The Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) was launched in 2005 to design and field-test a program that would pay ranchers in the Northern Everglades for providing environmental services of water retention and phosphorus load reduction. Such a program would complement the public investment in regional water storage and water treatment facilities, and would provide ranchers, who face low profit margins and fluctuations in the price of beef, with another source of income. This program would create financial incentives for ranchers to increase the environmental services provided by their lands and encourage land to remain in ranching rather than be converted to more intensive agriculture and urban development/land uses, which would further aggravate the water problems of the Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, and increase habitat losses.
The FRESP vision is to create a fully operational program that pays ranchers throughout the Northern Everglades to manage their water in ways that could:
Provide as much as a third to half of the estimated 1 million acre feet of water retention needed north of the lake complementing other regional storage and treatment options;Contribute to attainment of the water quality goals for Lake Okeechobee and its tributaries by capturing and holding phosphorus on-ranch; andProvide ranchers who volunteer to participate and document the services they provide, with a specified source of income over the life of a contract, contributing to the economic profitability of their ranch.FRESP is a collaboration of eight ranchers in Okeechobee watershed, World Wildlife Fund, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, South Florida Water Management District, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service and researchers from the University of Florida and the MacArthur Agro-ecology Research Center.
FRESP has received over $6 million in funding from various sources. Funding for the design and field testing phases of FRESP is being provided by USDA NRCS through two Conservation Innovation Grants, the South Florida Water Management District, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 319 Grant and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
FRESP accomplishments to date include:
Completed the design and permitting of eight ranch water management projects; four were constructed and operational in 2007 and four will be constructed and operational in 2009. These demonstration water management projects include rehydrating drained wetlands, raising the height of the water table in the ranch soil profile and drainage network, and pumping water from a nearby canal through existing ranch wetlands and flowing back into the canal. Field-testing cost-effective documentation methods for water retention and phosphorus load reduction. Installed monitoring equipment at the ranch water management projects to field test different methods of measuring the environmental services that are being provided by the projects. The documentation procedures selected must be feasible to apply by both the agencies who need to know the services they are buying and the ranchers who need to demonstrate that the services have been provided. Design the rules for a payment for services program. Essential program design questions, such as: establishing prices for the services; creating a dedicated, multiyear funding source to pay for services; integrating a new payment-for-services program with other state and federal programs; and reducing the costs of program administration and ranch project design are being addressed through the pilot projects. The FRESP project envisions implementing a pay-for-environmental-services (PES) program in three phases:
Phase 1 - Over three years (2006-2009), implement water management alternatives (WMAs) on eight volunteer ranchers and field test elements of a credible, transparent program to certify on-ranch provision of critical environmental services. Phase II - Over two years (2010-2011), implement a PES program with the 8 volunteer ranches to verify and refine program design. Post 2011 - Transition from an 8 rancher pilot group to a Lake Okeechobee basin-wide PES program.
Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project
