Ben Larson, Author at The National Wildlife Federation Blog

Guidelines to Produce Energy Grasses in Wildlife-Friendly Ways

Ben Larson — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 13:19:56 +0000

One of the great things about my job is being able to learn more about wildlife from experts at the National Wildlife Federation, in other organizations, and with consultants working on projects for us. One such project has been especially near and dear to me, since it touches on my love for grasslands as well as my interest in bioenergy.

Field border of perennial grasses in MN. Courtesy of NRCS.

Like much of NWF’s work on bioenergy, the project’s point is to reduce the impacts on wildlife from the production of bioenergy, including biofuels, biopower, or even heat generated from biomass. To do this, the project developed “Best Management Guidelines” (BMGs) that bioenergy companies and farmers can use in growing and harvesting native grasses like switchgrass. The BMGs try to balance the needs of production agriculture—that is, farmers making a profit—with wildlife needs.

The BMGs were written by consulting wildlife experts Bill McGuire and Susan Rupp. An interdisciplinary team of wildlife experts worked with Bill and Susan, and external reviewers with practical expertise provided valuable feedback.

Focus on the Prairie Pothole Region but relevant elsewhere

Prairie Pothole Region. Courtesy of NRCS.

The BMGs are relevant to many areas of the country, but they have a regional focus on the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), which is located in the Dakotas and parts of IA, MN, NE, WY and MT. The region stands at the cross-roads of wildlife and bioenergy because its matrix of shallow wetlands, grasslands, and croplands provides nesting habitat to over half the ducks in the country, and the Upper Midwest’s soils and climate have some of the highest feedstock production potential in the US.

Getting grass-based biomass right in the PPR is also critical because in the last five years, the region’s seen over a million acres of planted and native grasslands converted to cropland, largely due to increased demand for corn to make ethanol. We need the fewer grasslands we have left to do a lot for wildlife—and other ecosystem services, like clean water and carbon sequestration.

Before I started working on the project, I assumed that planting perennial grasses on farmland would be such a clear improvement for wildlife over annual crops like corn soy, which need planting, fertilizing and other inputs every year, that it would be an important victory in its own right. After all, most crops like soy or corn, though they do provide food to some species, offer limited nesting habitat and even less cover after harvest, and the downstream pollution from annual crops, especially corn, are well-known. The advantages of perennials in a sea of annual crops are all true and important—as far as they go.

Identifying native grasses. Courtesy of NRCS.

What this project helped me think about are some of the ways that bioenergy facilities and farmers can make improvements for wildlife with practical, low-cost ‘tweaks’ to where and how they plant, manage, and harvest bioenergy crops.

Highlights of the guidelines

Some highlights of the BMGs are to:

Use native grasses. A mix of indiangrass, big bluestem and sideoats grama is recommended to benefit more species, but the BMGs also include recommendations for switchgrass-only stands that industry might prefer.
Plant bioenergy crops on existing cropland rather than converting native sod or wetlands.
Plant bioenergy crops next to potholes, native prairies, or other planted grasses to create larger tracts that provide habitat to species that avoid the edges of habitat.

Beyond these and other major recommendations, the BMGs include suggestions related to more subtle interactions, such planting density, how much fertilizer and pesticide to use, the timing of harvest, using a flushing bar on the harvester to reduce bird injuries, and leaving taller stubble along field borders for winter cover and water quality benefits.

Importantly, the guidelines are not intended to be one-size-fits-all; they were written with the understanding that they will be need to be adapted for specific circumstances and operations.

Applying the guidelines

I look forward to working with bioenergy companies on implementing the BMGs, including one company we are talking with already that’s planning on growing tens of thousands of acres of native grasses as an energy feedstock in a few years—and wants to do right by wildlife. I hope to be able to share the details of this collaboration shortly.

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Bioenergy and Biodiversity in the Southeast: Like Speeding in a Crowded Neighborhood?

