What Noem is thinking about sportsmen and their science.
We would like to highlight some of the biological concerns we have with the bounty program. Research, with few exceptions, does not support the efficacy of trapping programs for increasing pheasant production and populations available to the hunting public. The few studies that seem to show positive results were conducted with intensive predator control programs on a fairly continuous basis. To be successful a trapping program must reduce nest predators during the entire nesting season, must extend beyond the nesting area, and must be a professional sustained effort. The use of the trapping public on a recreational basis, even with bounty payments, is unlikely to provide the intensity or duration of effort needed to improve pheasant production on a broad scale.
Numerous studies have shown that the sustained low level removal of predators from a population often stimulates reproduction in those populations leading to higher predator densities. Additionally, the resulting predator population is composed of a higher proportion of juveniles. These unestablished juvenile predators cover more territory, increasing the likelihood of encountering pheasant nests [Black Hills Sportsmen’s Club, letter to Game Fish & Parks Commission, 2019.04.02].
The Sportsmen say habitat conservation and restoration will produce far more sustainable, long-term gains, with or without predator control:
More importantly, numerous studies, several conducted in South Dakota by State and University personnel have shown the key to pheasant success is habitat. When habitat is good, pheasants do well. Predation was highest on poorly concealed nests in a Minnesota study (Chesness et at 1968) indicating the relationship between poor habitat and low nesting success. Additionally, there was no carry over to the pheasant population the year following an intensive predator removal program. Predator removal programs might improve nesting success at the proper scale over the short term in poor habitat, but will not be successful at the landscape scale over the long term.However, well-designed habitat projects can reduce predation by 80% (www.PheasantsForever.org) leading to long term benefit. “Through the addition and management of habitat, we not only decrease the impact predators have on existing nests, but also increase the number of nests and population size in the area. This management comes at a fraction of the cost of other predator reduction programs.”(www.PheasantsForever.org).
Weather and habitat conditions drive pheasant numbers. With the proper mix of good nesting cover, brood rearing cover, and winter cover pheasant populations will flourish. Good nesting habitat mitigates the impacts of predation leading to higher production. Good brood rearing habitat provides the resources for high chick survival and more birds in the fall population. And good winter habitat protects birds from the extremes of weather leading to more hens in better condition producing chicks the following spring [Black Hills Sportsmen, 2019.04.02].
But start talking about science, and Governor Noem’s eyes glaze over. Disagree with her, and she turns her back. She’s more interested in crowning herself with more titles than actually solving problems.
Bingo. Turns out, this isn’t a partisan issue after all. Its a “lets find ways to effectively support a profitable industry in South Dakota” issue. Sometimes there has to be a little give and take to solve real-life problems.
Gun rights and property rights, like every other right, has limits. Sometimes it’s OK for the government to step in and regulate stuff to protect citizens, landowners and industries from each other.
The GOP can deny, deny, deny science until it comes down to actually solving real problems. Then they have to decide if busting every wetland, and farming and spraying every square inch of the world is really in everyone’s best interests.
TAG
2019-04-04 08:33
To be clear, I’m not anti-farming. Obviously farming is the backbone of our state’s economy, and (anglo) history. Our soils in South Dakota are a massively important and productive natural resource.
What I am against is the view that farmers have no responsibility to safeguard other environmental resources, like game animal (and other wildlife) habitat, groundwater and surface water quality, air quality, etc.
It’s not that folks don’t have the right to use their private property productively, I just question the need to completely exterminate every square inch of habitat in the process, and I question the right to pollute our drinking water as well.
Bill Kennedy
2019-04-04 10:30
The “Queen of Right” can do no wrong, just ask her.
96Tears
2019-04-04 11:01
Here’s why elected officials do dumb things like Noem’s predator plan. A few high rollers stomp around a pasture and trip on a hole or five, left by a badger or a fox or a raccoon. They notice there’s a lot of holes out there! Hell, no wonder we can find so many birds. Look at all those holes!
They complain to the landowner. The landowner complains at the coffee shop. Pretty soon you’ve got conservation officers looking at those holes and shaking their heads because the coots complaining all those holes have zero idea how pheasant populations cycle up and down, and how predator populations cycle. Most of all those holes were probably deserted for many years and are no indication of how many predators are really working the pasture.
