The Conservationist

Finally, Some Good Farm Bill News for Sportsmen

Online Editors — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:00:17 -0400

Make that some very, very good news.

In an example of what has become rare political compromise in Washington, the nation’s leading farm lobbyists cut a deal with sportsmen’s conservation groups.

The farmers for the first time agreed to support linking crop insurance subsidies to compliance with conservation programs, while conservation groups involved agreed to oppose amendments that would limit farmers’ access to insurance programs, and will support lightening some regulations of conservation programs.

The compromise was a major breakthrough for sportsmen’s groups who have long sought to link subsidies to conservation. The change gives farmers an economic incentive to comply with critical conservation efforts. And it allows sportsmen to argue that if programs such as Sod Buster come with the linkage, they could save taxpayers $200 million a year.

Sportsmen’s groups involved in the deal were the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and the National Wildlife Federation. The Environmental Defense Fund and the National Association of Conservation Districts joined them.

The deal will be included in the Farm Bill being considered by the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. It then goes to the full Senate, which is expected to pass a bill by the end of the month.

Last year the Senate passed a Farm Bill that include a linkage. The House didn’t pass a final bill, and the measure that was approved by the House committee did not have the linkage.

In Current Rush to Buy Guns and Ammo, Pittman-Robertson Funds Break All Records

Online Editors — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:02:34 -0400

As we gnash our teeth and rail at the mismanagement of our world, we need to take a few long moments to unclench our jaws and celebrate our successes. One in particular, which is going unmentioned in the debates over new gun laws and especially in the national discussion of hunting, is the Pittman-Robertson Act and the cash that is flowing from it like a high tide of honey into our federal and state wildlife coffers.

I am still shocked when I go into the Scheels in Great Falls and find the shelves empty of ammunition, and the gun cabinet with nothing in it but brackets, but it is a comfort to know that we have a booming economy in guns and ammo, and that, because of the Pittman-Robertson Act, we have a record-shattering amount of money available to support wildlife, habitat, and the shooting and archery sports. The rush on guns and ammo produced $522,552,011 in Pittman-Robertson money in fiscal year 2013 alone. At a time of record federal deficits, slashed budgets and ideologically inspired attacks on conservation, the Act has never seemed so important, or so visionary.

I thought most people in the hunting and fishing world knew about the P-R, but I was wrong. I called the gun counter at a major outdoor retailer to ask if the Pittman-Robertson taxes applied to reloading equipment, bullets, shot, powder and primers (they don’t), and the guy who answered the phone—who was otherwise friendly and knowledgeable about his merchandise—had never heard of the Pittman-Robertson Act. I don’t fault him for not knowing. We have done a poor job, even amongst ourselves and our children, of explaining just how irreplaceable we are to American wildlife and habitat. So, for the good guy at the gun counter, and everybody else, including me, here’s the story of the most important single source of funding for fish and wildlife in the history of mankind:

The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937, usually called the Pittman-Robertson Act after its sponsors, Senator Key Pittman of Nevada and Virginia’s Representative Absalom Willis Robertson, is an 11 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition. The tax already existed in 1937, but sportsmen from all over the U.S., faced with the dire conditions of fish and wildlife in the 1930s (it is said that the lowest point for wildlife populations in our country was reached around 1934), pressured Congress to earmark that money for restoration and conservation projects, for wildlife research and habitat protection. The P-R Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937.

The money collected goes to the U.S. Department of Interior, and is passed out to the states according to a formula that counts how many hunting licenses are sold there and how large the state is. State fish and wildlife agencies apply for the money, and usually provide 25 percent or more of their own matching funds drawn from hunting license sales.

The success of the P-R led to its expansion in 1970 to handguns (which are taxed at 10 percent) and to archery equipment (taxed like long arms at 11 percent) and allowed some of the money to be used not just for wildlife restoration but for hunter education and shooting ranges.

