Animal ID System Faces Stiff Opposition

BY JOSEPH GUINTO
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2007

A program the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls “one of the largest systematic changes ever faced by the livestock industry” may be in trouble. The National Animal Identification System, which has been praised by some large livestock companies and panned by many individual landowners, was criticized in a government audit this summer. The Government Accountability Office concluded the NAIS might be “in danger of losing momentum.” At the same time, the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t include new, direct funding for the program in the version of the farm bill it passed. (At press time, the Senate’s version of the farm bill was unavailable.)

The NAIS has been plagued by controversy ever since the USDA announced it four years ago. Th e program was designed to track livestock by location. It asked landowners to register their properties—an address will usually do, but some instances require latitude and longitude coordinates—and register all animals kept on their property. Landowners would also have to log the animals’ whereabouts from birth until death and even implant radio frequency identification tags to help track the animals.

Despite how Orwellian that sounds, the intention behind the NAIS—improving food safety—is unassailable. The USDA insists the program will allow the government to track disease outbreaks among livestock bound for the food chain. Th at ability—to track and potentially limit animal-borne diseases—could make U.S. food products more desirable on the world market, especially since other countries have adopted similar programs. No surprise, then, that the NAIS has found considerable favor with large livestock producers in the United States.

It hasn’t been as popular, though, with some individual landowners. Though the NAIS is a voluntary program, its big-brother aspects have raised the ire of hundreds of landowners who either keep livestock as pets or for limited commercial use. Opposition groups like the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance and the Liberty Ark Coalition have been formed to stifle the NAIS. One Liberty Ark member called the NAIS “one of the most all-encompassing attacks on our right to farm and keep pets as has ever been fomented.”

The government has clearly been listening to that opposition. State governments, that is. Legislation has been proposed in 12 statehouses that would ban or limit states’ participation in the NAIS or similar programs. Those proposals come even as the USDA is funding grants to state and local governments that develop their own registration programs. The USDA has already handed out $35 million in grants.

But that money didn’t help 16-year-old Brandi Calderwood. She was ejected from the Colorado State Fair’s junior livestock sale this summer because the fair’s board had voted to require entrants to be in compliance with some aspects of the NAIS. Though Calderwood did register her animals, the board believed she erred in correctly identifying their location. That’s the kind of bureaucratic mess opponents of the NAIS say will spread nationwide should the program be made mandatory. But the GAO says that if it remains a voluntary program, “that may affect [the USDA’s] ability to attract the necessary levels of participation” to make the program eff ective at limiting animal disease outbreaks. Initially the program was to be mandatory, but responding to opposition from some industry groups, the USDA made the program voluntary in 2006. NAIS has more than 400,000 registrants, and the USDA hopes all livestock owners will be registered by 2009.

One of the objections to making the NAIS mandatory was that the USDA had not yet said how much the program would cost individual livestock owners. The GAO also criticized the USDA for not conducting a cost-benefit analysis on the program to prove that “the potential benefits of the program outweigh the costs.”

The USDA just awarded a contract to several universities to do an independent cost-benefit analysis on the NAIS. And with the House apparently not in the mood to directly fund the program this year, that study, due back early next year, may prove to be both the figurative and literal bottom line on the future of the NAIS.

Controversial Sale in North Dakota Badlands

BY JOSEPH GUINTO
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2007

More than 5,000 acres of federal land in North Dakota’s Badlands could go up for sale. That’s up to Congress. The property is supposed to be offered as a unique offset to a purchase made by the U.S. Forest Service. Last spring, the Forest Service ended a years-long controversy by spending $5.3 million on a 5,200-acre ranch across the Little Missouri River from the Elkhorn Ranch, a property once owned by Theodore Roosevelt and considered by many as the nation’s “cradle of conservation.”

Roosevelt retreated to the ranch in the late 1880s and emerged three and a half years later as an avowed environmentalist who would, as president, go on to add millions of acres to the government’s holdings for use as national forests, parks, and wildlife refuges. But adding to the government’s holdings was just what the Forest Service didn’t want to do when it bought the neighboring Blacktail Creek Ranch. After all, the government already owns 1.2 million acres in North Dakota. Some local ranchers and officials vehemently opposed taking a working ranch out of production just so Roosevelt’s property could continue to enjoy an unspoiled view.

So, in a unique compromise, the Forest Service said it would buy the Blacktail Creek Ranch and sell an equivalent amount of land it already owns in North Dakota, but that it would sell that land only to about 40 ranchers who currently own property in Billings County, where Elkhorn Ranch is located. And that’s where Congress gets involved. Or not. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota and a proponent of the ranch purchase, says he doesn’t support legislation with such restrictions.

