Hardly new, environmental racism part of lithium, rare earth mining

In 1951 after uranium was discovered in South Dakota's southern Black Hills more than 150 mines were ripped into the Earth where the Oglala Lakota once made their winter camp. Since then, radioactive tailings from those scars have been detected in Angostura Reservoir after a dam on the Cheyenne River broke in 1962. Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake. 

In 2017 Rare Element Resources said its mine in the Wyoming Black Hills just upstream of the South Dakota border on ancestral Apsáalooke and Lakota lands at the headwaters of the Redwater River, a tributary of the Belle Fourche/Cheyenne, announced financial backing from General Atomics and applied for enough water for the mineral separation process despite widespread contamination in Crook County wells. 

In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination and in northwestern South Dakota cleanup in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation. 

In South Dakota, British Columbia-based United Lithium staked some 500 claims on treaty lands, some on Bureau of Land Management ground near Pringle, where lithium bearing pegmatites are already being quarried for potassium feldspars and micas. Canada-based Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation wants to drill through the water-bearing Inyan Kara Group on School and Public Lands property in Fall River County. The project is less than a mile from Craven Canyon where pictographs and rock art of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, Ponca, eastern Dakota, and other Native American cultures are protected on the Black Hills National Forest.

Exploiting the General Mining Law of 1872 Australia-based South32 Ltd. is ripping into Sobaipuri O’odham and Hohokam ancestral lands at Harshaw, Arizona with plans to extract zinc, manganese and nickel. In 2023 Trump appointees rejected a lawsuit that would have blocked mineral exploration in Arizona's Patagonia Mountains despite the resultant acid mine drainage that puts wildlife at risk where half of all migratory birds in North America move through the nearby avian sanctuaries at Sonoita Creek State Natural Area and Patagonia Lake. 

Australian miners like Jervois Global want to gouge ore containing cobalt from the homelands of the Nimíipuu or Nez Perce at a Superfund site near the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho.

Trina Lone Hill wasn’t surprised that mining companies had found lithium in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Gold and uranium had drawn drillers to the Lakota Sioux tribe’s hallowed ground in these western highlands years ago. Now, with this new mineral powering the global green-energy transition, the tribe’s historic preservation officer had one thought: “Here we go again.” 

Indigenous communities are hard hit: Roughly one in 10 proposed mines sits within 10 miles of a tribal reservation, even though reservations comprise 2 percent of U.S. land overall. “All those minerals … are right in our sacred sites,” Lone Hill said. The pattern of sidelining tribal voices and dispossession, she added, “has always been oppressive.” In Nevada, ground zero for America’s lithium rush, Western Shoshone members, much like their Sioux counterparts, have maintained that they never ceded their ancestral land. [How the Rush to Mine the Metal of the Future Echoes America’s Colonial Past]

Learn more from the South Dakota Democratic Party.

Larson inducted into SD Hall of Fame funded in part by Earth hater adversary Schieffer

Citing discovery on Indian trust ground a Republican politically motivated acting US Attorney for the District of South Dakota named Kevin Schieffer upended local control and seized a thunder lizard named Sue in 1992 from Pete Larson and the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City. 

A team led by Larson unearthed and restored another Tyrannosaurus named Stan and created replicas of what some call the world's second-finest T. rex fossil. Stan's fossilized bones were found by amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison in the Hell Creek Formation near Buffalo, South Dakota in 1987. After a public feud and lawsuit the first Stan was awarded to Pete's brother, Neal who then teamed up with geologist Walter W. Stein Bill. 

In 2013 then-Governor Denny Daugaard appointed the disgraced Schieffer to the South Dakota Board of Regents. 

In 2019 a replica of Stan was moved from the lobby of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science to Farmington to make room for Albuquerque's new Bisti Beast exhibit. The original Stan sold for nearly $32 million in 2020 to an anonymous buyer and today is in a museum in Abu Dhabi. 

In 2022, auction house Christie's withdrew a T-rex skeleton from an event after experts, including Larson, noticed just 79 original bones and over 200 cast from Stan in the fossil known as Shen which was excavated from a portion of the Hell Creek Formation in McCone County, Montana.

Pete Larson has since co-authored and published findings from a study of the effects the Chicxulub asteroid impact had on Laramidia after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction and on the Hell Creek Formation near Tanis, North Dakota.

Today, Schieffer is a lifetime contributor to the South Dakota Hall of Fame into which Pete Larson has been inducted.

"A Visionary in Paleontology:" Operating from Hill City, SD, for over 50 years, Peter Larson heads Black Hills Institute, the world’s largest private fossil company. Internationally known for work with T. rex specimens Sue and Stan, he has authored over 80 scientific articles, shaped federal fossil collection policy, and built a collaborative community spanning business, academia, and government. Peter believes discovery is richer when done together. [press release]

Montana loses attempt to block Native voting

In an effort to reverse voter apathy in Indian Country the Montana Democratic Party became the first state party to formally include Indigenous as equitable partners. Montana is home to 12 Indigenous languages three of which are at risk of going extinct after Donald Trump weaponized a novel coronavirus strain killing many Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Montana Salish elders. 

