Working Lands Coalition provides multiple perspectives

At the July meeting of the Natural Resources interim committee, the Idaho Working Lands Coalition provided an overview of the changing landscape in Idaho and the importance of conserving Idaho’s ranches, farms and forests. The Idaho Tax Commission shows that 13.8 million acres in Idaho were taxed as private working lands in 2008. When considering Idaho’s population growth (projected to be 2 million by 2030), and the financial incentive landowners have to sell or develop working lands rather than preserve them, projections from three different land use studies show a sharp increase in the conversion and development of working lands to other uses.

Conversion of working lands can have a number of impact including changes to the economic contribution of the land, restricting access to public lands, a change in the demand for water, habitat, tax base and demand for support services.

The Coalition introduced representatives from rural north, central and eastern Idaho to share their perspectives on the importance of working lands in their respective areas. Items of particular concern for example in eastern Idaho include the dwindling resources for rangeland available for grazing to supply the beef industry. In northern Idaho, the conversion of forest lands adversely impact the timber industry. The committee discussed a Minnesota program for incentivizing the conservation of working lands as such. Those funds come from the state general fund.

Emma Atchley a Fremont County farmer supported conservation easements as a tool to maintain land in farming. She pointed out that there is a problem with developers going bankrupt. The farmers that sold land to them with the promise of a monetary return from the lots do not get any money. In some cases, infrastructure is developed so the land can no longer be farmed.

She also stated that while the state cannot commit to additional funds in the next legislative session with the downturn in the economy, we need to be looking at this as a long term issue and start preparing for better economic times.

Perspective from Federal and State Agencies

Jeff Burwell, representing the Natural Resources Conservation Service pointed out that the 2008 Farm Bill has a pretty substantial toolbox for conservation with about $38 million for use in Idaho. He distributed a chart and map showing land use changes in Idaho. Since 2003, Idaho has lost 278,000 acres of farm and ranch land. He discussed conservation programs to protect private working lands. These include:

ü The Farmland Protection Program which provides federal matching funds to help state, tribal
or local governments and NGO’s purchase easements to keep productive farm and ranchland in agricultural use.

ü The Wetlands Reserve Program which is a voluntary, non-regulatory, incentive-based program that may help landowners protect and restore wetlands on their property.

ü The Grassland Reserve Program which assists landowners to restore and protect grassland, rangeland, pastureland, shrub land and certain other lands, and provides assistance for restoration.

Sharon Kiefer, Idaho Department of Fish & Game discussed the importance of private working lands to the Department Private land ownership in Idaho is focused on those areas most productive for farms, ranches, and forests. These productive lands are also disproportionately important to fish and wildlife. The threat that IDFG sees is the fragmentation of fish and wildlife habitat from continued development and conversion of private working lands into smaller parcels.

Sharon described IDFG’s programs that help preserve private working lands including wildlife habitat improvements, the Access Yes program to provide voluntary access to private lands, the Mule Deer Initiative that brings department funding resource to private landowners to enhance the benefits from stewardship of wildlife habitat.

IDFG offers opportunities to reward stewardship, build capacity, capitalize on existing assets and promote partnership and collaboration.

The Idaho State Department of Agriculture’s Deputy Director, Brian Oakey, described Idaho’s Right to Farm Law and listed national trends in agriculture such as direct marketing of farm products, agritourism, and value added products processed on-stie.

In Idaho the number of farmer’s markets has doubled in three years. The number of Idaho wineries has doubled in the last five years. Eating locally gets more support than eating organic and more specialty items are being produced than ever before. Some traditional farmland protection tools are agricultural or large lot zoning, agricultural and forestry districts, conservation easements, purchase of development rights, use-value assessment for tax purposes and various forms of estate tax relief. Other tools might include smart growth, differential assessment programs, term easements, green payments of farm business succession planning.

Kathy Opp and David Groeschi of the Idaho Department of Lands discussed IDL programs such as the Statewide Assessments of Forest Resources (SAFR) and the Idaho Forest Legacy program. The SAFR helps to ensure wise investment of resources, identify critical forest issues and highest priority areas of impact in order to leverage resources through partnership to benefit forest management access across all ownerships.

Idaho’s Forest Legacy Program is meant to protect environmentally important forest areas that are threatened by conversion to non-forest uses. It was created in the 1990 Farm Bill and is a voluntary program with 75% federal funds and 25% non-federal match. There are not state funds used in the program Funds are used to purchase conservation easements on private forest land that might otherwise be developed or lost as working lands.

Nate Fisher, Idaho Office of Species Conservation (OSC), made the final presentation. Nate discussed the collaboration that has taken place through OSC to use federal salmon money to fund projects that benefit salmon restoration by restoring habitat while helping farmers and ranchers stay on their land.

Wild horse bill could impact local ecology

A bill being considered before the US Senate will restrict the authority of local agencies dealing with wild horses, and give a foothold to lawsuits, says Ron Kay with the Idaho State Department of Agriculture to the interim Natural Resources committee in late July.

The Restoration of the American Mustang Act aims to restore acreage available for wild and free-roaming horses and burros to at least that of 1971. Kay notes that wild horse populations double every four years. A federal wild horse adoption program returns any unadopted horses back to the rangeland – effectively postponing the problem. Among the tongue-in-cheek suggestions by committee members for dealing with expanding horse populations: opening up the National Mall in Washington DC as wild horse rangeland, or intermingling expanding horse and wolf populations.

Water rights curtailment order enforced in Southern Idaho

Chris Bromley of the Idaho Department of Water Resources gave the interim Natural Resources committee an update on three water calls which have been under review. The first two, dealing with the A&B Irrigation District and the Surface Water Coalition of 7 southern Idaho districts have been resolved, with the Department stating that they will strive to be as timely as possible in deciding such cases in the future.

The subject of the third call presented before the committee was the resolution of a 2005 suit brought by the Snake River Farm hatchery and Clear Springs Foods near Hagerman, Idaho. The question before the department is whether a senior water rights holder can be forced to accept cash in lieu of water and stems from a legal dispute over groundwater pumping. As a result of this call the Department has issued a curtailment order targeting water rights holders after 1981 in a 9,000 acre area. According to the Idaho Statesman this order “marks the first time the State has followed through on an edict requiring the closure of wells that irrigate crops and supply cheese factories, cities and golf courses with water.” http://www.idahostatesman.com/531/story/853051.html.