WASHINGTON, D.C. — Most zookeepers don’t become farmers, but that’s what happened to Tom Akre when he took over a biodiversity program at the Smithsonian institute.
It put the wildlife conservation manager into a rural community, surrounded by farmers and trying to work with hundreds more to encourage biodiversity in farming areas.
“The entire time we have been neighbours in the northern Virginia region,” Akre told members of North American Agricultural Journalists April 23 at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington.
“And that community of people has supported the (Smithsonian) Conservation Biology Institute.”
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Akre is director of the institute’s Virginia Working Landscapes, which tries to find ways to encourage farmers and other users of farmland and wilderness regions to support maintaining and encouraging native plants and animals on their land.
The institute took over a U.S. Department of Agriculture research farm in the 1970s and uses the 3,200 acres to produce forages and crops to feed the zoo’s inhabitants and provide locations for the zoo’s efforts to breed endangered species.
Employees of the Smithsonian farm know many local farmers, which helps them connect with people throughout a region that crawls up the slopes of the Shenandoah hills in the Appalachians west of Washington.
Akre said he has found that the key to persuading farmers to participate is to learn from their advice and provide suggestions that fit with a farmer’s real life concerns.
“Working farmers need to be able to do things within the constraint of their bottom line. The only way … to do it is in an incentive-based framework. That’s been our experience,” said Akre.
“It’s about what the farmer wants to do.”
Farmers who find ways to encourage wildlife while not undermining their farming operations tend to encourage others to do the same thing, he added.
ed.white@producer.com
