office. Jim, do you have any updates to give us as well? You know, I think Ryan kind of hit it best, you know, and you're right. Ag is number one in this state and, you know, we do support conservation efforts, so, you know, those are always the things that we're working on here in South Dakota, so welcome aboard, by the way. Looking forward to seeing you in person whenever you get here, so, but unless there's any questions of me. Anybody have any questions for either one of our Senator representatives? I just want to say I appreciate you both being on today. I'm looking forward to the discussion and Jim, I'm hoping to be there within the next couple of weeks too. We're working on getting the relocation thing taken care of, so I'm looking forward to meeting people in person here soon, so thank you. Well, just let us know when you get here and we'll set something up. Sounds perfect, thank you. All right, do we have anybody from Congressman Johnson's office? Well, I'm going to take that as a no. All right, so we will move over to an update from FSA. I don't know, Owen or Joe, I'm not sure which one of you is covering that. If you guys want to give us your update, we'd appreciate that. Hi, good morning. I'm Joe Schulz, acting SED for South Dakota FSA. We're hoping to get an actual SED appointment here within the next month. I don't know who it is, and as far as the conservation updates, I will let Owen update you on what we got going on with CRP's items. All right, thanks, Joe. Morning, everyone. Just a few updates on the conservation reserve side of things. January 26th, there was a press release issued by the secretary that announced the general CRP signup that'll be running from January 31st through March 11th. In addition, our grassland CRP signup will start April 4th and run through May 13th, so county offices are currently busy accepting the general CRP offers along with new land offers for CREP, for continuous CRP signup. Any re-enrollments on expiring contracts for continuous cannot be looked at until April 1, which would be six months prior to expiration, so we will be targeting that along with grassland signup at about the same time. This year alone, we've got around 139,000 acres expiring in South Dakota, so of course, we want to recapture those, get those re-enrolled along with new offers to continue our success with CRP in South Dakota. I guess I'd field any questions if there are any. If not, I'll turn it back to Jeff. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Owen, for that update. Next, we have a soil health update from Tants. Tants, I'll turn it over to you, sir. Good morning, everybody. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. I have just a couple of slides to share with you. I believe it's this one. Can you all see that? Yes, sir. All right. So welcome. Back in May of 2021, I switched my career path a little bit from that of a district conservationist in the Sturgis Field Office and was happy to accept the role of our state's grazing land soil health specialist. So I joined Kent Vleager in having that be my daily focus and just a little bit of background. South Dakota born and bred, graduated high school from Chamberlain, was active in FFA and 4-H at that level, served as the state FFA president during my sophomore year of college and have my degree in egg education from South Dakota State. I started my career with the South Dakota Association of Conservation Districts in 2003 in Belfouche. April of 2005, I moved over to NRCS as a soil conservationist in the Sturgis Field Office. And after four years of being a soil con, it became the DC for 12 and now joined as a soil health specialist. The last few years of being a district conservationist, I caught the soil health bug. I'll point to Jeff Zimperich and members of the soil health and grassland coalitions as credited with giving me the bug and the passion for soil health and really getting into the outreach side of things, both for our internal staff as well as our private landowner producers and even some collaborating agency staff as well. There's three main functions that I see this position really, really having. Of course, the soil health, education, training and outreach is paramount among those three. With the various focus points, the landowner operator side of things is clearly critical because we can talk about the science all we want, but if we can't translate that into implementation on the ground, then what is all of that effort for? We can certainly do that through programs and are having success at doing so, but really it's the technical assistance where Kent and I find our focus. And even though grazing lands specifically is in my position title, in practice, it doesn't matter what the land use is. With me being located at Rapid City in Kent and Huron, we've really been able to grow our reach, if you will, just logistically to include more of the activities related to soil health in the western South Dakota area. So some of the things that I've been doing since May include obviously some of the public tours and things such as the Leopold Tour out at New Harsh this summer. We didn't have any in western South Dakota, but excellence in range management, property tours from the Society for Range Management, conservation district tours and et cetera, pasture walks posted by the South Dakota Grassland Coalition at various locations. Dave Ola and I from the Soil Health Coalition presented at FFA Day down at the Black Hills Stock Show, been in a couple of classrooms, did the rainfall simulator and slag test and things like that. And you can see one of those photos there at County Fair's Youth and Agriculture is outside of school, outside of 4-H, just kind of a parent-led organization in Butte County, which is growing to include some of the surrounding counties. And we look for some activities with them again in 2022, kind of based, unless they change in that Butte