Today is the solstice – a good time to reflect on what has been and what is to come.

Recently in an interview on radio station KGNU I was asked if the due date for responding to one of the latest salvos from the Bush administration (gutting the Bureau of Land Management’s Special Status Species Manual) was January 20^th.  Ha ha.  Well, if that’s the way you want to look at it, I think the effective due date would actually be November 4^th.

I have only done advocacy work under the Bush administration (started with CNE in 2001), so it’s hard to imagine what life might be like under a different approach to endangered species (e.g., one involving conservation of endangered species...).  I am dreaming of the day when most of my time is spent on working on recovery issues, rather than just beating back the attempts to take away every shred of protection rare plants and animals have managed to hang on to.

As much as I love a good exposé, I would rather be helping Rocky Mountain National Park reintroduce boreal toads (planned for next week!) than be helping shed light on a scandal big enough to make the cover of Newsweek (our evidence that Julie MacDonald ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to deny Endangered Species Act protection for the white-tailed prairie dog made it in there) or cataloging for the Denver Post all of the last ditch attempts the administration has cooking to wreak havoc on the environment in Colorado.  Maybe next year.

In the meantime, here’s what else is on my calendar between now and then which will keep me going, in more-or-less chronological order:

• Fellow Staff Biologist Megan’s wedding
• The Service’s latest announcement about what it plans to do with the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, an ongoing saga since 2003
• Seeing if our son stays up for his first fireworks display
• Commenting on the “ludicrous” Salt Creek tiger beetle critical habitat proposal (see congressional testimony by Scott Hoffman Black from the Xerces Society)
• Making a concerted effort to see a wood lily
• Commenting on the proposal to remove Maguire’s daisy from the Endangered Species list
• Camping in the San Juan Mountains (my husband is almost done climbing the centennial 13ers, has a few left down there) and maybe looking for the Uncompahgre fritillary
• Meeting the Ute ladies’-tresses orchid in person
• Hosting our son’s first birthday party
• Visiting my grandfather in Pennsylvania and introducing our son to Lake Erie
• Working from home rather than attempting to make it in to Denver during the Democratic National Convention
• Attempting my first half marathon (the Golden Leaf) along with my husband, sister, and brother-in-law (the first time I have used that word for him!)
• Working on a campaign.  We usually shut down the CNE office for a week or two during election years so anyone can work on a campaign of their choice if they wish.

I had to restrain myself to only mention three firsts for our son there.  He has firsts nearly every day, which makes life all the more wonderful.  Yesterday he celebrated both his first aquarium visit and his first baseball game, and he highly recommends both.  A very kind man near us caught a foul ball and gave it to him so he came home with quite the souvenir.

Happy solstice and here’s wishing you all an amazing summer and an end to a culture of cover ups and corruption in endangered species management.  Now go be the change you want to see this fall!

Erin

Since 2006 we here at Center for Native Ecosystems have been dedicated to a new approach in endangered species conservation, reaching out to landowners, ranchers, farmers, agriculture groups, conservationists and other stakeholders on making the next Farm Bill (the single-largest source of conservation funding in the U.S.) work better for landowners and conservation. Since the majority of habitat for threatened and endangered species is on private land in the U.S., and a large proportion of private land in the U.S. being used to grow crops or forest products or to raise livestock, we felt this was an important approach we could no longer ignore.

From the start, we knew this was an ambitious task - the Farm Bill is one of the biggest and most entrenched bills Congress is tasked with taking up (every five years), and ranchers and farmers working together is a fairly new concept.  But with help from our growing network of friends in the agriculture community, new alliances with national agriculture and conservation groups and continuous pressure on Colorado  electeds (many serving on important Farm Bill committees and subcommittees), our goal was to take up a few priority items important to landowners and endangered species and see them through. In a number of ways we succeeded beyond our hopes (see Endangered Species Recovery Act below). We also had setbacks that will hopefully serve us in the future (see 'Sodbuster,' Wetlands Reserve Program and Conference Committee items below) -  in advancing better conservation and climate change policy, advocating for endangered species, and more effectively building relationships between agriculture and conservation communities. In the end, most national conservation groups opposed the final Farm Bill, due to the many changes that happened behind closed doors in Conference Committee, the Farm Bill's potential to negatively impact climate change and provisions (due in large part to inflated corn and commodity prices exacerbated by federal subsidies for corn ethanol production), that promise to open up vast tracks of native grasslands and prairies throughout the Midwest and West. To piece together the briefing report below, we borrowed heavily from two of our favorite Farm Bill partners, American Farmland Trust and  Defenders of Wildlife. 

