Washington,U.S.A–The U.S. Senate passed the 2012 Farm Bill today, meaning the measure is a big step closer to enactment. The Farm Bill, renewed every five years, is the largest source of funding for conservation on America’s working farmland, ranchland and private forestland. In addition to funding federal conservation and nutrition programs, the bill also authorizes risk management and other programs that influence the decisions of land managers across the country.

“The Farm Bill is the United States’ primary means for engaging farmers, ranchers and foresters in stewardship of America’s natural resources,” said Sara Hopper, agricultural policy director of Environmental Defense Fund. “The continuing economic prosperity of agriculture is critical to the nation. But it is also true that agriculture has a significant environmental footprint. It affects – and is affected by – soil health, reliable supplies of clean water, and healthy ecosystems.”

As part of an effort to reduce the federal deficit, the Senate voted to cut more than $23 billion from the Farm Bill budget over the next 10 years, including $6.4 billion from conservation programs. While these cuts will hurt conservation efforts on the ground, senators made an effort to mitigate the impact of the loss in conservation funding by including policies that will make conservation programs more effective. Specifically, the Senate bill consolidates some conservation programs and creates a stronger emphasis on leveraging additional resources from local and state governments and other partners who can assist producers in voluntary, cooperative efforts to address local, state and regional conservation priorities. Senators also voted yesterday to apply to taxpayer-funded crop insurance premium subsidies the requirements that farmers of some environmentally sensitive lands currently have to meet in order to receive other farm subsidies.

“With increasing pressures to feed a growing global population, America’s natural resources are under more demand and stress than ever before,” said Hopper. “Demand for conservation assistance for farmers already outstrips available conservation dollars. Congress must maintain and strengthen its commitment to conservation in this Farm Bill and one way to do that is through innovate partnership programs that bring conservation dollars to local communities.”

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Modern farming practices such as conservation tillage and no-till farming are responsible for significant environmental benefits often overlooked by Earth Day observers.

With no-till, farmers plant crops and control weeds without turning the soil. This method decreases erosion, reduces fuel use and improves water quality. In addition to the environmental benefits, no-till empowers farmers to grow more crops and feed more people than was possible 42 years ago when Earth Day first originated.

In the 1970s, a revolution in agriculture began when farmers started converting from conventional, intensive tillage systems to a system more in tune with nature. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that soil erosion from U.S. cropland declined more than 40 percent between 1982 and 2007, thanks in part to no-till and conservation tillage practices. These modern farming practices were made possible in part by the use of atrazine, an herbicide that can manage many different types of weeds under a wide variety of conditions.

“Atrazine’s reliable performance gave farmers the confidence they could control weeds without tillage,” said Richard Fawcett, Ph.D., former agronomy professor at Iowa State University who is now an agricultural consultant.

No-till allows farmers to grow crops year after year without disturbing the soil, thus increasing the soil’s amount of organic matter and decreasing erosion, according to a study by Fawcett.

“While plowing has benefits, it leaves soil loosened and susceptible to significant erosion, ultimately polluting air with fuel burned in the plow equipment and contaminating water with sediment run-off,” said Fawcett. “No-till fields also provide a healthier habitat for wildlife.”

But this farming technique depends on the ability to control weeds, demonstrating the importance of the 50-year-old herbicide atrazine.

According to Paul D. Mitchell, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, more than one-third of U.S. cropland devoted to major crops such as corn and soybeans uses no-till systems. Farmers are applying atrazine on about half of no-till corn acres. Mitchell’s research also found atrazine enables farmers to save as much as 28-million gallons of diesel fuel per year, equaling more than 600-million pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions.

Earth Day started as a campaign to raise awareness of environmental issues.

“But many of the campaign elements ignore the environmentally friendly and earth-saving methods farmers use in their day-to-day operations,” said David C. Bridges, Ph.D., president of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Ga. ”It is important to recognize the role of farmers and modern agricultural technologies in protecting wildlife, saving habitats and keeping our waters clean.”

Bridges, Mitchell and Fawcett are among a group of five academic researchers who recently studied the benefits of atrazine. Key findings include:

• Atrazine enables growers to use conservation tillage and other best-management practices, which contribute to a reduction in soil erosion in corn and sorghum.
• Atrazine and its sister triazine herbicides prevent up to 85 million metric tons of soil erosion per year – enough to fill more than 3 million dump trucks.
• Atrazine and the other triazines help reduce emissions by up to 280,000 metric tons of CO2 per year.
• Conservation tillage and no-till farming reduce agricultural diesel fuel use by more than 18-million gallons per year and annual carbon-dioxide emissions by more than 180,000 metric tons.