Lawrence County Fairgrounds there. I'm a part of the Society for Range Management as a member and one of the things that organization is doing is we put together a natural resources professionals range camp. This is a modified version, if you will, of the historic range camp that used to focus on youth, but due to declining attendance of our youth participants, we found that if we targeted natural resource professionals and maybe moved our focus point a little bit, that we could partner with our colleagues from the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, some of our tribal natural resource agencies and things. And we found success there, so I'm active with that. And then also presenting soil health principles to those grazing land managers help with dynamic soil properties in the field. I think that you're probably, you have been made aware of that project where we're capturing the differences in management across the fence line or across the road, where we have verified that the soils are exactly the same, but our history and management has changed and then quantifying what those properties really undergo as far as change under what we would consider better management versus more of the conventional management and telling that story through these public events. Some of the, maybe the last FaceTime type things got to be on Dakota Farm Talk with Pam Geppert a couple of times earlier this summer with respect to grazing land management during drought conditions. And if you're a subscriber or maybe saw an email, the growing resilience campaign did the six part series on soil health for grazing lands in the tri-state livestock news with Buzz Clute and that was pretty good. And soon to be released a podcast with Buzz where we talk all things soil health on the internal side, changing our focus a little bit to the staff rather than that public facing side of things, one of the focal points in the South Dakota soil health strategy is really engaging out all of our staff and equipping them and even holding them accountable for soil health measures in their performance and in their planning. And so that's going to obviously be a large part of this position already is in my involvement with the soil health and sustainability course from our employee development section, as well as the conservation planning on grazing lands. One of the neat things that I'm really enjoying about this position is that while I'm technically on the soil staff under Nathan Jones, in day-to-day function, I'm just as much tied to the grazing land staff or the range team with Emily as our state range conservationist and all of the area RMS folks. Another big point is to support and grow the partnership effort in our state. I went online and found all these logos and I know that I'm missing piles of them. I just ran out of space. And with Colette serving in her role as Assistant State Con for partnerships and her staff, we're looking for those opportunities and many members of the State Technical Committee might be represented here or should be. And I apologize if I've left you off. It was not on purpose, I promise. And so there's a lot to do there. I think that we've got many untapped resources. I'm serving on the state subcommittee for urban and innovative agriculture. And I suspect that if this were in list format, rather than all of these logos on one slide, that that list would be quite lengthy and will indeed continue to grow through that. And then finally, range land or the grazing land national resources inventory. It's part of my performance plan that I will help or I have and will continue to coordinate our private land access requests for this national inventory of trends, plant communities, soil properties and things of that nature. Really a statistical analysis. This may indeed be one of the best statistically backed resource inventories in the world as far as private lands are concerned. So I'm proud to be a part of it. It can be a heavy lift at times, but we still are accessing private land and need to have permission. So that's a large part of it so that our contractor teams can get on site. I have a role in going to the field. You can see Emily is the closest person in that photo there. That was a trip out to join one of the data collection teams. Make sure that they're essentially following the protocols. And then once the season is completed, I'm charged with reviewing that data accuracy. A lot of that stuff gets used then in ecological site descriptions. The South Dakota drought tool pulls data from this related to production. Kind of gets us maybe not real time, but an always current measure on what production was at a given point with known temperature and precip data from that geographic region. That's a very kind of a quick synopsis of what I do as the state grazing land soil health specialist. It changes. I'm still learning the role. I've always felt like and been told by folks a lot longer in the tooth or been in their careers for longer than me that oftentimes it takes a year, maybe three, to truly find what your niche is and what those roles as the seasons move forward really are. And so I'm still learning. I've been absorbing information just as rapidly as I can related to soil health and landscape management type things. But I'm always looking for other opportunities, particularly on that partnership front. So like the heading on this slide says, let's do something together. I would love to collaborate and visit with folks regardless of their background about soil health. If there's a focus on grazing lands, wonderful, but it doesn't have to be. And I have an email group that I send event flyers to, often included some comments for thought and pondering related to management and soil health. If anyone would like to be included on that, feel free to send me an email. Otherwise, I'm always available for questions. That's all I've got, Jeff. All right. Thank