Trump's Forest Service expected to pick Neimans over Norbeck

Photo shot of 2002 Grizzly Gulch Fire from '59 burn: spot fire on Pillar Peak, at least a mile downwind of main fire

Dendroctonus ponderosae or mountain pine beetle predates by millions of years Pinus ponderosa in the Black Hills which only reached that region less than four thousand years ago. Native Douglas fir, limber and lodgepole pine have been mostly extirpated from He Sapa, The Heart of Everything That Is and after a century of destructive agricultural practices invasive grasses infest most of western South Dakota. The Island in the Plains has been broken for decades but the collapse of select Black Hills ecosystems has been evident since at least 2002. 

The absence of prescribed burns, the persistence of cheatgrass on the Black Hills National Forest and on other federal and state ground are just more examples of the intense lobbying efforts of Neiman Enterprises and from welfare ranchers addicted to cheap grazing fees. Instead of allowing native aspen to be restored, stands of doghair ponderosa pine (ladder fuels that feed wildfires) cover much of the BHNF.

Spurred by the Neimans the Forest Service is still planting pine in the Jasper Fire area. Much of the 2002 Grizzly Gulch Fire outside Deadwood occurred on ground owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the 60th anniversary of the 1959 Deadwood Hill Fire was just recently commemorated but because of Senator John Thune (NAZI-SD) costs of conducting prescribed burns are now thousands of dollars per acre instead of hundreds.

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 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 Dusty Johnson, Jim Neiman and the former Republican Party now the American Nazi Party. 

A divided advisory board on Wednesday rejected Forest Service research calling for less logging in the Black Hills National Forest and instead recommended more logging. On Wednesday during a virtual meeting, the group presented its recommendation to the advisory board: Instead of being reduced, logging should be increased to 181,000 CCF [hundred cubic feet] annually. Paul Pierson delivered the working group’s presentation. He works for Neiman Timber, the main sawmill company in the region. South Dakota State Forester Greg Josten chairs the working group. He agreed with Pierson. Working-group member Bob Burns was the other dissenting member of the group. As a member of the Meade School Board, he was appointed to represent local governments. He’s also a member of the South Dakota Family Forests Association and a conservation group called the Norbeck Society. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

The good news? After Herr Trump is ejected from the White House President Joe Biden's Secretary of Agriculture will take action to clear the second growth ponderosa pine, conduct fuel treatments, restore aspen and other native hardwoods, build wildlife corridors and approximate Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids.

“Wildfires 2020: Why fire is our best tool against megafires” https://t.co/RyXZFlW9ZO

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) October 22, 2020