Do I want to listen to podcasts about parasitic wasps that take over the bodies of crabs?

Or about an island off the coast of Brazil where an estimated 4,000 snakes live?

Yeah, no.

Do I do it though?

Call it a mother’s love.

When your kid is obsessed with animals, you listen, watch and read books on all sorts of wildlife. As you can guess, I prefer the cute kind… he does not.

While it’s fun to learn weird animal facts, my son gets bummed when he finds out some animals are endangered—whether it’s from illegal hunting, urban sprawl or deforestation in Brazil, home to 10% of the world’s known species, for agricultural use.

That last part is at odds with his other love: farming.

That’s why my husband and I assure him, on our family farm, we implement conservation practices that bring in wildlife.

The native grasses we’ve planted through the Conservation Reserve Program make great habitat for pheasants. We also planted prairie strips last year and maintain grassed waterways, where animals, like deer, like to bed down.  

And honestly, these practices aren’t unique to our farm.

Farmers across Iowa have long embraced conservation, and the results speak for themselves.

In the northeast corner of our state, the number of streams with self-supporting trout populations is up 12-fold over the past 36 years in part through farmers’ water quality efforts.

And Iowa farmers have restored 315,000 football fields worth of wetlands—a common habitat for ducks and amphibians.

All these efforts and more have accumulated into impressive national rankings for Iowa farmers:
  • #1 in Conservation Reserve Program Acres for Wildlife Enhancement
  • #1 in pollinator habitat
  • #1 in buffers, waterways and contour grass strips
  • #2 in prairie strips
  • #3 in field windbreaks (trees that line a property)
  • #4 in upland bird (like pheasants and grouse) habitat

While these stats won’t bring back habitat for my son’s favorite animal—the cheetah—we’re proud to protect what we can for the wildlife that do call Iowa home.

And with that big heart of his, I know he’ll keep helping us make our family farm a safe haven for wild things.

You know… like his little sister.