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Coalition Sees Progress, Potential in House Farm Bill

News for Immediate Release

August 1, 2007

Contact: Geoff Mullins, (202) 654-4609, gmullins@trcp.org

 

Coalition Sees Progress, Potential in House Farm Bill

TRCP working group hails inclusion of Open Fields, Sodsaver, biofuels innovations and strong funding for wetlands, grassland reserve programs

WASHINGTON – A broad coalition of hunting, fishing and conservation organizations today responded to the Conservation Title of the Farm Bill legislation that recently emerged from the House of Representatives.

“Focusing squarely on the House Farm Bill’s Conservation Title, we can see several advancements for the conservation of fish and wildlife – and America’s sporting traditions,” said Barton James of Ducks Unlimited. “In a time of bad budgets, the House managed to produce a Farm Bill that would adequately fund many established programs, while it initiates some key new ones.”

The single-largest conservation program, the Conservation Reserve Program, received steady funding and was able to resist the strongest threats to its future effectiveness. Chief among these were proposed amendments that would have allowed the production of biofuels on CRP lands, a measure that could have watered down the program’s mission.

“We greatly appreciate the efforts of the House members who worked to grow conservation,” said Jen Mock Schaeffer of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. “They managed to provide funding to continue the Wetlands Reserve Program and Grasslands Reserve Program, which had no funding guaranteed for their futures, while establishing a new program, Open Fields, that would help states establish or expand programs designed to promote public hunting and fishing access on private lands.”

“Open Fields is huge for us,” said TRCP President and CEO George Cooper. “Sportsmen keep seeing the places they hunt and fish disappear because of sprawl and numerous other factors. By supporting voluntary, state-run sportsmen’s access programs, Open Fields will give us back some of what has been taken from us. That’s why we’ve been plugging away since 2003 for the passage of Open Fields. And that’s why we’re now thrilled to see it in the House Farm Bill.”

To Julie Sibbing of the National Wildlife Federation, “The great untold story of this bill is its robust energy provisions. From research and development funding to loan guarantees for biorefineries to a program that will help farmers learn to grow, harvest, store and transport native biomass energy crops, the bill properly invests in efforts to advance the next generation of biofuels without harming fish and wildlife habitat created by existing conservation programs.”

“There’s more good news in what didn’t happen in the biofuels arena,” said Brad Redlin of the Izaak Walton League of America. “The Conservation Reserve Program, for example, was reauthorized at its full 39.2 million acre level, and avoided being re-designed as a biomass production program, as some had suggested it should be.”

“Overall, this bill makes a clear statement about the need to provide a strong national investment in the programs that help conserve our fish and wildlife resources,” said Dave Nomsen of Pheasants Forever. “All eyes now turn to the Senate, where we hope our leaders will take similar steps to advance the stewardship capabilities of America’s farmers and ranchers. We hope that they will see in the House bill the same potential we do, while they work to extend certain key provisions of importance to our community.”

The organizations cited above were joined by a dozen of their peers in the Agriculture and Wildlife Working Group, which was facilitated by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) as it met for two years to analyze the effectiveness of the programs in the Farm Bill Conservation Title and issue recommendations for optimizing their effectiveness. Those recommendations were summarized in a comprehensive report, entitled Growing Conservation in the Farm Bill, that can be seen by clicking here.

“We would like to see much higher funding levels for one of the Farm Bill's best, most flexible fish and wildlife habitat programs, the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program,” said Steve Moyer of Trout Unlimited.  “The House bill would reauthorize WHIP at its current funding level of $85 million, but landowner demand will continue to greatly outstrip available funding. We hope the Senate will remedy this situation."

“Another place where we’d like to see the House bill strengthened is in its ‘Sodsaver’ provisions,” said Geoff Mullins of the TRCP.  “Sodsaver is designed to remove federal incentives that lead to the conversion of native prairie, forestland and rangelands, all critical landscapes for fish and wildlife resources. The House Farm Bill would make native grassland that gets converted to cropland ineligible for crop insurance and some federal disaster payments. We’d like to see the measure strengthened by making these lands ineligible for federal price supports as well, and we hope the Senate will make this a point of emphasis.”

Inspired by the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, the TRCP is a coalition of organizations and grassroots partners working together to preserve the traditions of hunting and fishing.