Trump's ag secretary scheduled to appoint BHNF resource committee

So, after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Hulett, Wyoming-based Neiman Enterprises closed its Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch announcing layoffs and production cutbacks while blaming the US Forest Service. Neiman bought an Oregon mill in 2020 but lumber prices are depressed as wildfire salvage floods markets. 

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the Black Hills National Forest who attended a roundtable discussion last March in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's lone US Representative Dusty Johnson who sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Cochrane was the sixth different leader in 2023 alone and 11th in the past seven years. Mertz told an interested party in July, 2024 that the Allowable Sale Quantity or ASQ on the BHNF should be about 40,000 hundred cubic feet (CCF) and that the mill in Spearditch will also close. One cubic foot of lumber is six board feet.

Today, the Black Hills Resource Advisory Committee is struggling to fill its fifteen seats after announcing requests for members in early December, 2024. Category A delegates primarily work with people in the logging, grazing and extractive industries. Category B representatives collaborate with watershed associations, environmental groups, archaeologists and hunters. Category C commissioners liaise with state and local government officials, tribal leaders, citizen groups and people involved in education. 

Applications are due 3 February; RAC applicants must live in South Dakota, preferably in Pennington County, Custer County or Lawrence County but because a Republican Earth hater has been nominated to become the next agriculture secretary and if DonOld Trump is actually inaugurated Democrats will find themselves locked out of selections for the posts.

It’s unclear what is ahead for these protection efforts as the incoming advisors to president-elect Donald Trump are recommending he waive environmental reviews to boost mining of rare earth elements according to reporting from Reuters. Lilias Jarding said the Black Hills Clean [W]ater Alliance will have to be ready to respond in real time if there are any proposals. The area is considered a sacred landscape and traditional spiritual homeland by the Oceti Sakowin but also many neighboring tribes: Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Crow Tribes. There are places within the Black Hills that are sacred to all these tribes, including the lands of the withdrawn area. [Water protection was made possible by diverse grass roots efforts]

The Black Hills National Forest Advisory Board is scheduled to meet on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday the grassland fire danger in Fall River County will return to the high category.