Syngenta, the principal registrant for atrazine, provided resources and support for the research. The papers are part of a broad assessment by Syngenta to examine the value of atrazine in today’s agricultural economy.

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Climate change is likely to harm California’s economy by reducing the types of natural, non-irrigated vegetation available for livestock forage and the ability of forest ecosystems to store carbon dioxide, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the scientific journal Climatic Change.

The ability of ecosystems to store carbon dioxide is a key part of implementing the state’s climate law, the Global Warming Solutions Act, also known as Assembly Bill 32 or AB 32.

“Much of the talk about climate change in California has been about the impacts of sea level rise and droughts,” said study coauthor Linwood Pendleton, director of ocean and coastal policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, acting chief economist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and study author. “Our work shows that even the gritty worlds of cattle ranching and forestry may take it on the chin as California skies become increasingly carbon-rich.”

The study was conducted by researchers from Duke University, Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Biology Institute, USDA Forest Service, Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Barbara. It examines how climate change will impact the fundamental character of California’s ecosystems and the valuable services that they provide to the economy.

To analyze the impact to carbon sequestration and natural, non-irrigated livestock forage—two important ecosystem services that contribute to the state’s economy—the researchers used climatic change scenario models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and three atmospheric-oceanic models.

The researchers identified that climate change would cause a consistent decline in conifer woodlands and forests through the end of the century that could decrease the amount of carbon storage in forestlands and harm the forestry industry.

They also determined that climate change is likely to alter the amount and timing of rain, hail and snow in California, resulting in a 15 to 70 percent increase in shrub lands and a consistent decline in natural, non-irrigated forage production for livestock.

“A less stable climate will reduce the ability of natural landscapes to support cattle grazing, so ranchers may have to grow or buy extra hay instead of getting it for free from nature, as they do now,” said lead report author Rebecca Shaw, Ph.D., associate vice president of EDF’s Land, Water and Wildlife program and a working group member of the IPCC.

“We calculated that replacing lost forage caused by climate change with extra hay will hike costs for the California ranching industry by up to $235 million per year by 2070,” said Shaw. “That’s why it’s important for policymakers to better understand the value of services that nature provides to California’s economy, so that they can work to protect our natural resources and the economy in the face of climate change.”

“Fortunately, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act provides new economic opportunities for landowners—both inside and outside California—to be part of the climate solution,” said economist Belinda Morris, a report coauthor and regional director of EDF’s Center for Conservation Incentives.

“Landowners can earn credits for capturing carbon on their land that they can sell to offset industrial carbon emissions. These credits will bring in a whole new revenue stream that can benefit the ranching industry, helping ranchers to keep ranching.” Carbon credits are an integral part of the carbon cap-and-trade program that is scheduled to begin this year under the Global Warming Solutions Act. It allows for 8 percent of the law’s carbon emission reduction goals to be achieved by offsetting emissions with carbon credits.

“EDF is working with landowners, academic institutions and others to develop cost-effective methods for capturing carbon on rangelands that could generate new revenue streams for ranchers as part of a carbon credits market, while also improving soil fertility,” Morris said.

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On the morning of January 11, as Yao Ming opened their cages, six young pandas stepped into their new home in the “Chengdu Panda Valley”, where they will undergo survival training in their natural habitat in their last step before their eventual return to the wild. This release marks the official beginning of the Chengdu Giant Panda Rehabilitation Project, launched by the Chengdu Panda Base and supported throughout by the national Ministry of Forestry.

“I’m honored to be a part of this important conservation effort,” said Yao Ming, “through the hard work and dedication of the experts at the Chengdu Panda Base, the Giant Panda will continue to flourish for generations as a symbol of China and as a symbol of what we can do when we all work together for conservation.”

For over three decades, the Chengdu Panda Base has been devoted to Giant Panda research and breeding, making it an invaluable part of the global Giant Panda conservation effort. Starting with six rescued pandas in the 1980′s the center’s captive population has grown to 108, making the Panda Base home to the largest captive-bred population of Pandas in the world.

As the number of pandas has steadily increased, the Panda Base has carefully planned the transition of pandas into Chengdu Panda Valley – a controlled natural environment, which will allow the pandas to steadily acclimatize and eventually rejoin their counterparts in the wild.

