Hunting and game fishing groups enter the farm bill debate seeking to protect funding for conservation programs and ensure that fish and wildlife habitat are given the same stature as protecting soil quality and water within the programs of the Department of Agriculture.
The farm bill’s conservation title authorizes the Conservation Reserve Program, the nation’s largest land set-aside program, along with several working land programs, such as the Quality Incentives Program environmental, the Conservation Management Program and others.
Farm bill priorities set by a coalition of 27 hunting and fishing groups known as the Agriculture and Wildlife Working Group include maintaining core funding for the conservation title and ensuring that additional funding provided by Congress last year through the Inflation Reduction Act to remain within these programs. .
The coalition also calls for Congress to provide more incentives to increase CRP enrollment, create a forest conservation easement program to protect working forests, streamline the Regional Conservation Partnerships program, and expand the ‘voluntary public access and incentives for the habitat.
“Basically, we want to find ways to make these conservation programs as valuable as possible for fisheries and wildlife while supporting agricultural production,” said Aaron Field, Theodore’s director of public lands conservation. Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, in Agri-Pols.
In addition to the TRCP, the coalition includes the American Fisheries Society, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Delta Waterfowl, Ducks Unlimited, the Izaak Walton League of America, the National Forest Owners Association, the National Federation of of Wildlife, Pheasants Forever, and Trout Unlimited.
Conservation funding is projected to make up about 4 percent of total farm bill spending over the next 10 years, according to an analysis of estimates by the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Congressional Budget Office . Commodity programs are expected to account for roughly the same proportion.
Curt Melcher, president of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, said his group is focused on trying to keep the core funding from the 2018 conservation title in the 2023 farm bill.
A bigger question, however, is what will happen to the approximately $19.5 billion in additional funding provided to the USDA for conservation programs and related initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Melcher said House Ag Committee leaders have indicated in conversations that they support keeping IRA funding at current levels.
“Given the dynamics of the House, I think the interest is in a more flat budget,” Melcher told Agri-Pulse. “I’m not worried about the downs. What I’m focused on right now is maintaining the status quo, at least until 2023.”
However, groups that are members of the Agriculture and Wildlife Working Group are interested in seeing increased funding for specific programs,
Delta Waterfowl, for example, would like to see an increase in the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program, which provides funding to state and tribal governments to encourage landowners to allow public access to their lands for hunting and fishing. Lawmakers authorized $50 million for the program in the latest farm bill, and Delta would like to see that increase to $150 million by 2023.
“It has executed very well with several states across the country, and we want to make sure the program is strong and well-funded in the 2023 bill as well,” said John Devney, Delta’s vice president of US policy Waterfowl, about the program.
Field of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said that he would like to see the CRP rental payment limits increase to at least $125,000 from the current $50,000. He said the payment limitations have not kept pace with inflation.
Task force members would also like to see caps on CRP rental rates removed,
Melcher wants the USDA to provide CRP cost sharing to help with the management of the average contract, which are the land maintenance and upkeep requirements that growers enrolled in the program must follow.
“CRP is a great program,” Melcher said. “But depending on what part of the country you are in, it requires maintenance, and right now that falls on the landowners.”
The groups are also calling for the establishment of a forest conservation easement program to prevent conversion of forests to non-forest uses, and the organizations say agricultural easement programs should be exempt from the means test.
The groups say the USDA should have authority to maintain easements in states where eligible entities “do not have the ability or capacity” to maintain easements on specially important grasslands.
Some Republicans from the Prairie Pothole region, including Sens. Mike Rounds, RSD, and Kevin Cramer, RND, have previously introduced bills suggesting that permanent federal easements should be eliminated, and it is possible that these bills its way into debates about farm law.
Hunting and fishing groups like Ducks Unlimited, however, oppose the idea of ending permanent easements because they provide long-term protection for wetlands that support waterfowl and other ecosystems important to species.
Julia Peebles, Ducks Unlimited’s manager of agriculture and sustainability, said groups like hers will have to “really advocate for the permanence of easements” if these bills make it into the farm bill debate.
“You will always have those opponents who do not agree with permanent easements. We’re completely opposed to that,” Peebles told Agri-Pulse. “It’s really the owner’s choice to do what they want with their land and if they want that permanent easement, that’s their choice.”
Task force members also want updates on the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which provides grants to state and local governments, nonprofits and private sector players to help with conservation efforts on farms and technical assistance
The legal ban on partners recovering indirect and administrative costs should be removed, and RCPP projects should be allowed to use modified conservation practice standards, if they are deemed “ecologically appropriate,” the groups say.