In 1950, Congress passed the Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act (known as the Dingell-Johnson Act, or D-J) created a tax on boats, boating fuel and fishing equipment that has built, year after year into one of the great conservation success stories of the planet. This year states will share $359,871,868 for everything for fishing access sites to hatcheries and fishery surveys. (Representative John Dingell of Michigan, who was co-sponsor of the bill, is about to become the longest serving member of Congress in history. Dingell has both an A rating from the National Rifle Association and a 100 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters, which is a powerful antidote to cynicism. Another is the fact that, in 2000, when the Pittman-Robertson funds were raided by the Clinton administration for everything from outlandish dinner parties and trying to purchase the Palmyra Atoll in the South Pacific to funding anti-hunting groups, an outraged U.S. Rep. Don Young of Alaska led the successful charge to pass a law that kept the P-R and D-J funds directed to serve the sportsmen who fought for the act and paid the taxes.)

Taken together, P-R and D-J—our money, from our purchases, from buying a new Barbie fishing rod for your toddler to the wild rush on .223s, is going to bring in a mind-blowing $882 million for us this year. These visionary excise taxes are based on the very basic principles of economic growth: money spent on wildlife and fisheries restoration results in more wildlife and fish, which allows for more hunters and fishermen, who buy more boats and fuel and ammo and guns and tackle, which provides more money for improving water quality and restoring or protecting habitat, which results in more game and fish… and so on to a kind of beautiful perpetual motion creation, teeming with happy outdoorspeople, leaping fish, thundering herds and skies dark with waterfowl, cerulean buntings and plovers.

The return on investment, the sheer economic boom, has been extraordinary, and it includes the billions of dollars spent by wildlife watchers, hikers, boaters, and all other non-hunters and non-fishermen who enjoy the clean water, abundant wildlife and birds and open spaces that the P-R and D-J funds buy for them. See just a few of the successful projects funded by these taxes here, and a simple breakdown of the PR’s history and application.

I doubt that many of the anti-gun people, or even many non-hunting and fishing environmentalists, know very much about the miracles performed by state wildlife and fisheries agents with all of this money, or how they get it, or why, or from whom. They just assume that we have all of this open space and wildlife and clean water by divine right, just as children living at home with good parents believe that there will always be a sound roof over their heads and healthy food on the table, never seeing the toil and risk and sweat that it takes to win those essentials for them. It is up to us to explain it to our fellow citizens, not to make our case for the Second Amendment—that case has long ago been made, by the Constitution—but to broaden understanding, to make allies, to celebrate the wisdom of those who recognized our responsibility to steward and restore our greatest natural resources, and had the genius to figure out how to pay for it. It was us—hunters and fishermen—who made this happen. We’re still doing it. Everybody should understand that.

Fish Ladders: A Great Idea That Doesn’t Always Work

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:35:39 -0400

Many scientists consider a statement by Galileo to be a guiding principle in their professions: Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

That came to mind as I came across this headline: Blocked Migration: Fish Ladders On U.S. Dams Are Not Effective

During the age of dam building, fish ladders were considered nothing less than penicillin in the world of fishery management. That’s because when the harm dams caused to migrating fish populations became evident, fish ladders were announced as the solution. Who can forget all those neat news features with film of fish charging up the ladders to the still waters above the dam?

But this group of researchers obviously didn’t consider the science settled. And when they looked into fish ladders on Northeast rivers, they discovered some surprising and sobering facts—one of which was that less than 3 percent of one key species was making it upriver to their spawning grounds.

As John Waldman, a professor of biology at Queens College in New York explains, the idea for the study began when colleague Jed Brown, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was investigating passages on the Merrimack River in New Hampshire, and discovered “at some fish restoration meetings there were more people in the room than salmon in the river.”

So Waldman, Brown and four colleagues set out to see if this was a pattern on other regional rivers that depend on fish ladders to overcome the obstacles dams placed in the path of migrating fish. They looked at the success of Atlantic salmon, American shad, river herring, and other species in passing dams on the Susquehanna, Connecticut, and Merrimack.