Ben Larson — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 16:00:57 +0000

The street to my house goes through a school zone and our neighborhood is full of kids. I have a school-aged daughter myself. I pride myself on being a safe driver. I try to look carefully and slow down. Of course I would never intentionally hit a kid who happened to be in my way. But I have to admit I wouldn’t slow down as often or as much if it weren’t for the speed camera that was recently installed.

The same basic truth applies to people ‘driving’ businesses in crowded neighborhoods. Sure, they have deadlines and payments to meet. Yes, they get impatient with caution and rules that might seem unnecessary at times. But to avoid accidents, we establish speed limits and other traffic rules. I’d suggest that a new, fast-charging industry might need a few new rules to avoid colliding with some precious ones that might happen to be in their way.

The industry involved uses wood for energy—“biomass,” it’s called—and the crowded neighborhood is the Southeast U.S.

Why Study the Southeast?

Until recently, we haven’t had much specific knowledge about the impacts of woody bioenergy harvesting on wildlife. There’s been a lot of concern—and rightly so—about the impacts of bioenergy on climate change. But these analyses are necessarily done at regional and global scales, and carbon impacts differ from wildlife impacts. So I’ve been very excited about a new report that NWF commissioned that is taking a good, close look at biodiversity.

A long-tailed weasel, one of several species that might be impacted by bioenergy operations in the Southeast U.S. Photo by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Doug Backlund.

The study focused on the Southeast U.S., and for good reason. The region has some of the highest concentrations of biodiversity in America. I had known that the hardwood forests in the Appalachians harbor high levels of biodiversity, perhaps owing to the long persistence of the ecosystem without glaciation or other major disruptions. What I’ve been learning lately is that Southeast coastal forests have high biodiversity, too. In fact, the renowned biologist E. O. Wilson has observed that while longleaf savannahs can have 200 species per acre, SE pitcher plant bogs might have the highest fine-scale (i.e., within a very small area) biodiversity in the world—as many as 50 species per square meter.

Fueling Biomass/Bioenergy Development

The timber rattlesnake was one of the species studied. Photo by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Kira Dott.

And when it comes to biomass development, the Southeast is where action is. Some of the biomass industry’s growth in the Southeast is in the use of biomass by local power plants, displacing some or all of their coal. Most of the growth, though, is in the production of wood pellets—ground, dried and densified wood fibers that can be easily handled and shipped. (Incidentally, it’s no coincidence that biomass pellets look a lot like rabbit pellets; the manager of one pellet mill that I visited told me that their mill uses the same die that is used to make rabbit pellets.)

Some of the SE’s pellets are made on a relatively small scale for the domestic home-heating market, but the fastest growth is in the large-scale production of pellets for export to Europe utilities. In fact, biomass, much of it from the U.S., is expected to supply up to half of the renewable energy needed to meet the European Union’s 20% by 2020 Renewable Energy Directive. In the U.S., the pellet industry is expected to almost double between 2012 and 2014, to a capacity of almost 14 million tons, with much of this growth occurring in the SE.

Seeing the Forest for the Species

The study marks a significant improvement in the quality of biodiversity impact assessments from bioenergy. Led by Jason Evans, an environmental sustainability analyst at the University of GA who has expertise in wildlife and GIS analysis, the study used a two-step approach to assess potential impacts. First, Dr. Evans developed spatially-explicit sourcing models to predict where, over the next few decades, logging will be done to supply six actual bioenergy facilities, ranging from small pellet plants in the mountains to utilities in the mountains and piedmont to large export pellet plants in the coastal plain. Their sourcing model is based on what types of biomass resources the plants will use, the distribution and abundance of local forest types, demand from other forest product industries, and even the local road networks.

Then the researchers assessed where this logging might conflict with biodiversity. Because the actual distribution of biodiversity isn’t mapped well, scientists need to use proxies or ways of representing biodiversity (or risks to biodiversity). The first proxy that the team used was an assessment of which natural forests might be converted to plantations, which can reduce habitat value and thus biodiversity, and which rare forest types might be logged, in response to new biomass demand.