you, sir. Anybody have any questions, sir? By the way, this is my very first state technical committee meeting in almost 18 years. So I'm looking to learn and take it in for the rest of the agenda. Well, welcome. Glad you could join us. I can't say it's my first. All right. Thank you, sir. Next on the agenda, we've got Collette. Collette's got the next two topics about some grant opportunities. So I'll turn it over to Collette. Great. Thanks, Jeff. I just want to drive ready his attention to the handout that came with the state technical committee meeting notice that Kathy sent out. So some of the things that TANTS referenced are in there under a publication called the 3Rs, and it's a growing resilience on the grasslands. So please take time to look through that. The Range Line Management Specialists and the coalitions have been really great about developing and messaging for that effort, and it's being coordinated by Buzz Cluton and his crew. So anyways, I want to draw your attention to that as something to look in our notes. So on the national scale news, we have an announcement that was done by Secretary Vilsack of Climate Smart Partnerships. And in your packet, there is a fact sheet about it, and I've included some links in there regarding that national agreement opportunity. It's really exciting, and there's a very large amount of money, a billion dollars with a B. And it would be really awesome to have some South Dakota proposals go up and be accepted for that. So please do take a look. The first deadline is April 8th for proposals from 5 million to 100 million. And the second deadline is May 27th for smaller from 250,000 to 4.9 million. So that's still a lot of money, and it's still really exciting. But just put your thinking caps on, and just know that any of the staff, if you've got ideas, we'll be happy to brainstorm a little bit with you as far as how to make a good proposal. So it'd really be awesome to have some South Dakota in there. So, okay, let's see. In the, for South Dakota, we have the conservation innovation grants, and it was determined with the leadership team that we will be pausing that announcement or proposals opportunity for one year. There's some things we need to attend to and work on within our state. So we'll be easily pausing that. We'll look for it next year in the winter, probably. Okay, so for the conservation collaboration agreements, we will be having a fiscal year 2022 notice of funding opportunity, and it will be posted on grants.gov. So the grants and agreements team has our information now, and as soon as it's posted on grants.gov, I'll be sure to push it out and we'll have a news release with public affairs and that sort of thing too. But just be aware that it will be posted and the opportunity is going to be coming for some cooperative agreements with us. And when it is posted, it'll be open for 60 days. So those are the things I have. Let's see. There's another sheet in the agenda in your handouts that has some news from partners. And of course, Tony already addressed the Soil Health Awareness Week, which the coalition has been promoting, which is awesome. I wanted to also just have a couple of other quick announcements that I know partners are working on. There's the South Dakota Leopold Conservation Award nominations that are being called for now. So it's a fabulous opportunity to recognize our stewards of the land. And if you need a little help with a nomination or getting it finessed, don't hesitate to ask around and we can maybe help polish it up a little bit because it really is a prestigious award and we fully support it within the agency. And also the Grassland Planners. I know the Grassland Coalition has been working on that for the current year and hard copies of those are available from either Judge Jessup or from Tammy Burmeister at our State Office. We've got soil planners. That's not on this list, but they're really cool this year. They have just each calendar month talks about some of the benefits and the reasons why soil is important to water, to health, to nutrition, all these different things for us. I mean, there's some really cool facts in there. So you may want to be, may want to copy of that as well. The last part is through that Grand Resilience project, Tantz had mentioned the podcast that are coming out. But what's really cool is that we've been working with farmers and ranchers across the state with interviews. And those interviews will be aired through public service announcement on the Grand Resilience project. And they'll be all on South Dakota radio stations. So you can hear voices of your peers on those stations. Okay, well, unless anyone has any questions, I will turn it back to Jeff Indewelt. Couldn't get my camera and mic to come off. All right, any questions for Collette? All right, about that. Always got to have some kind of technical difficulty. Otherwise, it's no fun. All right. Thank you, Collette. Looks like I'm next on the agenda with a couple of items. First, we'll start with the conservation implementation strategy. Just a quick reminder to everybody out there. March 4th is the deadline for the pre-proposals. We changed the process up a little bit this year to do a pre-proposal process, which is just a short two-page write-up of the project, a quick synopsis to give us an idea of what your project would be. And then we will invite a portion of those pre-proposals back to submit full proposals. So March 4th, which is coming up here in just a couple of weeks, is the deadline. And you can email those proposals into myself and to Jennifer Wirtz, and we will collect those up and get those reviewed and make those invites back out shortly thereafter so that you have plenty of time to work on those full proposals. So that's CIS. I also want to talk about woody encroachment strategy that we've been working on a little bit and give you guys kind of a little bit of an update on that as well. I