“What we found was grimmer than we expected,” Waldman reported for Yale University’s Environment 360 website. “For one species, American shad, less than 3 percent of the fish made it past all the dams in these rivers to their historical spawning reaches.”

As Waldman points out, the record of success for fish ladders on other rivers is mixed; some work well, some poorly.

But the point is that sportsmen and others who care about the future of fish and wildlife should never stop observing and reading - and seeking explanations for what they discover.

Science is never settled, and neither should our quest to do our best for fish and wildlife.

Appeals Court: Leave that Mountain—and Trout—Alone

Online Editors — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:50:32 -0400

Sportsmen and other conservationists found another reason to value the Environmental Protection Agency and the rule of law Tuesday, when a federal appeals court unanimously upheld the agency’s right to regulate the permitting process for mountaintop mining operations – one of the most destructive mining activities ever for fish and wildlife.

The case involved the EPA’s decision to revoke a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for The Spruce 1 Mine, the largest in West Virginia history, which would have buried some six miles of streams with tailings from the mountaintop. The EPA said the permit violated the Clean Water Act, but a lower court ruled the agency didn’t have the right to revoke a permit granted by the corps.

In overturning the lower court, Karen LeCraft Henderson, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reasoned “The Congress made plain its intent to grant the Administrator authority to prohibit/deny/restrict/withdraw a specification at any time … Thus, the unambiguous language of subsection 404(c) manifests the Congress’s intent to confer on EPA a broad veto power extending beyond the permit issuance.”

Conservation groups have long-opposed mountaintop removal mining because of its proven devastating impact on fish and wildlife habitat. The process involves literally shaving down the top of mountains and depositing them in adjacent valleys. Trout Unlimited reports the practice has buried more than 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams, and caused additional damage by introducing sediment pollution as well as altering stream hydrology and increasing flooding.

“Mountaintop removal mining practices create a survival risk for brook trout and other wild trout populations, and impede efforts to restore brook trout in already degraded watersheds,” the group said. “Many streams in the Appalachian Mountains subject to mountaintop removal mining are, or historically were, habitat for brook trout. Brook trout currently live in only a fraction of their original range.”

But all conservation groups were closely watching this case because of the dangerous precedent it could have set were the EPA removed from enforcing its authority under the Clean Water Act, and under other fish and wildlife friendly laws, if other federal agencies had previously acted.

Chris Wood, president of TU, said opponents of the EPA had been falsely using this case to paint a picture of an out-of-control agency stepping into areas where it didn’t belong.

“Since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the EPA has used its veto power on permits exactly 4 times – that’s 14 times in 40 years,” Wood said. “So they have used it judiciously, and only when some of the more remarkable outstanding resources I this country were put at risk. So it was very important that the (courts) affirmed the EOA’s authority to do its job for the American people, when others agencies have not.”

From 1985 to 2005, the Army Corps of Engineers authorized over 7,000 valley fills in central Appalachia for mountaintop removal mining and other strip mining operations, TU reported. Much of that was taking place while the Bush Administration had rolled back enforcement of buffer zone regulations that were supposed to protect riparian habitat so critical to fish and wildlife. The Obama Administration reversed that policy.

Unfortunately, this will not be the end of the story. The mine owners plan to appeal – and they will continue to get plenty of help from friends in Congress.

The GOP-controlled house, with help from coal-state Democrats, has twice attempted to remove the EPA from regulating mining. And with the coal industry facing hard times due to the arrival of plentiful and cheaper natural gas, this ruling is only expected to add fire to the political fight over coal regulation, as the Los Angels Times reported.

In fact, after the ruling Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) told The Hill that “I will soon be reintroducing the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act, legislation the House approved last year to prevent the EPA from using the guise of clean water as a means to disrupt coal mining as they have now done with respect to the Spruce Mine in Logan County, West Virginia.”

All of which means sportsmen and others who care about clean water need to stay focused on this issue in the weeks and months ahead.

