Posted by Jonathan Adler:
Subsidies Versus Conservation:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_12_07-2008_12_13.shtml#1228663631
The Washington Post reports on what we've known for a while: the
combination of agriculture subsidies, ethanol subsidies, and high ag
prices are causing widespread loss of important migratory waterfowl
habitat.
Fighting the trend is an array of hunting and conservation groups.
The political circumstances in the West have forced them to try to
protect the grassland without making it a national park or a
federal preserve. "There is still strong resistance in the West to
extending federal ownership of land," said Ken Cook, president of
the Environmental Working Group.
Scott Stephens, director of conservation planning for Ducks
Unlimited, estimates that the Prairie Pothole Region of the Dakotas
and Montana could lose an additional 3.3 million acres of native
grassland to farming over the next five years if prices stay high
and federal policy does not change.
Pat Comer, an ecologist with NatureServe, a nonprofit scientific
research organization, said the concern is less with the total
acreage lost than with the fragmentation of bird habitat. "We're
beginning to affect habitat needs," he said.
High ag prices, inflated by subsidies, make conservation particularly
difficult. Among other things, the inflated prices make government
conservation payments less appealing.
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