A farmer sprays toxic pesticide on public lands. Photo © Gary Braasch Photography

In December, 2007, the U.S. Forest Service approved spraying of up to 26 pesticides and herbicides across thousands of streamside acres in one of the nation’s largest federally owned National Recreation Areas. The chemical spraying will be financed with $100,000 per year of your tax dollars paid to two Kentucky farmers. The farmers will grow genetically engineered corn and soybeans in prime wildlife habitat located on the 170,000-acre Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area (LBL).

Help FSEEE stop the use of tax subsidies and toxic chemicals to grow genetically modified corn and soybean on federal recreation areas and wildlife refuges. A private foundation has offered to match the first $10,000 in donations for this appeal so your gift will go twice as far!

Last year, in the first ever lawsuit challenging commercial farming and its use of pesticides on federal land, FSEEE forced the Forest Service to make public the extent of its chemical use and farming of genetically modified crops.

Now that we’ve forced the issue out into the open, FSEEE is preparing its second legal challenge. We will seek a court order that National Recreation Areas do not qualify for farm subsidy payments.

It makes no sense to give tax dollars to farmers to degrade the environmental quality of our nation’s finest federally owned recreation and wildlife lands.

FSEEE was first alerted to this scam by the husband-and-wife team of Paul Schaefer and Daphne Sewing. Paul, who passed away recently after a long illness, was an environmental specialist for the Forest Service. He and Daphne, a Forest Service environmental educator, transferred to Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area after Congress passed the 1998 LBL Protection Act. That law set in place a new and environmentally progressive mandate for this national treasure. The Act directed the Forest Service “to provide public recreational opportunities; conserve fish and wildlife in their habitat; and to provide for diversity of native and desirable non-native plants, animals, opportunities for hunting and fishing, and environmental education.”

LBL is ecologically unique. It is one of the largest nature preserves east of the Mississippi and the nation’s largest in-land peninsula. Located on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, LBL lies at the intersection of the east’s hardwood forests and the Great Plains to the west. Here’s how the State of Kentucky described LBL in 1997, while Congress was considering its fate.

Nearly two million people a year visit the Kentucky portion of Land Between The Lakes. In fact, it is Kentucky’s number two tourist destination. They come to see and learn about such national symbols as the wild turkey, the bald eagle and the American bison. There are more than 1600 species of plants and animals…. This is a place where any man, woman or child can see, hear, touch and enjoy nature. More importantly, it serves as a natural learning environment for resource protection and preservation. — Testimony of the State of Kentucky before the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, June 21, 1997.

But what Paul and Daphne found when they arrived at LBL was an entrenched bureaucracy unwilling to embrace the progressive environmental vision Congress mandated in 1998. Nowhere was the resistance against change more apparent than the LBL’s so-called “open lands” management.

“Open lands” management is the Forest Service’s euphemism for stopping forest regeneration and growth. Left to its own devices, nature grows incredible hardwood forests at LBL, including 18 species of oak — among the most diverse assemblages in the nation. Joining the oaks are nine kinds of hickories, sugar maple, beech, sweetgum, tulip poplar and winged elm.

But the Forest Service doesn’t want to leave nature to her own devices — at least not in the prime bottomlands along streamsides. The reason can be boiled down to one issue — HUNTING. In the Forest Service’s own words, “Regulated hunting is an integral part of our wildlife management program at Land Between The Lakes.”

White-tailed deer and turkeys are the primary game species hunted at LBL. Deer and turkey thrive in open fi elds, not in forests. Turkeys, especially, grow plentifully where there is lots of grain for them to eat. So to meet hunters’ demand for turkeys, the Forest Service licenses two farmers to grow corn and soybeans on thousands of LBL’s fi nest streamside acreage.

But corn and soybeans are not particularly profi table to farmers — and the Forest Service requires the farmers to leave a portion of their crop in the field for the turkeys and deer to eat. Without some kind of subsidy, LBL corn and soybean farming would lose money and cease.

The Forest Service doesn’t have any budget to pay farmers to grow corn and soybeans at LBL; and it wouldn’t look very seemly for the Forest Service to do so. In fact, the farmers are supposed to pay the Forest Service to lease LBL acres for farming, but even this nominal lease payment is paid for by “in-kind” services, such as mowing fields.

The Forest Service has come up with the following scheme: It has chosen to enroll the LBL National Recreation Area in the farm subsidy program administered by the federal Farm Services Agency. In other words, the Forest Service thinks that our federal land qualifies for crop subsidy payments.

Since the 1930s, federal law has required the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of which the Forest Service is a part, to offer price and income support to producers of certain farm commodities, such as corn and soybeans. To qualify to receive the subsidy payments, private farmers must enroll their land with the USDA’s Farm Services Agency, which administers the payment program. If the landowner leases its land, the subsidy payment is made to the person who farms the land, not to the farmland owner. But in this case, the Forest Service is enrolling federal land and leasing it to the farmers so that they can receive USDA farm subsidies of $100,000 per year.

But money alone isn’t sufficient to grow genetically modified corn and soybeans at LBL. Chemicals are needed also — lots of them. Not surprisingly, then Forest Service has approved 26 different pesticides for farmers to use on the LBL. These chemicals are used to enhance crop yields. Ironically, many of these chemicals are also toxic to wildlife — the alleged purpose for which the crops are grown in the first place.

To sum up: The Forest Service uses federal tax subsidies, intended for private farmland owners, to fund pesticide use and farming of non-native corn and soybeans on federal land in order to feed deer and turkeys for hunters.

See anything wrong with this picture? Paul and Daphne did. They appealed the Forest Service’s Land and Resource Management Plan — a plan Paul helped author. When the Forest Service denied their appeal, they came to FSEEE for help. We uncovered the crop subsidy scheme and filed suit in federal court to force the Forest Service to examine the environmental effects of corn and soybean farming, with its associated chemicals, in an environmental impact statement.

The Forest Service responded by preparing a more limited environmental assessment that ignores the real risks posed by these pesticides — risks to amphibians, reptiles and other sensitive wildlife species. For example, the Forest Service did not address the widely held scientifi c view that pesticides are a major cause of the decline in amphibian populations.

Now we are filing a second federal court case — one directed at stopping the crop subsidies on federal land. And, if farming is to continue at LBL, it should be organic farming that promotes Congress’ environmental education mandate.

When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring 46 years ago, she faced substantial criticism that the environmental dangers of DDT (primarily to birds) were outweighed by DDT’s reduction of malaria suffering around the world. Carson was sensitive to these concerns. In Silent Spring she does not call for an end to DDT; instead, she counsels for its limited and judicious use. The Forest Service at LBL faces no such dilemma. Tax-subsidized corn and soybean farming to artificially inflate deer and turkey populations is not comparable to the fight against malaria.

FSEEE seeks to end this boondoggle now. We hope you will join in our fight to ensure that National Recreation Areas remain a place where “any man, woman or child can see, hear, touch and enjoy nature” without having to worry about a stew of pesticides sprayed upon their public land at taxpayer expense.

Remember that your gift will go twice as far due to the generosity of a private foundation who will match the first $10,000 in donations! Thanks for your support!

P.S. You can make a donation to this project by clicking on “DONATE NOW!” in the upper left-hand column, then clicking on “Stop Toxic Pesticide Use on Public Lands.”