Quack If You Like Prairie Potholes: USFWS Wants to Preserve 1.94M Acres

If you think the 48,000 acres proposed for the Tony Dean Cheyenne River National Grassland Wilderness is a big deal, check this out: Mr. Kurtz reads about an ambitious conservation project proposed by our friends at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. USFWS wants to create a Dakota Grassland Conservation Area that would preserve 240,000 acres of wetlands and 1.7 million acres of grassland in the Prairie Pothole region.

That isn't Florida! It's the Dakota Grassland Conservation Area
proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It's bigger than Florida.

Don't worry: USFWS isn't kicking us all out of East River. They plan to pay landowners not to tear up native prairie. USFWS estimates that over half of this untilled ground will be developed for farming or housing or some other use over the next 34 years. Such development would seriously degrade what USFWS calls "the backbone of North America’s 'duck factory' and critical habitat for many wetland- and grassland-dependent migratory birds."

To protect this habitat, Fish & Wildlife would buy conservation easements. Landowners keep their property rights and control over public access. Farmers can still farm the wetlands during naturally dry years and graze and hay the grasslands. The land stays on the tax rolls, so local governments don't lose out on revenue. On the budget side, this federal spending appears deficit-neutral: the money comes primarily "from oil and gas leases on the outer continental shelf, excess motorboat fuel tax revenues, and sale of surplus Federal property."

USFWS is hosting three public meetings next week across the Prairie Pothole Region to talk about the plan and gets folks' input:

• December 14, 2010: Minot, ND, 7 p.m.–9 p.m. Sleep Inn–Inn and Suites, 2400 10th Street SW
• December 15, 2010: Jamestown, ND, 7 p.m.–9 p.m. Gladstone Inn and Suites, 111 2nd Street NE
• December 16, 2010: Huron, SD, 7 p.m.–9 p.m. Crossroads Hotel, 100 4th Street SW

This grassland proposal looks like a good deal for all parties concerned, from budget hawks to ducks and geese. But Uncle Sam welcomes your two-cents' worth. If you can't make the meetings, you can submit comments by e-mail to planning team leader Nick Kaczor.

Climate Change Notes: Russia Hot, Like Everywhere Else

Climate change? Yup (hat tip to an eager reader for much of this collection):

1. Russia is experiencing its hottest summer on record. Wildfires this summer have scorched nearly 2.5 million acres—that's equivalent to a fire wiping out all of the Black Hills, then having a prairie fire burn up all of Union, Lincoln, Minnehaha, and Moody counties. The Russian heat wave has also wiped out 24 million acres of Russian grain. (Compare: USDA says South Dakota's total crop acreage this year is 16.5 million acres.)
   
2. Of course, one hot summer in one country (even the largest country in the world) does not a trend make. Data from 300 scientists in 48 countries on ten different metrics saying it's gotten warmer each decade since the then-record heat of the 1980s does. Read the new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I'm sure Don Kopp will be visiting your school to make sure your teachers cover this information.
3. We can just turn up the air conditioner: the American pika has to climb to cooler, higher ground. But mountains only go so high. As temps climb, the pika may become the second species added to the endangered list due to global warming.
4. The Ice Age is ending: There were 150 glaciers in 1850 in the Montana area that is now Glacier National Park. The park is now down to 25 glaciers. But hey, at least the melting glaciers will help archaeologists find stuff.
   

Keystone XL Notes: Butte County On-Ramp?

The big Keystone XL pipeline will cross just four miles of Butte County, but commissioners are already working to get their ducks in a row and prepare for the disruption of their county roads. (Memo to Butte County: check with your counterparts in Beadle County to find out what it takes to get TransCanada to fix the roads they tear up.)

On an arguably encouraging note, the new pipeline may actually provide some service to South Dakotans. Milo Dailey's article mentions that some High Plains oil producers, including some in northwestern South Dakota, are urging TransCanada to build an "on-ramp" or two that would bring American Bakken oil shale product into the big pipeline. TransCanada VP Robert Jones sounded hesitant about that idea at first, but now he's signaling more openness to adding American oil to the flow... perhaps in part because Governor Brian Schweitzer had suggested winning approval to cross Montana might be contingent on opening Keystone XL to local product. (Dang—why didn't our PUC think of that?)

Of course, I'm still of a mind that we might be better off without Keystone XL all together. Torn-up roads, farmland subject to eminent domain and enivronmental degradation, all to haul dinosaur fuel that will probably run out before I do? Not a good investment.

Keystone XL Avoids Indian Territory

Nick Nemec notices something interesting about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route: TransCanada's next big pipeline quite neatly threads the needle and avoid crossing a single Indian reservation anywhere across the Great Plains. The pipeline just barely misses three reservations—Fort Peck in Montana, Cheyenne River here in South Dakota, and the Osage in Oklahoma. Keystone XL even manages to angle east from Alberta just in time to go around the one Saskatchewan reserve in the neighborhood, Maple Creek.

Check the maps for yourself: they're big megabyte-sized PDFs and JPGs, but they're worth a look. (Note the Alberta/Saskatchewan JPG is currently broken, so you'll have to use the PDF there—maybe it's a metric thing? ;-) ). Here are smaller versions of the most interesting maps; reservations are marked in red, while the pipeline is the purple line (blue in Canada... metric system converts colors, too?):


That's a pretty neat trick to draw a line from Hardisty, Alberta to Houston and the Gulf of Mexico without crossing any sovereign native lands.

TransCanada will use Indian steel, but Keystone XL won't cross Indian turf. Some days it's good to be Native. Dang: maybe if we restored the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and the Great Sioux Reservation, we could keep Keystone XL out of South Dakota entirely!

Pine Beetles Love Climate Change; Pines Less Pleased

Remember the story about Harney Peak trails being shut down for timber cutting? Rangers are trying to thin the trees and minimize the spread of those darn pine beetles.

Where did those pine beetles come from? Us. Climate change:

SARAH GARDNER: But wait a minute. Explain for us how this little beetle has anything to do with climate change? Because, I mean, my understanding is that the pine beetle is a native species, right? It's always been there. And a lot of westerners believe the only reason it's gotten out of hand is because we haven't been thinning out the forests enough, right?

SAM EATON: That hasn't helped. And you throw in fire suppression and the beetles basically have an all-you-can-eat buffet of lodge pole and Ponderosa pine. But the scientists I talked to -- like Jesse Logan, who's been studying the beetles for decades -- say the main thing driving this outbreak is human-caused global warming.

JESSE LOGAN: It's by the actions of people. It's directly our actions that are taking these forests out.

SAM: Let me connect the dots here. Logan says pine beetles have always been held in check by deep winter freezes. But that 2-degree increase in average temperatures you mentioned earlier, Sarah, has meant fewer cold snaps -- especially in the high elevations of the Rockies. Basically, the pine beetle couldn't have asked for better breeding conditions [Sarah Gardner and Sam Eaton, "Climate Change in Our Own Backyards," Marketplace, 2009.10.27].

Marketplace is running a big series on climate change; part 4 runs this evening (SDPB Radio, 19:00 CDT). Each piece is lengthy and worth the listen. The series webpage includes lots of resources on climate change science and economic impacts.