Duck Habitat Disappearing
|  Video
|
| Retha Colclasure |
| 11/19/2009 |
.jpg) |
| There`s a housing shortage in North Dakota. It`s not affecting people, but ducks. A number of landowners are taking their land out of the conservation reserve program. When Congress passed the 2008 farm bill, they lowered the nationwide limit on how much land could be enrolled in the CRP. The number had to be dropped from more than 39-million acres, down to 32-million. Without that extra land, ducks will have a harder time finding a place to nest. North Dakota has some of the best duck breeding ground in the country. These tall grasses are growing in the prairie pothole region, an area in the central and eastern parts of the state with a lot of wetlands. "We`re concerned on a lot of different fronts," says Scott McLeod, of Ducks Unlimited. The problem is that this land, and thousands of other acres enrolled in the conservation reserve program, will cycle out of the program over the next few years. "Landowners had to make a decision in 2006 what they were going to do with their acres that were coming out from 2007 to 2010," says McLeod. And since commodity prices at that time were high, many farmers chose not to re-enlist, and instead convert the CRP land to cropland. In 2006, there were 3.4 million acres of CRP in North Dakota. Right now that number is down to 2.7 million. And Ducks Unlimited says if changes aren`t made, that number could fall even farther. Another 846,000 acres are set to expire in the state by 2012. Without CRP, Ducks Unlimited is concerned that ducks will lose their habitat. But they`re not the only ones worried. "Sportsmen in North Dakota should be concerned because CRP provides a lot of benefit for pheasants, benefits for ducks," says McLeod. "You hear a lot about the deer population being down, it provides a lot of security for deer." He says if CRP continues to be lost, ranchers could also lose a source of emergency forage during drought years. McLeod says he hopes that when lawmakers write the next farm bill, the nationwide cap for CRP acreage will be higher. Until then, he says he hopes the USDA will keep the number of CRP acres as close to the maximum allowed as possible. |
BACK TO NEWS | BACK TO REGIONAL STORIES
© 2009 KFYR-TV
Home | News | Weather | Sports | Webcast | Morning News | Programming | Primetime Rewind | Advertising & Sales | About Us
Community Connection | Movies | Contests & Promotions | Search | Links | Contact Us | Follow us on: Facebook and twitter
Sister Stations: KMOT in Minot, KQCD in Dickinson, KUMV in Williston
