Mertz: BHNF a 'mess'

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. 

In June an interested party asked former acting BHNF Supervisor Jim Zornes to comment on an article appearing in South Dakota Searchlight about the heinous state of affairs on the Forest.

Seth Tupper has followed up on that piece in the Searchlight with another describing the unheard of turnover of supervisors so the blog asked Dave Mertz to comment on it. Mr. Mertz retired from the BHNF where he worked as the natural resource officer until 2017.

I’d be glad to. It’s a good article that sums things up pretty well. In short, things are a mess on the Black Hills NF right now. Last spring, Jeff Tomac, who was the Forest Supervisor, was removed from his position by the Regional Forester, Frank Beum. To this day, there has not been an explanation why. People suspect, myself included, it was because he wouldn’t play ball in the overcutting of the Forest and he paid a price for that. 

Subsequently, they have had a series of Acting Forest Supervisors. The Forest has some great employees, but they are under tremendous pressure (from the RO and WO [Regional Office and Washington Office]) to keep getting the cut out at levels that they can no longer produce. Everyone in the Agency knows what a mess the Black Hills is right now, and no one wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole. It’s just a sad situation and it’s not the fault of the Forest employees. [Dave Mertz, blog comment]

Mertz believes discussions about the US Forest Service will heat up during farm bill negotiations because for some stupid reason the FS is in the US Department of Agriculture instead of in Interior where the agency belongs.

Read the Searchlight story linked here.

ip image: Walter White appears on the bumper of a Meade County vehicle parked in Rapid City.