Conservation Easements in Rice County, Minnesota

CREP: a permanent-easement program actively enrolling Rice County land right now

The Minnesota Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) is a partnership between the USDA and the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources that lets landowners in eligible counties, including Rice County, restore wetlands or install buffer strips along wetlands and riparian corridors in exchange for a defined, two-stage payment structure: enrollment in the federal Conservation Reserve Program for 14 to 15 years, with an annual rental payment during that term, followed by a permanent Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM) conservation easement once the CRP contract ends, compensated by a lump-sum payment based on the land's fair market value at enrollment. That permanent RIM easement is a real, binding restriction -- it protects the enrolled acres from future development or agricultural conversion indefinitely, not just for the CRP contract's term.

This isn't a hypothetical program description -- Rice County has a specific, named, on-the-ground example: a 157-acre CREP enrollment near Millersburg that borders a creek flowing into the Cannon River, restoring wetland and upland acreage with a direct, stated hydrological benefit of reducing the likelihood of downstream flooding. Rice Soil and Water Conservation District administers local sign-up for the program. For a buyer evaluating agricultural or riparian land in the county, especially anything near a tributary of the Cannon River, this program is a live, checkable option worth asking a seller about directly -- both because a specific parcel might already carry a RIM easement from a prior enrollment (which would meaningfully limit its future use regardless of who owns it next), and because it's a genuine income and land-use option for a buyer's own qualifying acreage going forward.

A multi-phase, Legacy-funded habitat program has already created new public land in the county

Separately from CREP, Minnesota's Legacy Amendment-funded Outdoor Heritage Fund, through recommendations from the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, has financed a long-running, multi-phase habitat protection effort in the Cannon River watershed specifically covering Rice County, referred to across different phases as the Cannon River Headwaters Habitat Complex and the Cannon River Watershed Habitat Complex. Individual phases have protected meaningful acreage: Phase III permanently protected 496 acres of wetland, remnant Big Woods forest, and shoreline habitat within the Cannon River watershed, and Phase IV added 287 acres through fee-title acquisition, creating four new Wildlife Management Areas in the process. A Trust for Public Land release describes nearly 700 acres of public land added in Rice County south of the Twin Cities through related project work, and named new or expanded WMAs from this program include Gray Fox WMA (a 78-acre parcel conveyed to the DNR in April 2019), the Trout Lily WMA (a 112-acre Phase I plus a 21-acre Phase II), and Prairie Creek WMA, intended to preserve prairie, grassland, and oak savanna.

It matters for a buyer to keep these two mechanisms distinct. Some of this program's acreage was acquired by the DNR outright, in fee, specifically to create new public Wildlife Management Areas -- meaning that land is no longer privately held at all, and a private parcel's boundary next to one of these WMAs is now adjacent to public hunting and wildlife land, not merely near a habitat-easement-encumbered private tract. Other components of the broader Legacy-funded program, along with the separate CREP/RIM mechanism described above, do work through permanent conservation easements on land that remains privately owned. Confirming which category applies -- adjacent public WMA land, an easement-encumbered private parcel, or neither -- is a straightforward GIS and title question worth asking Rice County directly for any specific parcel near the Cannon River corridor.

What this means for your purchase

• Ask any seller of land near the Cannon River or its tributaries whether the parcel, or an adjacent one, is enrolled in CREP/RIM, or included in any phase of the Cannon River Headwaters/Watershed Habitat Complex -- a title search alone may not surface a RIM easement or WMA-adjacency clearly without asking the specific question.
• If a parcel already carries a RIM conservation easement from a prior enrollment, understand that the easement runs with the land permanently regardless of ownership change -- development or agricultural conversion of the easement-protected acres remains restricted no matter who buys the property.
• If you're interested in enrolling your own qualifying wetland or riparian acreage in CREP going forward, contact Rice Soil and Water Conservation District (507-332-5408) directly for current eligibility, payment rates, and sign-up status, since program terms and eligible-acreage caps can change year to year.
• Check Rice County GIS or the DNR's own WMA boundary data if a parcel of interest borders Gray Fox WMA, Trout Lily WMA, Prairie Creek WMA, or another recently created public parcel from this program -- newly created WMAs may not appear as public land on older maps or plat references.