The second proxy was indicator species, which ecologists choose to represent a group of species dependent on similar habitats. The indicators species include includes two mammals (eastern spotted skunk and long-tailed weasel), four birds (northern bobwhite, Swainson’s warbler, brown-headed nuthatch, and prothonotary warbler), two amphibians (gopher frog and northern cricket frog), and one reptile (timber rattlesnake).

A brown-headed nuthatch, one of the study’s indicator species. Photo by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Virginia Senechal.

Lastly, the team assessed policy drivers behind biomass demand and the policy options for reducing wildlife impacts.

Importantly, the report does not assess carbon benefits—or risks—from any of the bioenergy facilities, but an earlier report commissioned by NWF found that using whole trees to generate electricity in inefficient power plants would increase atmospheric carbon for many decades, until the regrowth of trees finally re-sequesters the emitted carbon.

Diverse Impacts on Wildlife Diversity

What emerges from the dizzying array of maps and data that the team produced is a picture that, not coincidentally, is as varied as the distribution of most species. The projected impacts of woody bioenergy harvesting depend a lot on where the harvesting will be done, how much will be done, what kinds of biodiversity exists in the forests that might be logged, and what sorts of existing or new policies are put in place to protect biodiversity.

The GA Biomass, LLC pellet plant is a good example of how good placement of a plant, and adoption of new but basic protections for biodiversity, could significantly reduce the threat to biodiversity. Though the GA Biomass plant was located in an area with a high predominance of existing plantations, the research team still found that because the new demand for biomass, and the presence of natural stands within the hauling territory that don’t have protections against conversion to plantations, there is a risk that up to 43,000 acres of natural forests could be converted to plantations, of which over 30,000 acres could be longleaf.

However, a simple policy, either adopted voluntarily by the company or enforced by the EU, to not purchase biomass from new plantations, would reduce the threat that biomass harvests would directly lead to conversion. For its new biomass plant, the city of Gainesville already adopted such a prohibition against purchasing biomass from new plantations, as a way to discourage conversions.

There was one alarming finding in the study. Based on its business model to log hardwood forests, and its location in an area with a high concentration of ecologically-critical wetland hardwood forests, the Enviva pellet plant in Ahoskie, North Carolina will pose significant risk to rare forest types, biodiversity, and water quality. Over its expected span, the plant will log about 100,000 acres of hardwood forests along rivers, and about 50,000 acres of swamps away from rivers. Many of these wetland hardwood forests are in the Roanoke River floodplain, which is identified in the NC Wildlife Action Plan (NCWAP) as the “finest example remaining in the state.” The wetland hardwood forests that are located away from the rivers are identified in the NCWAP as “urgently needing protection.”

Prothonotary Warbler. Photo by Howcheng via Wikimedia.

And we know from a story in the Wall Street Journal that Enviva isn’t sourcing its biomass with ‘tread-lightly, low-impact’ forestry.

Clear-cutting wetland forests poses risks to two indicator species—the prothonotary warbler and Swainson’s warbler—and many other associated species, not to mention likely negative impacts on water quality.

This is not a sustainable form of biomass. It should not be allowed to count toward any nation’s renewable energy requirement. The research team suggests that Enviva could start planting fast-growing poplars as a more sustainable source of biomass, but planting trees is far more expensive than harvesting standing timber, and of course it’d take years after the planting investment to get the biomass. With its current sourcing strategy, I can’t see a way that the Ahoskie plant could be made sustainable. And it’s important to remember that this sustainability issue isn’t some accident. The plant was intentionally located near where a large hardwood paper plant had closed: logging these wetland forests is their business model. The future of the Enviva Ahoskie plant is the demise of far too many of the region’s wetland forests.

