An agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is a unique and rather poorly understood part of the U.S. government. It plays a major role in the management of the nation's rural [Page 1221]lands, but unlike its more famous federal land management counterparts (e.g., the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), the NRCS neither owns nor administers land. Indeed, it is generally disallowed from working on federal land, and it is the only federal agency specifically authorized to work on private lands. While its principal work activities involve agricultural extension, the NRCS also conducts soil and flood control surveys, inventories national land use and land cover, monitors snowfall ...