How the land gets protected.

RARI is a nationally competitive grant program formed in partnership between the Department of War and the Department of the Interior that uses Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars to enhance recreational opportunities near military installations. Per the program: projects must provide outdoor recreation opportunities and promote compatible land uses in the vicinity of, or ecologically related to, a military installation or military airspace, and/or maintain or enhance disaster resilience.

Eligibility works in reverse of most federal grants: a project must be inside a REPI Partnership Opportunity Area or a designated Sentinel Landscape. That is exactly the geography these corridors occupy. And per the program's own guidance, projects inside Sentinel Landscapes are 'more highly prioritized.'

REPI is the Department of War's flagship encroachment-mitigation program (10 U.S.C. § 2684a). It funds easements, land acquisitions, and conservation partnerships in lands adjacent to military installations to protect mission capabilities — preserving working farms, ranches, forests, and wildlife habitat that buffer the base from incompatible development.

REPI doesn't fund recreation directly, but its statutory 'secondary benefits' explicitly include 'maintenance or expansion of recreational uses (hunting/fishing, hiking, trails, parks)' and 'protection or increased access to cultural resources.' That language describes this corridor work. When REPI buys an easement on a Missouri-River-bottom farm next to Fort Leavenworth, the land stays open, undeveloped, and usable for the public corridor that runs through it.

REPI funds 50–80% of project costs depending on agreement structure. The annual proposal cycle opens in April and closes in September; the partner-driven REPI Challenge runs pre-proposals in July with full proposals in September. Funds flow the following fiscal year, typically Q1–Q2.

Sentinel Landscapes is the Federal Coordinating Committee — Department of War, USDA, and Department of the Interior — that formally designates large-scale landscapes where conservation, working lands, and national defense interests converge. There are eighteen designated landscapes nationally as of 2026, including Joint Base Lewis-McChord (2013, the first ever) and Southern Indiana (2022, which includes NSA Crane and Camp Atterbury-Muscatatuck).

The Partnership creates a coalition of federal agencies, state and local governments, and private organizations that work with willing landowners and land managers to advance sustainable land use practices around military installations and ranges. Projects inside designated landscapes are 'often prioritized for funding opportunities from all three Federal entities' — meaning REPI, NRCS ACEP-ALE, USFWS easements, and RARI proposals are weighted higher when they sit inside a Sentinel Landscape footprint.

GAOA created two things: permanent full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund ($900M/year, the source of RARI dollars), and the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund (up to $1.9B/year through 2025) to address deferred maintenance across federal recreation lands.

Legacy Restoration funds flow to the National Park Service (70%), USDA Forest Service (15%), Fish & Wildlife (5%), Bureau of Land Management (5%), and Bureau of Indian Education (5%) — the same agencies that manage the parks, monuments, refuges, and forests that the corridors connect to.