10/08/02

By MARK POWELL

About the only thing Maryland’s CREP Advisory Committee agreed on last week was to accept the membership of a subcommittee of the 26-member group who will write a required memorandum of understanding between the state and federal government.
And that was not unanimous.
The document will outline the basic parameters of the program which encourages rural landowners to put conservation easements along waterways and ditches. It will be written by representatives of the USDA-Farm Service Agency, USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland Department of Agriculture, Maryland Farm Bureau and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Excluded from that committee is Quail Unlimited activist James Farmer, something he pointed out at the meeting.
Mike Slattery, representing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the CREP meeting, Oct. 2 at DNR headquarters in Annapolis, said his agency should be involved with writing the memorandum of understanding because of CREP’s focus on encouraging wildlife. Ducks Unlimited representative Ben Alder said he was “going on the record” as being opposed to his organization not being included.
Farmer also took exception to committee co-chairman Jonathan McKnight’s statement that the final document would not come to a vote before the committee.
“It will be voted on,” Farmer insisted in a loud voice.
McKnight’s boss, Carolyn Watson, qualified McKnight’s position for Farmer and the rest of the committee, saying the advisory committee would work to come to a consensus. If need be, though, she said it could be voted upon.
The CREP Advisory Committee has come under public focus recently as Maryland’s tenant farmers have said the program is taking too much farmland out of production.
Most on the advisory committee say the program — aimed at taking 100,000 acres of farmland along waterways out of production — is a good thing for landowners, who are paid to create forested or grassed filter strips, and the environment.
However, there is conflict over buffer width.
Some on the committee — notably Farmer, a Charles County attorney and strong supporter of gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — are promoting wider buffers to provide wildlife habitat.
Farmer has advocated buffers of 300 feet. Farmer’s concerns were generally addressed in September 2001, when Maryland CREP was amended to increase buffer widths from 150 feet to 300 feet. Gov. Parris Glendening also upped the ante, paying a $100 per acre signing bonus.
Farmer has been profiled in The Washington Post and several outdoors sports magazines as a leader in efforts to build habitat for the threatened bobwhite quail.
Farmer has also been the subject of articles in this newspaper which stated he had arranged for Quail Unlimited to pay for a DNR employee to attend a national meeting on CREP. Farmer called for a state ethics committee ruling on the matter after it was detailed in The Delmarva Farmer.
That ruling, according to ethics committee officials, will not necessarily be revealed unless Farmer chooses to do so. It would serve as an advisory to DNR on the ethical nature of the agency’s common practice of accepting financial contributions from organizations “which share common goals with DNR,” according to an agency spokeswoman.
Others on the CREP advisory committee, principally those in the farming community, want narrower buffers to address water quality.
Scott Smith, a Maryland DNR wildlife expert, explained to the committee that wider buffers benefit a number of mammals, salamanders, turtles and birds. Song birds, many which migrate, are measured in the Maryland Biological Stream Survey as they travel in forested riparian buffer areas. “Scarlet tanagers, barred owls and the red-shouldered hawk,” are found in the areas, Smith said. Some of these species are endangered, but not all.
Smith said CREP buffers should be focused on areas with no buffers first, rather than expanding buffers in areas which already have buffers. He also said there is evidence that suggested larger buffers are better for wildlife.
Dr. Lori Lynch, a University of Maryland agricultural economist, told the committee that her research shows that farming in the state is not nearing a loss of the critical mass needed to sustain a future for agriculture.
That was contested by Maryland Farm Bureau lobbyist Valerie Connelly, who said there is evidence to suggest that farming and farmland is under severe stress. That issue is of concern as farm groups said too much productive farmland is being taken out of production.
Jonathan McKnight of DNR told the committee that it needs to rewrite its memorandum of understanding with the federal government in the next three months. But, DNR is expected to request an extension of the current MOU in a letter to the USDA’s Farm Service Agency. Steve Connelly, executive director of the Maryland FSA, said such an extension would be needed by Nov. 22.
Maryland Farm Bureau is represented on the CREP Advisory Committee by Earl “Buddy” Hance of Port Republic and Lee McDaniel of Darlington. Representing the state’s association of soil conservation districts is Bill Giese of Cambridge and Joe Brown.
Farmer is listed as a farmer/landowner. Charles County farmer Pat Wathan and Edward Taylor of Worton are also on the committee.
The next meeting for the advisory committee is set for Oct. 23.