Ground lost and gained in 75 years of conservation at Coon Creek

Excerpt

One spring morning, the back room at the local Eagles club in the tiny southwestern Wisconsin town of Coon Valley was filled to capacity with farmers, outdoorsmen, scientists, conservationists, and politicians. Over coffee and donuts, this unusual alliance gathered to pay homage to a humble element that ties together all their varied interests: soil.

Interrupted by occasional camera flashes, local and national dignitaries, including senators, congressmen, and the chief of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Arlen Lancaster, stood at the podium extolling the virtues of the soil conservation methods pioneered in the region. “Every farmer in the nation has a tie to the Coon Creek watershed,” Lancaster said. “You changed the course of our history.”

Seventy-five years ago—during one of the worst environmental and economic disasters this nation has ever experienced—modern soil conservation was born in the surrounding farmland of Coon Creek. The watershed was a living laboratory to test soil science, conservation techniques, and private-public cooperation. Then, as now, collaboration among scientists and landowners resulted in dramatic gains: In a matter of years, a denuded landscape devastated by erosion was healed. And in the process, modern conservation was invented.

FIGHTING THE “NATIONAL MENACE”

Farmers who lived …