NRCS, on behalf of USDA and the Commodity Credit Corporation, owns and administers more than 24,000 conservation easements covering over 5.3 million acres under its easement program authorities. Pursuant to Title 440, Conservation Programs Manual, Part 527, Subpart P, “Monitoring”:

·     NRCS must monitor all stewardship land easements and 30-year contracts on an annual basis.

·     NRCS must monitor all non-stewardship Grassland Reserve Program (GRP) easements once in five fiscal years (FYs).

·     The non-stewardship Agricultural Conservation Easement Program - Agricultural Land Easements (ACEP-ALE), Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP), and Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) entity-held easements are only monitored if NRCS must exercise its contingent right of enforcement or to review highly erodible cropland plans.

The Easement Programs Division (EPD) implements remote sensing capabilities through the annual acquisition of high-resolution aerial photography for monitoring conservation easements. The geospatial boundaries in the NEG are the dataset that determines the requirements for the location and extent of aerial photography flight planning and acquisition. The geospatial boundaries and attributes for all conservation easements must be continuously collected to ensure the quality and timeliness of the data in the NEG. The following tables list all NRCS easement categories that must be maintained in the NEG.

NRCS Stewardship Lands

*Note: FRPP also includes the predecessor program Farmland Protection Program (FPP).

**Note: Non-stewardship lands to be monitored in accordance with the stewardship land requirements.

***Note: Regardless of specific deed language, all FRPP easements enrolled during this timeframe are considered stewardship land and must comply with stewardship land activities as identified in this subpart.

High-resolution aerial imagery helps strengthen the integrity of conservation easement monitoring. High-resolution imagery and the current easements geodatabase are available through the Easements Imagery Web Map Viewer, a web-based application, at Easement Imagery Web Viewer (usda.gov) or through an ArcGIS Server site that can be added to an ArcGIS session.

Image Server Service: https://gis.sc.egov.usda.gov/data/rest/services/easements

Imagery will also be available in Conservation Desktop (CD) and the new Mobile Monitoring Application - Home (sharepoint.com).

Until further notice, States must check out the file geodatabase to add new easement boundaries and to upload updated easement boundary geometry or attributes approved though EPD. The file geodatabase contains domains in appropriate fields. This accelerates the data entry process and improves the integrity of NEG. The “Instructions for Digitizing and Transmitting Easement Boundaries to the Geospatial Enterprise Operations Branch (GEO), Fort Worth, TX,” January 2023, are attached to this national bulletin. Topology guidance is also provided in these instructions. Topology rules are set to check for “No Polygon Overlaps.” If overlap errors or other topology are found, do not move vertices of a new boundary to fit with an older boundary. Further investigation is required related to the overlap. We do not want to corrupt correct boundary data. Any corrections/updates required for NEG boundaries will need a Program Activity Management Solution (PAMS) ticket request submitted for “Geospatial Boundary Modification Assistance.” Conservation planning in CD can continue with overlapping easement boundaries in the NEG.

Updates to these instructions will be included with the easement checkout email notifications. Edits will only be accepted through this checkout/ check-in system. GEO, Fort Worth generates quarterly checkouts for States to add new easement boundaries and to update and correct existing easement boundary geometry or attributes during the FY. Each quarterly State checkout will only include National Easement Staging Tool (NEST) data as of the end of the previous quarter.

The checkout/check in schedule for FY 2023 and first quarter FY 2024 is as follows:

*Easement boundaries submitted to the NEG by August 25, 2023 will be included in FY 2024 flight planning.

For easement boundaries to be successfully uploaded to the NEG, easements closed in NEST must have a closing date entered in the NEST.  ACEP-ALE easements closed in Protracts will follow the similar upload process as NEST recorded easements with the exception of the NEST point match. Protracts ACEP-ALE easements attribution must have a closing date in addition to other attribution listed in the instructions. This attribution will be manually entered. States must have received a quarterly checkout from GEO, Fort Worth to upload new or updated easement boundaries. States must submit geospatial easement boundary data for the FY based on the above table. This submission will ensure that the agency has the most current easement boundary data available. 

Check-in location is in the following folder on the shared network drive:   \\aiomokcc3fp226\inbound_GEO\Easements\Incoming_Check-ins\ .

Boundaries for FRPP easements are required for parcels acquired under cooperative agreements in FY 2006, FY 2007, and FY 2008. Parcels acquired with funds during these program years were required to have USDA or the United States as a grantee on the easement deed; therefore, they are considered stewardship lands of the United States. Continue to include all OSLs into the NEG, as they are also stewardship lands of the United States. Non-stewardship ACEP-ALE, FRPP, GRP, and RCPP easements that list the entity as the grantee and do not list the United States as the grantee or co‑holder on the deed are also a mandatory part of this request. States that have non-stewardship ACEP-ALE, FRPP, GRP, and RCPP boundaries are required to upload them to the NEG.

Restoration cost-share agreements (RCSAs) should not be included in the NEG. Ingress and egress corridors continue not to be included in the NEG at this time. However, these boundaries will be requested in the future to be included in CD.

All legacy data must remain in the NEG — do not remove any legacy data. For RCSA projects, ingress or egress corridors, and other errors previously submitted, mark their status as “Do Not Fly (DNF)” in the non-stewardship dataset provided in the NEG.  All stewardship and non-stewardship, ACEP-ALE, FRPP, GRP, and RCPP easements, will be flown, do not mark any of these as “DNF."