New National Ocean Policy Gets Two Thumbs Sideways

Dave_Maccar — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:08:45 -0400

After years of often-bitter debate, The White House released its final version of the new National Ocean Policy this week. Sportsmen’s groups cheered. And jeered. The cup was half empty and full at the same time.

George Cooper, a board member of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and a consultant who has worked closely with the American Sportfishing Association on this issue, spoke on behalf of the ASA:

“What a lot of us see in this document is as follow-through on commitments Deerin [Deerin Babb-Brott, Director of the National Ocean Council] made to us early on in the process to be more responsive to our community’s interests,” Cooper said. “We didn’t want to be lumped in with the commercial interests, we wanted to be recognized for our contributions through the excise taxes we pay for fisheries management, and we wanted recognition of the proper priority of public access and use of a public resources.

“If you read through this very concise document, you see those things mentioned. So, from our standpoint, it’s a start. Do we want to see more progress? Certainly. But this is really a big change from where this was a few years ago, when our issues were not really getting recognized.”

The push for a National Ocean Policy is based on recognition that the nation’s oceans are being stressed by a growing number of competing and often conflicting uses—from energy production, shipping, recreational and commercial fishing, flood control and even military training.

The idea of forming a national framework to regulate those various uses while still protecting the environmental integrity of the oceans sounded good on paper. But competing users seldom see eye-to-eye, and that quickly became the case for this effort.

Recreational users were particularly concerned about the move to marine protected areas (which are regions of the ocean in which human activity, including fishing, is limited) and experiments with catch shares for regulating harvests—especially since in most areas sound scientific data was missing on the health of some species as well as the economic impact of sportfishing.

Underlying all of those concerns was a worry that management decisions would be taken away from regional councils and states and sequestered in Washington, where commercial fishing and environmental organizations seem to have more political power.

Cooper and others said the final document eased many of those concerns, and that was the result of Babb-Brott making good on his commitment to listen to recreational concerns.

“He didn’t just do that at the many very large meetings that were held, but also in follow-up discussions with individuals,” Cooper said. “And this document shows he was listening.

“I think it’s clear there will be no attempt to wrest regulation from regional councils, or to shut the states out of the process.

“Yes, there’s more work to be done, but we know we’ll be listened to.”

The official response from the American Sportfishing Association, which represents the tackle industry, mirrored Cooper’s evaluation. Here is part of the group's carefully worded statement:

“Language in the document referring to ‘ecologically important’ areas for ‘focused protection’ in the National Marine Sanctuary system actually points back to the anxiety the original NOP policy documents caused. But language in the document regarding pilot projects, the role of state agencies and other directives mark a move in a more sensible direction.”

Translation: We’re not happy, but we’re also happy.

And there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Super-Sized Crabs and Oysters with Herpes

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:19:28 -0400

When you spend most days scanning the wire (ok, the Internet; I’m old-school) ferreting out the latest events on the important conservation issues of the day, you come across some remarkable stories. Most make you cry. Some make you laugh.

And then there are those that make you laugh while you cry.

Which brings me to these two headlines from last weekend that created a serious panic among those of us in Cajun country:

“Oysters With Herpes: One More Effect Of Climate Change”

and

“Crabs, Supersized By Carbon Pollution, May Upset Chesapeake’s Balance”

The first headline came across my cell phone inbox while I was attending - really – an oyster party in honor of a friend’s 50th birthday. As is the custom in The Big Easy, we had a sack of freshly harvested local oysters iced down and being shucked by a pro. Some were being placed on the grill floating in a butter-garlic sauce, others were getting lapped up from the half shell, graced with a dollop of Tabasco, chased on their journey with a pull from a very cold 12-ounce brew. Still others were being tossed in a deep fryer wearing a golden coat of crispy batter.

As the phone with its headline was passed among the guests, a sudden silence descended on the event. People stared at their beloved oysters and, for a few moments, stopped eating (a sure sign of distress at a south Louisiana feed). That fear was soon replaced by sorrow, which quickly changed to anger.

