Wyoming Black Hills will be logged, grazed and hunted

Forty years ago I logged in the Buckhorn and Moskee, Wyoming areas of the Black Hills when much of it was owned by Homestake Mining Company. At that time 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.

Needing a new boogeyman the Republican Party began hating the Earth in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In 2010 after Barrick acquired Homestake it returned some Wyoming holdings to the tribes; and, after it takes responsibility for its complicity in the destruction of the Missouri River Basin it should divest of its remaining holdings in the sacred Black Hills remanding them to the owners by treaty.

In 2012, Wyoming Public Radio’s News Director Bob Beck began an interview with Senator John Bare Asso (earth hater-WY) asking the question: "Senator, why do you hate the environment?"

Add the very high number of private inholdings within the Black Hills National Forest that make the wildland urban interface (WUI) very large to one of the highest road densities in the entire national forest system and Region 2 to lots of grazing, logging, hardrock mining and pesticides like Carbaryl then understand why over a hundred species in South Dakota alone and a million worldwide are at risk to Donald Trump, Liz Cheney, Dusty Johnson, Jim Neiman and the Republican Party.

A process that began in late 2018 came to fruition this year when the state of Wyoming completed a transaction purchasing 4,349 acres of land in the Moskee area in Crook County, roughly 7 miles east of Sundance. As far as wildlife and habitat go, the property provides important habitat for 63 birds, 30 mammals, 8 reptiles, 4 amphibians and 38 plants identified as Wyoming species of greatest conservation need, including the northern goshawk, northern pygmy-owl, least weasel and the smooth green snake. “The canyon’s cliffs and snags provide habitat for the northern long-eared bat (listed as threatened),” the summary says. “Burned pine stands provide habitat for the black-backed woodpecker (petitioned for listing) and 15 USFS Region 2 Sensitive Species are known to use the site.” [State buys Moskee land]

The collapse of select ecosystems on the Black Hills National Forest was forecast in 2002 and now the entire Forest is at grave risk. Preserve the legacy pine by saving them from the Neimans, clear cut without building new roads especially where doghair chokes aspen, birch or hazelnut and burn, baby, burn.