think for those of you that were on the November State Technical Committee, you would have heard Dorak Tweedwell from University of Nebraska-Lincoln discuss what he's been working on and the impact that woody species encroachment has had on on our range lands. It's a pretty, it's a very interesting set of data that he has and what he's able to show about how woody species encroachment is truly invading a lot of our range lands. And so what we hear in South Dakota have been working on specifically Jessica Maholsky and I have been spending a lot of time trying to develop a strategic plan for South Dakota NRCS and we're not doing it by ourselves, but we want to make sure that we're incorporating the best research, the best information that we have on how to go about reducing woody species encroachment. We definitely want to develop an education and outreach component to that so that we can help producers understand some of those best practices that they can install to help help control woody species encroachment on their on their range lands and we want to work with them to create as many high quality conservation plans as we can to to help them with that process. So and then of course we always want to see that through and help them actually implement those conservation plans and and we're working on developing some some program funding that might be able to be available to those folks to help them implement those conservation plans as well. We did meet with some folks from SDSU Extension to talk about maybe some areas within the state to focus on and I would tell you at this point and these are just tentative I don't want to make this sound like this is set in stone but we kind of picked out seven areas in the state that we thought might be good areas to focus on and and how we came about those seven areas was some of it was based on what we know for local interest in dealing with woody species encroachment and some of it was based on on Dirac's research showing where we might have the the best chance of actually dealing with woody and species encroachment before it actually even gets to be a serious situation for that for that particular area. So we kind of have a combination of both types of areas where where woody species encroachments already an issue and then also a couple areas where we have the opportunity to maybe stop that encroachment before it really even starts. So those and these are just general areas just so that you know that these we're still working on some of this. So one of those is is the White River area where we had a lot of interest down there recently had a a rancher's workshop really had a lot of folks interested in in looking at woody species encroachment down in that area. Also the Mid-Missouri area down in the Lake Andes Charles Mix Gregory County area those folks have been doing some burning for a while down there and of course we want to continue to support them in that. And then we've got a couple spots in the Jim River Valley with Yankton and the Mitchell area where where we were starting to see a lot of encroachment along the Jim River obviously. We're also looking up into the northeast corner of the state up around the Katoa area as another opportunity. And then also these two areas just south appear the Lower Brule Fort Peer Grasslands area and then north appear up to the Cheyenne River as a couple of areas where maybe we can stop some of that woody species encroachment for moving up the river. So those at this point are kind of the seven areas that we've been thinking about trying to start doing a lot of education outreach getting connected with some folks there on the ground that are doing some work and seeing if we can build some build some local interest in in in dealing with woody species encroachment. And then lastly I'll kind of give you guys a heads up part of what we're trying to do and with this strategic plan and these areas is to develop a grassland summit for this fall fall or winter time where we would like to bring a whole lot of partners and producers in to talk about woody species encroachment and kind of help us finalize that strategic plan and finalize a plan on how we can deal with woody species encroachment in South Dakota. So that's that's what this overall effort is kind of leading up to and then hopefully then in 23 we'll also be able to roll out some programs and and start offering some support to our producers who are looking to deal with woody species encroachment. So lastly I guess I would just say that you know we've got kind of a three tier approach that we've been taking first and foremost is you know where are we having success now and working with those folks to help us build build interest and also help make sure that we got the education out there that we need to and then we want to network and partner with as many people as we can. We kind of think this is a whole an issue for the entire state for the most part. As you can see a lot of woody species encroaching all over the state and if you look to our south Nebraska, Kansas you'll you'll see a lot of that encroachment and it's all just moving north and we're kind of considering ourselves the front lines of maybe being able to beat that back a little bit. And then lastly you know we're trying to build up our technical guidance build up our technical adequacy here in South Dakota as well educating our staff so that we can assist producers in a in a good way and help with dealing with that woody species encroachment. So that's what we've been working on and I kind of just want to keep this this topic in front of you keep talking about it and like I said we're working toward putting a summit together for this fall where we can all get together and really hash some of these things out and really maybe put an effort towards beating that green glacier like they like to call it back a little bit and see if we can halt that spread and increase our