Conservation Clips are a weekly collection of articles distributed by NACD that provides our members and partners with the latest news in what's driving conservation. If you have a relevant submission, please contact your NACD Communications Team.

NACD Blog: Ohio Districts Collaborate to Create Best Management Practices
05/30/18

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) Division of Forestry and Ohio’s soil and water conservation districts (SWCD) have formed a partnership to reduce forestry pollution statewide and create best management practices for loggers.

Agri-Pulse: Roberts, Stabenow working to finalize Senate farm bill
By Philip Brasher
05/30/18

Leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee are working to finalize key details of their draft farm bill, including changes to the Agriculture Risk Coverage program, with hopes of bringing the legislation out of committee sometime in June.

Des Moines Register: Iowa’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy: five years later
By Mike Naig
05/29/18

(Opinion) Over the last five years, more than 250 partners have come together to take on the challenge of improving our water quality. Farmers, private businesses, municipalities and homeowners are demonstrating and implementing more conservation practices than ever before.

Agri-Pulse: Opinion: Farm Bill should protect Prairie Potholes, all wetlands
By Bill Antonides
05/29/18

(Opinion) The farm bill, with its wetlands and grasslands conservation easement and conservation compliance provisions, is the most important tool we have to protect wetlands and wildlife habitat on South Dakota’s—and the nation’s—private lands. I implore Congress to strengthen – not weaken – the wetland conservation provisions of the 2018 Farm Bill as they work to pass this critically important legislation.

The New York Times: In a Warming West, the Rio Grande is Drying Up
By Henry Fountain
05/24/18

With spring runoff about one-sixth of average and more than 90 percent of New Mexico in severe to exceptional drought, conditions here are extreme. The state of the Rio Grande reflects a broader trend in the West, where warming temperatures are reducing snowpack and river flows.

Agri-Pulse: Roberts: Farm bill will protect all regions
By Philip Brasher
05/30/18

Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts forcefully rejected proposed farm bill reforms that would make the Agriculture Risk Coverage program more attractive and increase payments to farmers in the upper Midwest at the expense of producers in other regions. Roberts said it was important not to help one region of the country “at the expense of another section. We either hang together or hang separately.”

Los Angeles Times: Gov. Brown's wildfire plan will only make things worse
By Chad Hanson and Char Miller
05/25/18

(Opinion) Reducing environmental protections in forests and increasing logging does not tend to curb fire behavior — in fact, it typically does the opposite. Logging reduces the cooling shade of the forest canopy, creating hotter and drier conditions, and removes tree trunks, which don't burn readily, while leaving behind "slash debris" — kindling-like branches and treetops.

High Plains Journal: About 50 farmers sign letter to Roberts asking that Conservation Stewardship Program be protected
By Amy Bickel
05/28/18

Peirce is among 50 Kansas farmers who signed and sent a letter to Sen. Pat Roberts, R-KS, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, in support of conservation and crop insurance practices in the next farm bill.

Denver Post: Efforts failing to save U.S. West sagebrush land, officials say
By Keith Ridler
05/24/18

Public lands managers are losing a battle against a devastating combination of invasive plant species and wildfires in the vast sagebrush habitats in the U.S. West that support cattle ranching and recreation and are home to an imperiled bird, officials said.

The Daily Sentinel: Disaster declared in southwest Colorado
By Gary Harmon
05/30/18

Disaster designations for seven Colorado counties, including several on the Western Slope, paint a picture of how the drought of 2018 has so far affected nearly half of Colorado.

Mississippi Business Journal: National forests brace for next pine beetle onslaught
By Jack Weatherly
05/25/18

Early signs are that national forests in Mississippi will face a second consecutive year of a severe Southern pine beetle outbreak, threatening to damage tens of thousands of acres, according to the National Forest Service.

Need to update your contact information, unsubscribe or change your subscription preferences? Click here to manage your profile.