Well, what about all those ‘coons I’m seeing along the highway at night? And those coyotes howling outside when I’m sitting on the can? Just because you can hear and see predators is not the same as a predator survey. When pheasants were thick during October-December, there were predators out there 12 months of the year working their territories.
If you’re a geezer like me, think back to when you remember the pheasant populations were the highest in South Dakota. They were two periods:
1. The Soil Bank days of the late 1950s and early 1960s that paid farmers to retire land from production for 10 years.
2. The 1985 Farm Bill when Prez Ronald Reagan (yep, the Gipper himself!) brought back the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which paid farmers to take erodible croplands out of production and convert them to vegetative cover. The purpose of the program is to reduce land erosion, improve water quality, and affect wildlife benefits.
Then the bean counters in Washington decided we didn’t need set asides anymore, so the farmers went back to plowing ditch-to-ditch, and that shot down the pheasant populations again, pushing the birds into smaller cover areas to compete for occupancy with predators. And voila! You have the situation we have today.
True fact #1 about raising more pheasants. The typical pheasant will spend its entire life within a one-mile radius of where it was hatched. If you plow up his home or run a big herd of cattle on it, Mr. Wily Pheasant will be gone along with his hens and the nesting potential.
True fact #2 about raising more pheasants. Water, food, nesting cover and roosting cover all year long. If any of those four items are gone from a pheasant’s immediate environment, no birds for you!
True fact #3 about raising more pheasants. Feeding pheasants to pull them through a hard winter might feel nice, but it’s not what wipes them out in winter. The lack of cover to withstand a lot of wind, wet snow and blizzard conditions will wipe out more birds than anything. When a blizzard hits, the birds that can’t find cover turn their backs to the storm. As the winds and blowing snow continue, their backsides get packed with snow and they flip over with their beaks pointing into the wind. That’s when their tears (not kidding) and moisture starts freezing their nostrils shut and they suffocate. March and April are notorious for blizzards like this, and you can find a lot of dead birds caked in snow with a ball of ice formed at the eyes and the beak. The bottom line is don’t expect a lot of birds to survive a big wet blizzard if you don’t have the variety of cover (grassy areas to shrubs and small trees) to block the wind.
True fact #4 about raising more pheasants. The ideal ratio to mate, hatch and nest pheasants successfully is one rooster per 10-15 hens. Remember, they all compete for the same patch of cover. More ideal nesting and roosting cover in spring, more birds to shoot in October.
And you’re correct TAG! This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s purely a biological one. And it’s too bad Governor Noem chickened out of meeting with the Black Hills Sportsmen’s Club. I would bet the vast majority of them voted for her last year and that all of them only want her to be successful in bringing back desirable pheasant populations.
Advice for you, Kristi: When they elect you Governor, you have wear your big girl pants 24/7 and listen, even if the information you’re hearing doesn’t match your uneducated beliefs. Or you can resign and give the job to an adult.
TAG
2019-04-04 11:29
^^great post, 96! Thanks for the insights on pheasant biology. It’s too bad that moneyed special interest groups have turned conservation (and science in general) into a wedge issue.
This all started with Big Oil’s misinformation campaign through the Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation, and look where we are now.
mike from iowa
2019-04-04 11:43
Noem is like many another wingnut- they refuse to get in the same zipcode with potential critics and unfriendly crowds.
96Tears
2019-04-04 12:29
As Governor, she may be surprised to learn that the S.D. Department of Game, Fish & Parks actually hires qualified, educated people to serve as game bird biologists. They have also published books on pheasant biology. And she can also find experts with doctorates in wildlife biology at S.D. State University. I think if she took a survey of these true experts, none of them would think her predator plan has much going for it, but all of them want her to succeed in increasing pheasant populations. It isn’t cheap and you don’t get something for nothing. The game birds need cover, food and water all year. There are no shortcuts.
Chris S.
2019-04-04 12:43
For some reason I can’t put my finger on, I’m reminded of Malibu Stacy from The Simpsons.
“Not a partisan issue at all”—Bingo, TAG. Notice that I didn’t mention any party labels. The issue of pheasant habitat is about paying attention the experts and doing what has been proven to work.