Climate change reality had finally hit these folks where it hurt most: Their cuisine.

That first hint of fear, of course, was based on the assumption this oyster herpes was the same virus that causes humans so much shame and pain. But as they read the story, they realized this was not a heaven-sent alibi for philandering spouses (Honey, it as an oyster, honest!). This was strictly a worry for the bivalves.

But that was still worry enough. What struck me was how serious some folks were finally talking about climate change.

The second story with the Washington Post headline at first read seemed to be a double-edged sword for the seafood lover. After all, who could be against jumbo crabs?

But the story quickly disabused us of any good news. The bully crabs were wreaking havoc on the oyster population, further complicating Chesapeake’s already struggling comeback from decades of demise.

And those jumbo crabs were all shell and no meat. As the story pointed out, “Carbon-absorbing crabs put all their energy into upgrading shells, not flesh — like a mansion without much furniture. So diners might be disappointed years from now when they crack open huge crabs and find little meat.”

In the past I’ve watched friends eyes glaze as I spread the news of glacial ice melt, explained eustatic sea level rise, the linear charting of high tide registrations, the methane release in melting permafrost, the convection rates of infrared waves, even attribution science, feedback loops and atmospheric blocking events.

But mention something they can see, feel and – most important of all – eat, and they’re suddenly focused like a field trial champion on point.

All of which is why sportsmen have been among the nation’s earliest and most active responders to the reality of climate change. It’s hit us where it hurts most, in the things we love.

As I watched the dinner friends react to the news, I had to laugh at them coming so late to the reality we accepted year ago. It also made me feel like crying.

A Perfect Storm of Wildlife Habitat Loss—and How to Stop It

Online Editors — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:04:20 -0400

Bob Marshall recently described on this blog how the biofuels mandate from the Bush administration has had an unpleasant result: the explosive conversion of native grasslands (our gamebird and waterfowl habitat) to corn crops, with their high uses of water and the fertilizers that run off and pollute watersheds for hundreds of miles downstream. As Marshall pointed out, what we are doing to our native grasslands is almost exactly what the Malaysians, Brazilians and Indonesians are doing to their native forests.

The biofuels mandate is a perfect example of unintended consequences. But there’s another engine driving this destruction of our wetlands and wildlife, too. This engine dates back to the 1996 Farm Bill, when Congress de-coupled what is known as “conservation compliance” - basic protections for wetlands and highly erodible lands- via our government supported crop insurance programs. At that time, it did not seem too important. Farmers in the U.S. relied more on direct subsidy payments - which came with an extensive set of mandates for conservation compliance - than they did the federally supported crop insurance plans.

Fast forward to 2013. The direct farm subsidy payments have become so unpopular- opposed by everybody from the Environmental Working Group to Taxpayers for Common Sense- that they have been almost entirely phased out. In their place is a much expanded Federal Crop Insurance Program that, unfortunately, not only lacks any conservation compliance requirements, it actively encourages the plowing and planting of marginal lands, ensuring that no matter the weather, the soil, the crop, money can be made. Government-supported crop insurance has become the largest subsidy to U.S farmers – 264 million acres insured in 2011, at a cost to taxpayers of over $7 billion.

If we had tried to devise a federally supported plan to wreck our wildlife habitat, ruin our wetlands, and empty the Treasury, we couldn’t have done it better.

What we are witnessing is a trifecta of disastrous effects. The crop insurance, the ethanol mandate, and the record global commodity prices driven by the hunger of 7 billion human beings have resulted in a frenzy of plowing, draining, and planting of corn and other crops, leaving little room for wildlife or birds, and few buffers to protect water quality from pesticide and fertilizer-saturated runoff. We’ve lost 25 million acres of grass and wetlands in the past 25 years--the greatest conversion since the decades leading up to the Dust Bowl. The pace is astounding- we’ve lost more wetlands and grasslands in the past four years than we did in the previous 40. South Dakota, the pheasant kingdom, reports 500,000 acres converted from grass to crops since 2007. North Dakota reports a million since then. Although the conversion is most extreme in what is known as the Western Corn Belt- the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa - demand for wheat from Asian markets is causing Montana farmers to convert conservation lands and grasslands to crops, too.

