SD Earth haters introducing invasive species into Black Hills streams

South Dakota's Earth hating congressional delegation obstructs attempts by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to streamline the agency as it weans support from a hatchery notorious for introducing invasive species to Black Hills watersheds and into the waters of the United States. And with the Trump Organization continuing to support the release of hybrid and non-native trout by South Dakota's Department of Game, Fish & Plunder when native species are being threatened in the Missouri River basin rainbow trout were released into Lake Sharpe.

Larry Rhoden and his other white meat supporters purport to be small-government conservatives but they're really just helping themselves instead of finding a way for communities to finance rearing for private ponds and begging the feds for more moral hazard money while pretending to be self-reliant.

Earth haters like Rhoden believe America is only great when Republican presidents are in power and revere an executive who is gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, promising to clearcut the Black Hills National Forest, pledging to mine public lands sacred to Indigenous peoples, erasing the workforce and putting septic systems in sensitive habitats all in the name of making white America great again. 

Finescale dace was the only fish identified in Black Hills streams by the Custer Expedition in 1874 but the creek chub and white sucker are also native. Brown trout are not native to the Missouri River either but recently, GF&P fisheries staffers electrofished Spearditch Creek.

To do this, a net was placed in a shallow area of the creek to prevent fish from escaping downstream. The team starts 100 yards downstream and walks upstream. Every fish is netted and a fin is clipped so that in the future, people know that it had previously been caught and migrated to other areas of the study zone. All the fish in the first 2 transplants he participated in recently swam away on their own. A sampling of Rapid Creek fish later this summer will help determine how many fish have survived. [GF&P transplanting brown trout from Spearfish to Rapid Creek]

NM Earth haters now supporting government buyouts of private land

Over a half million wildfires are started by arsonists every year in the US and if you live in the wildland-urban interface government can't always protect you from your own stupidity. 

Southern and southeastern New Mexico is home to many descendants of the Confederacy who back a convicted Republican felon as unitary executive and are quick to point fingers at the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for wildfires. So, Earth haters funded by the Koch and DeVos cabals through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund and scattered in the American West derailed President Joe Biden's America the Beautiful Initiative. Herr Trump's Interior secretaries blame wildfires in the West on “radical environmentalists” despite most acres burn on private ranch land in Republican counties. 

Today, the Seven Cabins Fire in the Capitan Mountain Wilderness has burned some 32,000 acres and is still growing but the fire itself isn't the only hazard because flooding can compound the threats to recovery.

With help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lincoln County is offering to purchase at-risk properties at pre-damage rates and demolish or relocate the houses, permanently converting the land into open space to act as a buffer against future floods. With $235 million in funding secured, officials hope to buy some 400 properties from willing sellers — a proposal that could dramatically reshape the 8,000-person town. Ruidoso is a conservative place, not one where you’d expect leaders to welcome what some Facebook commenters have deemed a government “land grab.” Now, Ruidoso’s mayor estimates that recovery could cost a billion dollars. Even with tens of millions promised in federal aid, it didn’t seem responsible, fiscally or otherwise, to keep rebuilding in areas that would flood again and again. [Lincoln County, New Mexico, wants to turn flood-prone properties into public land]

Joe in Sioux Falls

Amen

Exactly. Either convince Julian Beaudion to suspend his campaign to be the nominee for PUC, Commissioner of Schools and Public Lands or some other statewide post or urge Brian Bengs to suspend his campaign and seek the Democratic nomination for the South Dakota Attorney General race. Since Julian will come in third in the Senate race if all three stay in how is that even a choice?

Trump Organization gifts Neiman with Black Hills logging bonanza

Until recently there haven’t been 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 Earth hating 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 because they aren't focused on hardwood release, prescribed fire and restoring the Hills bioregion to what it was 150 years ago.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and the State of South Dakota’s Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR) have signed a 5-year shared stewardship agreement that expands cross-boundary forest management and strengthens South Dakota’s forest products industry. Following the initial 5-year term of the agreement, parties may then consider extension in increments of three years. [press release]

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.