Vilsack addresses pheasant enthusiasts in Des Moines

DES MOINES - Iowa pheasant enthusiasts twice interrupted Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack with applause during his keynote address here Saturday at National Pheasant Fest.

The first time was when the former Iowa governor announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture's first general signup for the Conservation Reserve Program in four years.

And the second came when he explained that 45 percent of U.S. troops come from rural areas, which have less than 20 percent of the nation's population.

The two are closely connected, Vilsack said, in the sense that the same values that make good soldiers - hard work and responsibility to community and country - are often instilled by parents teaching their children to hunt and fish.

Those activities teach children that “if you are going take, you have to give,” which is the essence of the conservation ethic, Vilsack said.

Besides saving soil, protecting water quality and providing habitat, CRP can “revitalize and strengthen rural America and improve the health and welfare of children,” two of President Obama's top priorities, Vilsack said.

Vilsack's announcement was short on specifics. He said the signup would start in late spring or early summer after an environmental-impact statement is complete.

Vilsack acknowledged that providing CRP rental rates competitive with rates paid by Iowa farmers for good quality crop land “will be a challenge for us.”

Moderating crop prices, coupled with a focus on less productive land, should enable substantial enrollments of Iowa farmland, he said.

CRP acreage, the backbone of pheasant habitat in the United States, has dwindled from a national high of more than 39 million acres to about 31 million now. In Iowa, CRP acreage peaked at 2.2 million acres in 1995 and has since fallen to 1.6 million acres, with contracts on another 600,000 acres set to expire by the end of 2013.

The general signup should help offset some of those anticipated losses, said Dave Nomsen, vice president of governmental affairs for Pheasants Forever, sponsor of the three-day fest at the Iowa Events Center.

Vilsack also announced an additional allocation of 300,000 acres to three popular wildlife habitat programs under the continuous signup CRP.

Iowa wildlife managers hope the CRP opportunities will help reverse the steep habitat losses, which have combined with inhospitable weather to drive Iowa's annual pheasant harvest from 806,000 in 2005 to a record-low 383,000 in the 2008-09 hunting season.

That record will surely fall again when the Department of Natural Resources posts its estimated harvest for the season ending Jan. 10.