Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

On Track with John Ragsdale

Conservation . . .

Ever since God created man there has been some type of conservation. Man was put in charge of His creation and man must be willing to stand back once in a while to see if he is doing what is expected of him.

One of the earliest forms of conservation plans, interesting enough, is found in the Bible. God gave instructions to His people who were to inhabit the land of promise to let the land rest every seventh year. That is simple enough. The land would yield what had been planted for six years, but the seventh year the land was to reclaim it nutrients it lost the other six years. That's practicing conservation before it was fashionable.

But one can look closer to home to see that in a different way our ancestors also practiced conservation the simplified way.

Back a few decades ago I was in a habit of digging through old dumps near old house sites, looking for bottles. One learned in a hurry that our ancestors a hundred or so years previous to my expeditions knew one way to keep the soil from washing away: They hauled they things they threw away to an area that was washing away! Almost all families dumped their trash in these areas, which acted as a deterrent to the water that had found a course to follow easily, and often making the wash into a gully. Many a bottle or other similar treasure was found in such locations.

Our society in the 20th century established soil conservation districts to teach farmers, and to put into practice, ways to conserving soil. It was needed, especially where row crops were planted. Many people in this area can recall when land was terraced with little levies that followed the contour of the land. This was a big help.

Another practice  a good plan for this area  was to plant trees, pine seedlings in particular. This area, once cleared for cotton and other row crops, was once more made a forestland. Cotton had moved big time to eastern Arkansas or along the flat river bottoms, that it had become a struggle for a family to plant enough to sustain their livelihood. The trees were a blessing  and this, too, conserved the soil. The trees, just as terraced-land, prevented the land from washing away.

. . . And Bureaucracy

This wasn't enough. Bureaucracy believed that farmers were not capable of conserving their land. Bureaucracy set up rules or made rules that indicated landowners were not capable or had no right to decide for themselves what they could do with their own land. But people had been practicing conservation methods for centuries.

One way extreme bureaucracy works was noted a few years ago when a law was passed to protect wetlands. On the surface that sounds good, but a property often could not do with his land what he wanted to do. Take for instance the flatlands in eastern Arkansas. Years ago canals were built to carry water from one area to another for irrigation purposes. Along the banks grew water-related plants and its habitat was wildlife that catered to such . However, the new law passed prohibited farmers from changing the land back to its previous state, or a farmer could not de away with the man-made waterway unless a permit from the federal government was granted.

President Clinton, before he left office, began to change the way timber was harvested from our national forests. If Al Gore had been elected President, the extreme conservation practices would have continued. Already plans were being made to take control from a property owners concerning forestlands  all in the name of conservation. Even this practice was opposed by some Democrats, notably Mike Ross, who was elected and still opposes such a plan.

If Gore had been elected and if he had gotten his way, more rights would have been taken away from our area's tree farmers. A farmer would not have been able to cut his timber when he wished, or worse; one may not have been able to cut firewood. It's as if one doesn't have the right to do what he wishes with his own land.

Certainly one must always practice conservation. We are God's stewards, watchers over everything else He has created. It is our responsibility, and I hope we will take the responsibility seriously. If not it will be taken away by those in power.