2025 Rice Levee, Road Edge, and Ag Corridors Program Application

The Rice Levee, Road Edge, and Ag Corridors Program pays private land-owners to provide waterfowl nesting habitat on rice levees and road edges on their farms during the spring and summer. This program now pays a fixed rate of $0.80 per linear foot of levee or road edge. You do not have to apply every levee or road edge within a field, you can specify which levees or road edges you would like to enroll on your map or in the comments section. We’ll rank the applications based on environmental factors such as habitat quality and proximity to summer water. Successful applicants will be notified by December 19th, 2025. Program Requirements: If selected for the program, vegetation on rice levees or roads must be left undisturbed from the previous growing season. Enrolled levees or roads must be left undisturbed until July 15th, 2026. If fields enrolled in the program do not get planted in the spring, they may still be eligible for the Fallow Field Program. Road corridors must be at least 5 feet wide to be enrolled. CWA and USGS will be regularly monitoring enrolled fields for nesting activity from April 1st to July 15th. Fields may be monitored by walking the levees every three weeks and marking any nests that are found. Active nests will be checked once a week. Payments will be made shortly after July 15th if program requirements have been met. For more details on this program please return to the Rice Levee Program page, or if you have any questions, please contact Jason Coslovich at 408-644-3525 or jcoslovich@calwaterfowl.org.