The Department of Agriculture is turning away from encouraging "random acts of conservation" to promote the development of landscape-scale initiatives and target so-called ecological hot spots.

The $33 million "Working Lands for Wildlife" program that USDA introduced last week showcases the new approach.

The program targets seven at-risk species and encourages landowners to voluntary undertake conservation efforts such as modifying fences to promote wildlife movements, halting the advance of invasive species and changing grazing patterns.

The approach differs from USDA's traditional approach to conservation, which let farmers enroll for benefits without regard to how their properties and projects fit into the overall picture.

"In the past, much of our conservation efforts in the country have been, I would term it, 'random acts of conservation,'" said USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources Harris Sherman in an interview last week. "Instead of focusing on the hot spots -- focusing on areas where we can get the greatest ecological benefit -- we have instead had a series of disjointed actions."

USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has begun 15 landscape initiatives, spending $324 million in fiscal 2011 and $243.5 million to date in the current fiscal year, service chief Dave White told Congress recently.

The first program, the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was begun in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. It brought in funding from three farm bill conservation programs and, with the help of nonprofit groups, focused on alleviating effects from oil pollution in migratory bird breeding grounds along the Gulf Coast.

The initiatives also target the Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River Basin, the Great Lakes, longleaf pine habitat in the Southeast and forests in the Northeast. An 11-state sage grouse initiative spurred Working Lands for Wildlife.

"Rather than applying one kind of conservation measure here and one conservation measure there, instead we are talking about a suite of conservation measures," Sherman said. "And we work hard to get as comprehensive a sign-up of landowners as possible. So instead of getting just one landowner here, or two landowners there, we try to get 100 percent of the landowners in this area."

By coupling a targeted approach with broader ecological context, "the return on our investment is greater," Sherman said.

While the conservation service's focus on landscape and targeting is relatively new, the idea is not.

In the 1960s, for example, the renowned conservationist and author Aldo Leopold articulated a broad landscape view as part of his "land ethic." The practice has since been well-documented in scientific studies.

But NRCS programs have historically been spread across the 50 states and open to farmers in general sign-ups. The approach has received bipartisan support but does not focus resources on the worst water pollution areas or critical habitat for threatened species.

Marty Matlock, an ecological engineer at the University of Arkansas, said he sees the recent policy focus on the landscape coming at the same time as a "consensus across all folks" that habitats have to be preserved in order to preserve species, combined with a recognition that habitat boundaries do not line up with state and county lines and farm fences.

"We can't preserve every habitat, so we have to prioritize," Matlock said. Historically, USDA incentive programs "have worked at some level, but they're not prioritized. It's not that they're not working, but we have to be able to be more effective with shrinking resources."

Popular with farmers, conservationists

The programs have proved popular with farmers -- more than 400 producers have signed up for the sage grouse initiative, according to USDA.

Conservation groups have praised the landscape focus.

"USDA's landscape-scale approach to conservation is exactly what's needed to ensure federal conservation dollars are spent as efficiently as possible to achieve specific conservation objectives in particular regions, like cleaner water and improved habitat for wildlife in the Upper Mississippi River Basin," said Terry Noto, an environmental lawyer and federal policy consultant for the Environmental Defense Fund.

Steve Kline, director of the Center for Agricultural Lands at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, also said he sees a heightened need for landscape-scale and targeted approaches.

Many of USDA's conservation programs are not large to begin with and have been deeply cut into by congressional appropriators. The Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, for example, is authorized for $85 million but was cut to $50 million in fiscal 2012.

"With limited budgets, limited staff, we have to make sure these programs are as cost-efficient as possible through targeting," Kline said.

Sixty-six percent of the funding appropriated for the habitat program will go toward the new Working Lands for Wildlife.

The Farm Service Agency's Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to idle their lands to preserve habitats, is also increasingly relying on a targeted approach.

In 1996, Congress authorized the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, a part of the Conservation Reserve Program that is targeted to waterways and wetlands. Another initiative begun a few years ago gives states the flexibility to focus funding on particular species and wildlife goals.

A few weeks ago, USDA announced it was focusing 1 million Conservation Reserve Program acres on wetlands and grasslands, while another initiative announced earlier in the year is focused on the most highly erodible land. The targeting programs are done under a continuous sign-up that is separate from CRP's general sign-up process.

Such approaches are benefiting not only at-risk species but also the water, air and soil, Kline said. An added bonus in the sage grouse and working lands initiative is that farmers who participate are excluded from requirements under the Endangered Species Act.

Kline stressed, though, that there must also still be a vehicle to spread out conservation dollars across the country.

"There's always going to be value to a farmer who wants to put in a riparian buffer," even if it is not in sage grouse habitat or the Chesapeake Bay region, he said. "There's always going to be value to a farmer who wants to keep cattle out of a stream."