drained and converted to cropland by farmers who also wished to participate in 

 the CRP program. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made contacts, supervised 

 habitat restoration activity, and arranged for payment for all bills. Financial 

 donors for the reconstruction activity and the leasing arrangements include the 

 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ducks Unlimited, Inc., and Coots Unlimited. 

 Minimal emphasis was placed on mandatory and legalistic aspects of the leasing 

 arrangements. The wetlands were not subjected to the swampbuster provisions of 

 the Food Security Act of 1985. The authors conclude that an incentive-driven 

 wetland habitat restoration program can be highly successful, but stress the 

 critical importance of the CRP in providing an initial compensation measure for 

 the withdrawal of land from crop production. 



85. Douglas, A.J., and R.W. Keim. 1988. Private drainage investment and 

 national wetlands loss. Pages 73-80 in P.J. Stuber, coordinator. 

 Proceedings of the national symposium on protection of wetlands from 

 agricultural impacts. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biological Report 

 88(16). Washington, DC. 



The authors present some empirical data and regression tests that pertain 

 to the potential efficacy of the swampbuster provisions of the Food Security Act 

 of 1985. The key difficulty in testing the basic premise that drainage 

 investment is directly related to net after-tax farm income is that no time 

 series or cross-sectional national data on investment costs is currently 

 available due to the extreme within region variations in costs. Even if drainage 

 investment is driven by a desire to maximize the net present values of the 

 farmers, the verification of a stable relation between farm income and 

 quantitative determinants of the profitability of such investment does not really 

 indicate the magnitude of the impact of swampbuster. Cross-section (State) 

 regression tests failed to reveal any stable, significant statistical relation 

 between drainage area and wetlands loss; between drainage area and the areal 

 extent of existing wetlands; between drainage area and per acre farm income; or 

 between drainage area and per capita farm income. Similar time series tests 

 failed to detect any statistical relation between farm income and drainage 

 investment. 



If nonpecuniary returns are the dominant force underlying drainage 

 investment, the swampbuster legislation will clearly increase the cost of 

 drainage investment. Hence it might have an appreciable impact on the rate of 

 wetland loss. However, the impact will not be as great as it would be if the 

 primary motive for drainage activity is maximization of the value of the future 

 net income from farming. Of course without appropriate cost data, the 

 regressions only suggest that nonpecuniary returns may be an important factor 

 generating drainage investment. 



The authors assemble National and State data that indicate that Federal 

 payments to farmers are much greater than the potential net income provided by 

 drainage. Hence their conclusion is, roughly, the opposite of McColloch et al . ; 

 namely, the swampbuster has plenty of leverage for slowing agricultural drainage 

 of wetlands when participation levels in Federal farm programs is adequate. 



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