President Joe Biden restored the White House Tribal Nations Summit after Herr Trump declared war on Indian Country and undercounted Indigenous Americans because Earth hating Republicans want citizens to believe democracy isn’t for everybody. 

American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Native American Rights Fund sued to reverse another attempt to restrict Indigenous people from voting.

A Montana district court has blocked a new state law that would have reduced Election Day voter registration hours, ruling that the measure likely violates the constitutional right to vote and disproportionately harms Indigenous voters living in rural reservation communities. The law, passed during the 2025 Montana Legislative session, would have eliminated the final eight hours of Election Day voter registration access across the state. Civil rights organizations argued that the state failed to justify the restrictions imposed by the legislation. [Montana Court Blocks Law Limiting Indigenous Voters’ Access to Election Day Registration]

Indian Country has won victory after victory by relying on protections in the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Callais weakens the safeguards guaranteed under Section 2 of the VRA, undercutting a critical tool for defending voting rights. Learn more: buff.ly/oyhcHej

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— Native American Rights Fund (@nativerights.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 3:05 PM

The SAVE Act is drawing criticism from Native American civic groups concerning its impact on Native voting rights. The bill would require proof of citizenship documents to register to vote, raising questions about whether Tribal IDs can be used. #VotingRights #NativeVote @fdnv.bsky.social

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— Public News Service (@publicnewsservice.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 12:00 PM

Guest post: free-roaming horses are unsustainable

Editor’s note: in 2018 my trail camera caught a cougar drinking at the trough under the windmill so when The Horse Shelter just east of Cerrillos reported two foals were killed a few years ago nobody was very surprised. An Appaloosa mare that foaled in 2023 showed up without it several weeks later so the logical conclusion was that a cougar took it. She just delivered again and the local herd has doubled in size hooking up with another probably from the Kewa Pueblo.

DEAR WILD HORSE ADVOCATES: You can't have it both ways

One of the biggest contradictions in modern wild horse debates is hearing people insist that every family band must remain completely intact while also arguing that inbreeding is a major concern. Those positions are not fully compatible under basic population genetics.

Family bands are social structures, not genetic management units. Long-term genetic health depends on effective population size (Ne), breeding diversity, dispersal, and gene flow (Waples et al., 2013; Hoban et al., 2021). When populations become smaller, geographically restricted, or behaviourally closed, relatedness and homozygosity increase over time because the same lineages repeatedly breed within a limited population pool (Thompson et al., 2024).

Importantly, wild horses do not naturally remain in their natal bands forever. As horses reach sexual maturity, young stallions typically disperse from their birth bands, and some mares disperse as well (Linklater, 2013; Nuñez et al., 2016). This natal dispersal is a normal behavioural mechanism that promotes gene flow and reduces close inbreeding in free-ranging horse populations (Linklater, 2013). Preventing movement between groups or restricting populations into isolated management areas interferes with those natural dynamics.

In free-ranging horse populations, most foals do not remain permanently in their natal band once they reach sexual maturity. Both colts and fillies naturally disperse, although males usually leave earlier and more consistently than females. Dispersal is a well-documented behavioural mechanism that reduces inbreeding risk in equids (Feh, 1999; Berger, 1986).

There is no single universal percentage because dispersal rates vary by habitat, density, stallion turnover, and herd structure, but studies consistently show that the majority of offspring eventually leave their natal group. Feh (1999), studying semi-feral horses, reported that dominant stallions expelled approximately 82–84% of daughters, greatly reducing opportunities for sire-daughter breeding.

Actual sire-daughter breeding rates in naturally functioning herds are relatively low, but a consequence of restricting dispersal of family bands. Berger (1986) found that only about 3.9% of matings involved fathers and their genetic daughters in a free-ranging horse population. Feh (1999) later found somewhat higher rates (~10–11%) under certain conditions, particularly when normal dispersal patterns were disrupted or when horses had prior captive management histories.

These findings demonstrate that horse societies are dynamic, not static “family units,” and that natural dispersal behaviours play a major role in limiting close inbreeding. Corona, from Sand Wash Basin, has been observed exhibiting reproductive behaviour with his presumed daughters on numerous occasions, with observations suggesting the pairings may have produced a foal.

At the same time, many advocates oppose nearly all removals, the introduction of horses from outside, and the disruption of existing bands. But if populations remain closed with limited dispersal and limited external gene flow, close relatives will inevitably breed over time, particularly in smaller herds or fragmented habitats (Hoban et al., 2021; Thompson et al., 2024).

