"Seeking Balance in U.S. Farm & Food" and the more than 350 local, state and national environmental, human rights and agricultural groups  who signed on to it will be officially announced this Monday January 22nd.  Meanwhile, with more than 90% of the habitat of threatened, endangered and at-risk species on private land in the U.S., we believe strengthening and broadening our relationships with Colorado agriculture and landowners on working together to improve U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation incentive programs is vital to our conservation work.

Conservation incentive programs, which range from financial and technical assistance to landowners assisting in the conservation and recovery of endangered species and their ecosystems  to conservation easements, are extremely popular with ranchers and farmers. Nonetheless, these programs are severely lacking in funds, with more than three-fourths of applicants turned down. For more information about our collaboration with agriculture groups such as American Farmland Trust and Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, see Summit on  Conservation Incentives blog. 

As for how things are shaping up nationally for our advocacy work in 2007, we've gotten off to an awfully auspicious start - conservation-minded electeds are now running the U.S. House and Senate environmental committees, with oversight, accountability and proper funding of the Endangered Species Act as some of their top priorities. Even the Bush administration has recently showed signs of promise. In response to a lawsuit filed by Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace and others, the administration officially recognized that polar bear populations are declining and might warrant listing under the Endangered Species Act.  The administration has even been vaguely hinted that climate change and a lack of sea ice might be the problem. This from an administration that through most of 2006 hasn't even admitted climate change existed. The times, they are a-changin'.