Make a Stand for Free Market Ranching: Support Tony Dean Grassland!

Mr. Kurtz brings to my attention commentary on another good bill Thune and the Republicans are holding hostage for the sake of more tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%. Well-traveled George Wuerthner at New West observes that S. 3310, the Tony Dean Cheyenne River Valley Conservation Act, would preserve our swiftly dwindling native prairie. Wuerthner also finds it ironic that a bill bearing Tony Dean's name would (contrary to Kristi Noem's willfull ignorance) protect existing grazing rights:

America has very little of its native prairie in any protected status. Most of the plains have been carved up by till farming, and the rest is grazed by livestock. Tony Dean Cheyenne River Valley Conservation Act would correct this by designating 48,000 acres as wilderness in the Indian Creek, Red Shirt and Chalk Hills areas of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland on the borders of Badlands NP. Walking these vast open breathing spaces reminds me of being on the vastness of tundra in Alaska. It’s a sense of freedom that is more difficult to experience in more forested terrain. As with any designated wilderness, livestock grazing will continue. This is particularly ironic since Tony Dean, who was an outdoor writer in South Dakota, railed against welfare ranchers and their impact on the state for decades. However language could be inserted into the legislation to permit buyouts of grazing privileges so that eventually bison, not cattle, will be grazing these lands [George Wuerthner, "Omnibus Wilderness Bill Likely," New West, 2010.11.29].

Welfare ranchers? Did Tony Dean say that?

Well, he let Sam Hurst say it on his website, and in reference to this very land:

Welfare Ranchers on Public Lands," Tony Dean Outdoors, 2006]

Dean himself called the no-bid grazing leases on public lands "welfare ranching" in this article. Neither Hurst nor Dean was advocating eco-socialism. They argue for ending subsidies and letting the free market rule.

The Tony Dean Cheyenne River Valley Conservation Act would create a unique national grasslands wilderness. It's a good idea. So is ending the market-skewing, deficit-widening subsidy to a handful of ranchers who plea for socialism. Why don't John Thune and Kristi Noem get that?

Remember Tony Dean: Act on Climate Change

Badlands Blue provides an appropriate reminder that Tony Dean, South Dakota's sportsman sans pareil, believed climate change was no myth:

Here’s a quote in the book from Tony about how global warming has been affecting waterfowl: “I’ve been hunting the Missouri River for 40 years, and I could always count on birds’ being here by the first week in November. But the migration has been getting later and later. Last year we saw more ducks in the closing days of the season than we’d seen at any other time in the year. Global warming isn’t some kind of nerdy abstraction; it’s what I deal with every time I throw out my decoys.”

It's not just us hippies; even a man who made his living with shotgun and fishing rod knew that we have to take care of the planet. Whether you shoot ducks with camera or 12-gauge, you should support climate-change legislation.

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Related: The National Academy of Scientists calculates that burning fossils fuels costs the United States (just our country!) $120 billion each year in health costs. That includes thousands of premature deaths from air pollution... assuming you're o.k. with putting a dollar value on individual lives.

And some of your want to use even more coal and oil?

Tony Dean Memorial: 2000 Acres of Open Land

A fund drive is underway to establish Tony Dean's Acres, a 2000-acre memorial to the renowned South Dakota outdoorsman and conservation advocate who died last October. The memorial fund has raised over $26K so far; they'll need about eight times that to move the project forward.

In the fundraising e-mail Mr. Powers posted Monday, Dean's wife Dar says, "Tony always wanted the average person to be able to enjoy the great outdoors. We hope the people who enjoyed Tony’s shows and writing will step up and enable us to do this for him.”

What more fitting memorial could we create for Tony Dean? A statue serves to glorify one person. Tony Dean's Acres will raise up all people and offer them more access to the glory of nature.

Find out more and make a donation at the South Dakota Parks and Wildlife Foundation website.

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Political note: The memorial organizers say they haven't picked out a site yet, though they envision getting some mixed wetlands/grasslands in central South Dakota. I can't help wondering: if Lake County had a suitable stretch of wildlife habitat for the memorial and the planners came a-calling, would Linda Hilde oppose the plan, saying a growing tax base is more important than providing spaces where the average person can enjoy the great outdoors?