BHNF Moon Walk schedule begins with importance of fire

Logging slash in Custer State Park turned the Legion Lake Fire into a wildfire according to South Dakota School of Mines meteorologist Darren Clabo so the Black Hills National Forest will begin its Moon Walk series with talk about good fire.

May 26 – The Importance of Fire in the Ponderosa Pine Ecosystem - This walk is located west of Rapid City. Join Black Hills National Forest personnel as they guide you through portions of the Silver Mountain Prescribed Fire area. They will discuss the local fire history, and the importance of fire to plants and animals in the ponderosa pine ecosystem.

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The human-caused Legion Lake Fire represents strategic failures by Black Hills Energy, the State of South Dakota, South Dakota Game, Fish and Plunder and the South Dakota Republican Party. The absence of prescribed burns and the persistence of invasive cheatgrass in the park are just two more examples of piss-poor planning by Game, Fish and Plunder.

South Dakota's failure to sufficiently clear decades of overgrowth and understory led to the Legion Lake Fire. 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. But according to one wildfire boss it's far cheaper to fight wildfires than to burn prescriptively.

More diversity means clearing the second growth ponderosa pine, restoring aspen habitat, prescribing burns, beginning extensive Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids, engaging tribes, buying out ranchers, leasing private land for wildlife corridors, turning feral horses from Bureau of Land Management pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and electing Democrats to lead the way.