Quail Unlimited Announces “Reload Iowa”

The loss of more than one-quarter million acres of Conservation Reserve Program land is one of the many reasons that harvest numbers of pheasant and quail in Iowa have dropped from 1.9 million and 1.1 million in the 1970s to less than 500,000 and 54,000, respectively, last year. Quail Forever is out to change that.

The goal of “Reload Iowa” is to raise $11.5 million to establish and improve 1 million acres of wildlife habitat on private and public land across Iowa. These habitat improvements will not onlly benefit wildlife, but they will also provide additional benefits such as improving water quality, preventing soil erosion, and sequestering carbon, an important step in offsetting greenhouse gasses.

Read more at the Quail Forever website.

Foreclosures Concentrated in Just One Percent of U.S. Counties

More than 50 percent of the country’s 3 million foreclosures in 2008 can be traced to just 35 of the 3,000 counties in the U.S.

According to an article in USA Today, these counties were bunched in Southern California, the Las Vegas area, in and around Phoenix, in South Florida, and Washington, D.C. ”They were the epicenter of a wave of foreclosures that have left leading banks teetering and magnified the nation’s economic problems.”

Read more at:
Most Foreclosures Pack Into a Few Counties, USA Today, March 5, 2009.

IP to Divest 143,000 Acres in Southeast

International Paper announced on March 2 that it plans to sell off 143,000 acres in the Southeastern U.S. in a transaction valued at approximately $275 million.

IP will sell 114,000 acres to American Timberlands Fund I, L.P., for $220 million in cash and contribute 29,000 acres with a value of $55 million for a 20 percent stake in the partnership. The transaction is expected to close in mid-June.

Read International Paper’s press release.

Sold! 1,789 Acres of Kansas Farmland for $765 Per Acre

Nebraska’s York College sold off a 1,789-acre bequest in Ellis County, Kansas. The college got $1.369 million ($765 per acre) at the January auction and retained the mineral rights. Read more