Managing the managers won't be enough to save the BHNF

From the Latin, manus means hand: "MANAGE implies direct handling and manipulating or maneuvering toward a desired result."

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the Black Hills National Forest who attended a roundtable discussion in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's Republican US Representative Dusty Johnson when Johnson sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Johnson has since sputtered a response to Mertz's comments about the BHNF's General Technical Report in a column written by the forest expert at South Dakota Searchlight.

My real education came as chief of staff to then-Governor Dennis Daugaard during the mountain pine needle epidemic, when I spent a lot of time focusing on state efforts. And so I think part of the question is, what do you want to manage to? Do you want to manage to 20% off the all-time peak, or do you want to manage to a different number? And Dave can say, “Oh, it’s just not out there.” That’s not what the GTR says. The GTR doesn’t say that the annual harvest target should be zero or 5,000 or 20,000 CCF. [Q&A: Johnson calls criticism of his forestry hearing ‘absurd’]

Wildland fire expert Joe Lowe even called Dusty Johnson's former boss, Denny Daugaard, incompetent and uninterested in governing. Lowe obviously believes that Daugaard didn't take the ecological collapse taking place on the Black Hills seriously enough. And, 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 and surrounding grasslands remain at risk to more blazes like the Legion Lake Fire. 

Mertz returned fire at the Searchlight's Faceberg page.

Well, I don’t think it’s absurd to think that Rep. Johnson and Senators Thune and Rounds have pressured the Forest Service to continually raise the timber cut off of the Black Hills NF. We have copies of numerous letters from them to the Forest Service to prove it. If Rep. Johnson thinks that Custer State Park knows how to better manage a forest, he needs to know they have not had a timber sale since 2018, when the salvage was done on the Legion Lake Fire. The reason the Black Hills NF continues to have timber targets of 120,000 ccf is due to the pressure that he and others put on the Washington Office and the Regional Office. That’s how it works. It has not been based on what the Forest can provide. I agree there needs to be constructive dialogue. I am going to contact his Rapid City office and see if he will meet with me. In addition, I would like to actually take him to the Forest so he can see what is going on out there. Maybe Seth Tupper could tag along. [Dave Mertz, Faceberg comment]

John Wrede studied Park Management and Wildlife Management at South Dakota State University, had a long career with SD Game, Fish and Park and lives in the occupied Black Hills. He has called what South Dakota Republicans have done to habitat, "managerially inexcusable" and also commented on Johnson's lack of forest acumen.

The man hasn't got an ecological bone in his body. And his so called forestry experience is rooted in political thinking and rhetoric no differently that his colleagues he brought to the Black Hills to strong arm the Forest Service. This wouldn't be an issue at all if business wasn't squealing and he understood ecological sustainability and the differences between even age and uneven age stand management. He uses the false equivalent of Norbeck and Black Elk to glorify CSP mangement that is completely different in legal mandate. No where does he mention Daschles work or the Burns Carter Memorandum law suit that now governs how Norbeck is to be managed nor does he acknowledge the federal agreement to treat The Forest, that portion of Custer State Park in The Needles and Mt Rushmore to protect the old growth and aesthetics in that region from Pine Beetle damage. The only thing that guy understands is money and the [weird] notion that the government has a duty to abuse public resources in subsidy to private enterprise. He isnt a student of Gifford Pinchot and neither are his colleagues in congress. [John Wrede, Faceberg comment]

Citing management responsibilities the BHNF wants to conduct fuel treatments in a portion of the Wyoming Black Hills.

The Forest Service is proposing to treat up to 8,000 acres of National Forest land four miles south of Beulah, WY, 13 miles east of Sundance, WY, and nine miles west of Spearfish, SD through mechanical and manual fuel reduction, prescribed fire, management of oak shrubs, and tree planting. The area includes lower Grand Canyon/Sand Creek, Dugout Gulch, and Boundary Gulch. Adjacent developments include historic Ranch A, Red Canyon subdivision, and the Sand Creek Country Club. The Forest Service is partnering with the Wyoming State Forestry Division, Crook County Natural Resource District, and Bureau of Land Management in an all-lands approach to managing forests in and adjacent to the project area. [Public Comments Sought for North Sand Project on Bearlodge Ranger District]

Using the word, "manage" thirteen times a Republican Lawrence County commissioner offered his two cents about the BHNF in the Black Hills Pioneer.

There aren't enough litigators to sue the Forest Service allowing Republicans to infiltrate management of the Black Hills National Forest and there is no evidence to support the claim that logging is effective insect control. Some imaginary war with the bark beetle on the BHNF is really more a fight for clean water because after all dead trees don't suck aquifers dry. 

Until forest managers and South Dakota's Republican congressional delegation get that they are being preyed upon by the Neimans to take legacy trees and leave the doghair for someone else to deal with, they won't be focused on hardwood release, prescribed fire and restoring the Hills bioregion to what it was 150 years ago.