production on our rangelands that way at the same time so that's kind of the overall goal and I just wanted to give you guys a quick update on that. So anybody have any questions on the woody species topic at all that they'd like to ask on what we're working on? Jeff this is Mark Norton with South Dakota Game Fishing Parks. I was trying to keep track of your seven areas as you were talking about them and I got six so maybe maybe one of them was combined. Is the area north of pier one area and then the Cheyenne River another or is it or did I miss something there? No so we've got the lower brool four pier grasslands which is south of pier obviously and then we're looking also to go from north of pier up to the Cheyenne River that area in general and then we got the Cato, the Mitchell area, the Yankton area and what we call the Mid-Missouri which is Charles-Mex Gregory, Wyman County that area and then the White River area those should be the seven if I counted right. All right thank you. You are welcome. Like I said that's just like we we sat down with a few folks and kind of talked about some areas and those were kind of the seven we picked out. If other folks have some ideas or interests that they think might be out there let us know but we sat down looked at some of that research with Dirac also looked at where we we have existing interest and those were kind of the seven general areas that we picked out. And I was just going to add Jeff that if anybody on this call is interested in a link to recording on YouTube with that data about a 45-minute presentation that Dirac gave to some of our South Dakota NRCS staff it's definitely worth a listen if you are interested in that just reach out to me and I will get you that recording. Okay we'll keep moving on. Next we'll have Jen Wertz join us to give us a quick update on Equip. As she joins us I'll just kind of make a quick comment that in general we're kind of in that time of year with our programs that there isn't a whole lot to report on but we do want to still provide you a quick update so Jen I'll turn it over to you. Thanks Jeff. Good morning everyone like Jeff said I don't have a lot for you today no handout this month so next time I will have a handout with some funding breakdowns of where the applications were at and what ones we funded how many we funded but just to let you know we're starting to move forward with pre-approvals we had a cover crop initiative that came out in 11 states South Dakota was one of them so that is moving forward. We do have a little bit of a hang up in our software system right now that hopefully will be fixed by Friday so we can continue moving forward with obligations on those contracts. We had about a hundred and three cover crops out of over 200 applications that had come in and then a few of our CIS projects some new some from last year are moving forward and we've pre-approved you know about four projects right now five projects excuse me right now and more are getting ranked our general Equip ranking deadline is March 4th as well and we will be moving towards pre-approvals on all of them the following week after that so like I said next time we'll definitely have more information for you but if you guys have any questions at all let me know I can take them now or you can certainly reach out to me after the meeting. Any questions for Jen? Thanks Jen. Like she said we're just in the middle of ranking and just starting some pre-approval stuff so definitely more information to come on that as well. One thing I will mention it was kind of brought to my attention yesterday and this kind of goes along with Equip the potential for for some some I forget the name of the disease off the top of my head but there is there is a chance of it affecting some of our poultry operations here in South Dakota and we're kind of keeping an eye on that been in contact with the state vet veterinarian as well trying to keep an eye on if it's if it's coming to the south of South Dakota area and if it does we'll certainly try to be ahead of it a little bit and offer those producers some assistance with that emergency should it make its way here so just wanted to let you guys know we're at least watching it nothing nothing really to report yet but just letting you know we're trying to be prepared in the off chance that that does come this way and we're trying to take proper precautions from a biosecurity standpoint as well when we visit these operations as well so just have to wait and see how this all actually plays out over the next few weeks and months we also have the mycoplasm bovis that is affecting at least a couple of bison herds here in South Dakota as well and also looking to provide them some assistance depending on how much or how how bad that disease spreads throughout South Dakota here as well so a couple of those things are on our radar nothing nothing real major yet as far as kind of a statewide concern but just think we are keeping our eye on to let you know and then I want to give you a quick update on our cpp we are we've got nine funded projects here in South Dakota they're all in kind of different stages of of process as far as getting those agreements in place and and those kinds of things but to let you know that two of them are are or have held signups for for producers to enroll and we're going to start that contracting process here shortly for those and then we've also got a couple that will be holding signups here in the very near future as we as we get those agreements in place and get those on board so very excited about rcpp and what it's going to bring to South Dakota like I said we've got nine projects that got funded last year so that is very exciting news for us also know that the rcpp proposal process is open right now for folks to submit uh proposals to the national level uh you can you can google rcpp announcement and and find that or it's also on uh grants.gov I believe