Saying that industrial farming practices have reduced wildlife habitat doesn’t make you anti-farming any more than planting corn to feed the world makes a farmer anti-pheasant. We’re just seeking reasonable, sustainable balance among all interests.
96 gives a great explanation, the kind Governor Noem should listen to.
Critters need cover. When there’s nothing but corn and beans, with no shelter belts, no grassy strips, no place to nest and hide and hunker down for the winter, darn few critters want to stay there, feathered, furred, or otherwise.
Maybe it’s less important to be “Sportsman in Chief” and more important to listen to lots of sportsmen and sportswomen (including the ones with those awesome degrees from SDSU) and let them formulate the best plan for preserving habitat and other natural resources.
Donald Pay
2019-04-04 13:19
I can’t figure out where she got her ideas on pheasants, unless she was reading stuff from the 1960s after the soil bank ended. Back then, there was a big push on predator control. As 96Tears points out, the research on this has been clear for decades. Habitat is the driving factor, with habitat actually controlling predation.
I never was that high on pheasants. Never liked to hunt them. It is, after all, a non-native species, and kind of a dumb bird. My prejudices aside, pheasants do provide a means to protect land and habitat, so I became a grudging fan.
TAG
2019-04-04 14:01
I’m a lifelong South Dakotan, but have never been into hunting. I very much respect what hunters represent, though. Many of them are conservatives that believe strongly in habitat conservation. That synergy has become increasingly rare in today’s political climate.
chris
2019-04-04 15:04
This is about the FLDS in Pringle, right?
Eve Fisher
2019-04-04 15:49
The idea of killing opossums is… well, it certainly isn’t ecologically sound.
“Based on a study conducted by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, researchers estimated opossums can kill about 5,000 ticks in one season. “They’re net destroyers of ticks,” Cary Institute researcher Richard Ostfeld told NewsTimes.com. Avoiding killing opossums could be a simple way of helping attack the tick population in your area.” https://www.boston25news.com/news/dont-hit-that-opossum-how-opossums-help-fight-ticks-and-lyme-disease/768984007
Debbo
2019-04-04 16:24
“well-designed habitat projects can reduce predation by 80%”
That’s huge! And 96, pheasant hunting was insane! in the 1960s, the era I remember as the Best. I do remember soil bank land too. It was very common. Pheasant habitat was bountiful.
Noem is simply making herself look stupid by ignoring really smart advice.
Daniel Buresh
2019-04-04 17:01
I’ve said this from day one. Noem is pandering to sportsman to make it appear she is doing something but this will yield very little results. True sportsmen know the issue is about habitat. A million dollars won’t do anything for the problem even if it was directed towards habitat. This is going to take a solution that probably involves the feds. After speaking to many old timers, nothing is going to change with modern agriculture practices until they feel the pain of a long-term natural disaster. Those 3-4 acre potholes in quarter of land hold enough water to keep the water table up. They provide small areas for birds to nest and offspring to find bugs to eat. Hatchlings don’t eat corn or beans, they eat bugs. As soon as a long-term drought hits, they will be plugging that drain tile and wishing they hadn’t removed those tree belts or natural grasses.
Lee Schoenbeck
2019-04-04 18:06
Interesting comments about CRP and the ‘85 Farm Bill. You’re right of course, it was the most significant piece of conservation law we have ever seen
You probably recall that Tom Daschle won his senate seat running ads attacking him Abdnor for voting for that bill.
I missed all the Republican praise and consternation about the anti-environment liberals that should appear here. Just based on facts
Adam
2019-04-04 21:16
Gov. Ranch Barbie ain’t nothing but stupid – ain’t gotta be smart to know that.
Debbo
2019-04-04 23:58
Read this, Gov. Noem. This, THIS, is how a Real leader speaks and leads.
