Field Notes
Endangered Species: Greater Sage Grouse
Wildlife
Habitat
Endangered Species: Kirtland's Warbler
Education
Global Warming
Dispatches
Habitat
Plugging a Leak
The embattled prairie pothole region and the millions of birds that call it home are getting a little extra help of late. Since 2006 the North Dakota Farmers Union has coordinated the sale of the area’s stored carbon, a program in which its members can earn carbon credits from their prairies and grasslands—by not plowing them. The Chicago Climate Exchange then sells these credits to investors who want to reduce their carbon footprint. As of last summer, 500 enrolled farmers had earned a combined $2 million through the program.
Carbon sequestering, as the practice is known, is catching on. Ducks Unlimited (DU) launched an initiative last November in which landowners permanently sell the rights to the carbon stored in their native or restored grasses to U.S.-based Equator Environmental and New Forests. These companies, in turn, sell credits to “individuals or corporations to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions and at the same time to invest in grassland conservation,” explains Jim Ringelman, director of conservation programs in DU’s Great Plains office.
These innovative efforts come at a crucial time for the 200 bird species that inhabit or breed in the pothole region—grasslands punctuated with waterlogged indentations left over from the last glaciation. When farmers drain these wetlands to plant crops, marbled godwits, meadowlarks, sedge wrens, and piping plovers lose key habitat, as do migrants like mallards and blue-winged teals that depend on the “duck factory,” as this region is often called. “Few places in North America are as important from the standpoint of migratory water birds as the prairie pothole region,” says Gary Krapu, a research biologist at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center.
The importance of the pothole region and its conservation was highlighted in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C. Even though there is a “high-priority” target of 12 million acres to maintain current bird populations, only three million acres of wetlands and grasslands have been purchased or leased with Duck Stamps since the 1950s. Currently, hunters pay $15 to buy a Duck Stamp from the government. But the collective proceeds—one of the primary sources of funding for acquiring land—don’t preserve as much land as they used to. “A lot of organizations are looking for other ways to raise revenue, but it’s high time to increase the cost of the Duck Stamp,” says Genevieve Thompson, Audubon Dakota’s executive director and a proponent of sequestration.
The new attention comes in the nick of time. Highly profitable crops, such as corn (for ethanol) and soy (for biodiesel), as well as the increased vulnerability of isolated wetlands in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2001 SWANCC decision, are adding pressure to convert prairie. “Because of the weakening in protection, the only things standing between wetlands and drainage are our easements or Swampbuster,” explains Ron Reynolds, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, referring to the 1985 farm bill program that penalizes farmers when they drain wetlands. Conservationists are optimistic that the addition of carbon sequestration programs, as well as new revenue and laws, will better patch up the prairie.—Kristin Elise Phillips
Back to Top |