it's what it's called uh that you can log in there and also search for it and find that announcement of available funding so they did the classic and afa funding announcement together this year I think you guys mostly have heard me speak about that in the past typically those are two separate announcements but this year they are running concurrently so you can apply for the classic and the afa both at the same time you would have to submit two different proposals if you want to put in for both or you can pick one or the other and submit a proposal that way if anybody is interested or has questions about rcpp or or a proposal and you want some some input or guidance on that proposal certainly let me know be glad to help you out and provide you some input on on your proposal and and help you try to at least put your best foot forward and see if we can get some more funding uh for conservation here in South Dakota through that program as well so any questions on rcpp I'll probably try to put a little more of a handout together as we actually are are now starting to to have some announcements and and contracting take place with rcpp finally we'll we'll start giving you an actual report now that we will be starting to get some money on the ground okay with that I will turn this over to Joyce Trevithic to give you an update on csp good morning I'll share my screen briefly with the handout that's with the report that's in your handout just give you a brief update on what's happened with csp in the last couple months since we've met um are you seeing my screen Jeff yes we are oh good okay so for the csp 22 renewals which um um or actually the application deadline on those was last April those were obligated in this past December and uh we had an allocation of 6.628 million and we had 307 357 applications so quite a few applications for that amount of money we were able to contract 44 of those applications that covered 131,834 acres and for a total cost of 6 million 540,206 dollars and 80 cents so that just finished in the South Dakota obligation deadline with December 17th on those then we had the csp gci sign up the 2022 sign up and those letters had been sent out in August to the eligible owners and operators and they were sent out from fsa the farm service agency that obligation deadline was December 31st 2021 and we were able to contract 17 applications which covered 1,838 acres for a total of 165,461 dollars and then our classic csp for 2022 is just in the process those that application deadline was January 21st and at that point we had 523 applications so our initial allocation on that is 8,640,000 dollars there's an additional allocation of 200,000 for organic and that ranking deadline is coming up quickly it's on March 18th and the obligation deadline we've set earlier this year it's April 29th so that pretty much wraps up what's happening with csp right now the following page does have the allocation amounts for each resource unit that is for csp classic that is just now in the assessing process so any questions I'll take them otherwise we'll move forward back to you Jeff all right thank you Joyce you're welcome I'll I'll just add to what Joyce said we moved that obligation deadline up to April 29th with the intent of hopefully allowing our producers an opportunity to get some practices on the ground this spring yet I think a lot of you know typically we'll we'll do obligations into June July and August and that makes it rather difficult for producers to get some of their practices on the ground that you know need to be implemented in the spring or early summer so hopefully with this earlier deadline we'll be able to allow some of that to happen a lot of a lot of the reason why we're able to do that is our funding and those kinds of things came to us earlier this year and so that's allowed us to to hopefully make some of this happen for for our producers so very thankful for that and and we're very hopeful that that'll work out well for our producers here in the long run as well so next on the list we've got Brandon Kotke Brandon's going to give us an update on the ASAP program so I'll turn it to you Brandon all right thanks Jeff morning everybody I'm going to give you a little bit of an update where we sit on ASAP for this year we're about three months I guess I had to schedule over the last three or four years I guess which has been official to our staff and our applicants out there so overall this year we're down a little bit in the application numbers total of 68 for WRE user we're kind of right around that 100 number but we're down a little bit this year as we went through things we're currently at the phase of making our tentative offers to our applicants so so far for this year we are looking at selecting two permanent easements with reserve grazing rights and eight permanent easements as well so we're right around 612 acres for the 10 application so since we're a little bit ahead of schedule our hope is as we go through things and as other states may have some slippage in ASAP funds we're kind of hoping that we can move down our list and maybe select another three to five easements in the coming months as far as ALE we did see some increase in application numbers there as well for this year which is great to see we're currently going through all those offers at this time we have not made any tentative offers and I am hopeful by our next state tech meeting that we'll be able to give you some more details on there and let you know how many of those that we plan to select for this year so again things are moving along pretty good this year so we're excited about that and we're hoping to get a little bit more money so we can get a little bit more easements in South Dakota we still have quite a bit of interest I guess if there's no questions for me I'll turn it back over Jeff all right any questions for Brandon on on the two easement programs all right thank