• CONSERVATION CAPACITY: Contagious Conservation Equals Contiguous Conservation—A Q & A with Seth Gallagher, Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory

• SCIENCE UPDATE: Not Easy Being Green—A Report on Wind Energy’s Implications on the Lesser-Prairie Chicken Population

• POLICY NEWS: PLJV Signs Agreement With Farm Services Agency

• MAPPING PROGRAMS: How CRP Expirations Will Open Up County Caps

• Playa Lakes Joint Venture Plots Wildlife/Wind Energy Safe Sites

CONSERVATION CAPACITY: Contagious Conservation Equals Contiguous Conservation—A Q & A with Seth Gallagher, Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory

The Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory (RMBO) is spreading the conservation word and they hope it’s contagious. Seth Gallagher, RMBO Stewardship Division Director, recently talked to the Playa Post about “Contagious Conservation” and how it can affect future generations.

What is Contagious Conservation and how did it originate?

Contagious Conservation was a term we coined after plotting four years of conservation work on the ground in Eastern Colorado on a map. What we noticed were that we had geographic areas with clusters of activities, including landowner workshops and ranch visits, and also habitat enhancement projects. It really makes sense spatially as you look at it, where we spent the most time providing outreach we had the most success implementing habitat enhancement efforts. A large part of the success of the habitat efforts was due to working with one landowner in a given area and then that landowner visiting with neighbors, who then became interested in similar projects, hence "contagious conservation."

Explain Prairie Partners. What is it? Who’s involved? How are workshops organized?

Prairie Partners is a program of the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory’s Stewardship Division and was funded through grants and contracts with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Playa Lakes Joint Venture. The program was designed to work with landowners to increase awareness and find win-win land management projects for bird species and habitats found on private land in eastern Colorado. From 2003-2008 the program hosted six workshops around eastern Colorado annually. During the workshops, resource professionals and landowners were given the opportunity to network and landowners could learn about the various cost-share and incentive programs available for habitat conservation. RMBO staff followed the workshops up with visits to interested landowners, many of which resulted in habitat enhancement projects.

What have been the results of Contagious Conservation to this point?

In eastern Colorado the program has reached over 3,000 agricultural producers and yielded over 30,000 acres of conservation actions through habitat enhancement on grasslands, playas and riparian areas.

What can landowners and farmers do to help participate?

The first step would be for a landowner to attend a workshop or visit with an NRCS/CDOW/RMBO Private Lands Wildlife Biologist to learn more about what kind of programs are available and what would work with the kind of project they might have in mind. I should emphasize that our program is not just about doing projects. In many cases when visiting a ranch a landowner asks the question, "What can I do better for wildlife?" and often the answer is, "Keep doing what you’ve been doing because the habitat is already outstanding."

Explain the importance of teaching youngsters conservation lessons early.

Well, I can’t speak to the education of youth directly, however much of what is done in agriculture is passed from one generation to the next, so if we (the conservation community) can pass on technical information that is palatable for a landowner to integrate into their operation it has a good chance of being passed to the next generation of land managers. For instance, the implementation of prairie dog management after Burrowing Owls have migrated south for the winter is a management application, which seems to be catching on and one very likely to be passed to future generations, if adopted by a landowner.

What are the biggest challenges to promoting land conservation efforts?

The most challenging issue to promoting private land conservation is maintaining and growing the capacity to do so. While we’ve had great success with our program there are still many landowners who have not heard of the program or are aware of the importance of private lands conservation to the shortgrass prairie ecosystem.

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about the Contagious Conservation effort?

Our appreciation for landowners as stewards of the land is paramount. Without their efforts there would be no such thing as "contagious conservation." Also without funding from the Colorado Division of Wildlife, The National Fish & Wildlife Foundation and the Playa Lakes Joint Venture our work would not be possible.

Seth Gallagher earned an associate’s degree in Wildlife Management from Minot State University-Bottineau, North Dakota (1997) and a bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Management from Lincoln Memorial University, Tennessee (2000). He went on to study nesting ecology of Red-shouldered Hawks in northern Michigan at Central Michigan University. Gallagher joined RMBO in February 2004. His duties include managing the NRCS-CDOW Private Lands Wildlife Program, assisting with landowner outreach activities, and designing and implementing on-the-ground ground habitat enhancement projects with partners.

SCIENCE UPDATE: Not Easy Being Green—A Report on Wind Energy’s Implications on the Lesser-Prairie Chicken Population

A new report released by the Sutton Avian Research Center at the University of Oklahoma outlines the reality of rapid wind power development and its negative impact on the lesser-prairie chicken population. Compiled after years of research by authors Christian Pruett, Department of Biological Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, Michael Patten, University of Oklahoma Department of Zoology and Donald Wolfe, Sutton Avian Research Center, the study tracked 463 lesser-prairie chicken over a seven-year period. The majority of studies have focused on collision risks with wind turbines to migratory species, not avoidance behavior. This new study concluded that lesser-prairie chicken avoid power lines by at least 100 meters and that the construction of wind turbines and new power lines would create a barrier to lesser-prairie chicken movement and avoidance of suitable habitat.

