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Every president wants a positive legacy, a crowning achievement or two that define his time in office.
President Bush is no different. When it comes to natural-resources conservation, President Bush’s two terms have been marked with far too much empty rhetoric and too few achievements. In fact, many conservation officials believe Mr. Bush has the worst environmental record of any president in our republic’s history.
Whatever your judgment, history will render the final verdict. But with only months left in office, President Bush, it appears, is attempting to tweak conventional wisdom by making a little history of his own.
Indeed, in his final budget as commander-in-chief, President Bush is proposing to increase the price of the federal duck stamp by $10, an increase that would pump some much-needed revenue into safeguarding migratory bird habitat across the country.
Why he’s doing this at the end of his term, I do not know. But the fact is his proposal is desperately needed, and Congress should pass it without hesitation.
Consider: President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal asks Congress to increase the price of the Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, also known as the duck stamp, from $15 to $25. It would be the increase since 1991. Yes, it’s been 17 years since Congress increased funding for one of the most effective—and efficient— U.S. conservation programs. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal duck stamp has secured more than 90 percent of the permanently protected waterfowl habitat on the U.S. side of the prairie breeding grounds. This is a stunning achievement, and waterfowl hunters should pat themselves on the back for making this happen.
The increased revenue from raising the duck stamp, projected at about $14 million annually, would protect and restore critical habitat for migratory waterfowl. More specifically, the increased funding would “allow for acquisition of an estimated 6,800 additional acres of migratory bird habitat and secure easements for 10,000 additional wetlands per year across the nation,” according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service press release.
Since 1934, federal duck stamp sales have raised nearly $700 million and conserved roughly 5.2 million acres of waterfowl habitat across the country, including roughly 2.7 million in the PPR, where the bulk of the continent’s ducks are produced. Last year alone, more than 1.6 million duck stamps were sold, raising roughly $24.2 million.
While it’s important to protect migratory bird habitat across the U.S., the goal of the duck stamp should be to raise more ducks, and to raise more ducks you have to invest more dollar ons the prairie breeding grounds.
Bottom line: The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), particularly North Dakota and South Dakota, should be allocated a greater percentage of any revenue generated by increasing the duck stamp. Throwing millions upon millions at “saving” the Ivory-billed woodpecker—a bird, you will recall, that most serious birders believe does not exist—would be irresponsible and wasteful.
The stakes for migratory birds have never been higher, because the prairie breeding grounds are losing habitat at an alarming rate. The loss of critical waterfowl breeding habitat in the PPR is being driven by record-high commodity prices, soaring land values and increased demand for biofuels like corn-based ethanol. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres and native grasslands are being converted for agriculture production. In 2007, for example, roughly 820,000 CRP acres were lost in the Dakotas and Montana—prime waterfowl-breeding states. And new numbers released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that contracts on roughly 5.6 million CRP acres will expire by October 2012. That’s roughly two-thirds of the current CRP acreage in the Dakotas and Montana.
Of additional concern is the Missouri Coteau in central South Dakota, where 10,000-year-old native prairie is broken by farmers and planted to various crops. When the Coteau is during the spring, it attracts some of highest densities of nesting ducks on the continent, including at-risk species like pintails.
If we hope to save the breeding grounds, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials need additional dollars to give perpetual wetland and grasslands easements to protect this important area. The good news is that there are hundreds of willing landowners who want easements. That’s why it’s so important to increase the prices of the duck stamp.
Another remedy: President Bush should encourage, and Congress should pass, the Emergency Wetlands Loan Act, which would advance $400 million in duck stamp sales to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect critical waterfowl habitat.
In combination, passage of both initiatives would help conservation officials save what’s left of one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world. And President Bush would improve his legacy with outdoorsmen and women. A good way to end his presidency, I’d say.
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