Farm habitat

Farmers’ wildlife habitat is shrinking

Photo and Text By BRENT FRAZEE

An aerial photo of our family farm in central Illinois could be a poster for the habitat crisis facing wildlife these days.

It shows my aunt and uncle’s farmhouse, surrounded by hundreds of acres of clean farming at its best – or worst, depending on your point of view.

Neat rows of corn and soybeans stretch fencepost to fencepost, with little in the way of wildlife habitat to be seen. Oh, there are a few ditches along the old county road that borders the farm. And the “swamp 40” has some brush in places where crops just wouldn’t take hold.

But other than that, our farm looks inhospitable to wildlife.

That bothered me years ago when I was just learning the importance of good habitat in fostering healthy wildlife populations.

The pheasants that hid in grassy cover along borders of the crop fields that I hunted in my childhood are long gone. So are many of the deer we saw regularly. No place to live.

THE HARD TRUTH

I pleaded with my uncle and aunt to leave a few rows of crops standing in each field to serve as habitat. At least that would be a start, I thought.

A short time later, my aunt sent me a letter with an estimate for how much money they would be losing by leaving those rows in place. Their farm stood in some of the nation’s richest farm country.

They were casual hunters … but farmed to survive.

I remember my aunt saying in the letter, “We can’t throw money away just to see that you and your friends will have something to hunt when you come down here.”

That was a curt response, but as I look back, one that

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Wild turkeys are in danger of the population loss that has cut quail populations.

made a lot of sense.

PRIME IS PRIME

On land that produces only marginal yields, it’s easy to think about leaving a few rough spots for wildlife. But in prime farm country, every row counts.

Others in my aunt and uncle’s area apparently felt the same way. There was little in the way of quality habitat but plenty of lush crops on the flat landscape.

And therein lies the problem. It’s easy for city folks like me to urge farmers to leave habitat for the critters, but until we’ve ridden a tractor in their boots, it’s unrealistic to expect them to give up part of their crop.

My aunt and uncle are gone now, but their message still resonates. Corporate farms are often blamed for the drastic loss of habitat such as fence rows, weedy draws, brushy borders and overgrown pastures. But the mom-and-pop farmers who are just struggling to survive also play a part.

MARGINAL RETURNS

It’s easy to say we should just throw money at the problem – that we should compensate them for idling land and letting it grow into productive habitat for the pheasants, quail, deer and songbirds. That’s what the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) does.

But that program compensates landowners for idling marginal farmland. What if the productivity of the land brings far more than federal or state assistance would?

And what if landowners such as my aunt and uncle view wildlife as a lower priority than raising healthy crops?

That’s what we are facing today, and I admit there’s no easy solution.

Since I moved to Missouri in 1980, I’ve seen a drastic decline in quail populations due to habitat loss, and turkeys are in danger of following the same path.

In Kansas, habitat loss has led to a reduction in once-spectacular pheasant populations. Prairie chicken numbers also are on a downward trend, and some songbird populations are struggling.

A NEW LAND ETHIC

It’s not all doom and gloom. Some conservation groups are demonstrating how farmers can still make money while implementing conservation practices that aid wildlife.

But in many cases, it takes a village – or in this case, a block of landowners – for wildlife populations to thrive. Fragmented habitat gives wildlife an island of favorable conditions, but it takes contiguous acres of good nesting and brood cover, insects and seeds for food, and shelter from harsh winter weather for populations to grow significantly.

So how do we get there? We have to convince landowners such as my aunt and uncle that wildlife matters…and that they can still make money while providing good habitat for the critters.

We’ll likely never see a return to the days when wildlife thrived in the brushy cover surrounding farm fields. Clean farming, pesticides and herbicides, and better machinery have seen to that.

But maybe we’ll see a new land ethic where at least a portion of many farms are left for creatures such as quail, wild turkeys, pheasants and deer.

It’s up to us to chart that course.

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