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Local View: Conservation of grasslands would help western counties
By Tyler Sutton
A report just released by the Rural Great Plains Collaborative once again demonstrates that agriculture alone is no longer able to support many rural communities on the plains.
At the same time, many communities on the plains are surrounded by some of the best examples of grasslands left in the world. Grasslands globally are the least protected habitat from human exploitation and the most in need of protection. Protected areas help local economies in at least four ways; they attract new residents, tourists, spin-off businesses and government expenditures. In Nebraska, protected areas are almost nonexistent.
Past proposals to create protected areas on the plains have been controversial because they were pushed by outsiders and involved the purchase of land by the federal government. But over the years, new protected-area models have developed that rely on local government and people to drive and control them.
In fact, there are examples in Nebraska in which small towns have developed water recreation projects jointly with Natural Resource Districts for economic development purposes. So instead of a water recreation project, let's say for example, the village of Arthur, population 150, and the Twin Platte Natural Resource District form the Arthur County Conservation Trust, to jointly develop a world-class grassland preserve for big-game hunting, ecotourism and as a long-term prairie research site.
Let's further assume the people in Arthur County would think really big because they know the project would be controlled locally and might just save their town. Therefore, the objective of the project would be for the Arthur County Conservation Trust to purchase all 400,000 acres of grassland in the county from willing sellers.
This is admittedly somewhat fanciful, and we are not proposing it, but for discussion purposes let's take a quick look at the economics of the idea because a grassland preserve of this size would make Nebraska a leader in the global effort to conserve grasslands.
In 2002, Arthur County had a population of 444, a workforce of 251, 61 farm/ranch operations with more than $25,000 in gross sales, about 70 people employed directly in farming/ranching, and the average age of the operators was about 58, which indicates a lot of folks are about ready to retire.
Arthur County frequently shows up as one of the lowest-income counties in the nation, reporting $15,810 in per capita income in 2002 and net farm income of $405,000, although the county received $449,000 in farm subsidies, so in reality there was no net farm income. The value of farm and ranch operations in the county that year was about $75 million and a ballpark estimate of what those operations paid in property taxes is around $1 million.
To make the math simple, and to make everyone happy, let's just assume the trust paid the 61 landowners $100 million for their land. That sounds like a lot of money until you consider that not long ago a bipartisan effort in Congress led to a special appropriation of $100 million for the Valles Calderas Trust to purchase a 100,000-acre preserve for wildlife and grazing in New Mexico, or that Nebraska receives on average close to $1 billion in federal farm subsidies.
Assume the trust raised $150 million from public and private sources for the project. After funding the buyout, the $50 million balance would throw off $4 million in annual income (at 8 percent), which, after paying the $1 million property tax bill to keep the schools open, would leave $3 million to operate the preserve in perpetuity. The preserve itself also would generate fees for visitation, and for ecotourism and hunting concession rights and other activities.
It is hard to say how much income the preserve would generate for the town of Arthur, but in South Dakota, Badlands National Park (which is only 250,000 acres) directly and indirectly generates about $7 million in personal income for the surrounding communities and 500 jobs. Arthur has a population of about 150, so if the $7 million stayed in the town, the local workforce would expand and receive a big fat raise. Of course, if the landowners stayed in the county, their $100 million buyout would throw off an additional $8 million or so in annual income that would benefit the county and town indirectly.
If the prairie preserve became a long-term research site for the university, residents of the county would benefit from state research and outreach spending. Further, the preserve undoubtedly would benefit from increase state and federal spending by wildlife agencies.
Without a full-blown cost/benefit analysis, we can only speculate about the economic benefit of creating the preserve, but the anecdotal evidence certainly suggests the issue deserves more research and attention by rural development advocates and state agencies.
People in western Nebraska obviously would be concerned that their cattle-based lifestyle would disappear, but with only 1 percent of the state's cow herd in Arthur County, the reality is larger social forces such as MTV and the World Trade Organization are more threatening to the survival of the cattle culture in western Nebraska than a grassland preserve. We can have both a vibrant cattle culture and a world-class grassland preserve if enough people in western Nebraska are willing to push for it.
Tyler Sutton is the president of the Lincoln-based Grassland Foundation.