Corn stalks ducks
Rising commodity prices may spell doom for habitat
LAS VEGAS — A storm cloud of historic proportions hovered over the Shooting Hunting Outdoor Trade Show here last week. And it has formed so quickly that hunters, conservationists and the outdoor industry are unprepared to weather it.
As farmers follow the money, the results for waterfowl are stark. As one measure, almost 420,000 acres previously enrolled in North Dakota's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) were converted to cropland in 2007. It's as if someone plowed under a three-mile swath of wildlife habitat from North Dakota's southern border to Canada, according to conservation group Ducks Unlimited (DU).
"It's a perfect storm," said Mike Checkett, a DU biologist. "I hate to use that cliché. But this is a crisis, absolutely."
The speed of the conversion is striking. As Americans turned to ethanol production to reduce their dependence on foreign oil, it has become highly profitable to plant corn almost anywhere and everywhere it can grow.
At the end of 2005, corn was selling for $1.86 per bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. On Monday, February 4, corn closed at $5.10 per bushel.
"It's amazing," said Bart James, DU's Director of Agriculture Conservation Policy. "Most people who should be concerned with this issue don't even have it on their radar screen. We're outnumbered, and we need help."
Checkett echoed that: "We kind of sound like Chicken Little, saying, 'The sky is falling, the sky if falling.' But the sky really is falling."
Corn is kicking conservation's butt, to put it simply. And if the people in conservation's corner don't get to work quickly, this fight could be a first-round knockout.
The 420,000 acres of CRP loss in North Dakota was twice as large as expected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency, which administers the program.
CRP provides financial incentive for farmers to convert marginally productive farmland and other environmentally important acreage into vegetative cover, like native grasses and trees.
It helps take the risk out of farming by providing annual rental payments to the landowner based on the amount and environmental significance of the acreage enrolled. Since it was established with the Food Security Act of 1985 and reauthorized in the 1996 and 2002 Farm Bills, the federal cap for CRP enrollment has grown to just over 39 million acres.
Five states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota and Iowa — comprise the primary breeding grounds for waterfowl in the U.S. And those five states had a total of 7.8 million acres enrolled in CRP in 2006. That CRP acreage has produced 2 million ducks per year, according to estimates by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
CRP has been managed with 10- and 15-year contracts between the federal government and landowners. With many of those contracts expiring last year and corn, soybean and wheat prices on the rise, a reduction in renewals was expected. But, as mentioned previously, the forecast for non-renewals was half of what actually happened in 2007.
And as bad as that sounds, it may be the good news. Various agricultural groups, hoping to land ethanol production facilities in their areas, are pressuring Congress to let every CRP enrollee escape early from those 10- and 15-year contracts without penalty.
The billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that have been invested in the Conservation Reserve Program since its inception in 1985 and those 39 million acres protected and enhanced by CRP could this year essentially be wiped out with the stroke of a pen.
Because no agreement could be reached on the 2007 Farm Bill, the time period to do that has been extended. James was going from one Congressional office to the next this week, lobbying for DU and conservation's answer to this crisis.
"At no time in the last 50 years has waterfowl nesting habitat been in more peril than it is now," Checkett said. "This is absolutely a call for action. We need help. It's critical that everyone take 10 minutes and call your Congressional representative about this issue. It's as easy as that, and it could make a big difference."
Even more troublesome than landowners abandoning CRP is their conversion of native prairie land, previously untilled and therefore ineligible for CRP enrollment. Native prairie has value as grazing land for cattle ranchers. The rise in corn prices hits them from two sides - making it more expensive to feed their livestock and more tempting to plant corn where it has never been planted before.
"We could begin to replace CRP land in the next five years, if the commodity market declined," Checkett said. "But native prairie can't be replaced. There are too many plant species involved. Once it's gone, you can't get it back."
In the past few years, U.S. waterfowlers have enjoyed daily bag limits and hunting season lengths that are on the high end, historically speaking. Those numbers are set by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service based on the total waterfowl population. Pheasant populations in both North and South Dakota are also at historical highs.
However, if you want to enjoy hunting seasons like these again you've got to act now. Not tomorrow — today. There's still time to build some shelter from this storm. But that window of opportunity is closing faster than anyone ever thought possible.
For more information on this issue and what you can do to help, go to the Ducks Unlimited website, www.ducks.org. For specifics on DU's efforts to maintain and enhance the Conservation Reserve Program, see www.ducks.org/crp and for information on the 2007 Farm Bill see www.ducks.org/farmbill
