12/11/20

Weakened by a demoralized federal workforce BHNF now hiring for Biden Administration

One startup that might be emboldened by a Biden presidency is Black Gold Biochar LLC, a proposed project partner and interested party in the shuttered STAR Academy property. 
Biochar is a charcoal-like substance made by burning organic material from agricultural and forestry wastes (also called biomass) in a process called pyrolysis. Although it looks a lot like common charcoal, biochar is produced using a process that reduces contamination and safely stores carbon. [War Criminal County Chronicle]
Biochar got a boost during the Obama Administration so more applications for it are still being advanced by the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and according to a 2013 Argonne National Lab study the Black Hills National Forest is highly suitable for that type of harvest.  
When President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month, one of his first challenges will be the nearly 2 million-member federal workforce. Morale is down in many agencies after four years of attacks on the civil service from President Trump. Max Stier, president of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, says the actions and rhetoric by the president have taken their toll on the federal workforce. "There's no question that the Trump administration has diminished the value of civil service or public service for many agencies," Stier tells NPR. "And you can see that just in the morale scores of those agencies themselves." [NPR, Morale Down, Federal Workforce Gets Ready For A New Boss]
Slow-walking 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. 

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

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