1/5/2012
As a resident South Dakota hunter, this is a major concern not only for me but for my future children. I get it and believe that farmers are entrepreneurs. Like many of us, they will pursue activities to maximize their incomes. Afterall, we do live in a free market and capitalist society. South Dakota is truly at a crossroads - Wildlife needs habitat and farmers need land.
This is a very well written article by Dennis Andersen and printed in the Star Tribune regarding the difficult situation our state is in.
NEAR PRESHO, S.D. - In the nearly half-century he's lived in South Dakota, John Cooper has seen countless beautiful prairie sunsets. But none perhaps prettier than one on a recent late afternoon that arched wild hues of orange, red, yellow and crimson across a darkening sky.
"I never get tired of that," Cooper said, nodding toward the colorful horizon, a 12-gauge double-gun slung over one shoulder and his Labrador retriever walking ahead.
However barren in appearance, South Dakota prairies pulse with life. Eagles, hawks, prairie dogs, pheasants, ducks, geese and sharp-tailed grouse thrive here. So do coyotes, a pack of which yipped their singsong appreciation for the coming night as Cooper sleeved his scattergun following a long afternoon's pheasant hunt.
The retired director of South Dakota's Game, Fish and Parks Department, serving 12 years under two governors, Cooper also has been a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.
In those states, he traveled nearly every highway, byway and country road during a 22-year career as a federal officer.
So when he says change is occurring to the South Dakota landscape at a rate never seen before, with far-reaching implications for wildlife and people, he speaks with a perspective few share.
"What has happened here in the past four years is unprecedented," Cooper said as he and I climbed into my pickup and rumbled over a dirt two-track. "Anyone who thinks South Dakota can continue to produce the pheasants, ducks and other wildlife it has in the past just doesn't know what's going on here. You're quite possibly witnessing the end of an era. Some of the nation's last, best prairies and potholes are going away."
Responsible for the changes is what farmer, rancher and hunting outfitter Steve Halverson of Kennebec, S.D., calls a "perfect storm" of high commodity prices, rising land values, breakthroughs in crop engineering, a seemingly feverish desire by some eastern South Dakota farmers to drain their lands of water, and relatively paltry federal farm bill conservation incentives.
"I honestly think that unless something unexpected happens, we may never see the high pheasant populations again that we've seen in recent years," Halverson said.
Duck production in the state is also at risk. The Natural Resources Conservation Service in Brookings, S.D., has a backlog of more than 4,500 requests by farmers and ranchers to issue wetland determinations on their lands - up nearly tenfold in only four years.
Most appeals are from landowners wanting to increase their tillable acres by draining water from their property. "The requests have been doubling each year," said Janet Oertley, NRCS state conservationist in Huron, S.D.
In 2011, with prices hovering around $6 per bushel, South Dakota farmers planted about 5.2 million acres of corn, a 650,000-acre increase from 2010.
"What's driving it is greed," said farmer and rancher Jim Faulstich of Highmore, S.D., who believes a balanced landscape is critical to South Dakota's economic well-being. "I've lost some friends over comments like that. But there's no other way to describe it."