Pheasant Heaven, But Ethanol Threatens

April 2006 headline in the Aberdeen (South Dakota) American News.


On the front page of the The Wall Street Journal yesterday was an article entitled "New Game: A Pheasant Boom Lifts Farm Fortunes on Great Plains." The article noted that the Conservation Reserve Program (see previous post on this topic), "the once-decimated pheasant is making a comeback," and that "one result is an unexpected boom that is raising land values, propping up farms and generating new businesses in many parts of the Great Plains."

South Dakota land that used to sell for between $350 and $400 an acre 10 years ago is now selling for $1,000 an acre or more, and in South Dakota nonresident pheasant hunters now provide more than $108 million a year to the state, which works out to be about $140 for every man, woman and child in South Dakota.

Last year South Dakota alone counted a population of nearly 10 million pheasants, its highest pheasant population since 1963, and it also licensed a record 95,000 out-of-state hunters.

But something threatens all this good news: corn. High oil prices have created intense interest in corn-fueled ethanol production, which the boom-and bust water cycle of the Dakota is ill-suited for in the long-term. Steam-belching new ethanol plants are replacing grain elevators as the tallest structures on the plains, and the palnts are sucking up not only corn and investor money, but also underground water reserves as well.

There is a good environmental reason to leave Conservation Reserve Program land idle and in use for hunters; a return to corn production in the Dakotas and much of the plains is not sustainable in the long run. This is the land of the Dust Bowl, where old fence lines sill lie buried in the dust and the only salvation to be gound was in finding a little ground water and leaving the plow alone entirely. Corn production will drain off the ground water and turn the plow again, leading to an environmental disaster only one of whose consequences will be a rapdily plummeting pheasant population.



Dust bowl or sustainable pheasant-hunting bounty? Chose or lose. This land is your land, and both heritage's and histories are available for recycle.