[Dialogue] Land Stewardship in WA

Wed Dec 27 21:41:56 EST 2006

Yes, we should pay farmers for the stewardship of the land (so they don't  
sell it to developers)   For several years we worked with the Stewardship  
Foundation in Florida trying to change some state and fed. tax laws -- to also  
provide such incentives.  Some great projects were  completed with the  saving of 
thousands of acres -- the Babcock Ranch, for one.

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. — The standoff here between farmers and environmentalists 
 was familiar in the modern West. 

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(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/us/27farm.html#secondParagraph)   

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Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times
Lisa Bellefond of the Nature Conservancy and David Hedlin, a  farmer, on 
farmland set to become wetlands. 

With salmon and wildlife dwindling in the Skagit River Delta, some  
environmentalists had argued since the 1980s that local farms should be turned  back 
into wetlands. Farmers here feared that preachy outsiders would strip them  of 
their land and heritage. 
This year, though, the standoff ended — at least for three longtime farmers  
in this fertile valley, who began collaborating with their former enemies to  
preserve wildlife and their livelihoods. 
The _Nature Conservancy_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nature_conservancy/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , which usually 
buys land to shield  it from development, is renting land from the three 
farmers on behalf of  migrating Western sandpipers, black-bellied plovers, 
dunlins, marbled godwits  and other shorebirds. 
>From private and public funds, including a grant from the federal 
_Environmental Protection Agency_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/environmental_protection_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , the 
farmers, David  Hedlin, Gail Thulen and Alan Mesman, will together receive up 
to $350,000 for  three years of labor, expenses and the use of 210 acres, 
said Kevin Morse, the  Skagit Delta project manager for the conservancy.  
Each man has committed about 70 acres to this project, which is called  
Farming for Wildlife. A third of that land will be flooded with a few inches of  
fresh water in the spring, fall and winter. This will create shallow ponds to  
entice thousands of birds, some of them on their way to and from the Arctic, to 
 stop and snack on tiny invertebrates and worms as they travel along the 
Pacific  flyway. 
More than a dozen shorebird species have declined primarily because of the  
loss of local wetlands, said Gary Slater, research director at the Ecostudies  
Institute here and a consultant for the Nature Conservancy. 
The farmers see the Nature Conservancy’s willingness to pay them as an  
acknowledgment that they should not be expected to sacrifice their land or their  
living for wildlife. This approach effectively turns shorebirds into another  
crop to manage, instead of grounds for a lawsuit. 
“The stewardship ethic in this valley is incredibly strong, but it doesn’t  
trump the bank,” said Mr. Hedlin, 56, who, with his wife, Serena Campbell, 
grows  farmer’s market produce, vegetable seeds, pumpkins, winter wheat and 
pickling  cucumbers on their 400-acre farm.  
Mr. Hedlin’s 70-acre Farming for Wildlife parcel has been under water since a 
 heavy November rain breached a dike and flooded the field, in a preview of 
what  environmentalists hope will happen. Edged with wild roses and blackberry 
bushes,  this accidental lake quickly attracted wintering waterfowl like 
trumpeter swans,  coots, and mallard, teal and wigeon ducks. 
An hour north of Seattle and an hour south of Vancouver, British Columbia,  
this region’s glorious tulip farms attract hundreds of thousands of tourists  
each April. Skagit farmers also produce about 80 crops of commercial  
significance, including seeds used to grow beets, spinach and cabbage around the  
world, many of the red potatoes eaten in the United States, and vegetables and  
dairy products sent to farmer’s markets and restaurants in the Pacific  
Northwest. 
Thousands of years of flooding on the Skagit River deposited a rich layer of  
topsoil in the “magic Skagit,” as Mr. Hedlin calls the valley. European  
immigrants flocked here starting in the 1860s and built Victorian houses for  
their families on the board-flat green fields. 
They also constructed an elaborate network of earthen dikes to capture land  
from the saltwater delta and prevent the rivers from flooding their farms. On  
this managed agricultural landscape, tens of thousand of acres of farmland 
were  once tidal wetlands, Mr. Hedlin said.  
Since the mid-1990s, residents have tried to slow development as strip malls  
and housing subdivisions marched northward from Seattle. Skagit County 
residents  pay extra taxes to buy development rights from farmers, and a charitable 
group,  Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, warns that “Pavement is forever.” 
Many conservationists have also decided that farms are better than pavement,  
and say they are willing to balance preservation with profitable land use. 
Mr. Morse lives here and even volunteered to spend two days last spring  
selling Mr. Hedlin’s produce at a farmer’s market.  
“We don’t know anything about farming,” Mr. Morse told the farmers recently  
over coffee and sandwiches at the Rexville Grocery. “You guys are the 
stewards  of the land. You tell me what to do.”  
For this experiment, each farmer’s 70-acre parcel has been planted with a  
mixture of clover and grass to enrich the soil. While a third of the land will  
be periodically flooded for birds, a third will be fenced as pasture for dairy 
 cows, and the rest will be mowed and otherwise left alone.  
Farms here are gradually shifting toward organic production because consumers 
 willingly pay much more for _organic food_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/organic_food/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) 
. As another incentive to join Farming for  Wildlife, the 210 acres will be 
available for organic use after three years. 
Mr. Mesman will start producing organic milk with his 225 Holstein cows next  
spring. Mr. Thulen sees a big market for organic potatoes.  
“In my time, I can see our little valley was farmed very hard,” said Mr.  
Thulen, whose 2,000-acre farm was begun by his grandfather in 1867. “That  
pendulum has swung to get the ground healthy again.” 
In an ideal world, the Nature Conservancy would love to persuade farmers to  
add wetlands to their regular crop rotation. To that end, the group’s 
scientists  will analyze soil samples to assess whether shallow flooding might improve 
soil  fertility as much as cow manure and mowed grass do. 
In a similar project on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Northern  
California, farmers reported better potato yields and fewer nematodes, a 
harmful  worm, on land that had been purposefully flooded. But scientists say this 
may  not apply in the Skagit Valley, where the soil has a higher clay content.  
Whether or not they end up with more productive land, the three farmers seem  
pleased to try something new without financial risk. 
“If 100 years from now,” Mr. Hedlin said, “there are healthy viable family  
farms in this valley and waterfowl and wildlife and salmon in the river, then  
everyone wins
Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
(http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla) 

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