Consider putting land in CRP to benefit area wildlife

Every time the United States Department of Agriculture announces additional acres for the CRP program, sportsmen and women across the country cheer.
The federal Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to take marginal cropland out of production and plant it to native grass and flower cover.
Contracts range from 10-15 years with rental rates as high as $350 per acre per year and as low as $42 per acre per year, depending on the land. It generally guarantees a profit on those acres each year.
Without CRP those marginal acres might make a great crop one year and then be losing acres for the producer for the next nine years in a row.
That’s why CRP is cheered as a win-win for all involved.
Now comes the difficult part.
The USDA recently agreed to open these set aside acres for haying and grazing during our current extreme drought period in order to provide much needed forage for livestock producers.
Nobody with a functioning brain would or could think this is a bad idea. If you have cows and own land in CRP, you should be able to utilize that forage for your own personal profitability during severe droughts.
As someone with no livestock, I struggle with farmers haying their CRP and as much of their neighbor’s they can get their hands on and then selling it to livestock people at an inflated price. When you cash the CRP check, you have been compensated for the use of that ground for that year. 
Another place that livestock producers can and do go to get much needed forage in extreme situations are wildlife management areas. These are acres that have been purchased from willing sellers and planted to wildlife cover and are open to public hunting. They are managed by the DNR.
I spoke with a high level DNR manager Monday about haying WMAs. He indicated that what is going on now has been in place for many years.
The Minnesota DNR has in place programs that allow for producers to hay permanently protected wildlife cover during droughts.
The number of acres hayed, location of the exercise and timing are all shared between the area wildlife manager and the individual needing the forage. It would seem that this practice has been around for quite a long time.
The haying of public land hunting acres occurs where the haying can actually benefit the wildlife habitat in the long term. Haying mimics grazing and can help reduce woody cover encroachment and set back invasive smooth brohm grass.
It can also increase species diversity and stand vitality. Haying and grazing can benefit wildlife habitat if done correctly and timely. Haying public wildlife lands usually impacts a portion of the unit and not the whole thing. Haying on public lands, at least the ones I have seen, usually end up being about 30-acre efforts.
CRP and public wildlife lands can also be grazed, but the cost of moving livestock, putting up fences and providing water usually make haying more cost-effective than grazing.
As pastures and traditional hay ground-type acres (marginal production acres) have been converted to row crops, totaling thousands of acres across southwest Minnesota over the past three decades, available forage has steeply declined and I see no end in sight for this trend.
Haying CRP set aside acres and public conservation lands should never be considered a long-term solution to forage shortages, which seem to happen almost every year.
The key here is balance. I have said all along that conservation and agriculture/livestock production can and should live in harmony during both good and bad.
Conservation haying and grazing can benefit both habitat and producers. But there needs to be a longer-term plan to address what seems like constant and ongoing emergency events taking place on CRP and public hunting lands become the exceptions and not the norm.
A drought in Montana should not result in haying CRP acres in Minnesota.     
 
Scott Rall, Worthington, is a habitat conservationist, avid hunting and fishing enthusiast and is president of Nobles County Pheasants Forever. He can be reached at scottarall@gmail.com or on Twitter @habitat champion.