Even the market for organic grains has a bitter downside - the easiest and fastest way to grow organic crops is to break new ground on former native prairie.

Here are the problems and what we can to solve them:

• The Renewable Fuel Standard needs to be reformed or ditched, as quickly as possible. The Renewable Fuel Standard requires refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of conventional biofuels (i.e. corn ethanol) into the U.S. fuel supply by 2015. As Scott Faber, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Environmental Working Group said in February 2012, “Corn ethanol has not only been a disaster for consumers…it’s also been a disaster for the environment. In fact, it’s worse for the environment than Canadian tar sands.”

• We must reconnect conservation compliance with any federal farm payments, including the expanded federal crop insurance. Here’s what Jim Moseley, Former Deputy Secretary of the USDA, wrote about the success of connecting conservation compliance with direct federal subsidy payments to farmers. The same can be said of connecting conservation with crop insurance: “Conservation compliance is a reasonable expectation in exchange for the significant benefits the public provides for producers….Compliance has been highly successful. Because conservation treatments have been applied to over 140 million acres, farmers have saved 295 million tons of soil per year—soil that has been held in place and kept from entering our rivers, lakes, and streams. Further, an estimated 1.5 million to 3.3 million acres of vulnerable wetlands have not been drained as a result of compliance.”

The success that Mosely describes here is evaporating before our eyes. Here’s a fast rundown from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership on what’s at stake.

• We need to develop new wildlife habitat programs and wetlands protections that do not depend entirely on federal support. We are already seeing big reductions in the acreage enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. CRP was designed to make sure farmers did not have to plant highly erodible, marginal lands, and could leave such lands fallow and in reserve in case of an emergency such as war or economic disaster. CRP also proved to be one of the world’s most successful wildlife and water quality programs- reducing runoff and erosion, and providing habitat for, especially, gamebirds like sharptail grouse and pheasant. In 2012, landowners brought over 3.2 million acres of CRP lands into production. Congress, seeking to reduce the federal deficit, will almost certainly cap the CRP program at 25 million acres in the new farm bill that is now awaiting passage, down from a high of 39 million acres. But that cap is hardly necessary. With an average rental rate of $40 to $50 an acre, CRP cannot compete with taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance that pays whether the land produces or not.

Yes, CRP is going to be reduced. But that does not mean that we have to lose all the benefits we have enjoyed from it. Crop-producing acreage can still provide some excellent wildlife habitat, if farmers and their partners will put forth the effort and bring the money to make it happen. Some of Montana’s best land managers and biologists have been working on this issue, and have recently published a comprehensive document called “Life After CRP.”

Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, National Wildlife Federation, all of the usual conservation powerhouses and partnerships, need our support now more than ever before. You do not have to agree with the group about every policy or every issue to be a member.

We all need food. We all - farmers most definitely included- want clean water and wildlife and fisheries. We are, at this moment, devouring our environmental capital like a bunch of feral hogs rooting up a turnip field. Many representatives who are making these laws and codifying these federal policies know as much about our waterfowl and our fishing and hunting as Joe Biden knows about our AR-15s. They are ignorant, and busy with other work.

The damage is not their fault. It is our fault for not telling them what we know.

EPA: More Than Half of U.S. Streams and Rivers Are Sick

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:17:54 -0400

It’s official: America’s streams and rivers are in serious trouble.

This isn’t from a green group; it’s from the Environmental Protection Agency, which this week released its first comprehensive survey looking at the health of thousands of streams across the nation. The 2008-2009 National Rivers and Stream Assessment found that more than half of those systems – 55-percent – are “in poor conditions for aquatic life.”

That, of course, includes fish.