The science avoidance is fueled by one attitude….. “infringement on landowner rights.” The prevailing politics says that government had better find alternatives to manipulating landowners, their management and their livelihoods in order to promote natural and cultural heritage. It follows the same loose screw logic that has driven wetland and water conservation in this and other states for the last 30 years to the detriment of ducks, pheasants, water quality and management and our states number 2 industry. All one needs to do is look at the most recent “riparian buffer zone” legislation to understand the resistance to doing the right thing. It is an insult to intelligence to suggest that ag landowners in their entirety are the best stewards of natural resources to be found. Yes, there are a few but not near enough to make an honest difference and reverse the trends that started over two decades ago. Government and the public dole shouldn’t have to assume responsibility to pay these folks to do the right thing to protect marginal, highly erodable, and questionably productive lands, or remove predators in limp wristed, feel good effort that won’t achieve even short term solution; but we do. Under proposals like this and a whole bunch of others, we don’t have to talk about the totality of land and water conservation and management. We’re just refocused to debate the more narrow topic of single species decline that causes economic impacts to government sales tax and business income. The farce of this whole thing is that this state revitalizes this debate every 15 years or so without learning a blasting thing from the previous debate. Alexander the Great was spot on when he noted that “Nobody learns from experience, the follies of the fathers are lost on their sons. Each generation must commit it’s own.” If we were honestly sincere and interested in doing something right, we’d take the lessons from the soil bank era, find a way to make them permanent with conservation easements and covenants and some reasonable and rational land use regulation that actually prevents contaminants, pollution, and disease agents eutrophying waters and water ways and creating human health problems right along with habitat degradation and wildlife population declines…..
There were good reasons why Daschle criticized Abnor……. The plan wasn’t strong and it wasn’t long term………. It was a political solution to a biological/ecological problem that needed to be revised and reauthorized at an even greater cost without any long term, permanent solution. And we have what we have……… Daschle wasn’t stupid. And he didn’t believe in the wisdom of reinventing the wheel like conservative government in SD has done for the last 40 years.
Opossum eat ticks? Dang! We’d better refer HB 1242! I’ll rerun my dog billboard from last year’s campaign: “If you love Ezra, you love possum! HB 1242 ticks us off!”
Patrick D.
2019-04-06 17:31
GFP indeed has highly trained biologists who for decades have been telling PF chapters to not waste their money on predator control. The problem is Secretary Hepler doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Governor Noem. He’d rather keep his job and do whatever that takes, even claiming he can’t wait to hear “heartwarming stories of families killing skunks and raccoons”. What? Really?
Francis Schaffer
2019-04-06 18:27
Is this a rooster ‘boosting’ program?
leslie
2019-04-06 18:59
love nos. 1-4 Geezer 961
mike from iowa
2019-04-06 18:59
Back in the mid 80s wingnuts voted to give surplus ag commodities to foreign nations as incentives then screamed when Dems decided to give away excess cheese and butter to needy Americans.
JW, that was a spot on post you put up here. Truth be known, most of west river lands were never fit to be crop productive and the proof of that was the bust of homesteaders that couldn’t make it on free stolen land. Put it back into grassland, and have real soil conservation like your knowledgeable input on the soil banks. Water is life and the beginning of that comes with the runoff without chemicals from their injection into non productive farm ground…that we taxpayers pay and pay for. Stop overgrazing the grasslands as well. That will bring back the grouse. I remember, in my youth, walking the grassland near Wood, South Dakota. Great walking and great hunting. No nothing GNoem needs to just ask an old hunter how it used to be and what the ground looked like in those days. If the NRA was actually worth a damn, it would promote the ground on which hunting is done, instead of being in the pocket of Russia and her servants.
Brian
2019-04-07 11:14
I just want to take a moment and thank @96Tears for the education. Seems like this kind of knowledge would help Noem to make a different decision.
Seriously, thank you.
Bingo. Turns out, this isn’t a partisan issue after all. Its a “lets find ways to effectively support a profitable industry in South Dakota” issue. Sometimes there has to be a little give and take to solve real-life problems.
Gun rights and property rights, like every other right, has limits. Sometimes it’s OK for the government to step in and regulate stuff to protect citizens, landowners and industries from each other.
The GOP can deny, deny, deny science until it comes down to actually solving real problems. Then they have to decide if busting every wetland, and farming and spraying every square inch of the world is really in everyone’s best interests.
To be clear, I’m not anti-farming. Obviously farming is the backbone of our state’s economy, and (anglo) history. Our soils in South Dakota are a massively important and productive natural resource.
