But like on so much public ground in the West the Black Hills National Forest and US Bureau of Land Management properties face habitat degradation fraught with lead contamination from unregulated shooting plus off-highway vehicles, grazing, mining and logging. The Victoria Lake area on Beretta Road above Rapid City is a lead Superfund site in the making after decades of unrestricted shooting.
In 2022 on BLM ground south of Lead some 700 pounds of lead were recovered from the Yellow Creek Shooting Range and in cooperation with the City of Deadwood berms were reconstructed then a vault toilet, two new shooting benches, two 50-yard pistol ranges, 100 and 200 yard rifle ranges, new target stands and shooting structures to help with noise reduction were erected.
BLM Montana/Dakotas has been saturating its Faceberg page with pleas to users to end the vandalism and "trigger trash" ruining public access. There's no telling how bad the chaos will get in western states and BLM Montana/Dakotas has been seeking a replacement for South Dakota's Field Manager based in Belle Fourche.
Nevertheless, the US Army Corps of Engineers just denied a permit for South Dakota's shooting range in Meade County because the state ignored federal environmental and cultural protection protocols. But was a facility built on BLM ground ever part of the discussion? It’s been done and being done in other states if there is a need.
The Fall River Gun Club operates a range on state land about fifty miles south of Rapid City.
South Dakota's current Republican governor should simply end her war on the federal government and enter discussion with the Corps and BLM to build a firing range on public ground.
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