On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA August-September 2016 | Page 12

SUSTAINABILITY COLUMN
NANCY TAYLOR ROBSON

LARGE-SCALE PROBLEMS REQUIRE LARGE-SCALE SOLUTIONS

Gardens as wildlife corridors – part 2, rural
Part 1 of this article appeared in the June-July 2016 issue of On the QT and explored creating wildlife corridors in urban areas.
Agriculture and National Resources Conservation Service regulations have encouraged farmers to install wildlife corridors.
Road crossings are especially lethal for wildlife and require a means of directing wildlife traffic through a constructed, safe passage.
BIGGER CORRIDORS MEAN BIGGER BUDGETS
“ But the family farms are not mom-and-pop operations any more. That often means they don’ t have the personal connection to the landscape,” said Clark. As a result, corridors can be a harder sell to those who focus primarily on balance sheets.“ Depending on how it’ s designed, a corridor can make their farming practices more difficult, and it affects their bottom line.”
Also, most corridors need to be maintained.“ Virtually any herbaceous corridor you establish in the Midwest will be invaded by trees fairly quickly and can lose its functionality,” Clark said.“ And the subtle benefits, such as nutrient filtration change dramatically, too, not just what kind of birds fly along and nest there.”
Maintenance requires time, effort and inputs, all of which add costs. In addition, there is sometimes a negative dollar impact from the wildlife itself.“ I’ d estimate we lose $ 30,000 to $ 40,000 a year to deer,” said Brennan Starkey, who farms 1,400 acres on Maryland’ s Eastern Shore.
The process of creating and maintaining effective wildlife corridors, especially rural corridors, obviously varies widely by region. A luxury habitat for the indigenous wildlife of Arizona would be starvation rations and skid row digs for the native wildlife of New Hampshire or Oregon. Wildlife corridors in Florida bear little resemblance to those in California.
“ Corridors vary according to landscape,” said William Clark, professor emeritus of the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology at Iowa State University in Ames, and an expert in population ecology.“ What amounts to perennial habitat in an annually row-cropped landscape is different from the scale of corridors
of grizzlies in the West or even bears in the suburban East.”
Regardless of where they are, wildlife corridors planted with a diversity of native flora must be designed to provide food, clean water, cover and a place to raise young. Each is an effort to help maintain or restore wildlife diversity, and in some cases, even pull individual species back from the brink of extinction.
Human endeavors have decimated what was once a richly endowed natural home for wildlife on this continent. For example, the prairie smorgasbord has been industrially plowed and planted with acres of three main crops: corn, soybeans and wheat. This monoculture has endangered pollinator populations, mammals and— thanks to runoff laced with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers— fresh water fish. To slow this destruction, the U. S. Department of
COSTS AND BENEFITS NOT JUST MEASURED IN DOLLARS
Wolves and coyotes can prey on livestock. Opossums eat eggs and sometimes chickens, as do foxes, weasels and raptors.“ I’ ve had lots of negative encounters,” said Barbara Starkey, Brennan’ s mother, who has raised cattle and sheep on the family farm.“ And, there are things I don’ t like about some of our encounters, but I still think having corridors is a good idea.”
In a kind of carrot-and-stick approach, regulations coupled with conservation programs can help mitigate some of the financial costs of relinquishing a portion of farm or grazing land to corridors. Conservation easements provide payment to the landowner. In exchange, they permanently limit the kinds of uses the land may be put to, yet do not inhibit the sale of the property or the ability to pass it on to heirs.
Pam Chrisman, owner of Fish Creek Flying W Ranches in Pinedale, Wyoming, put a portion
PHOTO COURTESY U. S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE
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