Daily Archives: December 21, 2014

South Dakota rancher lets the land point the way

By Steve Kline

TRCP Director of Government Relations.

I remember the first time I met Lyle Perman.

I had been worried about recognizing him, but the worry was misplaced. His bolo tie and cowboy hat set him a world apart from the buttoned-up navy suits of downtown Washington, D.C. This was his first trip to the nation’s capital since he had visited the city with the College Republicans decades earlier. Now, the TRCP hosted his return as part of an effort to educate his South Dakota congressional delegation on the importance of conserving native prairie.

As a lobbyist, I can attest that most Hill meetings run about the same way, with little variation. But when you fly somebody like Lyle to Washington to meet with senators and representatives that he knows personally, the meetings take on an entirely different tone. First, the senator has to catch up on all the latest gossip from home, including a serious dissertation on the weather. In South Dakota, rain is still considered a blessing. Talk then turns to neighbors and church; only after a full debrief can the conversation focus on the comparatively mundane: Farm Bill conservation programs working to keep South Dakota’s essential grasslands intact.

Lyle Perman’s farm in Lowry, SD
Image courtesy of Rock Hills Ranch

Lyle understands that he must learn from his forebears, question the assumptions of conventional wisdom and heed the ample advice the land offers. His Rock Hills Ranch is among the last vestiges of a great American ocean of grass. Much of that epic landscape has been replaced by row crops, bit by the plow, the grass long ago turned upside down. Lyle has seen firsthand what that means for the long-term health of the place he loves, the place where he raised his family. A lifetime spent in the prairies has convinced him grass is what God intended to be here.

After showing Lyle Washington, D.C., I was thrilled just a few months later that he could show me Lowry, South Dakota, and the place he calls home. Two worlds connected by a Farm Bill and a friendship. I am thrilled that my friend Lyle and his family ranch have received this award, where two new generations (and two sets of twins!) roam the countryside and plan for the future of their grass.

The 2014 Leopold Conservation Award could not go to a more deserving recipient. A tip of the cowboy hat from all of us here at the TRCP.

TRCP Director of Government Relations Steve Kline reflects on his relationship with 2014 Leopold Conservation Award winner Lyle Perman of South Dakota. Read more about Lyle and the award here.

One of the best conservation programs you’ve never heard of

Private Lands Primer: A SAFE place for Wildlife

By Ariel Wiegard

The Roosevelt Report

Just before Thanksgiving, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly announced an additional 86,000 SAFE acres across seven states: Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. These acres are a boon to private landowners and sportsmen. But I’d wager that most hunters and anglers, and probably many farmers and ranchers, don’t know what SAFE is or just how beneficial the program can be.

For the unfamiliar, SAFE— State Acres For Wildlife Enhancement —is part of the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP. The general CRP asks landowners to voluntarily conserve large tracts of previously cropped land to achieve a wide range of environmental benefits. As a part of CRP, SAFE is also a voluntary land conservation program, but here USDA works with landowners, state and federal agencies, non-profit organizations and the public to identify strategic projects that conserve land in specific parts of the country. SAFE distinctively focuses on habitat for species that are threatened or endangered, have suffered significant population declines or are considered to be socially or economically valuable.

That last phrase, “socially or economically valuable,” is key for sportsmen. SAFE authorizes your local decision makers to identify which acres will best target the needs of “high-value” wildlife, and that includes for hunting and fishing. SAFE projects have provided habitat for the plains sharp-tailed grouse, sage grouse, American woodcock, northern bobwhite quail, ring-necked pheasant, a wide variety of waterfowl, cottontail rabbits, black bears, mule deer, elk, salmon, steelhead trout and many other species, across 36 states and in Puerto Rico. That’s nothing to shake a tail at.

Landowners can benefit from SAFE too especially at a time when crop prices are low and land prices are high. USDA offers a signing incentive of $100 per acre to landowners who convert idle cropland into SAFE; pays landowners up to 90 percent of the cost of planting trees, forbs and grasses that benefit wildlife; and provides guaranteed rental payments on that land for the length of a contract, usually for 10 to 15 years. SAFE can improve farm income while incentivizing on-the-ground practices that benefit our favorite critters on an ecosystem-wide scale.

Although the extra 86,000 acres comprise only a fraction of the 24 million acres enrolled in CRP, at the TRCP we were thrilled by USDA’s announcement. Since SAFE’s introduction in 2007, many states have maxed out their allotted acres and maintain waiting lists for landowners hoping to enroll stream buffers, restored wetlands, newly seeded grasslands and longleaf pine stands in the program. The TRCP welcomes any additional chances to provide habitat for fish and wildlife and access for sportsmen.

Landowners can enroll qualified acres in a designated wildlife project in their state at any time. We especially encourage those in the seven states listed above to take advantage of this new opportunity. For more information, visit www.fsa.usda.gov/conservation or visit a local USDA office.

Wind farms aren’t green if the prairie is destroyed

By Mike Fuhr

From the Tulsa World

Many have been following the ongoing conflict in OsageCounty regarding industrial wind energy development — objections, denied permits, lawsuits, delays. Wildlife conservation is one of the many issues at hand there. Simply put, with regard to conservation, it comes down to the real estate mantra: location, location, location.

Globally, temperate grasslands have experienced drastic declines and they continue to disappear. The prairies in the central U.S. are the quintessential American landscape but have faced the same pressures as other grasslands. The tallgrass prairies of the eastern Great Plains have been especially hard hit. What was once more than 140 million acres of tallgrass prairie has been seriously degraded by 150 years of conversion to other uses. Less than 4 percent of this landscape remains.

The Osage Hills and neighboring Flint Hills of Kansas harbor the largest unfragmented block of tallgrass prairie anywhere in the world. The unfragmented setting and biological richness of the Osage and Flint Hills make them a high priority for conservation. In fact, it is our last chance to work collaboratively with landowners to conserve the tallgrass prairie at a large enough scale that will conserve the many interlocking biological pieces that make a prairie a prairie.

The Nature Conservancy is concerned that if inappropriately located, industrial wind farms pose known threats to natural habitats and certain wildlife populations, which might in turn have significant negative consequences for project developers, financiers, power purchasers and citizens. We do not want to exacerbate one problem as we try to solve another.

The Osage Hills are the very same landform with the same rich biological diversity features found in the Flint Hills of Kansas, which is a landscape that wind developers and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback have agreed to avoid disturbing with wind energy development. Industrial wind developments planned for the Osage Hills that are located in the remaining native tallgrass prairie landscape there, from a conservation science perspective, are in a very poor location for the siting of any major infrastructure, including industrial wind power.

For a decade, The Nature Conservancy has urged wind developers to find habitat-friendly locations for their projects. We have supported this by working with partners to develop science-based computer models for Oklahoma that identified those locations that have high impacts to habitats and those with little or no impact to habitats, and making those models available to wind energy developers.

It is inappropriate for the TradeWind projects, and any others planned for OsageCounty, to be labeled as “green” when they negatively impact the largest patch of unplowed tallgrass prairie left in North America. Together, the projects encompass an estimated 160 turbines, each standing 400-plus feet tall, across more than 17,000 acres west and northwest of Pawhuska.

It is critical that wind developers consider wildlife habitat and other potential constraints very early in their planning and collaborate with relevant entities to resolve any issues then. Let’s be smart about development that helps Oklahoma and preserve what’s left of our beautiful prairie land.

Mike Fuhr is State Director of the Oklahoma Chapter of The Nature Conservancy