Rick wrote:Read the piece and watched the clip and still missed any real/tangible information on the program. Can someone tell me what it actually does?
After a lengthy search I found this. I remember this same program, or one very similar offered years ago but it wasn't popular due to the flooding length and management needed by the farmers through the spring. I remember well a face to face conversation i had with Doug some years ago when I mentioned he may benefit from enrolling in the program. In short, he told me it was too much work. He would have received some funding to support his efforts.
In a nutshell, DU and other partners provide funding for upgrades to water wells and dictate land use in a more waterfowl friendly way. The land owner/farmer has to follow their guidelines, i.e. maintaining water on the landscape late into the spring at optimal depths for dabbler's.
https://www.ducks.org/conservation/public-policy/farm-bill/rice-and-ducks Farmers cultivate slightly more than 3 million acres of rice in the United States each year. Approximately two-thirds of the nation's rice crop is grown in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri. Slightly more than 1.5 million acres of rice are annually grown in Arkansas, while an additional 500,000 acres are cultivated in Mississippi, southern Missouri, and northern Louisiana.
Private landowners working with DU, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state conservation agencies, and other partners, annually flood more than 110,000 acres of agricultural land in the MAV. Farmers without financial support from government agencies and other conservation groups flood an additional 350,000 acres across the region.
Dr. Tom Moorman, director of conservation planning at DU's Southern Regional Office, explains, "DU has been evaluating potential waterfowl feeding habitat capacity in the MAV since 1997. The flooded agricultural habitat provided by private landowners, combined with habitat provided on public wildlife management areas and created via natural flooding, appear to meet the foraging requirements of desired populations of waterfowl in the MAV during most winters. The role of private landowners in this effort, particularly rice growers, cannot be overstated."
Another region where rice production is critical to wintering waterfowl is the Gulf Coastal Plain of Louisiana and Texas. While the Gulf Coast remains one of the nation's most wetland-rich regions, it has suffered staggering losses of habitat to development and rising sea levels. During the past 50 years, Louisiana alone has lost nearly 1 million acres of highly productive coastal wetlands, and the state could lose an additional 630,000 acres of wetlands over the next 50 years.
With the widespread loss of freshwater prairie wetlands and coastal marshes, flooded rice fields provide critical resting and feeding habitat for migrating and wintering waterfowl along the Gulf Coast. However, due to rising production costs, rice acreage has declined by more than 50 percent in the region, from 1.2 million acres in 1968 to only 577,000 acres in 2002. Many former rice fields have been claimed by urban sprawl or have been taken out of production and invaded by exotic Chinese tallow or salt cedar, which provide little value for waterfowl or other wildlife.
