Democrats are pushing back on Earth haters' opposition to proposed BLM rule; oil and gas leases sold anyway

Earth haters, including in my home state of South Dakota, are having (halving?)  a cow over the Bureau of Land Management's proposed Conservation and Landscape Health rule. 

Most of the vegetation on the 274,000 surface acres of BLM in the South Dakota district is prairie grassland or juniper woodlands but the trees at the Fort Meade Recreation Area are ponderosa pine and bur oak. Around Lead and Deadwood pine and oak are mixed with spruce, birch, and quaking aspen. Much of it is leased for pennies a head to welfare ranchers for grazing including some four thousand acres at the Bismarck Trail Ranch and the BLM leases land to bentonite miners around Belle Fourche, too. 

In 2002 the Grizzly Gulch Fire cleared invasive grasses from BLM ground near Deadwood.

Now, Democrats including US Representative for New Mexico's First District Melanie Stansbury are flipping the whoppers cooked by House Republicans and Koch-addicted South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem back at them.

“The actual proposed rule text actually says that the conservation leasing would establish conservation leases for a period up to 10 years for very specific purposes, which includes for restoration of land, mitigation, essentially, for conservation and restoration activities,” she said. “And then it goes on to say very explicitly, and this is a direct quote, ‘this provision is not intended to provide a mechanism for precluding other uses, such as grazing, mining, and recreation conservation leases should not disturb existing authorizations, valid existing rights, or state or tribal land use management.’ So the rule itself has already been very clear about this. It is not intended to disturb other purposes. It’s a tool to enable leasing activities on BLM lands to improve conservation activities as part of restoring intact landscapes.” [Stansbury addresses what she calls misinformation about the BLM’s conservation leasing proposal]

Yes, in 2021 while Mrs. Noem was in Texas hoeing in the cash by the boxful Democrat Melanie Stansbury buried her Republican opponent in Albuquerque.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) New Mexico State Office conducted a lease sale this week, offering 45 parcels totaling 10,123 acres within Cheyenne County, Kansas, and Eddy, Lea, and Chaves counties, New Mexico, on public lands managed by the Roswell Field Office, Carlsbad Field Office and Oklahoma Field Office. In total, 37 parcels totaling 8,596.25 acres sold for a total of $78,844,369. Information on current and upcoming BLM lease sales is available through the National Fluid Lease Sale System. [BLM Holds Oil, Gas Lease Sale]

In 2015 spurred by a nationwide initiative to protect sage grouse habitat and the first revision of the BLM Resource Management Plan in 27 years, tribes took part in a review of public properties and mineral rights in South Dakota. 

Today, the BLM and US Forest Service have bonded to protect part of the Pactola watershed but Mrs. Noem is hesitant to preserve those acres because she's getting campaign dollars from the foreign miners that want to exploit the occupied Black Hills for private gain.

Ginned up by Ammon Bundy and Margaret Byfield there’s no telling how bad the violence will get in western states.

Watt perpetuated the idea that federal lands transfer was religiously justified. This is something that, during my work on Bundyville, became more and more apparent: from the Bundys, to former Rep. Matt Shea, and beyond. People believe the Earth is here for them to use, and abuse, because God bestowed it to them to do so. For Kaczynski, he lived by his own kind of religion, too: when he was arrested, he was living in a primitive cabin in Montana, off-grid, beyond reach, surrounded by bomb parts, and all alone with his world-ending ideas. [Leah Sottile, 35. James Watt & Ted Kaczynski]

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.

ip image: Chaco Culture National Historical Park.