Wisconsin Has Lost One-Third of It’s Conservation Reserve Programs (CRP) in the Last Two Years, More than Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota

Better Environmental News
For Immediate Release Contact: Steve Bertjens, 608-732-0847
Wednesday, February 4, 2008 Brett Hulsey, 608-334-4994, Brett@BetterEnviro.Com
Wisconsin Lost One-Third of Conservation Reserve Lands
in the Last 2 Years, More than Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota–
Program Needs Change to Protect Land, Water, Habitat, Flood Control
Madison—With Pheasants Forever meeting in Wisconsin this weekend, Southwest Badger Resource
Conservation and Development Council, Trout Unlimited and Better Environmental Solutions
today released an analysis of USDA information showing that Wisconsin has lost one-third of the its
Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands in the last two years. That’s twice as much as Iowa, 5
times more than Minnesota, and 17 times more than Illinois lost, as a percentage of the 2008 total.
“We need to keep highly erodible lands in the Conservation Reserve Program to protect our streams
and lakes, provide habitat for people, fish, and wildlife, and reduce flooding,” said Steve Bertjens,
the NRCS coordinator with Southwest Badger RC&D. The USDA data are shown below.
Conservation Reserve Program Acreage Trends, 2006-2008
State
FY 2006 CRP
Acres
Dec. 2008
CRP Acres
Loss in
Acres % Loss
Compared to MW
Regional Average
Illinois 1,049,992 1,029,498 20,494 2.0% 14%
Minnesota 1,796,620 1,690,417 106,203 6.3% 43%
Iowa 1,958,883 1,688,730 270,153 16.0% 110%
Wisconsin 616,588 461,263 155,325 33.7% 232%
MW Total 5,422,083 4,869,908 552,175 14.5% 100%
One of the most successful conservation programs in history, the Conservation Reserve Program
was created in the 1985 Farm Bill to pay farmers for conservation practices. CRP protected 33.6
million acres of highly erodible lands and wetlands in December 2008, an area equal to 15
Yellowstone National Parks.
“The Conservation Reserve Program is the key to protecting habitat for pheasants, upland song
birds, and other wildlife and we can’t afford to lose any more,” said Jeff Gaska, Regional Wildlife
Biologist for Pheasants Forever.
The analysis also looked at CRP acres expiring in the next two years in western Wisconsin counties
and estimated that 165,079 more acres could lose protection. Grant, Iowa, Trempealeau and Dane
Counties could lose the most if farmers don’t renew their contracts, as the data below show.
Wisconsin County CRP Acres Expiring in the Next 2 Year
Grant 25,529
Iowa 17,594
Trempealeau 17,118
Dane 13,380
Pierce 11,966
Crawford 10,242
Lafayette 9,623
Green 9,281
Sauk 8,462
Richland 8,224
Monroe 7,725
Eau Claire 7,156
Vernon 6,626
Buffalo 6,292
La Crosse 3,684
Pepin 2,177
Total 165,079
“We must do more to protect these Conservation Reserve lands that protect our streams and make
Wisconsin a national draw for trout and other kinds of fishing and hunting,” said Laura Hewitt,
Midwest Director for Trout Unlimited.
To address this concern, Trout Unlimited recommended changes in CRP like focusing on keeping
landowners in the program and increasing flexibility to protect these conservation lands in a way that
protects the habitat.
“As a landowner formerly in the Conservation Reserve Program, we need to make CRP more-user
friendly and cut red tape,” said Larry Larson, head of the Association of State Floodplain Managers
based in Madison. “We need CRP to work better to reduce runoff from rainfall and to protect
natural lands that act like sponges to reduce floods.”
“The good news is that western Wisconsin is the Saudi Arabia for biomass and switchgrass. We
need to work with farmers to give them more flexibility to manage these lands for conservation to
produce biomass, and store carbon,” said Brett Hulsey, president of Better Environmental
Solutions, the environment and energy consulting firm that did the analysis.
-MOREConservation
Reserve Program benefits include better habitat, cleaner water, reduced floods,
carbon storage to reduce extreme climate change, and biomass potential.
The Conservation Reserve Program provides:
• Better Habitat for people, fish and wildlife by restoring native prairies, woodlands and
promoting more conservation tillage. New CRP can restore our native grassland prairies, the
most endangered ecosystem in the nation according to the Nature Conservancy.
• Cleaner Water—a recent study, “Estimating Water Quality, Air Quality and Soil Carbon
Benefits of the Conservation Reserve Program,” showed that enrolling marginal cropland in
CRP increases the amount of organic matter on enrolled fields and virtually eliminates soil
and nutrient loss. The study found that CRP in the eastern half of the U.S. (adjoining and
east of the Mississippi River) reduced soil, nitrogen and phosphorus losses from fieldpractice
enrollments are 6.5 tons, 20.7 pounds and 5.4 pounds, respectively, per acre lower
annually compared with acres engaged in current production practices, see
www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/606586_hr.pdf.
• Reduced Flooding—USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service studies in Minnesota
and Iowa on the Boone and Redwood Rivers showed that CRP and farm conservation
practices can reduce 100-year flood peaks by up to 20%, and by almost 40% with other
measures such as the restoring wetlands and small flood detention projects.
• Biomass Energy–Better Environmental Solution’s 2007 report, Cellulose Prairie: Biomass Fuel
Potential in Wisconsin and the Midwest, showed that Wisconsin has enough excess biomass like
switchgrass to replace half our coal burning, significantly reducing greenhouse air pollution,
see http://betterenvironmentalsolutions.com/reports/CellulosePrairie.pdf
• Reduced Climate Change– A recent USGS study showed that the Conservation Reserve
Program (CRP) and the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) has quantified and documented
environmental benefits, such as preventing more than 23 million tons of soil erosion.
Nutrient loading in waterways is closely related to rates of erosion in watersheds. The
scientists calculated that the programs reduced levels of phosphorous and nitrogen washed
into adjacent waters by nearly 6,000 tons per year. CRP and particularly wetland basins of the
Prairie Pothole Region sequester nearly a quarter million tons of carbon. Also, those basins
have the potential to store nearly a half million acre-feet of water of floodwater if filled to
maximum capacity. See http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1745/.
The research project is sponsored by Southwest Badger RC&D Council, Inc., Trout Unlimited,
Alliant Energy, the Driftless Area Initiative, USDA-NRCS, and Better Environmental Solutions. For
more, go to www.BetterEnviro.Com.