Wetlands Reserve Program

The Wetlands Reserve Program, or WRP, was a program that paid farmers and landowners to restore previously farmed or degraded wetlands. The Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service, or NRCS, paid them to establish long-term or permanent conservation practices on wetlands, as well as acquire 30-year or permanent easements on the land.

The 2014 Farm Bill ended the program but created the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which includes Wetland Reserve Easements. The wetland easements that are part of ACEP are extremely similar to the former WRP. For more information about current Wetland Reserve Easements, see the ACEP description on this database.

About the data

The Wetland Reserve Program data in the database is from this NRCS website, pulled from the website in fall 2021. The database has total obligations by state, for fiscal years 2017 through 2020. These payment amounts are what the government was obligated to pay in the given year to each state, not necessarily what was actually paid to landowners or eligible entities.

Although the program was defunded by the 2014 Farm Bill, some payments continue to be made for easements established before the farm bill went into effect.

For more information about the former Wetlands Reserve Program, see this NRCS website.