A new Environmental Working Group report shows that from 2000 to 2013, a total of $ 4.4 billion in federal prevented planting crop insurance payments went out to farmers in North and South Dakota. EWG’s Senior Vice President of Agriculture and Natural Resources Craig Cox says his group is concerned at the large amount of payouts as well as the resulting plowing up of wetlands in the Prairie Pothole region.

Cox says most of the prevent plant payments in the nation were concentrated in that Prairie Pothole area.

Cox says his group’s major concerns are that payments are going for land that shouldn’t have prevent plant coverage and that the government is encouraging plowing up of wetlands.

Cox says another concern is that the wetlands being plowed up are home to more than 50 percent of North America’s breeding waterfowl.