We need to start demanding to see where all this "habitat" money is going and this crap of producers double dipping (and that's exactly what it is) on wiha funds while grazing or tilling that tract to oblivion has to stop. Everytime you pass a walk in that's bare ground or grazed call it in and complain. Call kdwp and ask why the bird report looks like a cut and paste job each year. Audit your PF and QF chapters and just see where that banquet/fundraising money is going. We're going to have get the states attention as they are the voice to the farmer to get them to go back to the days where land husbandry meant something. We were raised that no matter how much land you have you leave all of it better than you found it. Not milk it for every penny and consequences be damned.
Nothing will happen until there is a focus on soil health and bio diversity -- Until companies like Monsanto, Bayer AG, Pioneer et al can find a way to make money on soil health you're fighting an uphill battle -
We previously had it - how quickly it's went away since the 90s -- it's not just gamebirds, prairie birds, butterflies, insects, reptiles etc etc. List goes on --
You want to see what a micro environmental disaster looks like from modern farming - drive about 15 miles south on River Rd south out of Holcomb - once you cross the river bridge make a left turn on Holcomb Ln and continue south instead of following the curve west -- about 7 miles the road will veer west for a mile or half mile then head back south again where it will T at Parallel Rd -- Look south -- and to the west -- drive in there on the roads - about 30 square miles the @KDWP likely the NRCS office, FDA and whomever else was involved in 2012 made the absolute dumbest decision known to man when they tried to convert the raped farm land back to native grass -- luckily from what I'm told by my buddy who is a land manager near Kinsley the City of Hays has not made the same mistake on their many square miles of owned land.
You can go over into the flint hills of KS where we've let trees encroach and take over - to ranchers spraying their damn pastures - to ranchers overgrazing etc etc -- list goes on -- We dont work with mother nature - we continue to fight it to an extreme to line pockets of the big ag companies who could give 2 shxts what happens to the landscape --
The US outlawed a lot of stuff from the 60s to I think the 80s - they need to go on another banning spree so they can reinvent the wheel and use other solutions that are beneficial to mother nature and future generations - if they dont make changes people will keep raping things until nothing is left but wasteland. I will continue to beat the dead horse but the Ogallallah Aquifer in Western KS that stretches from TX, NM, OK, CO, to NE and maybe SD (unsure about SD) -- anyways they're sucking it dry - day of recockoning is sneaking up on us. Just not quick enough for anyone to be motivated to do anythig about it. But I dont know about you - I was in HS in the mid to later 90s and loved the outdoors - even from my childhood in the 80s it's amazing the amount of bio diversity that has went away in such a short time - especially in the 90s when spray EVERYTHING seemed to become the mantra along with GMO crops meant to literally destroy any biodiversity.
My buddy that I mentioned is a land manager and is 9 yrs younger than me - I met him when I was 2 yrs out of college with my first adult job in western KS and he lived next door and was in HS - we visited a bunch and had hunting and wildlife in common so have stayed friends -- anyways his job now is to manage lands for wealthy guys that invest from out of state and are well versed in govt programs and they task him with restoring raped properties they buy -- the stories he tells me about how the neighboring farmers get so mad at him for some of the practices he does to restore things and the asinine things some of the farmers do is really beyond belief.
***I am not anti farmer - frankly like people there are many dumb ones, and MANY MANY more just simply ignorant or have been brainwashed for lack of a better term by a keep up with the joneses mentality or by other corporate interests that tell them they have to do things a certain way.
Until we can move mountains there - it will only continue to get worse - I hate to say it. With the Bill Gates of the world becoming even larger landowners and pushing the little guy out the prospects seem slimmer by the minute. There's a son of some Russian Oligarch buying up western KS - he bought a chunk of land that borders an area I hunt out west just this past year or so that he bought from a NY hedge fund family - I'm curious to see what he has up his sleeve for the land and how it changes.
