Federal grant programs / Department of Agriculture

Inflation Reduction Act - Forest Legacy Program (10.734)

Also known as IRA FLP

• Awarded, FY 2021 to 2025$685 million
• Grant awards129
• Typical award$1.1 million
• Awarded in FY 2025$510 million
• Size rank304 of 1824
• Type of assistanceGrant, cooperative agreement

Key findings

• It is the 304th largest of 1,824 federal grant programs by five-year awards.
• The 20 largest recipients received 94% of the money.
• Awards went to recipients in 43 states and territories.

What the program funds

To effectively identify and protect environmentally important forest areas threatened by conversion to non-forest uses, through the use of conservation easements or fee simple purchase. The Forest Legacy Program (FLP) is a voluntary private land conservation partnership between the Forest Service, participating States, land trusts, private landowners, and others. The Program works with State partners and operates on a willing seller and willing buyer basis and is completely nonregulatory in its approach. No eminent domain authority or adverse condemnation is authorized for this Program.

From the federal Assistance Listing. Read the full listing on SAM.gov.

Open opportunities

No opportunity under this program is open or forecast on Grants.gov right now. Programs often post once a year, so the funding history below shows what to expect.

Rules from the program listing

Who can apply

Projects are evaluated and prioritized by State lead agencies, in consultation with the State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committees. All States and territories participate except North Dakota, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam.

What the money can and cannot pay for

Landowner participation in the program is voluntary and consists of two components: (1) conveying land or interests in land to achieve land conservation objectives and (2) preparing and periodically updating a Forest Stewardship Management Plan or a multi-resource management plan, when the participation is through conservation easement. State lead agencies must first evaluate and approve projects as Forest Legacy eligible before competing for Forest Service funding.

Matching requirements

This program has no statutory formula. Matching requirements may be waived at the discretion of the Secretary.MOE requirements are not applicable to this assistance listing.

Deadlines

Contact the headquarters or regional location, as appropriate for application deadlines

Examples of funded projects

Fiscal Year2025: The Wasatch Back Conservation Project will conserve more than 8,500 acres of forest land near Park City Utah, where visitors spent $630M in 2019 on outdoor recreation activities that supported 5,700 jobs; 40% of the 14,300 jobs countywide. Local trail systems average 450,000 annual visits. The Project permanently secures public access across the entire acreage for recreation, education, and research. It is estimated that public use of the property will be around 60,000 annual visits and will provide over $1.3M to the local economy. Recreational activities will include hiking, biking, fishing, cross-country skiing, wildlife viewing, equestrian and other non-motorized pursuits. The management plan proposes 35 miles of new public trails along with plans for camping and managed angler access, recreation experiences that are limited and highly desired in this area.

Quoted from the program's federal Assistance Listing. The notice of funding opportunity is the official source for each competition's rules.

Who usually wins

State and local governments received 95% of the money, colleges and universities 4.9% and nonprofits 0.3%.

By state

34 states have a page for this program: those that received at least $1 million or 10 awards.

Award amounts are federal obligations reported to USAspending.gov for fiscal 2021 to 2025; see how our data works.