Center for Native Ecosystems

BRIEFING REPORT

The 2008 Farm Bill: Good, the Bad and the Ugly

6/2/08

The Good

The Farm Bill’s conservation title includes increased funding for conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program and Farm and Ranchland Protection Program.

The new Farm Bill includes the Endangered Species Recovery Act, which will provide tax deductions for private landowners that volunteer to conserve habitat on their lands for threatened and endangered species. Center for Native Ecosystems worked with our conservation and agriculture allies to improve ESRA and ensure its support by the Colorado delegation. Co-sponsoring ESRA in Colorado were Senators Salazar and Allard and Representatives Udall, DeGette, Perlmutter, Musgrave.

The Grassland Reserve and Wetlands Reserve programs have both been reauthorized. These programs conserving threatened ecosystems and wildlife habitat would have lost their funding under current law.

An illegal logging provision will limit unsustainable and illegal logging around the world, protecting forests and forest-dwelling species such as orangutans, while also benefiting domestic timber and paper industries.

The Bad

Enrollment for the Conservation Reserve Program will be reduced from 39.2 million acres to 32 million acres.
The Wetlands Reserve Program will be reduced by about 25% to just 185,000 acres per year.

Cuts to the Conservation Reserve Program and the lack of a Sodsaver provision will likely result in the destruction of millions of acres of grasslands.

 The Ugly

High commodity prices and federal subsidies for corn ethanol production have created intense pressure to plow under remaining native grasslands. Conversion of these lands to corn production not only destroys important imperiled habitats that are home to numerous declining species of birds and other wildlife, it also releases large quantities of carbon stored in grassland soils. A strong Sodsaver provision would have helped counteract these pressures by eliminating federal support and insurance payments on newly broken out land. Sodsaver provisions were included in both the House and Senate bills, as well as the Administration’s farm bill proposal only to be taken out during Conference committee. Now producers in the prairie pothole region will be incentivized to break out their lands for fear their Governors will opt into this program. At least parts of the permanent disaster relief program will likely exacerbate the problem by guaranteeing producer income on even the most marginal of newly broken lands. Taken together with the bill’s significant retrenchment of the Conservation Reserve Program, the net effect will be to add to rather than ameliorate the pressure to plow under fragile native grasslands—destroying habitat while contributing to climate change by releasing carbon stored in the soils.

The Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, which formerly assisted a wide array of landowners in improving and restoring terrestrial and aquatic wildlife habitat, now limits eligible lands to owners of agricultural and private non-industrial forest lands. Important projects such as restoration of in-stream habitat and dam removal will apparently no longer be eligible, nor will projects involving the restoration of non-agricultural privately-owned lands. Further, the newly-added annual payment limitation of $50,000 will hamper the program’s ability to address larger-scale habitat cost share projects. None of these changes appeared in either the House or Senate version of the bill or were ever given a public discussion during the farm bill renewal.

Not only will enrollment for the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) will be sharply reduced, but new restrictions will also be imposed on the length of ownership and payment schedules. This will hamper the program’s ability to protect and restore large-scale wetlands. The Conference Committee also deleted language from WRP, approved by both the House and the Senate, to protect riparian areas. Riparian areas, which protect water quality, wildlife habitat and provide crucial habitat corridors, are threatened throughout the West.

2008 Farm Bill by the Numbers

Conservation Reserve Program
• Reduces acreage cap to 32 million acres
• Land enrolled in CREP and continuous enrollment elements of CRP can be exempted from acreage cap if the county government concurs
• Adds Chesapeake Bay Region as priority area
• Adds flooded farmland and aquaculture ponds to wetland pilot
• Transition assistance to beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers
• Restoration payments for WRP under a cost share agreement limited to $50,000 per year

Wetlands Reserve Program
• Lifts cap to be 3,041,200 acres [implies $1.3 billion in funding for enrolling added acres]
• Establishes term for payment of WRP easements as follows:
            o Valued at $500,000 or less – from 1 to 30 annual payments
            o Valued at more than $500,000 – at least 5 and up to 30 annual payments
• Allows for Secretarial waiver to allow lump sum payment where appropriate
• Limits eligibility for WRP if land changed ownership in past 7 years
• Restoration payments for WRP under a cost share agreement limited to $50,000 per year

