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'Holy Grail' for wildlife at risk from energy harvest

The head of the Agriculture Department would like to see farmers plant and harvest energy crops on land enrolled in his agency's largest conservation program -- a move that environmentalists say could undermine millions of acres of vital bird habitat.

Conservation advocates are concerned about the vitality of the Conservation Reserve Program -- which environmentalists and hunting and fishing groups call the "Holy Grail for wildlife" -- as it faces increasing pressures from energy crops. CRP currently provides more than 34 million acres of habitat.

Fueled by high prices for corn and other commodities, landowners are already taking millions of acres out of the program to plant row crops. It could face more pressure in the future, as land managers look for new areas to grow feedstocks for the next generation of biofuels, cellulosic ethanol.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said this week that he would like to see farmers plant and harvest switchgrass for cellulosic ethanol on land enrolled in CRP. The program requires landowners to follow strict rules to idle the land and keep native grasses planted on it -- seldomly harvesting or haying the grasses under a conservation plan. Schafer said it would be a "great idea" to change that to allow an energy harvest.

"It would only make sense to me that we should be allowing the planting of switchgrass on CRP, it gives it a productive capacity ... that kind of production should be taking place," Schafer told reporters at a renewable energy conference in Washington.

Environmentalists and hunting and fishing advocates disagree. Julie Sibbing of the National Wildlife Federation said it would "completely undermine the purposes of the program" to allow farmers to plant and harvest switchgrass for energy development. CRP was started 20 years ago to protect soil, water and wildlife.

Schafer and other advocates for a CRP energy harvest say that periodic harvests of native grasses like switchgrass should be able to provide conservation benefits while they produce feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol. The argument is that the land should be able to have multiple uses, to help take the strain away from the increasing demand for more farm production for ethanol and food.

But conservation groups argue that frequency of harvest would not be compatible with habitat production and the genetically modified monocultures that would provide the most energy would do little for habitat. Some switchgrass is already grown on CRP land but usually in mixes combined with other native grasses.

"CRP is the Holy Grail for fish and wildlife and to turn it into a production program overnight would not only tip over the grail, it would turn it upside down," said Tim Zink of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

The CRP program gives producers payments for 10-to-15 year contracts to convert highly erodible cropland to grass. It is vital for ducks and pheasants in the prairie pothole region and a favorite of environmental and hunting groups alike. The Fish and Wildlife Service credits CRP with helping to produce more than 2 million ducks a year.

The program has also reduced soil erosion by more than 40 percent, sequestered 48 million tons of carbon dioxide and produced 13.5 million pheasants each year, according to Ducks Unlimited.

Other pressures

The program is already facing a tight squeeze from biofuels. Farmers planted crops on more than 2 million acres that were previously enrolled in the program last year (Land Letter, Jan. 10). USDA economists expect another 2 million acres to drop out this year.

Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department has not conducted any new signups for contiguous tracts of CRP land -- the large sections that environmentalists say are most useful for wildlife.

The Bush administration's budget proposal for next year includes more than $1 million as a "placeholder" for CRP, but agency officials say they have no plans for a new general signup to get more farmers in the program. With corn prices almost twice as high as they were two years ago, USDA's Budget Director Scott Steele said their priority is to leave more land available for crop production.

"It seems like people are thinking we have to maximize production on every inch of land, and if the plan is to have no wildlife that's fine," Sibbing said. "But we can't do that if we want to have wildlife."

The next farm bill

Sibbing and other environmentalists say that efficient energy production -- even of cellulose crops -- cannot be compatible with wildlife goals and USDA should look to different programs to support cellulosic ethanol.

The National Wildlife Federation, American Sportfishing Association, Izaak Walton League of America and other hunting, angling and environmental groups formed an Agriculture and Wildlife Working Group that pressed Congress to include a separate biomass energy development program in the farm bill, instead of looking to CRP to do the job.

Both the House and Senate farm bills included different versions of a biomass transition program that would assist farmers who want to plant new cellulosic ethanol crops. The Senate bill also includes a number of wildlife protection requirements.

"There are already big challenges in CRP as contracts on millions of acres expire and landowners face decisions whether to re-enroll," Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said this week. "So we must be very careful about the consequences of abrupt or sweeping policy changes affecting land in CRP."

But even if CRP is kept intact, its funding in the next farm bill could also face a blow. The program is at risk, as House and Senate farm bill negotiators scramble to find areas of the farm bill to cut to lower the overall pricetag for the bill. One proposal House negotiators floated last month would have cut back 7 million acres from CRP.

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