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Deer Hunting, CRP and the Farm Bill: What Can You Do?
I recently attended the North American Deer Summit put on by the National Deer Alliance. If you haven’t heard of the NDA, check out their website and become a member (It’s FREE). The North American Deer Summit was a meeting of many leaders in the deer world. There were industry representatives, state agency biologists, NGOs, and media all in attendance.
There were many great discussions about Chronic Wasting Disease (picture above) and the lack of quality hunter access, but what stood out to me was a speech given by Whit Fosburgh from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership about the upcoming Farm Bill and the importance of CRP to deer hunters (second picture). CRP or Conservation Reserve Program, is a program that helps private landowners remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production, and instead plant species that will improve environmental health and quality. The last Farm Bill, the amount of land eligible for CRP was cut from 32 million acres down to 24 million acres.
With commodity prices now low, more land owners are trying to enroll in conservation practices, but the funding is not there for them. The current Farm Bill is set to expire in 2018, so now is the time to have your voice heard in support of CRP funding. How do you do that? Simply sign the petition on the website CRPworks. It takes about 1 minute to fill out and that will contact your representatives on Capitol Hill to increase the allocation for CRP funding. Most die-hard deer hunters understand the importance of good cover for wildlife, and habitat loss due to land conversion is a real threat to all wildlife populations.
CRP reverses that trend and has the additional ability to provide thermal cover as well as fawning habitat. The forbs that grow in CRP stands also help feed deer. The benefits CRP reach far beyond just helping deer. Ducks, Pheasants, Turkeys, Dove, and a whole host of non-game species also benefit from CRP, not to mention humans benefit by having cleaner water with less erosion around CRP land. With the acres enrolled in CRP shrinking, deer will be forced to live on more marginal habitats which makes them easier for predators to find and decreases overall herd health. If you currently own land and are a deer hunter, you should take a look at CRP as a source of income for your property.
Up to this point, the main supporters for increased Farm Bill conservation funding have been Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, and North American Wild Turkey Federation. As deer hunters, we outnumber all the other types of hunters, so speaking up about the importance of CRP should be at the forefront of our mind. That is one great role the NDA can play: to combine the power of hundreds of thousands of deer hunters to rally in support of federal conservation funding.
-Tim Neuman, Wildlife Biologist
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