South Dakota rancher targeted in Fall River County

In 2018 Fall River, South Dakota rancher Susan Henderson and her lawyer, Republican former SD Attorney General Roger Tellinghuisen, sued the county weed and pest board to stop the forceful use of fumigants to kill prairie dogs on her 8,000 acre property. 

Just a few miles away, boasting remote off-grid survivable spaces with two deep wells, California-based Vivos xPoint is leasing hardened shelters to doomsday preppers. In October, 2020 dead cattle were found in one of the Igloo bunkers after fences were cut on six area ranches in incidents that Fall River County Sheriff Bob Evans acknowledged were "malicious." Activist Henderson said her ranch was one that was targeted. 

During public comment at last month's meeting of the Fall River County Commission Henderson testified that she pays a shooter to control prairie dogs after the weed and pest board threatened to use fumigants on her ranch again even though she had won her lawsuit. She reminded those in attendence that poisons kill other wildlife indiscriminately then stormed out after being shouted down by one of the commissioners. 

Sylvatic plague has been confirmed in prairie dogs in the Oglala National Grassland upstream on the White River from Conata Basin and just south of the Henderson place. The disease kills black-footed ferrets, the prairie dogs' natural enemy reintroduced by officials  and biologists for prairie dog control.

Susan Henderson went to school in Edgemont when a uranium mill operated in town in the 1950s and 60s. The Fall River Rancher said there were devastating consequences. “I can remember watching my classmate’s mothers coming down with cancer because they’d gotten exposed to uranium around the area," Henderson said. Henderson’s parents settled in Fall River County in 1902 and she took over the ranch in the early 90s. She worries the project could affect her cattle operation. Henderson, along with others in the county, are asking county residents to declare uranium mining a nuisance. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

Nearly all of the 300 mile long Cheyenne River flows through Indian Country and Powertech USA, part of Canadian firm Azarga Uranium, now enCore Energy, wants to mine near Dewey northwest of Edgemont on a tributary of the river despite warnings of high risk from a securities firm. Recall that the South Dakota Republican Party ceded regulatory authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency for uranium mining after the legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies.

No doubt the mine’s principals wish ill will on Ms. Henderson, too. Texas-based enCore has uranium claims or operations in Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and South Dakota. 

ip photo: a prairie dog peers at a photographer from its burrow at Wind Cave National Park in Fall River County.