Plan for conservation first

The success of a land owner/producer can be greatly improved with a conservation plan. A conservation plan is a roadmap to achieving your goals and objectives, and remember, a goal without a plan is just a wish.

Whatever your conservation objective and resource concerns are, the Natural Resources Conservation Service can develop a custom conservation plan to meet your goals.

The NRCS uses a nine-step process to develop and complete a conservation plan. These steps include:

1. Identify problems and opportunities.

2. Determine objectives.

3. Inventory resources.

4. Analyze resource data.

5. Formulate alternatives.

6. Evaluate alternatives

7. Make decisions.

8. Implement the plan.

9. Evaluate the plan.

Many of these steps are done on a daily basis, but one key component is often overlooked. That is step three, inventorying the resources available. In many instances, a complete resources inventory can mean the difference between effectively solving a problem or ineffective expenditures of time and money.

The resource inventory may include identifying key forage plants and amounts with key grazing sites, analyzing the current irrigation system, locating areas that lack water, conducting habitat evaluations, identifying available ranching/farming equipment and calculating grazable acres (which is based on distance from water, terrain, brush canopy and type of grazing animals present).

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