Mainstreet Index again below growth neutral; South Dakota floundering

Since at least 2017 Creighton University's Ernie Goss has been warning that the Trump Organization is bad for American agriculture. Goss follows the economies of several breadbasket states including South Dakota's and banksters are freaking out as the region’s overall reading for February fell to 47.9 from 52.0 in January. This marks the 12th time that the Rural Mainstreet Index has dropped below growth-neutral or 50.0 since January 2025.

According to trade data from the International Trade Association (ITA), regional exports of agriculture goods and livestock for the first 11 months of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, fell from $11.5 billion in 2024 to $10.8 billion in 2025, for a decline of 6.6%. The February RMI for South Dakota sank to 47.2 from January’s 54.2. The state’s farm and ranchland price index fell to 45.2 from 46.3 in January. South Dakota’s February new hiring index decreased to 48.7 from 50.3 in January.

Read it all here.

South Dakota Earth haters ready for circular firing squad

Watching these four Earth haters pounding the shit out of one another is going to be a blast!

Conservation vital to Mountain West: State of the Rockies

Even red state voters are leery of the Trump Organization's war on the West.

Results from Colorado College’s 16th annual State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West Poll released today show widespread concern among Western voters about rollbacks of protections for land, water, and wildlife and cuts to funding for public land management.

The poll, which surveyed voters in eight Mountain West states—Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—found that Western voters across party lines are prioritizing conservation, recreation, and renewables over fossil fuel development heading into this year's midterm elections.

Highlights from the Poll

• ●  84% of Western voters say that the rollback of laws that protect our land, water, and wildlife is a serious problem, a sharp increase from prior years.

• ●  85% of respondents say issues involving public lands, waters, and wildlife are important in deciding whether to support a public official.

• ●  86% of Western voters deem funding cuts to public lands a serious problem, including 76% of Republicans.

• ●  70% of respondents oppose fast-tracking oil, gas and mining projects on national public lands by reducing environmental reviews and local public input.

• ●  72% of Westerners prefer expanding renewable energy over drilling and mining for more fossil fuels.

• ●  76% of Western voters—more Western voters than ever before—say they would prefer their member of Congress to place more emphasis on conservation and recreation on public lands over maximizing energy production.

• ●  74% of Western voters oppose selling some national public lands for oil and gas development.

  ● 91% of Western voters say existing national monument designations should be kept in place.

Read it all here.

Miners threaten sacred lands on purpose: part n

It’s not really South nor even really Dakota. 

Over twenty years ago Congress passed the Tribal Forest Protection Act when this columnist was still living in the Black Hills. It authorized tribal nations to enter agreements with the Departments of Interior and Agriculture to protect public resources bordering or adjacent to reservations and trust lands that have biological, archaeological, historical, or cultural connections. 

Then in 2012 the Sicangu Lakota Oyate or Rosebud Sioux Tribe raised some $10 million combined with contributions from the other members of the Oceti Sakowin the People of the Seven Council Fires purchased Pe'Sla, the property formerly called Reynold's Prairie by the descendants of white settlers. In 2014 the Nations acquired the final 437 acres of the Heart of Everything That Is and in 2015 the Oyates began moving bison to the meadow with hopes to add many more after winning federal trust status but in 2020 the herd of sixty five was removed after whining from welfare ranchers who lease Forest Service land for domestic cattle grazing for pennies per head.

Gaia targeting Olson ranch

Remember when Betty Olson said global warming is bunk because it's cold? Well, maybe she needs extreme grassland fire weather instead.

Earth hating Republicans like Betty Olson are destroying South Dakota.

Grand River Roundup

By Betty Olson

2-25-26

  Monday was President’s Day so we didn’t get any mail that day. It was a nice day so Reub and I put more firewood in the entryway for when it gets colder outside. Casey had left for Buffalo for wrestling practice with the Harding County wrestlers when Taz got the alert that there was a fire over east at the Nash ranch so Taz and Reub jumped into the fire-fighting unit and headed over there to help put the fire out. The wind wasn’t blowing hard and it was just a small grass fire. The fire headed down toward the Big Nasty Creek and the guys got it put out pretty quick. Thank God the wind wasn’t blowing like it was later in the week. Nash’s and a whole lot of other neighbors were here to help put out a fire on our ranch several years ago and we are really thankful to live in this neighborhood with so many good people here to help with whatever our problems are!

  Reub helped the guys move the cows across the highway from Coyote’ Butte to the pasture northeast of the buildings Tuesday morning because the cows will be calving soon. They brought some of the cows that looked like they are getting close to calve into the lot across the creek so they can keep an eye on them.