What I am against is the view that farmers have no responsibility to safeguard other environmental resources, like game animal (and other wildlife) habitat, groundwater and surface water quality, air quality, etc.
It’s not that folks don’t have the right to use their private property productively, I just question the need to completely exterminate every square inch of habitat in the process, and I question the right to pollute our drinking water as well.
The “Queen of Right” can do no wrong, just ask her.
Here’s why elected officials do dumb things like Noem’s predator plan. A few high rollers stomp around a pasture and trip on a hole or five, left by a badger or a fox or a raccoon. They notice there’s a lot of holes out there! Hell, no wonder we can find so many birds. Look at all those holes!
They complain to the landowner. The landowner complains at the coffee shop. Pretty soon you’ve got conservation officers looking at those holes and shaking their heads because the coots complaining all those holes have zero idea how pheasant populations cycle up and down, and how predator populations cycle. Most of all those holes were probably deserted for many years and are no indication of how many predators are really working the pasture.
Well, what about all those ‘coons I’m seeing along the highway at night? And those coyotes howling outside when I’m sitting on the can? Just because you can hear and see predators is not the same as a predator survey. When pheasants were thick during October-December, there were predators out there 12 months of the year working their territories.
If you’re a geezer like me, think back to when you remember the pheasant populations were the highest in South Dakota. They were two periods:
1. The Soil Bank days of the late 1950s and early 1960s that paid farmers to retire land from production for 10 years.
2. The 1985 Farm Bill when Prez Ronald Reagan (yep, the Gipper himself!) brought back the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which paid farmers to take erodible croplands out of production and convert them to vegetative cover. The purpose of the program is to reduce land erosion, improve water quality, and affect wildlife benefits.
Then the bean counters in Washington decided we didn’t need set asides anymore, so the farmers went back to plowing ditch-to-ditch, and that shot down the pheasant populations again, pushing the birds into smaller cover areas to compete for occupancy with predators. And voila! You have the situation we have today.
True fact #1 about raising more pheasants. The typical pheasant will spend its entire life within a one-mile radius of where it was hatched. If you plow up his home or run a big herd of cattle on it, Mr. Wily Pheasant will be gone along with his hens and the nesting potential.
True fact #2 about raising more pheasants. Water, food, nesting cover and roosting cover all year long. If any of those four items are gone from a pheasant’s immediate environment, no birds for you!
True fact #3 about raising more pheasants. Feeding pheasants to pull them through a hard winter might feel nice, but it’s not what wipes them out in winter. The lack of cover to withstand a lot of wind, wet snow and blizzard conditions will wipe out more birds than anything. When a blizzard hits, the birds that can’t find cover turn their backs to the storm. As the winds and blowing snow continue, their backsides get packed with snow and they flip over with their beaks pointing into the wind. That’s when their tears (not kidding) and moisture starts freezing their nostrils shut and they suffocate. March and April are notorious for blizzards like this, and you can find a lot of dead birds caked in snow with a ball of ice formed at the eyes and the beak. The bottom line is don’t expect a lot of birds to survive a big wet blizzard if you don’t have the variety of cover (grassy areas to shrubs and small trees) to block the wind.
True fact #4 about raising more pheasants. The ideal ratio to mate, hatch and nest pheasants successfully is one rooster per 10-15 hens. Remember, they all compete for the same patch of cover. More ideal nesting and roosting cover in spring, more birds to shoot in October.
And you’re correct TAG! This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s purely a biological one. And it’s too bad Governor Noem chickened out of meeting with the Black Hills Sportsmen’s Club. I would bet the vast majority of them voted for her last year and that all of them only want her to be successful in bringing back desirable pheasant populations.
Advice for you, Kristi: When they elect you Governor, you have wear your big girl pants 24/7 and listen, even if the information you’re hearing doesn’t match your uneducated beliefs. Or you can resign and give the job to an adult.
^^great post, 96! Thanks for the insights on pheasant biology. It’s too bad that moneyed special interest groups have turned conservation (and science in general) into a wedge issue.
This all started with Big Oil’s misinformation campaign through the Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation, and look where we are now.
Noem is like many another wingnut- they refuse to get in the same zipcode with potential critics and unfriendly crowds.