“The health of our nation’s rivers, lakes, bays and coastal waters depends on the vast network of streams where they begin, and this new science shows that America’s streams and rivers are under significant pressure,” said Nancy Stoner, the EPA’s Acting Assistant Administrator for Water. “We must continue to invest in protecting and restoring our nation’s streams and rivers as they are vital sources of our drinking water, provide many recreational opportunities, and play a critical role in the economy.”

Since the field work in this survey was completed in 2009, it’s safe to say the conditions of most of these troubled waters has worsened, because riparian areas have been largely without Clean Water Act protections since 2006 when the Supreme Court ruled Congress never intended to include those habitats – or isolated and temporary wetlands like the prairie potholes – in the original act.

Congress could have quickly restored those safeguards by passing a law saying, “Yes we did.” But powerful development and agriculture interests have trumped sportsmen on this issue ever since.

The recent EPA survey found a laundry list of ills that have degraded the quality of most of America’s streams, including:

Nitrogen and phosphorus are at excessive levels. Twenty-seven percent of the nation’s rivers and streams have excessive levels of nitrogen, and 40 percent have high levels of phosphorus. Too much nitrogen and phosphorus in the water—known as nutrient pollution—causes significant increases in algae, which harms water quality, food resources and habitats, and decreases the oxygen that fish and other aquatic life need to survive. Nutrient pollution has impacted many streams, rivers, lakes, bays and coastal waters for the past several decades, resulting in serious environmental and human health issues, and impacting the economy.  

Streams and rivers are at an increased risk due to decreased vegetation cover and increased human disturbance. These conditions can cause streams and rivers to be more vulnerable to flooding, erosion, and pollution. Vegetation along rivers and streams slows the flow of rainwater so it does not erode stream banks, removes pollutants carried by rainwater, and helps maintain water temperatures that support healthy streams for aquatic life. Approximately 24 percent of the rivers and streams monitored were rated poor due to the loss of healthy vegetative cover.

Increased bacteria levels. High bacteria levels were found in nine percent of stream and river miles, making those waters potentially unsafe for swimming and other recreation.

Increased mercury levels. More than 13,000 miles of rivers have fish with mercury levels that may be unsafe for human consumption. For most people, the health risk from mercury by eating fish and shellfish is not a health concern, but some fish and shellfish contain higher levels of mercury that may harm an unborn baby’s or young child's developing nervous system.   

Congressmen who have been blocking the restoration of Clean Water Act protections to stream sides for almost a decade had better wake up, or we could face a serious problem in fisheries—not to mention drinking water.

Native Grasslands Can Be Saved by 'Protect Our Prairies Act'

Online Editors — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:26:02 -0400

There’s new hope that native grasslands—arguably the most threatened wildlife habitat in the nation – can be saved. But the House of Representatives will have to follow the bipartisan lead of a couple of prairie state representatives to get that done for sportsmen.

The Protect Our Prairies Act recently introduced by Tom Walz (D-MN) and Kristi Noem (R-SD) would help protect the nation’s remaining native sod and grasslands by reducing federal crop insurance subsidies for the first four years those acres are farmed.

This is a new version of the “Sod Saver” concept that has been around for some time, with the aim of preventing native grasslands from being plowed for two important reasons: This habitat is critical for a wide range of upland birds, migratory waterfowl and numerous other species; and they are far less productive for crops than other lands.

But the need for Sod Saver has never been greater, because the recent push for corn-based ethanol and soaring world commodity prices have led to a dramatic increase in conversion of grasslands to row crops.

Last year, many in Congress attempted to mitigate this ongoing wildlife disaster, with the Senate passing a bipartisan Farm Bill that had a national Sod Saver program. Unfortunately, the House never did pass a Farm Bill, and the version it was considering had only a regional Sod Saver provision. That’s because the Ag. Committee chairman, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), is opposed to a national program.

Wildlife advocates point out regional programs – which allow states to opt in or out – have never been successful.

