EUREKA — John Cooper, 80 years old and with a new set of knees, still rises before the sun, dons waders, sets up decoys and tries to call in ducks.

“I love waterfowl hunting,” he whispered, nestled into the cattails along the edge of a pond this fall. “The immersive experience of the hunt, learning about these ecosystems, being involved in waterfowl conservation — I love everything about it.”

“And it’s good eating if you cook it right,” he added. 

For Cooper, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement officer and former head of the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks, duck hunting is more than a pastime. It’s a passion tied to the wildlife and land he’s spent over 50 years trying to conserve. 

These days, he worries about disappearing wetlands and hopes the next generation will stop the losses.

Activists across the nation share his concern. The Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Massachusetts, released a report Wednesday saying that a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Sackett v. EPA, has stripped federal protections from 30 million acres of wetlands in the Upper Midwest. 

The ruling redefined federal wetlands protections, leaving those without direct surface connections to larger water bodies unregulated. The researchers said the decision will accelerate wetland losses. According to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the more than 300,000 square miles of wetlands that existed on the U.S. mainland several hundred years ago had already been reduced to almost half that amount by 2019.

The report says the next federal farm bill, likely to be considered by the new Congress next year, presents an opportunity to strengthen wetland protections by increasing funding for conservation programs that pay farmers to conserve and restore wetlands on their land.

Stacy Woods, a research director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the threat to wetlands is particularly severe in South Dakota, where agriculture occupies more than 85% of the land and the state has no wetlands protections beyond enforcing federal laws.

The report says South Dakota is home to about 1.9 million acres of wetlands, which is about a 30% decline from the 2.7 million acres estimated to have existed two centuries ago. 

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Cooper said he sees evidence of those losses every time he goes hunting.

Conservationist to the core

Born and raised on an orange and avocado farm in rural California, Cooper earned a criminology degree from the University of California, joined the Navy and served two tours in the Vietnam War. 

He joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Law Enforcement Division, where he oversaw habitat and wildlife protection across the Dakotas and Nebraska for 22 years.

“There was just an unbelievable amount of habitat when I first moved here,” he said. 

In 1995, then-Gov. Bill Janklow appointed Cooper as secretary of South Dakota’s Department of Game, Fish and Parks, a role Cooper held until 2007. Cooper also served as Gov. Mike Rounds’ senior policy adviser on Missouri River issues and as a senior policy adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center on climate change and wildlife management. From 2013 to 2016, he chaired the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Commission.

All the while, Cooper said, wetlands were vanishing.

“The days of when I first moved here are gone,” he said. “Those live in the heads of old guys like me now.”

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The influence of farm policy

The 1980s farm crisis was a key turning point for wetlands and wildlife habitat, Cooper said. Federal policies in the 1970s had encouraged farmers to plant more crops, especially corn, to meet booming global demand. Many farmers borrowed heavily to buy land, equipment and supplies to expand production.

The surge in planting caused overproduction, driving crop prices down. When interest rates on loans soared in the 1980s, many farmers were deep in debt, unable to repay their loans. Bankruptcies spread across rural America, forcing many farm families off the land.

In response, the federal government introduced policies to help struggling farmers. They included subsidies, programs to buy surplus crops, 10-year contracts paying landowners to leave marginal land as grass, and requirements for ethanol to be mixed into gasoline. The goal was to stabilize farm incomes and protect family farms, Cooper said. 

“But did it stop the corporate consolidation trend?” Cooper asked.

The evidence says no. Subsidies based on production rewarded larger farms, encouraging growth and out-competing smaller operations. Increasingly expensive farm equipment, seeds and technology favored big operations with better access to credit. And rising land values made expansion easier for large farms while pricing out smaller ones.

Large-scale farms operating on 2,000 acres or more now control over two-thirds of the cropland in South Dakota, according to the 2022 U.S. Census of Agriculture. Thirty years ago, large farms controlled less than half of the state’s cropland, according to a report from South Dakota State University Extension. 

The report says the number of farming operations in the state dropped nearly 30% from 26,808 in 1997 to 19,302 in 2022. The sharpest declines have occurred among medium-sized farms.

“You used to only have these small, diversified family farms – a couple of families to a section – where having good habitat was just part of it,” Cooper recalls. “Now, what you see is an industrialized ocean of corn and soybeans.”

Cooper said federally subsidized crop programs have encouraged the draining of wetlands and the tilling of grasslands, incentivizing producers to cultivate more acres.

“To be clear, I have nothing against the actual farmers,” Cooper said. “They’re responding to a system the international seed and chemical companies, biofuels, tractor companies, and other fat cats have cooked up, where production is king, and conservation doesn’t put food on a farmer’s table.”

Impacts from drain tile

Some farmers drain wetlands using underground perforated pipes, called drain tile, which lower the water table and make land suitable for farming. 

“And that water goes somewhere,” Cooper said. 

Instead of being retained in a wetland, excess water from drain-tiled fields flows into ditches, creeks and rivers. The amount of water flowing down the James River in eastern South Dakota has risen 300% since the late 1990s, according to a report by the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The report primarily blames increased precipitation.

But the report also says that “only a handful of counties in eastern South Dakota have a drain tile permit program, meaning there is not a temporal or spatial record of tile drainage in the state and thus difficult to determine the extent to which tiling may have increased flow.”