As Governor, she may be surprised to learn that the S.D. Department of Game, Fish & Parks actually hires qualified, educated people to serve as game bird biologists. They have also published books on pheasant biology. And she can also find experts with doctorates in wildlife biology at S.D. State University. I think if she took a survey of these true experts, none of them would think her predator plan has much going for it, but all of them want her to succeed in increasing pheasant populations. It isn’t cheap and you don’t get something for nothing. The game birds need cover, food and water all year. There are no shortcuts.
For some reason I can’t put my finger on, I’m reminded of Malibu Stacy from The Simpsons.
[pulls string]
*giggle* “Playing governor is hard!”
“Not a partisan issue at all”—Bingo, TAG. Notice that I didn’t mention any party labels. The issue of pheasant habitat is about paying attention the experts and doing what has been proven to work.
Saying that industrial farming practices have reduced wildlife habitat doesn’t make you anti-farming any more than planting corn to feed the world makes a farmer anti-pheasant. We’re just seeking reasonable, sustainable balance among all interests.
96 gives a great explanation, the kind Governor Noem should listen to.
Critters need cover. When there’s nothing but corn and beans, with no shelter belts, no grassy strips, no place to nest and hide and hunker down for the winter, darn few critters want to stay there, feathered, furred, or otherwise.
Maybe it’s less important to be “Sportsman in Chief” and more important to listen to lots of sportsmen and sportswomen (including the ones with those awesome degrees from SDSU) and let them formulate the best plan for preserving habitat and other natural resources.
I can’t figure out where she got her ideas on pheasants, unless she was reading stuff from the 1960s after the soil bank ended. Back then, there was a big push on predator control. As 96Tears points out, the research on this has been clear for decades. Habitat is the driving factor, with habitat actually controlling predation.
I never was that high on pheasants. Never liked to hunt them. It is, after all, a non-native species, and kind of a dumb bird. My prejudices aside, pheasants do provide a means to protect land and habitat, so I became a grudging fan.
I’m a lifelong South Dakotan, but have never been into hunting. I very much respect what hunters represent, though. Many of them are conservatives that believe strongly in habitat conservation. That synergy has become increasingly rare in today’s political climate.
This is about the FLDS in Pringle, right?
The idea of killing opossums is… well, it certainly isn’t ecologically sound.
“Based on a study conducted by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, researchers estimated opossums can kill about 5,000 ticks in one season. “They’re net destroyers of ticks,” Cary Institute researcher Richard Ostfeld told NewsTimes.com. Avoiding killing opossums could be a simple way of helping attack the tick population in your area.”
https://www.boston25news.com/news/dont-hit-that-opossum-how-opossums-help-fight-ticks-and-lyme-disease/768984007
“well-designed habitat projects can reduce predation by 80%”
That’s huge! And 96, pheasant hunting was insane! in the 1960s, the era I remember as the Best. I do remember soil bank land too. It was very common. Pheasant habitat was bountiful.
Noem is simply making herself look stupid by ignoring really smart advice.
I’ve said this from day one. Noem is pandering to sportsman to make it appear she is doing something but this will yield very little results. True sportsmen know the issue is about habitat. A million dollars won’t do anything for the problem even if it was directed towards habitat. This is going to take a solution that probably involves the feds. After speaking to many old timers, nothing is going to change with modern agriculture practices until they feel the pain of a long-term natural disaster. Those 3-4 acre potholes in quarter of land hold enough water to keep the water table up. They provide small areas for birds to nest and offspring to find bugs to eat. Hatchlings don’t eat corn or beans, they eat bugs. As soon as a long-term drought hits, they will be plugging that drain tile and wishing they hadn’t removed those tree belts or natural grasses.
Interesting comments about CRP and the ‘85 Farm Bill. You’re right of course, it was the most significant piece of conservation law we have ever seen
You probably recall that Tom Daschle won his senate seat running ads attacking him Abdnor for voting for that bill.
I missed all the Republican praise and consternation about the anti-environment liberals that should appear here. Just based on facts
Gov. Ranch Barbie ain’t nothing but stupid – ain’t gotta be smart to know that.
