It Is Time For A Native Plant Policy At USDA

By Ammoland

By Don McKenzie, NBCI Director

Washington, DC –-(Ammoland.com)- It is time for the US Department of Agriculture to embrace a native vegetation standard across all its agencies and programs.

Such a move will be good for the birds, the pollinating bees, the monarchs and many other butterflies. And for soil health, water quality and clean air. And for taxpayers. And, yes, also for producers and landowners.

USDA does not keep good data on introduced versus native plantings. But reading between the lines of USDA data on just one program, NBCI estimates roughly 1.25 million acres of aggressive, introduced vegetation that provides poor habitat was subsidized on private lands across the bobwhite’s range in 2014, by the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. In contrast, NBCI’s annual habitat management inventory documented only about 750,000 acres of private lands bobwhite habitat management fostered by state wildlife agencies that same year

(See NBCI’s Bobwhite Almanac, State of the Bobwhite 2015 ).

Across USDA, multiple programs in multiple agencies are working at cross-purposes with themselves: supporting native grassland restoration while subsidizing the spread of aggressive introduced plantings for agricultural and conservation purposes that replace and degrade …Read the Rest

Source:: AmmoLand