In what must have seemed like a waking nightmare, Becky Jones Mahlum heard the early morning radio announcer in Bismarck, N.D., deliver a commercial touting a new type of sodbusting plow “perfect for breaking up native prairie and Conservation Reserve Program grassland.”
For Mahlum, whose job is to deliver the Ducks Unlimited message of land conservation, the words must have seemed like something from the twilight zone.
“That’s what is happening in the prairie pothole region,” Mahlum lamented last week on a visit from DU’s Great Plains Regional Office in the North Dakota capital. “They’re developing varieties of drought-resistant wheat and beans and plowing up more land.”
Thing is, 70 percent of all duck production in the lower 48 states is generated in the eastern Dakotas. And, as Mahlum is quick to point out, ducks do best on the miles and miles of native grassy marshland for which the region is noted.
All this makes the politics and economics of the next congressional Farm Bill all the more important. DU and other conservation groups have begun a campaign for a “sodsaver” measure, a toughening of regulations that would deny benefits to farmers who destroy grassland. The current Farm Bill has one more year remaining and the battle to craft the next one could be even more intense.
“There’s a lot of concern about how the budget deficit might cause the administration to divert money to other programs,” Mahlum said of potential peril to initiatives such as CRP, critical for ducks, pheasants and a variety of small wildlife.
This concern for grassland also extends to Colorado, where a loss of water wells and the drought-induced drying up of playas, those natural water-collecting cavities in the prairie, add to the pressure on waterfowl and upland game birds.
“That’s why we’re focusing our efforts on the South Platte River corridor,” said Greg Kernohan, DU regional biologist with headquarters in Greeley. “We’re trying to restore seasonal wetlands that used to fill from the river overflow. It doesn’t do that anymore.”
The lower Platte will occupy much of the time and money generated by Ducks Unlimited in Colorado as part of a 10-year strategic plan extending through 2013. Much of the money comes from banquets and other fundraisers sponsored by local DU chapters.
“Our focus used to be the San Luis Valley, but we’ve generally achieved our goals down there,” Kernohan related.
The emphasis now will be to re-establish 20,000 wetland acres along the South Platte, the sort of habitat identified as important feeding and resting places for ducks by the continuing survey conducted by Division of Wildlife biologist Todd Sanders.
Meanwhile, national focus has landed squarely on the Dakotas, where 298,000 acres – 2.2 percent of the remaining 13.8 million acres of native prairie – were converted to cropland during 2002-05.
Ducks Unlimited proposes a provision in the next Farm Bill that would eliminate federal subsidy of any kind on any new cropland put into production from grassland with no previous farming history.
It’s a bold move certain to be opposed by the powerful agriculture lobby. Success requires equally strong support from waterfowl enthusiasts and conservationists. North America has lost too much of its wetland resources. It’s time to draw a line, and not with a plow.