“The House version (last year) only applied to prairie pothole region, and that covered parts of a handful of states,” said Steve Kline, director of the Center for Agriculture and Private Lands at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “The problem with these partial programs is that you create situations that even within a state or perhaps even a county, some farmers would be in, some would be out, and you have an enforcement nightmare.

“National Sod Saver is absolutely critical if we’re to prevent the loss of this incredibly valuable habitat for wildlife.”

The new Sod Saver bills have gained support among fiscal conservatives because they tie a grant from the taxpayer to a service from the landowner. Reps Walz and Noem said their bill could save the taxpayers $200 million while also serving a critical conservation function for wildlife, and sportsmen.

In a video interview with Ducks Unlimited, which is one of the bill’s supporters, Walz and Noem said they were confident a Farm Bill would move out of the House this year.

Sod Saver’s inclusion in a Farm Bill indicates their Protect our Prairies measure is also a public statement to fellow House members that national Sod Saver has bipartisan support.

Sportsmen can help by contacting their congressional delegation urging them to pass this bill, or include its goals in the next House Farm Bill.

Biofuel Growth Is Decimating Wildlife Habitat in Corn Belt

Online Editors — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:12:42 -0400

Some sportsmen wonder why they should care about what goes on in Washington. After all, outdoors sports are about recreation, not politics. Why should they care what Congress is debating and doing?

One of the best answers to that question was given in a recent report in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, one of the nation’s most prestigious journals of scholarly research. The title of the report is as jarring to hunters as it is to academicians: “Recent land use change in the Western Corn Belt threatens grasslands and wetlands. ”

What South Dakota State University researchers Christopher K. Wright and Michael C. Wimberly discovered is what wildlife advocates have been warning about ever since Congress decided that ramping up production of corn-based ethanol could bring down our fuel prices: Skyrocketing commodity prices have led to the greatest loss of prairie wetland and grasslands since the Dust Bowl, posing a serious threat to a long list of fish and wildlife.

The graphic above, taken from the report, indicates the percentage of grasslands converted into corn or soybean fields between 2006 and 2011.

In the words of these researchers, what is happening in the nation’s corn belt is analogous to the ecological disasters that have overtaken other areas of the planet where less developed nations have given profit margins a higher priority than a healthy environment – or fish, wildlife, hunting and fishing.

“Our results show that rates of grassland conversion to corn/soy (1.0–5.4% annually) across a signiﬁcant portion of the US Western Corn Belt are comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia, countries in which tropical forests were the principal sources of new agricultural land, globally, during the 1980s and 1990s.”

What has politics and Capitol Hill have to do with this?

The drive to plant corn for fuel was a creation of Congress and endorsed by then president George W. Bush. In fairness, the program was widely applauded in some circles as a first step in moving the nation away from fossil fuels toward renewable, cleaner energy. Some wildlife advocates, however, were not as happy.

It wasn’t long before biofuels – corn in particular – was were revealed to have their own environmental impacts, such as the conversion of millions of acres of land from wildlife habitat into row crops loaded with fertilizers; the millions of gallons of water required to convert them to fuel, and the carbon footprint required to produce a gallon of fuel.

This couldn’t be happening at a more dangerous time for waterfowl and upland birds, in particular. Drought is returning to much of the Midwest and Prairie states, and as climate scientists have been warning for close to a decade, global warming is making the impacts of this event much deeper and longer-lasting that recent cycles.

And the unfolding wildlife disaster is coinciding with a push in Congress to severely limit or totally dismantle many of the conservation initiatives that provided habitat buffers during previous dry periods - programs such as the Conservation Reserve, Wetlands Reserve and Grasslands Reserve programs.

The politicians we elect have authority to affect land-use policies – and not just on federal lands that we all own jointly. Federal subsidy programs also have an enormous impact on private land use policies. These can be a force for great conservation – such as in the case of CRP – or they can be a force for destruction of fish and wildlife habitat.

As you read this research report, you’ll understand why it’s in every sportsman’s interest to keep abreast of what’s happening in Washington.