Mower SWCD tops last year’s conservation record
County sees another 457 acres of cropland enrolled for permanent prairie, wetlands
Oct. 10, 2025
A new record of cropland and floodplain acres are getting enrolled in Mower County for permanent restoration into native prairie or wetlands that support water quality and wildlife habitat.
After setting its one-year record of 407 acres in 2024, Mower Soil & Water Conservation District recently received state approval for enrolling another 457 acres of cropland into permanent conservation easements. Prior to last year, Mower’s highest enrollment for permanent conservation was 351 acres in 2006.
“We continue to see great interest in these programs, and we’re excited to help landowners apply because the restorations are permanent while keeping the land privately owned,” said James Fett, a Mower SWCD technician who leads signups in Mower. “Combined, these acres enrolled over the past two decades provide so much benefit to habitat and water quality.”
This past year, Mower SWCD received significant support for MN CREP and RIM signups from the national Pheasants Forever organization based in Minnesota by providing local staff to help landowners submit applications.
“Without the help of Pheasants Forever providing funding and staff, our office would not have achieved this level of success,” Fett said, “and we’re very grateful for their continuing commitment to habitat restoration that goes back many years.”
Nearly 377 acres of this year’s enrollments are in the Cedar River watershed, with two-thirds of that land located upstream of the City of Austin. The remaining acres are in the Root and Upper Iowa watersheds of eastern Mower County.
Overall, 11 contracts have been approved with 10 landowners this year through the federal-state MN CREP program started in 2017 and the state’s Reinvest In Minnesota (RIM) that originated in the 1980s. Some sites are established native prairie already while others will be restored in the next one to three years.
These newly enrolled acres are in Austin, Lansing, Lodi, Lyle, Pleasant Valley, Red Rock and Udolpho townships, with largest signup consisting of nearly 103 acres in Lyle Township.
Udolpho Township — just south of Blooming Prairie in Mower County’s northwest corner — continued in 2025 to be the township with the most enrollments in permanent conservation just like in 2024. With 161 acres signed up this year, Udolpho landowners now have enrolled about 664 acres — more than one square mile — since 2017.
Another highlight is a nearly 33-acre RIM enrollment along Wolf Creek in Red Rock Township that will extend a 328-acre corridor of permanently restored native prairies and wetlands. This corridor follows the creek upstream from the northern boundary of Austin’s Todd Park, where the state has stocked 600 rainbow trout in Wolf Creek every spring since 2020.
Managed by the Minnesota Board of Water & Soil Resources (BWSR), the RIM program is a critical component of the state’s efforts to improve water quality by reducing soil erosion as well as the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen entering waterways. RIM also aims to improve wildlife habitat and lessen the effects of flooding on private lands.
Landowners enrolled in RIM are compensated for granting conservation easements and establishing native vegetation habitat on economically marginal, flood-prone, environmentally sensitive or highly erodible lands.
MN CREP combines the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) with the state’s RIM program. Landowners accepted in MN CREP enroll acres in CRP for 14 to 15 years. At the same time, the land is put into a permanent RIM easement.
Payment rates via MN CREP vary based on the cropland’s location in the county, Fett said, and is determined by each township’s average assessed tillable cropland value per acre.
Current payment rates remain about $9,000 to $11,000 per acre for RIM and $12,000 to $14,000 per acre for MN CREP.
“Landowners of flood-prone cropland that doesn’t produce good crop yields or has challenges with soil erosion likely can fit into one of these programs and get paid well at the same time,” Fett said.
Mower County landowners interested in MN CREP or RIM should contact Fett at james@mowerdistrict.org or 507–460–4592.