you sir one last topic to bring up with our easement programs and I don't have the official guidance yet it's coming out here in the next couple of weeks but I did ask since we were having state technical committee meeting today they kind of gave me a heads up on what that that new policy is going to be and I wanted to share that with you so that we could have a conversation at some point so before I get too far into what this is I just want to let you know I'm we're not going to spend a lot of time today debating it but what I will ask anybody on here that's interested in in talking about this new policy that's coming out that you get a hold of me and we will schedule a meeting to to talk about this change in policy so what is well let me give you the history last year in 2021 with the drought that hit South Dakota there was a lot of interest in our primary nesting season dates and when we were allowing hang to occur on our easements versus when hang was being allowed on our CRP fields and there was a discrepancy of about two weeks between those dates and so what has happened that that issue got raised well I think it was more than just South Dakota but that issue did get raised at a national level and so so policy is being adjusted to deal with that discrepancy and dates and so what is going to happen is that we're being asked to make our dates align between CRP and our easement programs as to when we will allow hang to occur on on these pieces of of land so what will happen then essentially is that the easement program will adjust its dates to match the CRP hang dates as well so instead of July 15th being the first day that we can start hang easements we will move that to August 1st to match CRP and so those that would like to discuss this more there is there is wiggle room in the new policy that says that if we can justify having two different dates that we can update our wetland criteria our wetland restoration criteria to to justify why we would have an earlier hang date with our easements than we do with CRP so what I would like to do in order to have a you know very productive discussion about those dates is that if there is anybody on here that is interested in in talking about keeping the July 15th date for our easements versus the August 1st for CRP that you get ahold of me send me an email you can drop your name in the chat here today either way will work and I will schedule a meeting now I will tell you that meeting is probably not going to happen until probably mid-March as I don't anticipate that policy actually being issued until about the 1st of March so I don't want to get too far out ahead of when that policy actually comes out and what the wording will specifically say but I have been going to given a preliminary draft of that wording and so I wanted to bring that to your guys' attention that I think this will have a lot of effect especially on our easement holders as far as them being delayed another two weeks before they can do their hang that's going to be kind of a major change for those folks and will obviously cause some some complaining and and and those kinds of things to happen over the next couple of months as we as we roll that out so so anybody on here that would want to be included on that conversation like I said either drop your name in the chat and I'll copy those down or send me an email and I will make sure that you get invited to that to that meeting so we can have a conversation on those dates and decide how South Dakota should move forward with this new policy and when that policy comes out I will share that policy with I'll share with everybody on this call or with the entire state tech mailing list I should say and we can have that conversation and get that meeting lined up at that point so wanted to give you a heads up that that was coming and like I said I I didn't want to wait till the May State Tech I know that the policy will be out before that but May's getting too close to to when we'll we'll be writing our compatible use agreements for easements and those kinds of things and I would like to at least do some kind of outreach to our easement holders before that so we can kind of get this out in front of them before hang really gets really gets going this summer slash fall so wanted to give you a heads up on that and like I said drop your name in the chat or or send me an email and I will I'll make sure you get invited to that meeting so any quick questions on that or comments I didn't want to waste everybody's time spent a lot of time talking about that today but did want to at least get it to your your guys's attention and Jim and Pete I see both your names in there I'll make sure you guys are on it okay um the next topic is the wetland and he'll compliance team update uh Deeks not able to be here with us today so I am going to touch very briefly on his handouts and if you got specific questions about anything certainly reach out to Deekhavik and he would be glad to to answer those questions for you but just wanted to share real quick where we're sitting currently and just kind of continue to keep you guys apprised of of any any requests that we're getting and how old our requests are I think you'll you'll see that we're still doing a good job of trying to keep up with the requests our oldest requests on here are six months or less which is really good as far as that goes and as you can see on here you know a majority of them well a little over half of them actually are two months or less old um so the compliance team is doing a good job of keeping up with those uh requests here in South Dakota so 569 and 1026 is you can see the request age here and how many we've completed and received and uh how the team's keeping up with that on the HEL side you can see the same thing a lot of requests have come in you know they've completed 759 requests since October and they've they've still have just 19 outstanding requests