The Lowndes County Soil and Water Conservation District employees will hold their annual tree giveaway day Thursday.
The first 300 people who come to the district’s office on Martin Luther King Drive can pick up a bundle of five different species of trees to plant.
That’s just one day a year for the district.
Conservationists and technicians work year-round with farmers and landowners to assist with water conservation, erosion control and resource preservation. They also tour local schools to educate children on the importance of preserving the natural environment. They provide assistance to the National Resource Conservation Service and are one of 82 agencies in the Mississippi Association of Conservation Districts, one for each county in the state. The four-employee district is funded by the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors.
District technician David Hester said through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, he and colleagues help provide financial assistance to farmers who want to build and maintain fences or culverts that can be used to improve the use of natural resources on their land. For example, through this program, livestock owners can have land for grazing “cross-fenced” so that cattle only eat on one side of a fence while grass grows on the other side. This prevents overgrazing and ensures a steady supply of food, he said.
“Anything that we can do to help them control erosion and keep the soil in place, that’s our job,” Hester said. “We also do the engineering and design for a project. We’ll work with the farmer to find a contractor that will actually use his equipment and build this conservation practice and when he’s finished, we’ll make sure it’s done to our specifications so it will work like we say it will.”
Potential landowners also come to his office for soil testing assistance if they are unsure if property they’re interested in buying might be wetlands. This would provide limits on what they would be able to do with the land because disturbing wetlands would run afoul of Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regulations, Hester said.
“We can’t go out and say whether or not a piece of land is a wetland, but we can give you information to help you along the path. The Corps of Engineers have the final say on whether you can do what you want to do,” Hester said. “Wetlands help us understand what’s going on in the environment. That’s why the wetlands are so important. A lot of people don’t realize that because they think it’s just a hole where snakes live. That’s very true, but we monitor the environment by that.”
One of the most critical components of the program is education, Hester said. After the tree drive is over, he and colleagues from the Mississippi Forestry Commission and Extension Service will be in local classrooms speaking with children about what they can do to protect the environment and why it’s important. His district also sponsors essay and poster contests.
“When we get a chance to reach the people, we give them the information they need to conserve,” he said. “Many of them don’t realize what they’re doing affects a lot of other people as well. I think one of our main jobs is to reach as many people we can to explain to them how important it is to take care of the environment because we want to make sure there’s clean water and soil for our grandchildren.”
The tree bundles consist of a sawtooth oak, a flowering dogwood, a red maple, a yellow poplar and a loblolly pine. Weyerhaeuser’s local pulp and paper plant donated the pines to be part of the bundles, Hester said.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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