Read this, Gov. Noem. This, THIS, is how a Real leader speaks and leads.
http://strib.mn/2VnT41c
The science avoidance is fueled by one attitude….. “infringement on landowner rights.” The prevailing politics says that government had better find alternatives to manipulating landowners, their management and their livelihoods in order to promote natural and cultural heritage. It follows the same loose screw logic that has driven wetland and water conservation in this and other states for the last 30 years to the detriment of ducks, pheasants, water quality and management and our states number 2 industry. All one needs to do is look at the most recent “riparian buffer zone” legislation to understand the resistance to doing the right thing. It is an insult to intelligence to suggest that ag landowners in their entirety are the best stewards of natural resources to be found. Yes, there are a few but not near enough to make an honest difference and reverse the trends that started over two decades ago. Government and the public dole shouldn’t have to assume responsibility to pay these folks to do the right thing to protect marginal, highly erodable, and questionably productive lands, or remove predators in limp wristed, feel good effort that won’t achieve even short term solution; but we do. Under proposals like this and a whole bunch of others, we don’t have to talk about the totality of land and water conservation and management. We’re just refocused to debate the more narrow topic of single species decline that causes economic impacts to government sales tax and business income. The farce of this whole thing is that this state revitalizes this debate every 15 years or so without learning a blasting thing from the previous debate. Alexander the Great was spot on when he noted that “Nobody learns from experience, the follies of the fathers are lost on their sons. Each generation must commit it’s own.” If we were honestly sincere and interested in doing something right, we’d take the lessons from the soil bank era, find a way to make them permanent with conservation easements and covenants and some reasonable and rational land use regulation that actually prevents contaminants, pollution, and disease agents eutrophying waters and water ways and creating human health problems right along with habitat degradation and wildlife population declines…..
There were good reasons why Daschle criticized Abnor……. The plan wasn’t strong and it wasn’t long term………. It was a political solution to a biological/ecological problem that needed to be revised and reauthorized at an even greater cost without any long term, permanent solution. And we have what we have……… Daschle wasn’t stupid. And he didn’t believe in the wisdom of reinventing the wheel like conservative government in SD has done for the last 40 years.
Chris, those FLDS tails are a lot harder to chop off and take to GF&P.
Opossum eat ticks? Dang! We’d better refer HB 1242! I’ll rerun my dog billboard from last year’s campaign: “If you love Ezra, you love possum! HB 1242 ticks us off!”
GFP indeed has highly trained biologists who for decades have been telling PF chapters to not waste their money on predator control. The problem is Secretary Hepler doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Governor Noem. He’d rather keep his job and do whatever that takes, even claiming he can’t wait to hear “heartwarming stories of families killing skunks and raccoons”. What? Really?
Is this a rooster ‘boosting’ program?
love nos. 1-4 Geezer 961
Back in the mid 80s wingnuts voted to give surplus ag commodities to foreign nations as incentives then screamed when Dems decided to give away excess cheese and butter to needy Americans.
What, Patrick? Why does Secretary helper have to worry? He made his expected $250 contribution to the Noem campaign toward the end of 2018; what else does he have to do to stay on Kristi’s good side?
Related to Noem’s “riot-boosting” bill: Boston judge acquits 13 pipeline protestors.
https://www.ecowatch.com/pipeline-protestors-acquitted-boston-2554052139.html?fbclid=IwAR0_XFQ-kSEC7VNMrVWch1spswDyRq2o5xNezFyA5TxCv3i_58UT1KBgBYI
JW, that was a spot on post you put up here. Truth be known, most of west river lands were never fit to be crop productive and the proof of that was the bust of homesteaders that couldn’t make it on free stolen land. Put it back into grassland, and have real soil conservation like your knowledgeable input on the soil banks. Water is life and the beginning of that comes with the runoff without chemicals from their injection into non productive farm ground…that we taxpayers pay and pay for. Stop overgrazing the grasslands as well. That will bring back the grouse. I remember, in my youth, walking the grassland near Wood, South Dakota. Great walking and great hunting. No nothing GNoem needs to just ask an old hunter how it used to be and what the ground looked like in those days. If the NRA was actually worth a damn, it would promote the ground on which hunting is done, instead of being in the pocket of Russia and her servants.
I just want to take a moment and thank @96Tears for the education. Seems like this kind of knowledge would help Noem to make a different decision.
Seriously, thank you.