Planting the Seeds of Conservation - It makes farmers happy and creates habitat for wild creatures. What's not to like about the Farm Bill? - farmers who set aside areas for wildlife

National Wildlife, Oct-Nov, 2001 by Gary Turbak

I GUESS I'M KIND OF A NUT for wildlife," says Kenneth Walters, who raises beans, wheat, corn--and wildlife--on his 650-acre farm in northern Missouri. Thanks to Walters' conservation ethic and some timely government programs, nearly half his farm is now covered with native grasses and wetlands. The quail population has not rebounded the way he had hoped, but pheasants and turkeys are doing well.

To help nature along, Walters plants wildlife food plots--milo, millet, corn and beans--near the best cover, and he plans to burn some spots to stimulate plant growth. Last year, a Canada goose nested on a tiny island in a pond on his land. When the water level dropped and it appeared predators might soon be able to reach the goslings, Walters pumped in extra water. "On my farm, wildlife is important," he says.

Across America, thousands of other farmers are also setting aside parts of their farms for wildlife and wildlife habitat. Making all this possible is a series of federal government programs contained in a legislative package called the Farm Bill (officially known as the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996). "Farm Bill programs have done more to restore wildlife habitat and to retard the degradation of wildlife habitat on private land than anything else we've done since early in the last century," says Donald McKenzie of the Wildlife Management Institute.

As the law comes up for reauthorization late this year or early next year, "Congress has the opportunity to increase significantly the benefits to wildlife, water quality and landowners by renewing and expanding federal conservation programs," says Lesli Gray, a legislative representative for the National Wildlife Federation.

Historically, the agricultural industry has been hard on wildlife habitat. Although patchwork family farms often provided a place for wildlife, modern technology and farming practices have intensified the habitat decline. Today, many farmers till or graze livestock fencerow- to-fencerow, and as corporations buy up small farms, even the fencerows disappear.

Grasslands have been hit especially hard, and only 1 percent of the nation's original tallgrass prairie remains. In Indiana, for example, seven million tallgrass acres have gone under the plow, leaving only 1,000 acres in scattered patches. In Illinois, only 2,600 prairie acres remain from an original total of 25.6 million acres. In North Dakota and Nebraska, nearly 75 percent of the mixed-grass prairie has been destroyed. As a result of grassland loss, many wild species have suffered. "Intact native grasslands are now one of North America's most endangered ecosystems," says Catherine Johnson, the National Wildlife Federation's grasslands program manager. "With the broad-scale loss of grassland habitat, we are witnessing dramatic declines in grassland wildlife species from black-tailed prairie dogs to sage grouse."

A few decades ago, pheasant populations in many states plunged, and the reproductive success of upland-nesting ducks--pintails, mallards, teal, gadwalls and others--threatened to dip below replacement level. Bobwhite quail numbers fell by 73 percent in the Southeast, and in the Midwest at least 13 species of grassland birds became state-listed as threatened or endangered. Swift foxes, burrowing owls, meadowlarks, loggerhead shrikes, kingbirds, dickcissels, savannah sparrows and other species also declined.

Meanwhile, more than half of America's original 224 million acres of wetlands has been lost, often to cropland. With about 900 animal species--including one-third of all North American birds--believed to rely to some extent on a wetland environment, wildlife has suffered.

Farming, of course, is not responsible for all these losses. Weather, urban encroachment on habitat, flood control and other factors have also played a role. And when farmers do eliminate wildlife habitat, it's usually because they are trying to eke out a living from the land, not because they have something against wildlife. Still, much habitat loss does occur on agricultural land.

The Farm Bill is helping to change this legacy, however. Actually a collection of varied agricultural legislation that is lumped under a single moniker, the Farm Bill comes up for renewal about every five years. For decades, this package focused on agricultural subsidies-- payments made to farmers based on the crops they grew or didn't grow-- but in 1985, Congress added environmental objectives (primarily the reduction of soil erosion) to the mix. In 1996, at the urging of conservationists, other environmental benefits, including wildlife habitat, also became Farm Bill goals.

The law's flagship environmental component is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to plant native grasses or trees instead of crops on highly erodible land. Once enrolled in the program, land must remain unfarmed for at least ten years. Millions of trees have taken root under CRP, but most of the program's acres have been planted with grass in the prairie states. "Virtually overnight, CRP put nearly 35 million acres of permanent vegetative cover on the ground-- something no other program will probably ever match," says McKenzie.