Senator commended for work to protect vanishing prairie
WASHINGTON, December 7, 2007 – Ducks Unlimited Executive Vice President Don Young met with Sen. John Thune (SD) on Capitol Hill to discuss the 2007 Farm Bill and to praise the senator for the work he has done for conservation.
“South Dakota’s Prairie Pothole Region is North America’s best breeding habitat,” Young said. “DU appreciates the outstanding leadership role Senator Thune has displayed by building on the 2002 Farm Bill’s Conservation Title and fighting to include a critical Sodsaver provision the Senate’s Farm Bill.”
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| Sen. John Thune (SD) and Ducks Unlimited Executive Vice President Don Young. |
Sodsaver would disallow federal subsidies on newly broken native prairie. These grasslands and wetlands are some of the best waterfowl habitats in the world. More than 80 percent of
America’s native prairie has already been lost to conversion and development.
“Sodsaver does not take away a landowner’s right to convert native sod to cropland,” Thune said. “This provision simply prohibits crop insurance and other federally funded disaster insurance from being available for this converted prairie land, eliminating misguided incentives.”
South Dakota is one of the country’s top agricultural states and has a strong outdoor recreation economy that will benefit from the habitat protections Sodsaver would provide.
With more than a million supporters, Ducks Unlimited is the world’s largest and most effective wetland and waterfowl conservation organization with almost 12 million acres conserved. The United States alone has lost more than half of its original wetlands - nature’s most productive ecosystem - and continues to lose more than 80,000 wetland acres each year.
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Contact: Neil Shader, Conservation Policy Specialist, 202.347.1530, nshader@ducks.org
Click here for more information on Ducks Unlimited’s Farm Bill priorities.