With habitat for California waterbirds drying up, conservation groups and rice farmers are collaborating to flood fields and enhance waterbird habitat on roughly 550,000 acres of California’s rice fields.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is contributing $7 million, matched by partner agencies, for helping share farmers’ costs of implementing new practices that align rice growing with waterbird needs. “The idea behind the program is to provide the incentive for people to adopt new things and then do it on their own even without the payment,” program manager Alan Forkey said.