On a more optimistic note, the study does note a possible wildlife benefit from biomass harvests. Many pine stands in the SE are planted with a high density of trees with the expectation that some will die and others will be thinned after about 15 years (for pulpwood, a small-diameter product). But given fluctuating paper markets and other factors, many landowners delay thinning, or don’t thin at all. As a result, many pine stands have so many trees that they shade out almost all other plants, particularly the grasses, which is where most species live. If it focused on thinning pine stands, bioenergy harvesting could improve habitat for quail and many other species, particularly if the harvesting was targeted toward areas with better wildlife potential, and if landowners also used prescribed fires to maintain the habitat value of the grass layer.

For me, the study reinforces my conviction that bioenergy can be done badly and become a threat to diversity, or that it can also be done well and reduce risks to biodiversity—and can even help improve wildlife habitat in some cases. The difference between doing bioenergy well or badly is the enactment of policy—some speed limits and stop signs, if you will—that insist that bioenergy be done well, including the protection of biodiversity.

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Michael Forsberg’s Great Plains on PBS this Fall

Ben Larson — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 19:25:41 +0000

When we think of wildlife shows on TV, we usually expect to see places like the African savannah, the Rocky Mountains, or the Arctic. We don’t expect to see Oklahoma, Kansas or North Dakota.

But award-winning conservation photographer Michael Forsberg is out to change that. A Nebraska native, Forsberg’s documentary “Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild” follows him to all corners of the region as he photographs its wildlife and talks with the ranchers, biologists, and advocates who are trying to save the region’s remaining natural landscapes.

I fell in love with grasslands while hunting in North Dakota, so I am delighted that this fall, PBS stations around the country will be able to air Great Plains.

Wherever you live or wherever you grew up, Great Plains is a great introduction to some of the lesser-known wildlife in a lesser-known landscape. America’s own grasslands are usually overlooked, or even scorned, for their supposed lack of beauty and wildlife. In addition to the region’s iconic bison, elk and pronghorn antelope, Forsberg has beautiful footage of pintail ducks, grebes, and even the common but surprisingly beautiful sunfish swimming in a crystal-clear Kansas stream.

Photo courtesy of Tom Koerner, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Forsberg certainly mentions environmental threats faced by the region, but Great Plains doesn’t focus on them, nor does it get into the policy solutions that we focus on here at NWF. Instead, Great Plains aims for the heart—and I think it is on target.

I had the pleasure of meeting Forsberg in August, when he was a keynote speaker at our America’s Grasslands Conference in Kansas. His speech and photography was moving, and had us in the audience on our feet. He is a kind and gentle soul on a very important mission.

After watching Great Plains, you might not give your TV a standing ovation, but you will have had a great tour around one of the world’s great ecosystems, and seen some of its beautiful inhabitants.

PBS has a preview of Great Plains available here. Check your local listings for when your PBS affiliate might show it.

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Having Lost Thousands of Cattle to the Blizzard, Northern Plains Ranchers Need a Farm Bill

Ben Larson — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 18:58:19 +0000

The recent blizzard in western South Dakota didn’t just dump up to four feet of snow in the Black Hills, northwestern Nebraska and northeastern Wyoming. In killing thousands of cattle, it piled another hardship on ranchers, who in recent years have been losing ground, literally and figuratively, to row crop farming.

The disaster also added urgency to calls for Congress to pass the farm bill, which includes the disaster program that the ranchers need.

State officials estimate that after last weekend’s blizzard, 10,000-20,000 cattle were killed, a figure that amounts to about 5% of the state’s cattle herd. So many cattle died because they didn’t yet have their winter coats, and they were on summer pasture, where they didn’t have much shelter.

Because of the high cost for small- to mid-size size ranchers to buy insurance on their own, ranchers are looking to the federal government to help them recover from their losses.

The deadly blizzard came at a time when the ranching industry as a whole has been weakened.

Last year brought a devastating drought that is continuing in parts of the southern Plains.
As a result of high crop prices, ranchers have seen rising costs for both feed and land rents, which makes it harder for ranchers to compete with farmers for pasture.

Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

The financial challenges are especially acute in the northern Plains, where some geographers are describing what they say is one of the most significant land use changes in modern history. Land that has been grass—either because it was planted back to perennial cover to protect its fragile soils or because it had never been plowed—is being converted to cropland at rates not seen since before the Dust Bowl. A paper published earlier this year by two geographers at South Dakota State University found that in the last few years, over a million acres of grasslands in the western Corn Belt have been converted to grow crops like corn and soybeans.

Cattle grazing can be a sustainable use of grasslands, which evolved with grazing by ungulates like bison. But the same cannot be said of the croplands that replace grasslands. Compared to grasslands, annual crops like corn or beans leave the soil more exposed to erosion and provide precious little habitat for wildlife, like the waterfowl and grassland birds that nest in the Prairie Pothole Region.

The disaster assistance that ranchers need is in the expired farm bill. Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP) was included in the 2008 farm bill, but funding for it has expired with the lapsed farm bill. LIP covers up to 75% of fair market value of livestock killed directly by disasters such as blizzards. Producers don’t have to pay premiums but can receive up to $100,000 for their losses.

NWF’s Ag and Forestry team has been pushing for the farm bill to be reauthorized and for it to include a national Sodsaver provision and to link conservation compliance to crop insurance subsidies.

But until congress passes the farm bill, ranchers can only expect cold comfort from Washington.

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Thinking of the Future at America’s Grasslands Conference

Ben Larson — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 12:35:55 +0000

Like a herd of cattle heading to a stock tank, leaders in grassland conservation from all over the country are convening today in Manhattan, KS for two days of reflecting and sharing on how America’s remaining grasslands can be conserved and restored.

Photo courtesy USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

This won’t be just another hotel roundup on the conference circuit. In fact, I’m expecting a sense of urgency, even desperation, because these are worrisome times for those of us who are in what ND rancher Travis Maddock calls ‘the grass business.’

High crop prices are driving rates of prairie plowing not seen since before the Dust Bowl. In the last few years alone, over a million acres of grass have been plowed up in the northern plains. Geographers are talking about this as one of the most profound land-use changes in recent US history.

Conserving the Prairie

Photo courtesy USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

This plow-up is leaving less and less nesting habitat for ducks, waterfowl and other grassland birds, which have seen some of the greatest, most widespread and consistent population declines of any group of species. Even bee health and populations are suffering as the landscape has been converted to corn and soybeans; the bees no longer have sufficient pollen sources that they used to get from the diverse mosaic of many crops and grasslands, both planted and native. Our modern prairie plow up is also releasing untold tonnage of carbon, making it more difficult and expensive to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Though sanguine about the prospects for easy or quick fixes, I’m excited for all the energy and ideas that our speakers and participants will bring to the conference. I can’t wait to see our keynote speaker Michael Forsberg’s award-winning conservation photography. I look forward to the discussion of Chris Wright’s research into the high rates of conversion in the prairie pothole region. I know I’ll be proud to hear my boss, Julie Sibbing, describe the coalition’s efforts to include conservation compliance and the sodsaver provision in the farm bill, and the prospects for other grasslands programs.

Recruiting ranchers was a priority at this year’s conference. We know ranchers play a critical role in conserving prairie, and we’re trying to figure out how we can help them ‘keep the right side up,’ as they say. I’ll be a bit nervous, but I’m looking forward to moderating a plenary panel with ranchers, addressing how we in the conservation community can work better with ranchers around our shared goals of conserving grasslands.

Managing Resources—And Expectations

And in the breakout sessions, we have a great lineup of speakers in a wide range of topics. Experts will address beef and bison, and the birds and the bees. They will discuss managing wildlife, making bioenergy development sustainable, and new ways of rewarding more sustainable ranchers, among other topics. A second panel with ranchers will discuss details of conservation programs. There is even a panel on citizen action, including a woman from Iowa who restored her property to its natural condition as an oak savannah.

Today, tour groups are out exploring the Flint Hills—one of America’s largest intact prairies—and tomorrow night, we will have dinner at the Konza Prairie, where we will drink a beer made especially for the conference by Tallgrass Brewing Company.

