Winter/Spring 2001

The Farm Bill And Wildlife Conservation

Pete Heard is the Director of the Wildlife Habitat Management Institute in Madison, Mississippi. Photo by Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The last time I wrote an article for folks back home in Stoneville, I was serving as Senior Wetlands Scientist for the Natural Resource Conservation Service and working to shape the agency's role in helping landowners protect and restore wetlands. My strong interest in the task evolved from a boyhood spent calling ducks into flooded bottomland hardwoods and harvested farm fields in the Mississippi Delta near Tchula.

The work was exciting because the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills had begun to bring agricultural interests and fish and wildlife folks back together, to me it was a natural. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) along with other Farm Bill provisions gave us new tools to help landowners conserve natural resources.

The 1996 amendment to the Farm Bill further elevated fish and wildlife habitat in the delivery of conservation programs. Our own Senator Thad Cochran crafted the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, so popular, that applications for participation greatly exceeded the available funding. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program and several other provisions were added in 1996 with the potential to improve fish and wildlife habitat. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) funding for conservation now stands at about $2.5 billion/year, more than the combined budgets of all the state fish and wildlife agencies.

In Mississippi and the Southeast, Conservation Reserve Program plantings are dominated by tree planting. Photo by Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Recognizing the potential for USDA to assist landowners with enhancing fish and wildlife habitat on the agricultural landscape, the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment and the Chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) asked me to convene a team of agricultural and conservation interests to consider the agency's approach in delivering fish and wildlife conservation assistance to landowners and communities. The results of the effort were two documents, Framework for the Future of Wildlife and Barriers to Providing Wildlife Assistance, that identified how the NRCS could best do this.

One of the recommendations was to create a Wildlife Habitat Management Institute (WHMI) to deal with fish and wildlife habitat management. I now serve as Director of that Institute, with its national headquarters in Madison, Mississippi. We were created in 1997 to work with our conservation partners to develop scientifically based technical materials that will assist our field staff in promoting the conservation of fish and wildlife resources on private lands.

In January 2000, I charged the WHMI staff with compiling all of the scientific literature documenting the response of fish and wildlife to Farm Bill programs on private lands since 1985. The results were published in December, 2000. The work is entitled "A Comprehensive Review of Farm Bill Contributions to Wildlife Conservation 1985-2000."

Most of the completed research on wildlife responses to Farm Bill programs has centered around the Conservation Reserve Program. CRP is the oldest and largest of the programs, and fish and wildlife have had the opportunity to respond. The Wetland Reserve Program has been around 10 years, but our knowledge of specific fish and wildlife responses on WRP is somewhat limited. However, we do have information about their response to similar wetland restoration efforts in Mississippi prior to WRP. These efforts were begun mostly on public lands managed by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the USDA Forest Service and the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. Fish and wildlife responses on such lands give us insight into the value of our developing private wetland reserve sites.

The newer programs, such as Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program, have not been on the ground long enough for scientists to have conducted evaluations, but there is high anticipation that we will see positive responses from these programs and will be discussed a little later in this article.

Well, have the multi-purpose farm programs had an impact on fish and wildlife at the national level? You bet they have. Do positive impacts to wildlife in South Dakota mean anything to the Mississippi and other states in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley? Again, the answer is yes. We benefit from habitat put on the ground locally and from conservation in places a long way from home. Ducks produced on CRP fields in South Dakota find a winter home on some of Mississippi's restored wetlands.

Let's look at some of the highlights of our report. The CRP is the largest and best known of the Farm Bill programs. In the Great Plains nearly 18 million acres of former cropland are now in grass. This land use change has had a great influence on fish, important grassland birds, waterfowl and other wildlife.

CRP has had positive influences on ducks. The increase in grassland in the prairie breeding grounds has resulted in:
* high use by nesting ducks;
* higher nesting success in CRP cover than in other areas;
* improved nest success in habitats near CRP.

In fact, between 1992 and 1997, CRP contributed to a 30% improvement in duck production. This meant an additional 10.5 million ducks coming south, with Mississippi receiving its fair share.

Although other grassland birds also benefited from CRP, not all species showed population gains. The effects varied with the cover selected, how the cover was used (haying, grazing, etc.) and its location in the landscape.

In Mississippi and the Southeast, CRP plantings were dominated by tree planting (62%), with most going to loblolly pine. Although the plantings provided some grass and shrub habitat in the first 3-5 years, mid-rotation stands will have limited avian diversity, and the future value for wildlife will depend on the age of the stand and the management practices used (burning and thinning).

Exotic forage grasses, such as Kentucky tall fescue, dominate the CRP grassland plants in the Mid-South and Southeast, and most studies have shown them to have very limited wildlife value. However, progress is being made where lands being re-enrolled are converted to native warm season grasses.

These grasses provide soil protection, and water quality and fisheries benefits as well as the habitat required by important species such as bobwhite quail. Much work is being done at Mississippi State University and other educational institutions to help NRCS and landowners improve CRP for fish and wildlife. Hopefully, these recommendations will be incorporated into the 2002 Farm Bill debate. One of the more important Farm Bill programs in Mississippi is the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP). This popular program provides incentives for landowners to restore degraded wetlands on the agricultural landscape.

Nationally, WRP has enrolled over 912,000 acres, with 55% restoring former bottomland hardwood habitats like those in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley. The WRP is also providing important wetland restoration in other parts of the country such as the Central Valley of California and the Great Plains.

Restoring wetlands through programs such as the Wetland Reserve Program and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program are popular with many landowners. Photo by Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Mississippi's restored wetlands will provide winter habitat for ducks and other migratory birds, as well as insects, reptiles, amphibians and numerous other species vital to maintaining a healthy wetland ecosystem. Through this vital and popular program, America's farmers and landowners are contributing greatly to fish and wildlife conservation.

The Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) was added to the Farm Bill in 1996. WHIP specifically targets fish and wildlife habitat restoration for culturally and economically important species such as the northern bobwhite quail and Atlantic salmon, as well as threatened and endangered species such as Karner blue butterfly and Indiana bat.

The WHIP program, used to restore bat habitat in old Michigan mines, even received airtime on national public radio. WHIP is extremely popular with landowners because it addresses important fish and wildlife management needs identified at the local level.

Another important conservation program for the working landscape is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Designed to assist farmers and landowners who face serious threats to soil, water and other natural resources, this 1996 addition to the Farm Bill's suite of conservation provisions is making its greatest contribution to fish and wildlife by protecting water quality. The potential of the program is great, but in the early stages of implementation.

As you can see, NRCS is charged with helping America's farmers, ranchers and other private landowners to manage their productivity while protecting their precious natural resources. The future of America's fish and wildlife resources is tied to private working lands and each of us as citizens needs to share in the cost of protect-ing this heritage.

Pete Heard is a native of Holmes County. He has over 40 years experience as a Wildlife Biologist and Conservation Administrator. He has worked with the former Mississippi Game and Fish Commission, Biologist in Florida and Caribbean area, agri-liaison with the Environmental Protection Area in Region IV (Atlanta) and a former State Conservationist for Mississippi. He is now Director of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Wildlife Habitat Management Institute.