I agree with your hypothesis oldandnew! It really makes a ton of sense. Now, what can I as an individual hunter do about it? What can we as a group do about it? The beauty of this forum and all forums is communication with many like-minded people. We need some sort of a plan to work toward this goal. Seems like we need to join together somehow and try to address this issue, but how? How can farmers and land owners be educated and made to care, or better yet, be led to care about bird populations and other game? does any body have any ideas that could develop into a plan. I know PF and QU exist but it seems they are not being really effective, but right now they are all we have, and I support them, but it seems like we should be doing something other than just grousing and musing out loud. What can we do to encourage connected habitats and fence rows etc. I am just so frustrated watching it happen year after year bird populations going downhill. If someone could come up with some sort of plan towards fixing this I will surely get behind it.
This deserved a special blog! I don't know the perfect plan. I will tell you it takes effort on many parts. First education, from grade school on up, to foster the value of conservation, this includes colleges which should pioneer the advancements in providing more with less, not more inputs to leach everything out, sponsored by grants from the corporate input salesmen, and or the government. Development of less invasive agriculture, with the belief that this is better, begins to shuffle the deck. Federal government should topple the legal regulations, financially sponsor several marketing avenues to sell farm produce, this will not be easy, or inexpensive, but it will pay us back in a short time. Realize there are maybe 3-4 end buyers for hogs, and cattle, so auction or not you are getting a pre-arranged price. Grain prices are determined by 6 grain companies! We should subsidize the development of this. We should actively determine the side effects of chemicals which are used wholesale. Just a note there has been NO research done by USDA and EPA on roundup, since the late 1970's! We accept Monsanto's word. The local USDA committee should take a decisive role, in the 1930's they became the custodians of reforms of the dust bowl recovery. There rule was law, bust the sod, everything from banning from USDA programs and or criminal citations were necessary. You see, that they realized that what you do on your ground, effects everybody, it could be your neighbor, or a couple states away. Just like there are rules in business, ( in theory), there should be rules in farming, because the consequences are to high to contemplate. There should be encouragement to save what we have and restore what we need. Subsidize food with a national tax to provide funds to restore the health of the landscape, heck we have taxes to subsidize Pro football stadiums? How bout restore the water in Iowa, or the incentives to restore quail habitat? There is no economic need to foster production, there is a need to provide income back to the source! A farmer who can farm 40 acres of an 80, and receive a decent wage will not be real tempted to slash and burn the other 40, especially if we subsidize it! We should subsidize new farmers who are like minded, to buy property agreeing to put it in a land trust forever. D.U. does it, Nature conservancy does too. Less cost, secured, use it coupled with saving bonds programs, Buy an upland stamp, both nationally and state wise to foster program. invest in our land and future. Economy and efficiency. All of us should use energy, and life styles which are mind full of the best economical solution. 4000' square ft. house might be fine, but a premium concern for utilities should be job one. Do we need to drive a Hummer to work 5 days a week from 60 miles away? Conservation is the best way available currently! It help your piece of mind, and your pocket book. When we think back a few years, like to the 1940's most people owned one car, farms were plowed by horses mostly till during or after WWII. Renewable power, new model was grown on the farm, not on the hucksters lot! After that we farmed with 4 row equipment, nobody had a bulldozer, except the county, now you will see a bulldozer on any bigger farm, if you have it and a trencher, and pipe and tiles, and a subsidy to put it in, you will, on some dark winter day. So education, Yankee ingenuity for farm income technology , hard work on the farm, subsidy to accomplish clean water, foster new markets for farm products, not the monopoly game we have now, invest in the new farmers or old farmers, who believe the theory. We have a few here. Sacrifice for everybody for a better future. So make a soil plan nationally, with real compliance, subsidize to achieve it, subsidize markets here and internationally to provide true value to the farmers for crops and livestock, This cannot be a contest as to what we naturalist claim we want, any more than it can be about the faction that believes that all process is good, if I get another bushel. We are all bound together, as Ben Franklin said, "We don't sign declaration, we will all hang separately". better to make a plan, forget the simplistic idea that supply and demand solves all problems, that's where we are now! Better to make sure, what ever we do we should hang together. LBJ was a president who was flawed in many ways, but he said, "that there was nothing in the world that the U.S. could not solve." Teddy Roosevelt believed to. I admire that, and I wish for those days, and even the sacrifice to get there, yours and mine!
