Biden's land conservation program to rely on voluntary, local efforts
Source: NBC News
A new report leaves many details unanswered about how the government will use its dollars and federal powers to promote local conservation.
May 6, 2021, 10:15 AM EDT / Updated May 6, 2021, 10:16 AM EDT
By Josh Lederman
The Biden administration will rely on locally led and voluntary efforts to meet President Joe Bidens goal of conserving 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, the administration said in a report released Wednesday.
In his first days in office, Biden signed an executive order on "tackling the climate crisis" that established the "30 by 30" goal and tasked Cabinet officials with drafting a report on how to get there. Although environmental and conservation groups hailed the target as ambitious, the administration did not initially offer specifics about how it would meet that target or how conservation would be defined.
The report, titled "Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful," offers the first look at how the administration believes it can meet the target. It calls on the administration to work with local and tribal governments to create more parks, expand fish and wildlife habitats, boost outdoor recreation and create incentives for fishers, farmers and forest owners to voluntarily conserve some of their land.
"As the country works to recover and rebuild from the coronavirus pandemic and fully address the climate crisis, now is the time to develop and pursue a locally led, nationally scaled effort to conserve, connect, and restore the lands, waters, and wildlife upon which we all depend," says the report.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/bidens-land-conservation-program-rely-voluntary-local-efforts-rcna846
DURHAM D
(32,595 posts)We currently pay farmers not to grow crops. It goes back to FDR and if I recall correctly it was originally called the Soil Bank Program. My grandfather called it his "All Day Sucker".
CRP - Conservation Reserve Program
CRP is a land conservation program administered by FSA. In exchange for a yearly rental payment, farmers enrolled in the program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and quality.
Farmers around here seem to ignore the part about controlling certain weeds.
mopinko
(69,804 posts)i have a neighbor who was in it. it's just dumb. you have to mow, but you have to leave it lay. all of it. that's just dumb.
he got out cuz it wasnt worth the hassle.
rlegro
(338 posts)And, by the way, the mulch would hold down noxious weeds, which is another part of the deal.
mopinko
(69,804 posts)his was thick enough to smother everything.
fyi, you are talking to a farmer.
Bayard
(21,802 posts)I still think it would be a great and patriotic program to require every citizen to plant one tree a year. If they can't do it because of health reasons, someone else can plant it for them. And there are plenty of free trees to be had. I've gotten 100 little evergreen seedlings from the Forestry Service previously. You get 10 free trees when you join the Arbor Society.
It could be done.
not fooled
(5,791 posts)decades (centuries?) of exploitation and looting will continue unabated.
mopinko
(69,804 posts)people love this shit.
speaking as an urban farmer, no one pays me to do this, but i do it anyway.
i've sequestered a boodle of carbon, too.
makes these resources available to urban farmers and you will get a whole lot more of them.
even this one small thing- i took many, many truckloads of landscape waste, including some huge chunks of trees. i sequestered all that carbon.
if i had just been able to charge a tipping fee, like the big guys get, it would have helped so much.
the year i started, IL changed its laws to allow farmers to take more landscape waste. but they wouldnt let them take tipping fees, courtesy of waste management.
if i could get some conservation credits too, that would be most groovy.
even a decent credit on my very-high-for-farmland taxes would help.