MOULTRIE — Return of the native.

Topping off a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) Director Teresa Lasseter, of Colquitt County, announced Wednesday a new conservation reserve program (CRP), CP 36, dedicated solely to the restoration of longleaf pine and wiregrass, native to Georgia.

“This valuable tree once covered more than 60 million acres and now only 4 million acres are remaining,” Lasseter said of the longleaf.

The CP 36 provides property owners incentives to plant longleaf pine and wiregrass on up to 250,000 acres in nine states: Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Sign-up for the conservation program starts Dec. 1. The project builds on the more than 200,000 acres of longleaf pines already planted through other CRPs.

Wiregrass was a last-minute addition to the conservation program thanks to another local, businessman Jimmy Jeter, Lasseter said. Jeter informed John Johnson, deputy administrator of FSA farm programs, Tuesday at Lasseter’s home why wiregrass was so integrally important to the longleaf pine ecosystem in general. Staff experts agreed with Jeter’s suggestion.

“Today, we were last-minute tweaking our program.” Lasseter said. “It’s so important that we communicate and that we understand. That’s the one thing I hope that I take to the office of administrator is a hands-on approach from Washington to the farmer and the rural community.”

Lasseter had her staff visiting a peanut buying point, a shelling plant, three county FSA offices, an alligator farm in Mitchell County and met with First United Ethanol, also in Mitchell County.

“I mean, we have not had a free moment since we’ve been here. We’ve used every moment to go to different sections of agriculture and see how we can better serve our customers,” she said.

The CP 36 is a continuous enrollment program until the FSA signs up 250,000 acres. For those whose land is suitable to grow longleaf pine, the FSA will pay a signing incentive of $100 per acre of trees for contracts of 10 or more years, a one-time practice incentive payment equal to 40 percent of the eligible installation costs plus a 50 percent cost share and an annual rental payment for 10 to 15 years.

This is a more generous program than in a general CRP program, Johnson said.

That’s enough to sell Moultrie property owner Mary Whitfield who has 14 acres planted in longleaf now and is looking now to plant 50 more acres under the new program.

“We have 100 acres to do that. It’s that sandy soil,” she said.

Accompanying Lasseter in her announcement was avid bobwhite quail hunter Sen. Saxby Chambliss, also of Colquitt County, “I can’t tell you how excited I am to hear that we’re now going to have the wiregrass initiative as a part of this.”

Efforts to restore quail and its habitat have been successful in Southwest Georgia. This new conservation program will expand hunting potential which translates to tourism dollars for the state, he said.

“...I’m very confident that it’s going to spread not only across the southern states — the nine states that we’re putting this program in and this initiative in today, but it won’t be long before we spread that to even more states,” Chambliss said, noting that seven of the nine states in the program participate at Expo.