Threatened species, Forest Service, Wyoming, warring ranchers, sheriff, politics colliding in northern Black Hills

Forty five years ago this interested party logged in the Buckhorn and Moskee, Wyoming areas of the Black Hills when it was home to some of the last old-growth ponderosa pine stands in the region. We operated a belt-driven portable sawmill powered by a John Deere tractor on private ground where I cut and skidded some huge bug-killed trees. 

In 2020 the State of Wyoming completed the purchase of some 4349 acres of private land surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest near the border with South Dakota in the Grand Canyon area near Moskee in Crook County about seven miles east of Sundance. 

It's home for 63 birds, 30 mammals, 8 reptiles, 4 amphibians, 38 plants identified as species of greatest conservation need and include the northern goshawk, northern pygmy-owl, least weasel, smooth green snake, the threatened northern long-eared bat and black-backed woodpecker. Wyoming is a fence-out state so the parcel is at risk to cattle encroaching from neighboring allotments and private property but Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge has refused to ticket the livestock owners who complain the cost of fencing is prohibitive. 

Grazing on federal lands is a privilege not a right and the Forest Service issues tickets for noncompliance but can also allow permits for trespass.

No legal fix has yet been found for the state land lease issue in the Moskee area that left two ranchers at loggerheads over grazing rights [sic]. However, Bearlodge District Ranger Patrick Champa visited the Crook County Commissioners last week to explain how the U.S. Forest Service has been working with the Office of State Lands and Investments to tackle the problem once cattle are turned out for the year. USFS does not require fencing on its leases. [Mediation ongoing for Moskee grazing issue]

Now, extended drought in the region is causing a bump in the number of pine beetles like Dendroctonus ponderosae and Ips pini so Neiman Enterprises has compelled the BHNF to request comment on proposals for commercial logging on 8,000 acres of National Forest System land four miles south of Beulah, WY and on 6,372 acres and fuel treatments on a total of 15,170 acres of NFS land on the South Dakota side of the border. 

Spearditch Republican Randy Deibert, a monetary recipient of Neiman largesse, is all for the projects even as the Norbeck Society and the group, People for Sustainable Logging in the Black Hills are sounding the alarm on over-logging on an already-stressed BHNF. 

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the BHNF who attended a 2024 roundtable discussion in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's lone US Representative Dusty Johnson who sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Cochrane was the sixth different leader in 2023 alone and 11th in the past seven years. Mertz just told an interested party that the Allowable Sale Quantity or ASQ on the BHNF should be about 40,000 hundred cubic feet (CCF) and that despite increased timber sales the closure of Neiman's mill in Spearditch is only a matter of time.