Cooper is skeptical that increased rainfall is the lone culprit. 

“Nothing on the land occurs in isolation,” Cooper said. “And things start to accumulate.”

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Farm Bureau perspective

Other researchers have attributed widespread higher streamflows not only to higher precipitation, but also urban development that sends rainfall running across concrete and asphalt into streams, expanded tile drainage systems under farmland, and the conversion of grassland to cropland, which causes higher runoff.

“Taxpayers are subsidizing rich operations to drain wetlands and plant another acre of corn,” Cooper said. “There has got to be a better way to pay these landowners for the ecological benefits their land provides.” 

The Union of Concerned Scientists not only supports increased funding for conservation programs to protect wetlands, but also tying crop insurance subsidies to environmentally friendly farming practices. By adopting methods such as cover cropping and reduced tillage, farmers can minimize harmful runoff while maintaining productive operations, the union’s report says.

South Dakota Farm Bureau President Scott VanderWal is a contrary voice, arguing that subsidies aren’t driving increased corn production. He supported the Sackett v. EPA decision. 

He attributes increased production to advances in genetics, equipment and the changing climate, all of which have allowed farmers to grow corn and other crops in places that previously weren’t considered good areas for those crops. He also said that farmers don’t drain “true wetlands” as defined by federal regulations, since doing so would forfeit federal subsidies. 

Cooper uses the broader scientific definition of wetlands, which includes ecosystems where water saturates the soil seasonally, supporting aquatic plants and wildlife.

“We’ve never agreed with John on that,” VanderWal said.

VanderWal is also skeptical that draining wetlands worsens flooding, suggesting drained land can absorb water and saying there are ways to control the outflow. 

Cooper counters that downstream flooding impacts communities more than farmland — which is insured by federally subsidized programs. There have been signs of worsening floods in South Dakota, including in June when a record crest on the Big Sioux River overwhelmed flood-control measures and devastated the community of McCook Lake. 

“We need to let these watersheds serve their purpose, as they have for thousands of years,” Cooper said. “When someone thinks their ‘private property rights’ trump Mother Nature, it sets us all up for trouble. Mother Nature always bats last.”

VanderWal said modern agriculture prioritizes conservation more than ever, with farmers adopting practices like reduced tillage or no-till and leaving crop residues on the land to protect the soil.

“This is becoming more important all the time,” VanderWal said. “People are learning.”

Why wetlands matter

Wetlands absorb and store excess water during heavy rains and snowmelt. That slows water flow into rivers, reducing the risk of downstream flooding, explained Stacy Woods, of the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

Another way wetlands help mitigate flooding is by slowing climate change, which has already brought more extreme weather to South Dakota.

South Dakota has seen two billion-dollar floods in the last two decades. Just this year, the June storms that brought flooding to McCook Lake dumped 10 to 20 inches of rain on some southeast South Dakota communities. During those storms, Mitchell and Sioux Falls recorded their wettest two-day periods since the National Weather Service began record-keeping.

“Healthy wetlands can capture and store carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would otherwise trap heat and contribute to a warming planet,” Woods said. “But when wetlands are damaged or destroyed, they can release this stored carbon as methane, carbon dioxide, or other heat-trapping gasses that accelerate climate change.”

Saturated wetland soils slow plant decomposition, and the dense plant material becomes carbon-rich peat. Wetlands cover about 3% of the planet’s land yet store approximately 30% of all land-based carbon. That’s according to documentation from the 50th anniversary of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, an international treaty the U.S. joined is 1986 focused on the conservation of wetlands worldwide.

The loss of wetlands is particularly concerning for waterfowl populations, especially in the Prairie Pothole Region, often referred to as North America’s “duck factory.” This region, which spans much of northeastern South Dakota, is one of the most important breeding grounds for ducks. The small, shallow, seasonal wetlands are critical nesting habitats teaming with the bugs ducklings consume. Yet, these same wetlands are among the most vulnerable to drainage for agricultural purposes. And pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers can kill wetland bugs.  

That’s why hunters including Cooper are concerned about wetlands, but he wants to spread the concern wider.

“You don’t have to be a duck hunter to care about this,” Cooper said. “When we lose these places, we lose a lot more than hunting opportunities, no doubt about it.”

Cooper’s message

Cooper is not optimistic about wetland conservation, citing the dominance of production agriculture and the imbalance between federal programs incentivizing production over conservation. 

“Until the feds make conservation as competitive as production, I don’t see it changing,” Cooper said. “We need incentives that reward preserving wetlands and grasslands or enforce their protection.”

He urges policymakers to recognize wetlands and grasslands as vital climate solutions. He advocates more federal support to encourage less tilling of the soil, more cover crops left on farmland year-round, and incentivizing wetland preservation over the conversion of wet areas to cropland.

Cooper and his wife, Vera, are committed conservationists, supporting groups including Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever, which work to conserve wildlife habitats. For him, hunting ties directly to conservation, providing state funding for habitat conservation and improvement through license fees and taxes.

“Hunting isn’t just about pursuing wild game. It’s about protecting the ecosystems that sustain them,” Cooper said.

At 80, Cooper acknowledges the toll of his efforts but remains steadfast.

“Vera says it’s time to kick my feet up, but she knows I can’t,” he said. “Because the wild places are worth fighting for.”

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.