Conservation Security Program

• Restructures old CSP into new “Conservation Stewardship Program” including revisions of eligibility for land, producers, and practices
• Adds $1.1 billion over baseline for the new CSP
• Directs enrollment of 12,769,000 acres each fiscal year and requires CSP to be managed so as to cost, on average, $18 per acre
• Funds existing CSP contracts through their full terms

Farm and Ranchland Protection Program
• Restructures program to emphasize use of longer term and renewable cooperative agreements
• Establishes a certification process for eligible entities
• Requires use of an impervious surface requirement in easements, with the eligible entity specifying the nature of the requirement

Grasslands Reserve Program
• Authorizes additional 1,220,000 acres to be enrolled during FY 2009-2012
• Gives priority for enrollment to certain expiring CRP acres
• Acreage translates to about $300 million over the four-year period
• Significant revision of certain program provisions

Environmental Quality Incentives Program
• Includes non-industrial private forest land as eligible and provides linkage with national organic program
• Adds air quality, invasive species, pollinator habitat and animal carcass management to residue, nutrient, and residue management concerns
• Retains the 60 percent requirement for funds devoted to livestock related conservation activities
• Includes payments related to organic production practices
• Revises process for evaluation of offers to improve effectiveness
• Revises payment limit to be $300,000 instead of the current $450,000 during any six-year period, but provides authority for a waiver for projects of special environmental significance

 Conservation Innovative Grant program
• Retains innovative approaches for the grant program
• Adds a carve out for air quality amounting to $37.5 million annually

 Agriculture Water Enhancement Program
• Replaces the Ground and Surface Water Conservation Program and focuses on water quality and quantity through partnership agreements arrived at through a competitive process
• Provides total of $280 million through 2012 for AWEP

 Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program
• Changes limit program to agricultural land, non-industrial private forest land, and tribal lands
• Changes landowners to be limited to owners of above types of land
• Projects addressing State, national or regional conservation initiatives get priority
• Limits payments to $50,000 per year

 Grassroots Source Water Protection Program
• Reauthorizes and adds funding of $20 million per year

Voluntary Public Access (Open Fields)
• Establishes a grant program to enable states and tribes to encourage landowners to make land available to the public for wildlife dependent recreation
• Provides $50 million for the program over a five year period

Funding [other funding covered under specific topics where applicable]
• Budget Authority for FRPP totals $743 million over 5 years
• EQIP funding rising from $1.2 billion in FY 2008 to $1.75 billion in 2012, totaling $7.325 billion
• Continues funding for WHIP at $85 million per fiscal year
• Raises amount for regional equity states to be $15 million per year

Cooperative Conservation
• Adds a cooperative conservation provisions to enable producers to come together with partners to leverage resources and better address common resource concerns
• Covers all conservation programs except CRP, WRP, GRP, and FRPP. [Means it covers EQIP, CSP, WHIP, and some of the smaller programs like Chesapeake Bay]
• Provides for use of 6 percent of program funds to be used for the cooperative conservation efforts

Other
• Requires USDA to report on program enrollments for contacts or easements above certain dollar limits
• Strengthens technical assistance provisions with respect to use of third party providers, including multiyear agreements that are renewable and access to funding through the respective farm bill program
• Provides for new authority for environmental services markets, including creation of a registry and a verification system for producers. Gives priority for protocols for participation in carbon markets
• Establishes a program to enable experienced conservationists to assist with technical services to producers and other aspects of program delivery
• Updates elements of State Technical Committees
• Provides lump sum of $100 million for the Small Watershed Rehabilitation Program
• Reauthorizes and updates the Resources Conservation Act of 1977
• Revises parts of Resource Conservation and Development Program concerning planning process and technical assistance
• Provides $175 million for the Desert Terminal Lakes program under the Interior Department

Conservation Loan Guarantee Program
• In credit title of conference report
• Establishes loan guarantee program to assist producers in financing conservation systems
• Gives priority to beginning and socially disadvantage producers, those converting to organic production systems, and producers applying systems to address compliance requirements

Conservation Easement Tax Deduction
• Extends the conservation easement tax deduction for donations from 12/31/07 until 12/31/09
• Is effective retroactively to January 1, 2008