Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Tim Male, VP of Conservation Science & Policy

Black-tailed deer graze on a South Dakota prairie (c) Moriah Brocar

I watched Little House on the Prairie as a boy … I might have had a crush on Laura Ingalls.  It was a story of one family on the frontier and their efforts to break the prairie and make a successful life for themselves as farmers in Minnesota.  The fictional characters succeeded … and their non-fictional counterparts in the real American Midwest did too.  Unfortunately, they succeeded a little too well from an environmental perspective.

America’s tallgrass and mixed grass prairies are mostly gone today.  States like Arkansas have less than one percent left.  States like North Dakota have lost 80 percent of their prairie.  Gone are bison and pronghorn antelope from prairies, but the loss of these landscapes has also imperiled many less obvious species that make prairies special – endangered orchids, fritillary butterflies, grasshopper sparrows.

The loss of America’s prairies continues as agricultural technology creates new techniques to plow and irrigate the hilly, rocky or poorer soils or more disaster-prone areas that until recently supported remaining grasslands.  And in the prairie pothole region of North and South Dakota, it’s not just grassland but also wetlands that are being lost.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that up to 1.4 million isolated wetlands in these prairies are at risk of being drained.  Populations of many kinds of ducks will be hit hardest by some of these losses, since this region is the ‘duck factory’ of America.

High crop prices are fueling part of this cycle of destruction, and corn ethanol subsidies help drive those prices.  Adding to the problem are the extremely generous subsidies that the federal government provides to even America’s richest corporate agribusiness to help them buy crop insurance.  Think of your car insurance and imagine that Congress paid Geico to sell you a car insurance policy. They paid 60 percent of your out-of-pocket cost to buy the insurance, and then gave more money (called a subsidy) to Geico in case you had a lot of accidents and they started losing money.  That is how our crop insurance system works, and when subsidies are that generous, economists agree that it starts producing strange outcomes.   For example, since taxpayers are covering more than half the cost of insurance, we take away the risk from plowing up those grasslands and wetlands.  Farmers have no reason not to plow up wetlands or prairie because even if a crop fails to make it to harvest, insurance and taxpayers cover the losses.  The farmer wins either way – the only loser is the prairie and the species that rely on it.

Prairie dogs are another species that make their home in these grasslands.

Last week, two Members of Congress — Reps. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota.) and Kristi Noem (R-South Dakota) — reintroduced legislation to help stop some of the pressure that taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies put on prairie and wetlands.  The Protect our Prairies Act would pull back almost $200 million in insurance subsidies by dramatically lowering the amount the government provides on any acres of native grassland that have been recently plowed. This doesn’t mean that farmers can’t keep farming, just that they won’t have as much of an incentive to plow up prairies to do it.  It’s a great idea that has Defenders’ enthusiastic support and should be passed by Congress.

We are working on additional, bold ways to rein in billions in spending on the other corporate insurance subsidies that drive environmental destruction. For example, we agree with proposals that would prevent millionaires from getting as much subsidy as other farmers.  More importantly, we are working hard to ensure that Congress passes accountability provisions that require farmers have to abide by modest conservation requirements, in exchange for a generous subsidy provided by taxpayers. This is called ‘conservation compliance’ and was successfully included in the Senate-passed Farm Bill in 2012, partly because of our efforts. There are smart ways to maintain a taxpayer-supported safety net for America’s family farmers without doing as much harm to our environment.

Kelly Catlett, California Representative

Wetlands at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge (Photo ©American West Conservation)

For wildlife enthusiasts, visiting the six national wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin is an amazing experience. Located on the Oregon-California border, the six refuges — Klamath Marsh, Upper Klamath, Bear Valley, Clear Lake, Lower Klamath, and Tule Lake — are an important stop on the Pacific Flyway providing habitat for 353 bird species as they migrate from breeding grounds in the north to wintering grounds in the south. Fall and spring bring millions of ducks, geese and swans to the area during their annual migrations, and the refuges are home to the largest winter bald eagle population in the contiguous United States.

The refuges are breathtaking, but I actually wasn’t there to view wildlife. I went to the Klamath Basin to learn about a program operated on the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuges that could provide a model for how agriculture and wetlands can not only co-exist, but benefit one another. In the United States, nearly half of our original wetlands have been drained and converted to other uses, including agriculture. Finding a way for wetlands and agriculture to co-exist can slow the loss of wetlands and keep much-needed habitat available to a variety of wetland-dependant species, including ducks, geese, swans, and other migratory birds.

Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Refuges are unique in that their management allows commercial agriculture on the refuge. In fact, both wetland wildlife habitat and commercial agriculture are part of the refuge’s purpose. Refuge managers struggled for decades to reconcile these seemingly conflicting land uses.  Under traditional management techniques, wetland areas were flooded permanently. After several years of continuous flooding, the wetland areas became so thick with tules and other plants that wildlife stopped using them. Eventually, managers hit on the idea of rotating wetlands through the commercial farm fields on the refuges.

The American White Pelican is one of the many species of birds that benefit from the Walking Wetlands program (Photo ©Dan Dzurisin)

As part of an effort dubbed the “Walking Wetlands” Program, refuge managers began to experiment by flooding fields that were of such poor quality that no one wanted to farm them. Using specific water management techniques, they restored former cropland to productive wetland habitat. Then, after several years of flooding, fields were dried and returned to agricultural production. Allowing a more natural regime of flooded and dry periods produced healthier, more attractive wetlands. During this test project, the experimental walking wetlands only represented 4% of refuge lands, but they supported 30-90% of some waterbird species.