  It was really windy and cold when Reub and I went to Lemmon on Wednesday to meet with Attorney Jim Elsing to get the new wills he wrote for us. We asked our dear friends Audie and Wendy Brockel to come and sign the wills as witnesses for us and it was really nice to be able to visit with them a little while. We stopped in Hettinger on the way home to get stuff from Runnings but we had to hurry to get home in time to get ready for the Ash Wednesday Lenten service and potluck supper at the church that evening with communion during the service. A nice crowd came to enjoy the service and fellowship after the supper. 

  Thursday, February 19, was our son Sandy Dan’s birthday and this winter was a lot better than the year he was born in 1979. The winter of 1978 and 79 was horrible and there were weeks when the snow was so deep we couldn’t make it out to the highway to take our kids to school. We had been blocked in for two weeks when Reub got the snow plowed enough to make it out to the highway the day I went into labor. Reub took me to the hospital in Hettinger and went home that evening after Sandy was born. 

I was listening to the weather the next morning and there was another blizzard rolling in. Reub’s parents, Buck and Amy Olson, had their car in Hettinger getting fixed, so I called the garage and asked if their car was fixed yet. They said it was, so I asked them to bring it up to the hospital for me and then I packed up, wrapped Sandy Dan in a warm blanket, and headed for home after calling Reub to let him know we were coming. 

The blizzard didn’t start until I turned south at Reeder and headed down Highway 79 where the drifts on both sides of the road were higher that the roof on our house and there was only room for one vehicle on the highway. It was a struggle to make it through the blizzard and the bad road but when I made it down to the road into our place Reub and Pastor Phil Rokke were waiting to get us into the ranch safely. That was a stupid thing to do, but thank God we got home without getting stuck on the highway and it was two more weeks before we could get out again!

Wyoming Earth haters ignoring cheatgrass fix

Cheatgrass can produce more than 10,000 plants per square yard and is a major fire risk because it dries out more quickly than native vegetation. In 2021, the Forest Service, the US Department of Agriculture and the Wyoming Game & Fish Department sprayed the herbicide Rejuvra® with a helicopter on cheatgrass in a 9,200 acre area within the Mullen fire perimeter with the hopes of reducing, maybe even eradicating its presence. People recreating on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest were warned to avoid the kill zone and the compound is persistent in soil posing long-term risks to aquatic habitats through rain-induced runoff particularly on sloped or compacted earth.

In 2025 the Red Canyon Fire scorched 195 square miles of land plagued by a cheatgrass infestation so county weed and pest people argue that "without costly chemical intervention in the near future, the fire scar could convert to an unproductive monoculture of invasive grasses." But, those in the extreme white wing of Wyoming's party of Earth haters are pushing back on the cost of spraying Rejuvra®, at about $1,150 a gallon, on at least 340,000 acres in just one county.

Buffalo eat young, green cheatgrass in the spring and dormant plants but they mostly avoid it during the mid-summer seed stage when the awns are sharp and unpalatable. Wapiti or elk, mule deer and pronghorn travel from Grand Teton National Park to winter ranges throughout the region and into the Wind River Reservation eating cheatgrass along the way. But disease, urban sprawl and oil and gas development have altered historic migration routes in wonderful Wyoming.

So, irony is just another casualty of Wyoming's wildfires which have also cleared millions of acres of fences, power lines, dry grasses, sagebrush, ponderosa pine and juniper in Republican ranch country even as the Biden administration reached out to those serial ecoterrorists who rely on moral hazard to survive. But, if grazing cattle is the key to preventing wildfires why do red states suffer from near daily high even extreme grassland fire danger indices even in February? Because they're in denial about how manifest destiny is destroying the West.

ip image.

Global warming threatening Republican Black Hills town

Rapid City area fire crews knocked down a wildfire that burned dangerously close to some businesses early this morning. The fire burned right up to businesses off Disk Drive, including Pet Smart and Kohls. In all, the fire burned approximately 15 acres before being brought under control.

And.

After a stretch of cold days, our average temperature this winter has dropped 2.2°, down to 34.5°. This currently ties 1930-1931 as the warmest winter ever with 6 days to go, including today. With above normal temperatures expected this week, it’s looking likely that 2025-2026 will become the warmest winter ever recorded in downtown Rapid City history. Records began in 1888.

Daschle to host author in Brookings

Daschle Dialogues is the public component of the Thomas A. Daschle Congressional Research Study. Daschle, a 1969 SDSU graduate, served in Congress for 26 years. He was one of the longest-serving Senate democratic leaders in history and one of only two to serve twice as both majority and minority leader. Daschle’s official papers were donated to Hilton M. Briggs Library and maintained by University Archives and Special Collections, where they have become the basis for research by SDSU faculty, scholars and students. Daschle will join Meacham at the program.