A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills are named after a murdererous war criminal.
At the courthouse in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal Patrick Pipkin and members of a religious splinter group bought a 140 acre compound for a fraction of its value in 2021 that was built in 2005 by now-jailed polygamist Warren Jeffs.
The United States Forest Service paid Custer County $166,978.15 to maintain its roads in the county that the public travels on, also known as Schedule A roads in county highway department parlance. At the Jan. 22 meeting of the Custer County Commission, county highway superintendent Jess Doyle presented an update to the commission that showed in 2024 the county spent nearly $1.7 million in county taxpayer money maintaining those same roads, showing that while the Forest Service does give the county some money—and free gravel—the cost of maintaining its roads still far exceeds what the county receives to do so. Also discussed at the meeting was the National Wilderness Preservation System, in which there is potentially nearly 7,000 acres of county land that the government is eyeing as potential designated Wilderness area. The lands are already part of the Black Hills National Forest. [War Criminal County Chronicle]
Now imagine if the county commission was landlocked within a tribal preserve where access is limited by that government instead of enjoying the fruits that the National Forest System provides to the towns in the Black Hills.
Remanding lands in the public domain to the tribal communities from whom they were seized can’t happen soon enough. But as much as this interested party would like to see a Forest and Land Management Service within the Interior Department a Trump administration consolidation will cause catastrophic damage to both the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
2 comments:
A county in Oregon will find out after fucking around with seized Indigenous lands in the public domain: OPB.
The following is a Faceberg comment by Republican former SD legislator, Alan Aker.
1. The forest service requires the timber sale purchaser to build or improve roads in the timber sale. This expense is specified as an offset for stumpage payments prior to letting bids. In other words, if the forest service says, “we think the roadwork we want will cost $100,000,” the purchaser builds the roads and deducts $100,000 from the stumpage payments, whether the actual cost is $50,000 or $150,000.
2. At least in the Black Hills, the forest service does not sell timber at a loss. Also, they cannot sell it for less than appraised value. This has meant that if an area has poor timber, steep slopes, and expensive road needs, it is not offered for timber sale, even if it would benefit more from it than other areas. I think this needs to change.
3. The Knutson-Vandenburg Act requires the forest service to spend, I think, 25% of stumpage revenue on thinning, weed control, and such. I think it should be 100%. The remaining 75% goes into general federal coffers, not the forest service.
4. Recently, the stewardship timber sales are changing this. Purchasers are required to thin timber in some areas and use stumpage from good timber to offset it. My issue with this is that the most efficient smallwood thinners are small businesses which don’t have sawmills and the stewardship idea puts the purchaser-sawmill in between these guys and the forest service. But it is a way to invest more in forest heath.
5. At peak prices in the 90s when Pope and Talbot was competing with Neiman, timber was going for double or more of appraised value and the forest service was making up to $1,000 an acre, and still leaving some good timber on the land. Now, there really isn’t much competition. Anyone can theoretically bid, but it may require a million-dollar bond and you have no guarantee Neiman will buy the logs at the price it is paying its preferred contractors.
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