Okay. I just wanted to make sure.
Dr. Pearson, I am a landowner myself and involved in agriculture, so I appreciate your comments. I have always believed that we're a bit further ahead to use a carrot rather than a stick in getting participation in the conservation movement by landowners.
As you said, farmers have always been proud to be stewards of the land. They take great pride in making sure they protect the species that they get to enjoy every day on their farms.
I would suggest that the program they have running down in the States, CREP, isn't quite the exact model we want to adapt here in Canada, because I believe there needs to be more of a joint management of those lands, whereas what they're doing in the States essentially becomes “hands off”. It even becomes hands off from a biologist's standpoint.
I hear from scientists in Minnesota and North Dakota, where there are a lot of CREP lands, and essentially those lands become biological deserts. They actually become at risk because they're not utilized in any way, shape, or form. They're left to go completely wild without any utilization of the grass species.
In riparian zones, that can become a problem in itself. Because there is no competition on those grass species, undesirable species start to exist, which could essentially cause more soil erosion and have more waste products--nutrient values that are harvested and removed from the site. They get into the waterways and add nutrients, which causes greater difficulty with species recovery.
There needs to be a balance, and I think, as you said, some compensation needs to be identified. I know that a number of farm organizations have been talking for quite some time about how we go about that. So any ideas that you see working on the Canadian side versus the United States side would be worthwhile.