Duck Stamp Price Going Up

[Stute Slap]

I'm waiting for a call from a FWS buddy for an updated perspective, but as long as I can recall we've been told there is a long waiting list of ranchers in the Dakotas that want to protect their grass & wetlands. Out there it's a big difference between farming & ranching. Some ranchers don't want to see native prairie converted to row crops. Conversion has been going full throttle for a decade due to ethanol.

As for how many more acres, I don't know but I would have to think an easement could be anywhere from 1/2 to 1/10 the cost of purchase.

Seems like you are "in the know".

Do you work in gov't or involved in conservation groups or something along those lines?

[Bill Gilbertson]

And it will kick out ducks, deer , and pheasants instead of corn, beans, & polluted runoff

Educate me. Isn't it doing that today via CRP and other programs without having to pay for the same benefits twice?

[gimpfinger]

And it will kick out ducks, deer , and pheasants instead of corn, beans, & polluted runoff

Educate me. Isn't it doing that today via CRP and other programs without having to pay for the same benefits twice?

What CRP?

Team Power Dump

[lanyard]

Can"t Remember Planting-it

[Fish Felon]

And it will kick out ducks, deer , and pheasants instead of corn, beans, & polluted runoff

Educate me. Isn't it doing that today via CRP and other programs without having to pay for the same benefits twice?

I'm all for the increase and I'm fine with the extra $10 bucks going towards easements.

Bill, how are we paying for the benefits twice by purchasing a permanent easement? With your last comment you seem to be advocating CRP and other programs over easements...I'm not understanding your train of thought.

That won't happen with our $10. The easement land we pay for will get locked up and only hunted by the owner and his friends. If you want to hunt there, you will have to pay a trespass fee.

How is CRP any different from that standpoint? We, the taxpayer via the farm bill, pay landowners yearly for setting land aside via CRP. It's private land that almost exclusively gets locked up and only hunted by the landowner and his friends. When the contract is over the landowner can put the ground back into production if they choose to. When that happens, which has often been the case lately, there's absolutely nothing to show for the money that was paid out yearly for a decade.


I think your might be misunderstanding the intent of the increase. It's not really comparable at all to a program like CRP and it will most likely have very little impact to states like MN.

The easements are going to be geared towards states like the Dakota’s and Montana. As Quack said earlier this money will be going towards protecting what's still there...not restoring what's gone.

It's a good deal and the best bang for our buck. Plus it frees up the entire other $15 for acquisition...which is good for MN since there's lots of new WPA's going in and that's the primary funding source (that's often matched a bunch of times by other groups/government). It's land that's permanently set aside and open to hunting.

[Quack]

Intensely managed artificial duck habitat for hunting could & should be done in mn but fed duck stamp $$ won't pay for it. We have state duck stamps & ded funding. DNR & MWA should cooperate on this.

CRP is lovely but expensive & short lived. It's a farm program administered by USDA.

Duck stamps purchasing land for wpa's or easements can get leveraged by ded funding, but the funds are very different than crp $. Duck stamp $$ pays for permanent habitat & 98% goes into habitat.

It might be confusing to have all these different pots of money but they prevent monopolization of habitat management.

[lanyard]

The issues in the Dakotas sound like the old East River/West River disputes are alive and well....

The farmer and the rancher can be friends......

[tornadochaser]

The issues in the Dakotas sound like the old East River/West River disputes are alive and well....

The farmer and the rancher can be friends......

Some of it boils down to perpetual easement vs. 30 or 50 year easements.
SD is in a fragile state right now. We've got some serious issues that need to be addressed in terms of drainage permitting, as well as issues with public water over private land. Producer/land owners feel like they are being told what they can and can't do with their own land from a lot of different angles, and it's not going to end well for sportsmen.

[Stute Slap]

They should increase the cost to $1,000 and use the money to offset all the pollution sportsman create.
- just think of all the CO2 put in the air driving around - totally unregulated
- just think of all the innocent birds they are killing preventing all the non hunters from enjoying nature.

Isn't it funny to really think about it.....we bitch about how individuals are putting their own interests ahead of sportsmen, yet sportsmen want to kill the very resource they think others should pay for to raise for them to kill.

[Bill Gilbertson]

My issues are that I want to see more WPAs and that money spent to achieve conservation goals is used optimally. It seems to me that having both CRP and an easement on a given piece of land is redundant. I prefer buying land for public use rather than renting it. I am open to a better understanding of the issues though.