Desperate Days for CRP

Monday, October 10th, 2011

I hope you received our important Action Alert last week asking pheasant hunters and Pheasants Forever supporters to immediately contact your two U.S. Senators and one U.S. Representative about making CRP reauthorization a top Congressional priority.  I can’t stress enough how important your email voice is in today’s battle to save America’s benchmark conservation program.

Is the Conservation Reserve Program headed the way of the Soil Bank?

I have worked in Washington, D.C. on conservation programs and CRP since its 1985 beginnings.  I’ve never, ever, seen the program’s future so grim.  There are proposals to slash CRP’s current 32 million-acre baseline in half . . . or worse.  I don’t need to tell you what a loss of that magnitude would mean to pheasants, quail, flood prevention, water quality and hunting access.  “DEVASTATING” is the word that rings in my mind.

I recognize we do need to reduce federal spending, but we need to be wise about our conservation cuts.  If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines of this battle for conservation in the past, it’s critical that you get in the game now.  Your future and your children’s future of days spent in the field together with bird dogs and flushing roosters hangs in the balance.

This is my personal plea; please, please contact your two U.S. Senators and one U.S. Representative about making CRP reauthorization a top Congressional priority today.  If you get a response back, please drop me an email message with the feedback you receive at dnomsen@pheasantsforever.org.  Please don’t let CRP be this generation’s Soil Bank program of days gone by.

Thank You!

The D.C. Minute is written by Dave Nomsen, Pheasants Forever’s Vice President of Government Relations.