Zornes: Republican micromanagement ruined BHNF

After a century of fire suppression, a decades-long moratorium on prescribed burns, a lack of environmental litigators and GOP retrenchment the Black Hills National Forest has been broken for decades. 

Wasicu have stolen the ground, plundered the resources, encouraged ponderosa pine to infest lands once dominated by aspen and sage, polluted waterways and depleted watersheds. Nine tribes have sued to force the courts to act on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management mismanagement where worker morale struggles to rebound from the terrors of the Trump term.

Slow-walking prescribed burns and the persistence of cheatgrass on federal and state ground are just more examples of the intense lobbying efforts of Neiman Enterprises and from welfare ranchers addicted to cheap grazing fees. Instead of allowing native aspen to be restored, stands of doghair ponderosa pine (ladder fuels that feed wildfires) cover much of the BHNF. 

Add the very high number of private inholdings 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 that contribute to bat mortalities then understand why over a hundred species in South Dakota alone and millions worldwide are at risk to the Earth hating Republican Party.

Craig Bobzien lasted as supervisor for eleven years but retired in 2016 when the volume of shit hitting the fan just became too overwhelming.

The first person to confront that panoply after Bobzien was Jim Zornes, an acting supervisor whose Southern drawl stood out like a palmetto in a pine forest. He was one of many supervisors to be surprised by what he found in the Black Hills. “Ya’ll got inholdins’,” he proclaimed at one public meeting during his short tenure. He was talking about “inholdings” — parcels of privately owned land within a national forest — and he was right. The Black Hills has a lot of those, thanks in part to gold rush-era land claims that predated the creation of the national forest. After Zornes came Mark Van Every, a permanent hire who walked right into the kind of thorny controversy that’s a hallmark of Black Hills land management. The position of Black Hills National Forest supervisor was formerly known as a “primo” job, said Dave Mertz, who was the forest’s natural resource officer when he retired six years ago. Now, according to Mertz, people in the Forest Service ask, “Who would want this job?” [Eight supervisors, seven years: The ‘challenging’ Black Hills National Forest]

An interested party asked Jim Zornes to comment on that South Dakota Searchlight article and his remarks were only lightly edited because English is an evolving language.

Sure, the assumptions made in the commentary hinge on the Black Hills being “unique” in their many challenges. Not so; the challenges were made from subjective assumptions by a timber industry that is cutting more than ASQ [allowable sale quantity], political micromanagement “on steroids” and a Regional Office scared to death of both of the above!

The Forest is not much different than the Southwest in character, doesn’t have near the inholdings of Southern forests and timber interests similar to the Northwest in the early 1980’s. Had retirement not been shining in my headlights, I certainly would have jumped at the chance to stay. But alas, life was contributing greater opportunities for stones unturned!

The Hills have a great group of dedicated employees who are engaged in real (REAL) Forest management, along with the other magnificent resources. The State realizes what recreation means to their economy, partners are actively engaged, and it’s just “drop-dead” gorgeous country!

Now picture this with a Southern drawl, a “Bless your heart” attitude, and you have my response….🤠🤠 [Zornes, blog comment]

Rail cars bearing logs from California and bound for Neiman's sawmills have arrived at a siding in Upton, Wyoming

ip image.