Bill May Force Landowners to Shoulder Firefighting Cost

When Smokey Bear says, “Only you can prevent forest fires,” he really means it. After several years of historic wildfires in the West that have strained firefighting budgets, burned thousands of acres, and destroyed homes, lawmakers in Washington and at the state and local levels are preparing to ask landowners to help combat the blazes before they begin. Read more

ATV Riders Run Into Bump in Road

Whether you’re tearing it up in an off-road vehicle or all torn up about their impact on the land, you’ll probably want to know about the tongue-twisting new advocacy group known as Rangers for Responsible Recreation. The group, backed by Washington, D.C.-based lobbying outfit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), may be the most influential so far to push for broader regulations on off-roaders riding on public lands. And their efforts could have a spillover effect on private properties. Read more

How Safe Are the Nation’s Wildlife Refuges?

BY JOSEPH GUINTO
PUBLISHED JULY 2007

The White House accelerated funding for its Healthy Lands Initiative this year, allocating some $3 million to the Bureau of Land Management. The money must be spent on restoring or maintaining natural habitats on federal lands, and more will be made available in 2008.

But the sum isn’t nearly what one lobbying group is seeking for refuges. The Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE), which unites an array of environmental, hunting, and scientific organizations, wants the budget for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System doubled by 2013. CARE has long pushed for more monies to go toward the nation’s wildlife refuges. Yet even with bipartisan support, they’ve won only modest increases. The Fish and Wildlife Service says funding for the refuge system has increased from about $300 million a year in 2001 to $383 million today, but the agency says that’s not enough to keep up with federally mandated raises for employees and deteriorating conditions at many refuges.

CARE agrees. Last spring, the organization released a lengthy report that offered a breakdown of what CARE sees as funding shortfalls for and shabby upkeep at wildlife refuges. The report concludes that the nation’s refuges are at a crisis point. The group wants funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System increased by $55 million next year with continued increases each subsequent year.

Many members of Congress have endorsed CARE’s efforts, including Rep. Jim Saxton (R-New Jersey). Still, at the moment, there is no legislation working its way through the Capitol that would give the refuge system the funding CARE is seeking.

Open Fields Legislation Offers Payments to Landowners

Remember that little place in the woods where you used to get off spectacular hip shots while hunting birds on the wing? Well, there’s a strip mall there now. That’s an increasingly common issue for hunters, whose once-prized spots are being encroached on by urban and suburban sprawl. But some in Congress think they have a way to offset those land losses. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, would provide $20 million annually to bolster state programs that pay landowners to open their properties to hunters. Read more

Is the Clean Water Act Polluted?

You know the big mud puddle that forms on your back 40 every time it rains? The Environmental Protection Agency might want to come inspect it. At least, that’s the concern of groups that oppose a law that would rewrite the 35-year-old Clean Water Act. Read more

Preserving Endangered Species for Profit

Who can save the Alabama red-bellied turtle? Maybe your accountant can. He or she will have a chance if Congress passes new legislation that would give tax breaks to landowners who act to preserve species like the Alabama red-bellied turtle, one of the creatures considered endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Read more

Will Conservation Easement Tax Breaks Be Extended?

BY JOSEPH GUINTO
PUBLISHED MAY 2007

Act now or forever lose your easement. A tax break for conservation-related land donations-known as conservation easements-is about to expire. That is unless Congress does something about it.

The tax break, signed into law by President Bush in August 2006, vastly expanded the deductions landowners could get in exchange for donating their lands to trusts and surrendering the right to develop those lands. But unless the tax break is extended, it will only apply to lands donated in 2006 or 2007

Some landowner lobby groups are pushing hard for an extension, as are members of Congress, who note that the temporary tax deductions passed in 2006 added to the increasing popularity of conservation easements. The Land Trust Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based interest group, reports that even before the new tax breaks went into effect, the total acreage of conservation easements under control of land trusts had skyrocketed. Acreage under easement increased 148 percent from 2000 to 2005, reaching 6.2 million acres at last count.

For landowners of moderate income, whom the 2006 bill was intended to help, a lot is at stake if the tax break is not extended. The government offers this example: Under the current law, if a rancher earning $50,000 a year on a ranch appraised at $2 million donated half his property to a conservation easement, he would be able to receive $800,000 in tax deductions over a maximum of 16 years. Once the law expires, the maximum tax break on the same donation would fall to $90,000 over a maximum of six years.

Numbers like that have inspired influential Democrats and Republicans in Congress to sponsor bills that would permanently extend the 2006 tax break.