From his Iowa cabin, Mike Delaney gazes at a hillside now covered with native prairie grasses and wildflowers. “This was a corn and bean field, and it went [all the way] down to the river,” says Delaney. “When I bought the land, there was a lot of topsoil erosion going into the river.”
Today, thanks to Delaney’s efforts and support from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), erosion from this land into the Raccoon River has stopped. The deep roots of the prairie grasses he planted hold the soil in place year-round. Shallow-rooted corn and soybeans didn’t hold soil in place nearly as well. Seasonal crops also left the ground bare much of the year.
A long-time Izaak Walton League member who serves as the Iowa Division’s conservation chair, Delaney says his motivation was as much about wildlife as water quality: “I’m trying to return it to natural prairie and woodland conditions to sustain as much wildlife as possible, from insects to deer populations.” The land now provides habitat for deer, turkey, pheasants, and much more.
Delaney is one of more than 50,000 Iowa landowners who have enrolled 1.7 million acres in the Conservation Reserve Program. Created in the 1985 Farm Bill, CRP pays landowners to take highly erodible ground and other environmentally sensitive land out of crop production for 10 or 15 years. The land is planted with grasses, shrubs, or trees, which substantially reduces soil erosion, improves water quality in nearby streams, and provides better habitat for a long list of fish and wildlife species.
Nearly 24 million acres of vulnerable cropland nationwide are now enrolled in CRP, but that is down nearly 20 percent from the 30 million acres enrolled in 2012. As Congress writes a new five-year Farm Bill, the League is working to protect the ability of the Conservation Reserve Program to provide wildlife and water quality benefits.
Doug Sheeley sees wildlife benefits from a different piece of the Farm Bill: the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP). As a conservation ecologist for the Polk County Conservation Board, Sheeley uses this easement program to help farmers restore and protect wetlands in central Iowa, a state that has lost nearly 90 percent of its historic wetlands. Wetlands are wildlife magnets. Sheeley sees the impact a newly restored wetland has in just a few years, such as the reappearance of Sandhill Cranes and river otters. “If you provide that habitat, they’re going to come back and make it home,” he says.
The League has been advocating for increased funding for conservation easements in the 2018 Farm Bill. The Senate and House bills include increased funding for this program.
A third wildlife-friendly Farm Bill program is the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). It’s the nation’s largest conservation program, with more than 70 million acres of productive agricultural and forest land currently enrolled. Solutions funded by the program include fencing that minimizes impacts on wildlife (such as using smooth rather than barbed wire or making fencing more visible with tags); enhanced field borders to provide wildlife food and cover; and rotational grazing that provides a diversity of grass heights, benefitting grassland prairie birds.
The League is working to defend the Conservation Stewardship Program. Although the Senate bill would continue the program and increase support for managed grazing rotational systems, overall program funding would be reduced. The House bill would eliminate CSP entirely - along with the wildlife and conservation benefits it provides.
Farm Bill conservation programs provide more than $5 billion per year to help farmers and ranchers be even better stewards of land and water. The League is working to ensure that those dollars are well spent and deliver more benefits for fish and wildlife -and the people who love them.