I know this conference—or any conference, for that matter—won’t solve the crisis of grasslands loss. But what we can hope to accomplish is to pull together the leaders of all the various groups and agencies who will be part of the solution, and develop new and additional strategies that will help solve or slow the crisis. I know that I for one am thirsty for inspiration and ideas on how we can save America’s grasslands.

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How Grasslands Affect Climate Change

Ben Larson — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 12:33:24 +0000

Watching President Obama roll up his sleeves, mop his brow, and get serious about climate change, I was heartened to have read that one of the specifics will involve grasses.

Sunset over coastal grasses. Photo by Cas Galiszewski, National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant.

Admittedly, they may not be one of the most charismatic or showy ecosystems, but grasslands have an important role to play in reducing atmospheric carbon. Stitched together by grasses with roots up to eight feet deep (see photo of switchgrass and its roots), grasslands suck significant amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere, and store it for decades, even centuries, in the soil. This is how the soils of Iowa got so famously fertile.

Those swaths of grass are also where most of the country’s ducks and many birds nest, especially where there are water sources like “prairie potholes” nearby.

Tackling Cimate Change and Restoring the Landscape

Switchgrass and roots.

So I was delighted to read that Obama is pledging his administration to “identify new approaches to protect and restore our forests, as well as other critical landscapes including grasslands and wetlands, in the face of a changing climate.”

Certainly towering but far-off tropical forests have a key role in storing carbon, but I am glad Obama also sees the need to save our deep-rooted grasslands here at home. About 40% of America used to be grasslands. But now almost all of the wetter, tallgrass prairies have been plowed under to grow crops. We have less than 3% of the tallgrass prairies that used to be cover most of Illinois, Iowa and the eastern parts of the Dakotas and NE.

I don’t mean to be one of those of people who always see the downside in any situation, but as happy as I am with the inclusion of grasslands in Obama’s plan, I must point out that some Obama administration’s policies, at least to date, haven’t been helpful in protecting grasslands. So as we roll up our sleeves and get serious about climate change, I humbly suggest that we’ll also need to look a bit in the mirror.

Because the truth is that since 2007 we have lost more than 20 million of acres of native and planted grasslands—an area the size of Indiana—through the conversion of grasslands to grow crops. These are the highest rates of grassland plowing since the Dust Bowl. To protect grasslands, we need to acknowledge that we’re losing them at historic rates, and then look to—yes, the root causes—of why we’re losing so many so fast.

From Grasses to Crops

So what is driving farmers to convert grasslands to croplands? There is no single cause, but there are a handful of main ones. Many think that the Renewable Fuel Standard (“RFS”), which is consuming about 40% of the corn crop and is pushing up crop prices, is a main driver of grassland conversion.

Three species of ducks are visible in this photo by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Randy Shipley.

There’s another perverse incentive in federal policy, too. Farmers can get federally-subsidized crop insurance on crops they grow on converted grasslands, even though these are often the most marginal and risky soils.

Farmers who do want to conserve their grasslands are undercut by a lack of funding for Farm Bill conservation programs, particularly easements for grassland areas and recent deep cuts to the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).

And lastly, the EPA has not been ensuring that corn used to make ethanol wasn’t grown on converted native prairie—which the RFS prohibits.

I’d love it if one of Obama’s legacies is the protection and even restoration of millions of acres of grasslands. In a few doable steps, he certainly can make a meaningful, even historic contribution to protecting the grasslands, and help us reduce climate pollution 17% from 2005 levels.

The USDA can also put needed resources behind working with private landowners and the Fish and Wildlife Service to conserve remaining grasslands.

And for its part, the EPA can enforce the RFS’ prohibition against growing biofuel crops on lands that hadn’t yet been converted to agriculture by 2007, as the law requires.

Obama rightly praised America ingenuity in reducing our emissions and the threat of climate change. Once America is committed to doing so, protecting our grasslands should be no sweat.

Speak up for migratory birds and other wildlife—tell President Obama you reductions in carbon pollution today>>

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