Old COL, you can thrown in the Farm Bill when it comes to what's happened to wildlife in this country. 35 million acres set aside in CRP didn't reverse trends in modern agriculture, but it did take a whole lot of land out of row crops and into grasses, trees, etc. Of course the govt gives and the govt takes away, and they've been busily taking away CRP for the last several years--to the point that about a third of those 35 million acres are now back growing row crops. Couple the loss of CRP with the desire to tile away wet spots, rip out fencelines, raise livestock in confinement buildings rather than allowing them to clean up waste grain in the fields, the economy of scale (bigger equipment justified by a single farmer farming more acres) etc . . . all bad news for wildlife in general. And upland game populations in particular.

When we first got CRP, hunters got a significant benefit. But as those fields went from corn or soybeans to grass, I noticed that farmers were working their crop fields more and more intensively. Taking out the micro-habitats where a pheasant or a covey of quail could hide. And I thought at the time: "God help us if we ever lose CRP." That's where we are now, and given the economy in general and trends in DC, it's unlikely that we're ever going to regain those millions of acres of habitat we've lost. Nor all the little spots that used to produce the occasional bird.

Last edited by L. Brown; 11/15/16 09:12 AM.