Quote:
Originally Posted by Topspinmo
I blame it deforestation of the fly over States all for corn, wheat, and soybeans.
O, also population explosion.
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I wouldn't call it deforestation, per se. More like wall-to-wall or field-to-field crops. And even crops right up to the highway. I was in Nebraska in the 1960s and there was a Federal program called Soil Bank which was designed to prevent the topsoil from blowing away as it did around 1929 partly causing the Great Depression. The Soil Bank idea was for the farmer to basically leave the harder-to-till parts of their land untouched like in gullies and near the roads. This allowed these parts of the farmer's land to remain in trees and heavy brush and thus hold the topsoil - it made for great areas for wildlife. The farmers got PAID to NOT plant these rough areas under the Soil Bank plan.
Nebraska in the 60s had large numbers of both whitetail and mule deer populations. it was not unusual to see as many as 20 or 30 pheasants crossing a highway back then. Today that has all changed. At some point, the Soil Bank was eliminated because people began to care less about the environment as factory farming took over and profits were the driving factor. The pheasant population dropped due to less bush cover and possibly the over-fertilization was bad for their eggs.
Incidentally, Nebraska has plenty of trees. It and Kansas are not all grasslands.