Ag and Wildlife

Dr. Bruce Stein is an expert on wildlife biodiversity in the United States and I asked him about the impact of agriculture on wildlife. “There's a couple of ways to think about agriculture and wildlife. It is clear that the conversion of a lot of native habitats into agricultural lands is one of the things that has been contributing to the decline of many bird species and other things over the last 10 years. As a result of increased planting of corn for ethanol, we've actually seen a lot of new native prairie broken out, unfortunately, and converted from native grasslands into corn production. And we're very concerned about that because we need healthy agricultural lands. And so what we actually think is that there are ways to do agriculture that are more wildlife friendly. That includes making sure that rather than breaking out new undisturbed habitat into ag lands, that we do a better job of managing the soil and the lands that we have. It also means perhaps being a little more graceful in leaving some field edges that provide value to birds and other things. It means thinking about the types and amount of herbicides and pesticides that were put on our lands. As an example, Monarch Butterfly has been declining dramatically over the last 20 years for a variety of reasons, but in part it seems to be due to the loss of milkweed as we become more efficient at getting milkweed out of field.”