Over the past century, the lesser-prairie chicken has suffered population declines that mirror the loss of prairie itself. Since 1900, populations have become increasingly disconnected due to habitat fragmentation. Wind development threatens to further increase that fragmentation. Today, there is little to no environmental oversight of the placement of wind farms and power transmission lines in relation to wildlife. The report says that wind farm development has more than doubled over the past five years with turbines erected in less than six months and without formal environmental impact assessments. And lesser-prairie chicken are found in states with some of the highest potential for wind energy development?Texas is ranked second in the nation, Kansas is ranked third, Oklahoma eighth, Colorado is eleventh and New Mexico is ranked twelfth. In Oklahoma alone there are approximately 250 wind turbines in lesser-prairie chicken range with at least 1,300 more turbines proposed. Areas considered to have the highest energy potential are ridgelines where wind is strongest. According to the report, these areas represent much of the remaining native southern prairie in these states. Thus, wind farms are being placed in locations that have a high proportion of remaining lesser-prairie chicken habitat.

The lesser-prairie chicken is restricted to short and mixed grass prairies, sand sagebrush and shinnery-oak shrublands of the southern Great Plains of the U.S. Lesser-prairie chicken are among a group of animals that evolved in an ecosystem devoid of trees or other tall features. Furthermore, raptors are predators of lesser-prairie chicken and often perch on tall objects to hunt. Therefore, it is unlikely that lesser-prairie chicken will approach wind turbines even if they have anti-perching devices.

Currently, the lesser-prairie chicken is a candidate for listing under the Federal Endangered Species Act. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service has recommended a minimum buffer of five miles for wind farms from prairie grouse species habitat. Other proposed solutions include burying power lines and clustering wind turbines rather than erecting them in long, narrow rows. After all, "As the lesser-prairie chicken goes, so goes what little remains of the southern grassland ecosystem in North America."

POLICY NEWS: PLJV Signs Agreement With Farm Services Agency

The Playa Lakes Joint Venture has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the United States Dept. of Agriculture's (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA), which details how PLJV and FSA will cooperate to enroll more playas into the Continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CCRP). The specifics of the agreement involve PLJV and FSA cooperating on outreach and educational activities aimed at landowners/operators; jointly training the local office FSA personnel on CP23A, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) practice in CCRP that is specifically aimed at conserving playas, and other programs administered by FSA; assesses allowing playas to be enrolled in counties where the 25% cap on CRP enrollments is in place; and behooves PLJV to go find more outside dollars to use for playa conservation & restoration. It also talked about deciding whether to add Practice Incentive Payments and Signing Incentive Payments to CP23A, which FSA has now put in place (See attached PDF) to help make the CP23A practice more economically attractive to landowners. The MOA also allows joint collaboration on outreach activities like the upcoming CP23A Pilot Mailing, which hopes to inform and motivate expiring CRP contract holders to enroll their acres into CP23A and other conservation practices, thereby keeping as many as possible of the already realized benefits of CRP on their acres in place. This pilot will assess if such mailings lead to added enrollments in CCRP. If there is a positive response, then additional mailings will be made in 2010-2012 for the entire PLJV region.

MAPPING PROGRAMS: How CRP Expirations Will Open Up County Caps

Expiring CRP will open up county caps in the PLJV states where efforts to enroll playas in CCRP have been stymied because many counties in the TX and OK Panhandle have been capped as well as counties in SE CO, SW KS, and NE NM. Meg can tell you how quickly that will happen and provide the map showing what is now capped and when they will have enough CRP acres expire to lift the caps. There is a provision in the 2008 Farm Bill which allows the cap to be waived for CCRP and Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) enrollments upon a favorable vote of the county government but we are still waiting for the rule-making process for CRP to be finished.

Playa Lakes Joint Venture Plots Wildlife/Wind Energy Safe Sites

The Playa Lakes Joint Venture (PLJV) region encompasses some of the highest rated areas for wind energy development in the nation, including the western two-thirds of Kansas. As of Jan. 2008, approximately 50 wind farms producing in excess of 4,000 megawatts of energy were in operation throughout the six-state PLJV region. Where wind farms are placed may have an impact on birds, so the PLJV has conducted an analysis of key wildlife habitats in the region and produced maps detailing where birds that may be sensitive to wind development may be found.

Wetlands throughout the region also attract high concentrations of waterfowl and shorebirds. Water is often scarce in this region, and wetlands such as playas are primary gathering areas for birds. This is especially true during migration, when thousands of birds flock to a single wetland to feed and roost. Development of wind turbines, power lines, and associated structures near wetlands may pose a risk of birds (including endangered species such as the whooping crane) colliding with these structures.

To help industry professionals minimize collisions and other potential impacts of wind development on wetland birds and lesser prairie chickens, the PLJV has identified areas of high wetland density and prairie chicken use throughout the region. Detailed information, including maps identifying these areas, have been posted on the internet.

To obtain digital maps, phone Megan McLachlan at 308-382-6468, ext. 38.

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