The State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE) Initiative restores vital habitat in order to meet high-priority state wildlife conservation goals. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) provides farmers and landowners with several opportunities like this to achieve many conservation goals. Through SAFE, landowners establish wetlands, grasses, and trees. These practices are designed to enhance important wildlife populations by creating critical habitat and food sources. They also protect soil and water health by working as a barrier to sediment and nutrient run-off before they reach waterways.

SAFE Practices include: buffers, wetlands, trees, longleaf pine, grass

Species targeted by SAFE include those designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened or endangered including the lesser prairie chicken, those that have suffered population decline — like the New England cottontail, bobwhite quail, and grassland birds.

SAFE also provides habitat for other wildlife, including deer, game birds such as pheasants, waterfowl, and pollinators that have significant social and economic value.

SAFE enhances populations of high priority species by working with states to identify practices and sites that will have the largest benefit. It improves native grassland habitats for rare, threatened, endangered, and declining species that are dependent on native prairie communities.
SAFE restores trees, primarily hardwoods, to create habitat that will benefit species such as northern bob-white quail, the Indiana bat, ducks, and other wildlife. It also promotes carbon sequestration.