The biggest surprise came when, after several years as a wetland, the fields were drained and returned to agricultural production. Farmers in the “Walking Wetlands” program have found that after wetland cycles of one to four years, they don’t need to fumigate their soil or apply pesticides and fertilizers. Yields of certain crops even improved by 25%, and farmers discovered that the pest and disease control benefits even allow for production organically. In other words, farmers could produce more and better-quality crops with less cost and effort.

©American West Conservation

From this initial experiment, the program has grown to include 600 to 1,200 acres of year-round and seasonally flooded wetlands. It has been so successful that neighboring landowners have even begun to incorporate wetlands into their operations on private land outside the refuge. The “Walking Wetlands” Program has demonstrated that wetlands and agriculture don’t have to be at odds. They can be integrated in a way that keeps the ecosystem healthy and supports the economies of rural communities.

We’re looking at how the same methods could be put into use to compensate for the losses of other wetlands and farms like those in California’s Yolo Bypass. This large, undeveloped, leveed expanse of land shunts water around Sacramento to relieve pressure on the city’s levees during high water periods. There are proposals to re-operate the Yolo Bypass to hold water more frequently and for longer durations, which would benefit migrating salmon, steelhead and a couple other species of fish. But the practice would also displace current waterfowl habitat, and potentially make farming inside the bypass more difficult. Learning about programs like Walking Wetlands, which can use swaths of land for both purposes, gives us a new option to bring to the table — one that could help out farmers and waterfowl alike whether applied inside or outside the bypass.

A new report released today by the Environmental Working Group and Defenders highlights the massive wildlife habitat loss stemming from unlimited and unregulated crop insurance subsidies like the ones on the pending 2012 farm bill.

New research from the report indicates that, between 2008 and 2011, over 23 million acres of viable wildlife habitat were converted into cropland, particularly in areas of the Midwest and Great Plains. The loss of these wetlands and grasslands now pose a significant risk to the long-term survival of songbirds and waterfowl, as well as several at-risk species, such as swift fox, mountain plover, sage grouse, and lesser prairie chicken. The secondary pollution effects of crops in these areas with the use of chemicals and fertilizers has also been observed, leading scientists to worry that pressure on these species will only increase.

Much of the conversion from wildlife habitat to cropland has occurred as a result of crop insurance subsidies. Because these subsidies lower farmers’ risks of plowing crops in certain vulnerable wetlands and grasslands, they provide greater incentives for farmers to work there and eliminate prime areas of wildlife survival. Further, these crop insurance subsidies are not currently subject to payment limits and conservation requirements.

Sage grouse are one of countless species that rely on private farm land for their survival.

With the release of this report, Defenders and EWG are hoping to influence Congress to make changes in regards to adding conservation requirements as they prepare to outline legislation for the 2012 farm bill. New “conservation compliance” provisions could require growers to implement basic elements of environmental protection as part of an agreement to receive crop insurance subsidies. While there is much work still to be done, it is the hope that this report will highlight the vulnerability of wildlife and allow for genuine impacts on the upcoming farm bill.

To learn more about how crop subsidies contribute to massive habitat losses, please visit this article from EcoWatch.

“Coast to Coast” is a summer blog series highlighting some of America’s most imperiled wildlife. Using the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new state-by-state endangered species map, Defenders is drawing attention to native plants and animals most in need of help.

In honor of the Fourth of July holiday last week, the first species comes from the first states. Found in all but two of the 13 original colonies, the bog turtle once ranged far and wide in America.

Young Bog Turtle- Courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Despite its large territory, however, this tiny turtle is facing some titanic threats. Reaching lengths of only 4.5 inches, the bog turtle is not only the smallest turtle in North America but has also become one of the rarest.

Bog turtles rely on fragile marshes and wetlands for everything from food – like seeds, berries and invertebrates — to finding mates. They’re perfectly adapted to life in the swamp, where they elude predators by burrowing into the muddy soil and disappearing from sight.

But when these wet places disappear, so do the turtles. In recent decades, their population has declined dramatically. A large percentage of the bog turtle’s former habitat has been drained and converted to farmland, making it virtually impossible for this wetland wonder to survive. Invasive plants, such as the Purple Loosestrife from Asia and Africa, are crowding in. Their roots grow too thickly for any nutrients to pass through. And poachers often nab this diminutive dude as a favorite of the pet trade.

These threats have resulted in a perfect storm for the bog turtle, which was finally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1997. Progress toward recovery has been slow to date, but a promising program was put in place in 2008 as part of the Farm Bill. The bog turtle was selected as one of seven unique species under the Working Lands for Wildlife program in need of additional help from private land owners.

The voluntary program offers incentives to farmers and other private landowners to help conserve the species. By altering or restricting livestock grazing and controlling weeds, farmers and ranchers can improve and restore habitat for bog turtles. As an added bonus, efforts to protect wetland areas for bog turtles will also benefit wild turkeys, bass and trout.

To find out more about this terrific turtle listen to this podcast featured on the Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.

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