The Ranch Post

Everyone’s heard the buzz in the news - is the U.S. in a recession? While MRG is not at liberty to say if that is 100 percent true or not, we do feel it’s safe to say that there are more reliable and stable investments out there than others.

In the LANDFLIP Blog this week, Curtis Seltzer, a land consultant and author, offers his opinion on why Americans invest heavily in the stock market, and explains that the real estate market, particularly land, is a sound and lucrative investment in the current market. To read the article, click here.

The Denver Post has published a feature story on visiting Yellowstone National Park in the winter. It steps you through available lodging, road conditions, open park entrances, winter activities and dining. Check it out! It might be right up your alley.

The Casper Star-Tribune is reporting that hunters and anglers are getting worried about the effect global warming is having on wildlife and fish habitat.

The Wildlife Management Institute released a report based on work done by nine fishing and hunting organizations, providing “a glimpse of their concerns.” Highlights include:

• “Prairie pothole regions essential for waterfowl could lose 90 percent of their wetlands, causing a 69 percent decline in North America’s breeding ducks.
• About 42 percent of the trout and salmon habitat could be lost by the end of the century, with bull trout virtually disappearing in the high mountain West and wild trout from lower Appalachian streams.
• The number of pronghorn antelope, elk and mule deer will dwindle as rising temperatures allow trees and shrubs to overwhelm the sagebrush ecosystem in the West.
• Populations of bobwhite quail will shrink in the Deep South as summertime drought and higher temperatures disrupt their breeding cycles. And drier conditions in fall and early spring will threaten quail in the Southwest.
• While an increase in water temperature and other change could benefit some salt water marine species, sea-level rise would destroy thousands of acres of coastal salt marshes and seagrass that are home to larval and juvenile game fish.”

The American Farm Bureau is reporting the results of a Department of Agriculture survey of farmer’s planting intentions for 2008. According to the report, “U.S. farmers are expected to plant about 18 percent more soybeans this year, while their corn acreage could decline by about 8 percent from a year ago.” The report is significant, as the day the report was released, a bushel of corn was “up about 10 cents to 15 cents.”

In related news, the New York Times elaborates on our April 1 blog on how ranchers and farmers are taking their land out of the government’s Conservation Reserve Program, and farming that land to cash in on the agricultural boom. “Environmental and hunting groups are warning that years of progress could soon be lost, particularly with the native prairie in the Upper Midwest. But a broad coalition of baking, poultry, snack food, ethanol and livestock groups say bigger harvests are a more important priority than habitats for waterfowl and other wildlife.” According to the article, as many acres as “are in Rhode Island and Delaware combined” were converted from conserved to cultivated land last fall alone.

It’s been going on for a few years now. In 2005, the U.S. Army announced plans to expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, (located between Trinidad and La Junta, Colorado), “by 418,000 acres, with the potential for expanding the site to more than 2 million acres.” Since most land in that area is privately owned, many generational ranching families are worried about their land being taken over by eminent domain.

Read a detailed recap of the ongoing events on the Western Horseman website.

From around the web, here’s the latest news on conservation tax credits in Colorado:

• “Ranchers worry about future of conservation tax credit,” KUNC 91.5 FM Radio Broadcast
• “Columnist: Transparency welcome on open space tax credits,” Vail Daily, by Cindy Cohegan, Executive Director, Eagle Valley Land Trust”

Also, check out “Ridgeway rancher looks back” in the Telluride Daily Planet, an article about the life of Deedee Decker, the wife of our Agricultural Stewardship Expert, Peter Decker. The Deckers came to Colorado in the 1970s, and have been extremely active in the community from the get-go. Here she discusses everything from their initial move from the East Coast, to learning to become the agricultural experts they are today, to advising Ralph Lauren on buying his first ranch property.

USA Today is reporting that many openlands are vanishing because of “soaring grain prices that have increased their value as cropland.” Farmers are electing to not re-enroll in the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which is a voluntary conservation program run by the US Department of Agriculture that pays farmers to convert farmland to grasslands, forest, wildlife cover and for other conservation purposes. “As grain and farmland prices surge, farmers have less financial incentive to hold land in the CRP,” and as a result, farmers “chose not to re-enroll about 2.5 million acres when the most recent batch of CRP contracts expired on Sept. 30.” Read the article to find out more.

While oil and gas exploration continues to expand across the rural west many communities are growing concerned as they look how the “energy boom” has left towns like Pinedale, WY “mired in inequities.” Energy companies generate “hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to state and county governments”, but this “wealth also brings heavy traffic, housing shortages, inflation, noise and higher crime.” As communities struggle to create an infrastructure capable of accommodating the arrival of large scale oil and gas activity there are valuable lessons to be learned from towns like Pinedale. Click here to read the full article.

The Washington Post is reporting today that the U.S. Forest Service may be moved from the Depart of Agriculture’s jurisdiction to that of the Department of the Interior.

The National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management are already managed by the Interior Department, and proponents of the transition say that moving the Forest Service makes sense because these other agencies are essentially “bureaucratic cousins.”

Those against say the move “might send a symbolic message that national forests are to be preserved and enjoyed, not harvested and developed…which could be perceived as a threat to the timber industry.”

Read the article in its entirety at The Washington Post website.

Yellowstone Lake (in the famed park of the same name), has had decling native trout levels for the last decade.

“The East Yellowstone Chapter of Trout Unlimited in Cody is spearheading an effort with Yellowstone National Park and the U.S. Geological Survey to raise $169,000 to fund a research project that could help save Yellowstone Lake’s native cutthroat trout. The four-year research project would be conducted by scientists from Montana State University and the USGS who would try to find ways to eradicate unwanted lake trout by targeting their eggs and spawning beds with a variety of lethal methods, including electroshocking, ultrasound, microwaves, biodegradable polymers and fish-killing toxicants.”

For more information, read the article in the Casper Star-Tribune.