In order to find the best “candidates” for this morning’s first release, experts spent one year carefully examining individual pandas based on criteria such as age, health and genetic background, personality, and ability to socialize within their community. Twin brothers, Xingrong and Xingya, together with Gongzai (the inspiration for the main character in “Kung Fu Panda”), Yingying, Zhizhi, and Qiqi were chosen as the pioneers of this rehabilitation training.

“The main goal of this project is to ensure the sustainable growth of the Giant Panda population; we hope that soon they will be able to reproduce sustainably in the wild without the help of human breeders. We do not want to keep them in captivity forever; they need to return to nature, to their natural home.” commented Dr. Zhang Zhihe, Director of the Chengdu Panda Base.

Giant Pandas once flourished in the Sichuan Mountains surrounding Chengdu where boundless bamboo forests supported their grazing lifestyle. The connection of the Panda with Chengdu has made it a symbol of the city and has fostered a deep commitment from the community to their conservation. The Chengdu government has given full backing to the conservation efforts and has made the Panda Rehabilitation Project one of the hallmark elements of their program to develop Chengdu as a world-class Garden City.

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In Sumatra, some Islamic leaders believe that religion is the key to conservation for Indonesia – the country with the highest rate of deforestation and some of the most diverse habitat in the world.

The island of Sumatra, with its population of over 50 million people, has seen its habitat disappearing fast, mainly due to oil palm plantations, and its population of endangered species such as the Sumatran orangutan and tiger is dwindling. Leaders of the religious community believe that education is key to solving the region’s environmental problems and that religion has the potential to spark wide public interest in environmental awareness.

In an article by freelance environmentalist writer Melanie Jae Martin, the spiritual initiative, who calls themselves FORDALING (the Islamic Leader Forum for Environmental Care), is said to believe that the Quran, the religious text of Islam, directly addresses the need for protecting the natural world. Martin explains that their newly released book Ayat-Ayat Konservasi (Islamic Verses for Conservation), promotes a religious mandate to respect the earth and other species. Though their material and projects, the religious leaders of Sumatra preach to Indonesian Muslims why conservation should be important to them and the world.

Martin explains that the Ayat-Ayat Konservasi consists of chapters such as “Earth, Our Collective Home,” “Leuser [National] Forest, an Invaluable Gift from Our Creator,” “Nature Conservation in the Age of Muhammad the Messenger”, and “Implementation of Islamic Principles in Conservation by Communities around the Leuser Forests.” One chapter, “The Good Deeds of Muhammad the Messenger to Wildlife,” tells how the Prophet Muhammad and his followers saw a pair of baby birds as they were traveling, and caught them. The Prophet noticed the outraged mother bird trying to rescue her babies, and told his followers to give the babies back to their mother immediately. In another story, his followers set an ants’ nest on fire, and he told them such thoughtless treatment of wildlife is unacceptable. The collection of verses highlight the Prophet Muhammad’s compassion for other species but the book also emphasizes that the consumption of animals should be humane. Furthermore, the authors draw parallels to current environmental and social concerns that stress compassion for individual animals as well as for the greater ecosystem in local practices.

The work of FORDALING involves multiple projects. The organization’s works to educate Islamic leaders on how to teach their congregations about the urgent need for conservation through sermons. Their training program has so far reached out to more than 150 Islamic scholars and leaders and 50 of its members have also taken a guided tour of Gunung Leuser National Park, a popular orangutan viewing area, to learn more about the problems facing the biodiversity hotspot.

FORDALING also works to educate the general public. Projects includes a ‘sermon roadshow’, a partnership with the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC) to create easily accessible material for the general public and held a speech competition for Islamic students in Langkat and Aceh Tamiang. For this last event, 75 children participated and the winners presented their sermons in across villages and Islamic schools. Additionally, FORDALING runs conservation efforts such as tree nurseries, where volunteers raise seedlings for planting in the OIC’s restoration site in Besitang. Like many other areas, the national park there has been tainted by illegal logging and replanting with oil palms. Young Muslims are encouraged to join the group Islamic Student Nature Lover (SAPA) to learn and help with the conservation effort.

Martin cites Panut Hasisiswoyo, OIC founding director, for supporting FORDALING’s work, saying that it has the power to change people’s attitudes across Sumatra. He asserts that “with direct, religiously inspired sources to share and cite to the largely Islamic population of Indonesia, the effort to save the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan has a brighter outlook.”

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