SDGF&P to step up cougar extermination

The ferocious face of a baby mountain lion.. pic.twitter.com/QnaRbn2NKO

— Land of cuteness (@landpsychology) October 4, 2019

South Dakota Game, Fish and Plunder (GF&P) may have been interested in science at some point in its past but like Douglas fir, lodgepole pine and as revenues collapse the eventual extirpation of mountain lions from the Black Hills looks like a given. Under pressure from the Humane Society of the United States the GF&P Commission did reverse itself on hunting cougars with weaponized dogs.

During one season a white christian trophy hunter illegally slew a three-month old, fourteen pound cougar kitten in the Black Hills. The idiot was cited for a class one misdemeanor improper tagging, which carries a penalty of fines to $1,000, one year in jail and loss of hunting privileges for a year. That particular incident is par for the course in Lawrence County where firearms and alcohol mixed with meth chasers are as common as sibling marriages.

The state Game, Fish and Parks Commission made some changes Thursday that might nudge the harvest a little higher for the 2019-2020 season that starts December 26. Commissioners added a month to the Black Hills season, so it would close next spring on April 30, rather than March 31. [KELO teevee]

The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.

Add the very high number of private inholdings within the Black Hills National Forest that make the wildland urban interface (WUI) very large to one of the highest road densities in the entire national forest system and Region 2 to lots of logging, hardrock mining and pesticides like Carbaryl then understand why over a hundred species in South Dakota alone and a million worldwide are at risk to the Republican Party.

Kill off apex predators like wolves and cougars; spray glyphosate and POEA on everything then wonder why cervids contract a prion disease like Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).

Not wolves, cougars or even coyotes: golden eagles levied a 53% mortality rate on domestic sheep on one ranch in Wyoming.

The South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks (GFP) Commission proposed a change to the way hunters would be allowed to transport deer, elk, or moose carcasses from areas that have been identified as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) endemic areas. https://t.co/D9Kgh3ZDPi

— Capital Journal (@capitaljournal) July 17, 2019