Environmental Defense Praises Bottomland Hardwood Proposal

(22 April 2003 —Washington, D.C.) Environmental Defense praised today’s decision by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman to target half a million acres of the Conservation Reserve Program to restore bottomland hardwood forests. 

“Today’s decision provides new hope for these vanishing forests,” said Environmental Defense senior attorney Tim Searchinger.  “In most areas, the U.S. has lost 80% of its bottomland hardwood forests, and many of these lands are frequently-flooded and unproductive croplands.  Secretary’s Veneman’s decision creates a golden opportunity to improve water quality and restore important habitats for declining migratory birds and rare animals like the black bear.”

Secretary Veneman today announced that the Department of Agriculture would move ahead with a so-called general sign-up this spring to enroll land in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).  The CRP pays farmers to restore habitat for ten to fifteen years on one-tenth of the cropland in the United States, now up to 39.2 million acres.  The new bottomland hardwood initiative is a special use of the CRP program that allows landowners who have land of special value automatic entry into the program.

“While this program has achieved many environmental benefits, as a whole there has been too much emphasis on restoring random strips of land in the central U.S, a legacy of the program’s past as a crop supply control program,” said Searchinger.  “The program holds enormous environmental potential, but the key is to target the program at special kinds of restoration of exceptional environmental value.  The bottomland hardwood focus today is a good step forward.  Because there is far less demand by farmers to use CRP as a retirement program, the Secretary has a great opportunity to target more CRP at other lands of exceptional environmental value.”

“We look forward to working with the Secretary to assure that sufficient CRP acres are reserved for enrollments of exceptional value,” said Searchinger.  “That would also be more equitable nationally, since general sign-up criteria typically do not result in many sign-ups in more than half the country.”