Modern conservation genetics, therefore, focuses on maintaining an adequate effective population size and preserving gene flow, not simply preserving every social grouping indefinitely (Frankham et al., 2017; Hoban et al., 2021). Social stability matters, but it cannot replace population genetics.

You cannot simultaneously argue that:

1. No horses should ever be removed,

2. Family bands must remain permanently intact,

3. Outside gene flow should be restricted or prevented,

4. There will be no increase in inbreeding risk.

Those arguments fundamentally conflict with established conservation genetics principles.

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References:

Berger, J. (1986). Wild horses of the Great Basin: Social competition and population size. University of Chicago Press.

Feh, C. (1999). Alliances and reproductive success in Camargue stallions. Animal Behaviour, 57(3), 705–713.

Feh, C., & Munkhtuya, B. (2008). Male infanticide and paternity analyses in a socially natural herd of Przewalski’s horses: Sexual selection? Behavioural Processes, 78(3), 335–339.

Frankham R, Ballou JD, Ralls K, et al. Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Hoban S, Bruford MW, Funk WC, et al. Global commitments to conserving and monitoring genetic diversity are now necessary and feasible. BioScience. 2021;71(9):964-976.

Linklater WL. Adaptive explanation in socio-ecology: lessons from the Equidae. Biological Reviews. 2013;88(1):182-198.

Nuñez CMI, Adelman JS, Mason C, Rubenstein DI. Immunocontraception decreases group fidelity in a feral horse population during the non-breeding season. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 2016;183:13-17.

Rubenstein, D. I. (1986). Ecology and sociality in horses and zebras. In D. I. Rubenstein & R. W. Wrangham (Eds.), Ecological aspects of social evolution (pp. 282–302). Princeton University Press.

Thompson MA, McCann BE, Rhen T, Simmons R. Population genomics provide insight into ancestral relationships and diversity of the feral horses of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Ecology and Evolution. 2024;14:e11197.

Waples RS, Luikart G, Faulkner JR, Tallmon DA. Simple life-history traits explain key effective population size ratios across diverse taxa. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 2013;280:20131339.

Cresciente (dun) & Poseidon (black/dark bay)

Sand Wash Basin, Colorado, 2017 

Equus ferus- Wild Horse Photography®

Amalgamating Science & Art

Karen McLain Studio

Corps warning of low Missouri River levels as pipeline boondoggle doubles in price

Recall the fight over surplus water in the Missouri River basin when Marty Jackley blamed the US Army Corps of Engineers after the Oahe Dam dropped sediment that ultimately filled up some areas in South Dakota’s Moreau River. 

Hardly coincidentally, an Earth hating former governor of South Dakota who built a house in a swamp knowing Lake Sharpe was filling with silt sued the Corps after he was flooded out. 

Today, the Lewis and Clark Rural Water System exists because farmers have ruined their own wells and the Big Sioux River but South Dakota will flout Waters of the United States rulings until the cows come home unless or until downstream states cry foul.  

And speaking of poisoning your own aquifers Earth hating Republicans are begging for more federal money for a 165-mile, 71-inch pipeline from the Missouri River to Rapid City that will cost at least $4 billion then lift water nearly two thousand feet in elevation for lawns, Rally campgrounds and Ellsworth Air Force Base carving through Native America for white privilege instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater while rural communities are dependent on politicians who exploit need.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers says April 2026 runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, IA, was 51% of average– or 1.5 million acre-feet. John Remus, chief of the Corps’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, says dry conditions are present in 74% of the basin. He says drought conditions are expected to persist through July with some expansion likely in Montana and South Dakota. As a result, the runoff forecast was lowered by 0.7 MAF from last month. [Missouri River upper basin runoff forecast lowered due to dry conditions]

South Dakota receives zero dollars for hydropower generation but eminent domain forces transmission lines to be built so how is that in the state’s best interest? Silt deposits are the responsibility of the state so AG Jackley should sue the mining and ag industries for that runoff instead of blaming the Corps.

“'Ultimately a lawsuit was filed in 2003 [and] the federal court judge held for liability against the United States and held that they were the proximate cause of injury. That was back in 2022. As I sit here today, the United States still has not resolved that case. It has created major problems with the environment and other concerns. The United States held that trust lands that involved ranchers and native americans [sic] have no property interests. And equally so on range units – where you combine parcels of land – set up by the BIA. They ultimately determined that that also is not a property interest. So they put these ranchers in jeopardy of their farming operations by bad decision they’ve used the civil courts to drag out litigation,' said AG Jackley." [Jackley, Sullivan, Byfield speak in House lawfare roundtable]

With irony as a casuality US Senator Mike Rounds continues to push for legislative changes to the Corps' Master Manual to prioritize flood control over the threatened piping plover and endangered pallid sturgeon and demands better mitigation strategies for the Missouri River basin.