East River bear at risk to Republicans, white gun nuts

If history is any guide, locals will just kill the offending bear like they do with moose, elk, cougars and their kittens.

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. The incident is par for the course in Lawrence County where firearms and alcohol with meth chasers are as common as sibling marriages.

State wildlife officers are investigating the poaching last Friday of a young bull moose believed to be the same animal that was seen and photographed during recent weeks in Custer State Park and at Pactola Reservoir. [Rapid City Journal]

The endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, black footed ferret, northern long-eared bat, the black-backed woodpecker that feeds on bark beetles and a bird that actually walks underwater - the American dipper, are just a few species at risk to the GOP. Threatened by the increased conversion of native prairie to cropland the most endangered plant in the chemical toilet that is South Dakota is the white-fringed orchid (Platanthera praeclara) found mainly in tallgrass prairies west of the Mississippi River.

Game, Fish and Plunder 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. The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money hunting and public lands grazing funnel into a region smothering under single-party rule. How would the presence of moose, wolves and bears in South Dakota not automatically make them candidates for endangered species protection?

Because Republicans are evil.

Jacquie Ermer with the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks said she couldn’t say for sure, but most likely the young bear is a male from Minnesota. The agency doesn’t have to take the bear into custody or take other action, she said. It hasn’t hurt anybody or livestock, she said. There’s no reason for people to be alarmed and no way to know how long the bear might be in the area, she said. [Aberdeen American News]

Wyoming conservation groups call for $25 billion in federal funding for public land restoration https://t.co/RDWQYNKbR4 #rewilding

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) May 27, 2020