to work on you can see we're still having a lot of new breakings 383 for us grass guys you know that's a lot of new breakings and hopefully we can continue to show the value of rangeland as well so and then he's got a couple of maps in his handouts as well and i'll rotate the view here so it's right here are our 1026 only uh determination requests uh mini ha ha you can see has has between 11 and 21 is the highest number on there excuse me everybody else is at 10 or less and you can kind of see where that workload is and how it's how it's spread out throughout the state on the certified wetland determination requests received you can also see there we've got 229 total requests out there and you can see where all those requests are at as well and then lastly he's got a map in here about where all the requests have been completed so far this year um well since October I believe and you can see there's 350 requests that have been completed as well so I don't have a lot to add to deke slides he wasn't able to join us today as he's working on some appeal training but he did want to make sure that his information was shared with you guys and you had the opportunity to see it and like I said if anybody has any questions or comments about any of that just reach out to deke uh and he'll be glad to to help you out with that um as I I don't know all the ins and outs of his uh slides there but did want to share them and make sure that you guys got a chance to see them any questions on that I could maybe try but I'm I'm going to tell you not too likely not my cup of tea okay lastly we've got an update um from the northern Great Plains Joint Venture I know I saw Steve on here I don't know if Catherine joined as well or who's going to do that update I see Steve's coming on so we'll turn it over to Steve yeah Catherine had a conflict today so I'll uh you'll have to look at my face but uh just uh wanted to take the opportunity to uh uh share a little news we uh just recently entered into an agreement with South Dakota NRCS through the conservation collaboration agreement process to embark on a three-year project to try to integrate science at the field level and particularly we're interested in grassland science related to uh healthy range conditions as well as uh you know the connection to grassland burrs so as a kind of a a key part of that process we uh recently hired a young lady named Krista Erdman and I'll introduce you to Krista she is in Rapid City uh grew up there went to Augustana and then uh followed up with graduate work at Duke uh and most recently she's been working for the division of forestry as a service forester and has been involved with NRCS through that process and I'll ask that Krista join us on the camera and give you a little bit of an elevator speech as to what she's going to be doing uh with the the broad partnership over the next three years Krista yeah thank you Steve hi everyone I'm happy to be here so in this position my goal is to accelerate and amplify conservation action across South Dakota and we identified four main objectives that I'll be focusing on including increasing access by partners to conservation science tools data and research to inform conservation decisions identifying and reducing barriers to conservation programs co-producing science to address locally relevant information needs and then finally bridging the gap in science and evaluations with the outcomes and measures that are needed to inform partner programs uh so this was alluded to earlier in the meeting but there is a lot of science out there and more is being published every day and even though the science is meant to help folks on the ground um sometimes it's just not making it there whether it be too complex or just not relevant at the local scale so essentially my job will be in collaboration with you all to figure out how to bridge that gap um and make the science work for practitioners and our producers across South Dakota so um please feel free to reach out with any questions or to chat about ideas I can put my contact info in the chat box and I look forward to speaking more and working with all of you in the future so thank you thanks Krista so I you know I think you can tell that we're really excited about this partnership and I think it's kind of a cutting-edge opportunity for us to work together to try to just get more relevant tools to the local level so that folks can weave those tools into their decision-making process and hopefully advance conservation as we go along so really want to thank South Dakota NRCS for working with us on this and enabling this to happen and want to just ask all of you to uh where it's appropriate be engaged I would mention that one of the other partners in this group of partners is the Prairie Pothole Joint Venture and we'll be collaborating with them since East River is part of the Prairie Pothole Joint Venture and West River is all within the Northern Great Plains Joint Venture will be working together to try to make sure that we cover the whole state of South Dakota with whatever processes we develop any questions well thanks for the opportunity to introduce Krista and we'll turn it back over to Jeff. All right thanks Steve and welcome Krista. Glad to be joining us today. Okay so that brings us to the end of the official agenda um any of our other partners on here want to give uh any kind of an update or have any comments that they'd like to make okay not seeing any um we will wrap this up uh I'll do that by saying thanks everybody for joining us today. I'm glad this could go fairly quick today we had some just real quick updates to give you uh as we're kind of in that time of year where we're not quite to spring we're thinking we'll really start happening so thanks for joining us today I hope you guys all have a good rest of the week and uh we'll talk to you all again soon thanks everybody Kathy do you need to stop the recording?