WEEKENDERS VIII

ATTENTION NORTH DAKOTA NEWS MEDIA. THE NORTH DAKOTA GAME AND FISH DEPARTMENT HAS PREPARED A REPORT ON THE IMPACTS OF OIL DEVELOPMENT ON WILDLIFE IN WESTERN NORTH DAKOTA. SOMEONE IN THE NORTH DAKOTA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE TOLD GAME AND FISH TO HIDE THE REPORT. IT GOT HIDDEN FOR SIX MONTHS. THEN IT GOT RELEASED, SORT OF, BUT ONLY TO PEOPLE WHO ASKED FOR IT. AND NO ACTION IS BEING TAKEN ON ITS RECOMMENDATIONS. ATTENTION NORTH DAKOTA NEWS MEDIA. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO START WRITING ABOUT THIS?

Update On Hoeven’s (Dalrymple’s) Chief Of Staff

(Cross-posted from NorthDecoder.com)

Did you catch this little nugget in one of (last) weekend’s papers? (Someone pointed it out to me yesterday.)

In other news, (former Governor John Hoeven’s Chief of Staff Ron) Rauschenberger told Hoeven’s office Monday he will no longer be leaving the (new) governor’s office to work for them.

“We do so much work together,” Rauschenberger said of the two offices. “This will help keep smooth, cohesive operations.”

Bismarck Teabune

Yeah, right.

I’m sure Rauschenberger is passing up the opportunity to take a big pay increase while working in a high-level position in a U.S. Senator’s office because staying put will “keep smooth cohesive operations.” Because certainly there are no other people available who could serve as Dalrymple’s chief of staff who could do the job.

I’m pretty sure, too, Rauschenberger staying put doesn’t have anything to do with these folks — or the ones who know what’s going on — being concerned about the stink from the Game & Fish Oil & Gas Wildlife Impact report cover-up wafting through the room every time Rauschenberger walks by.

Stay tuned for the next news story about Rauschenberger retiring from state employment.

“I’ve decided I want to spend more time with my family for a little while. I also have some possible other business opportunities available to me,” he’ll say.

Shortly after that, he’ll go to work for an oil and gas company. ”This opportunity is just one I couldn’t refuse.”

Either that, or they just want to wait and see if the story blows over; make sure no insiders at Game & Fish go public to talk about the report cover-up.

At least he’s only second in command in the Governor’s office for now.

(Originally posted at www.northdecoder.com)

Update On The Update On Hoeven’s (Dalrymple’s) Chief Of Staff

(or)

The Quarter-Million Dollar Mistake

As Chad points out in the post on his blog above, everyone pretty much agrees that it was indeed Ron Rauschenberger, the Governor’s Chief of Staff, who told Game and Fish Director Terry Steinwand last summer to put his study on the impacts of oil development on wildlife and its habitat on the shelf, never to be seen again. (By the way, am I the only one who liked the title “Commissioner” way better than “Director”? “Commissioner” evokes images of Russ Stewart and Dale Henager and Lloyd Jones—all three of whom would have had the balls to say “You’re going to have to fire me before I do that.”) Anyway, it’s beginning to look like a bad move on Rauschenberger’s part. He was tapped to be Hoeven’s U. S. Senate State Director. No more. A pretty costly difference. Because the difference in pay between being the Governor’s Chief of Staff and being a U.S. Senator’s State Director is somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000 a year.

Rauschenberger, as the current Governor’s Chief of Staff, is paid just under a hundred thousand dollars a year the last time I looked. Scott Stofferahn, Senator Kent Conrad’s State Director (the job on Hoeven‘s staff Rauschenberger was headed for), is paid about $140,000 a year, the last time I looked. Over the six year term of a U.S. Senator, that’s close to a quarter of a million dollars Rauschenberger is sacrificing by staying on in the Governor’s office instead of making the move to the Senate office. That’s a pretty high price to pay for “loyalty” to the state of North Dakota. Before becoming a part of the Governor’s staff, Rauschenberger was a clothing store owner in Kenmare, and a mover and shaker in the community. That’s where I met him and we became friends—we helped put together an event called “Goosefest” back in the 1980’s which I think is still being held each fall. Kenmare is not only in the heart of goose country, it’s also in the heart of oil country now. I don’t know if Rauschenberger still has family ties there, or if he or his family own mineral acres there, or not. If so, maybe he doesn’t need the money.

As for the report that he squashed, it’s been hard to find out if then-Governor Hoeven actually read it or not (if YOU haven’t read it yet, see the next paragraph). My guess is he didn’t, and the chief of staff was acting on his own. And because of that, Rauschenberger is a little too hot for Hoeven to touch right now. I could be wrong. NorthDecoder could be wrong. Somebody in the Governor’s office reads these blogs. If we’re wrong, probably they’ll let us know so we can print what’s right.

Update On The Game And Fish Report

By now you have probably read the NorthDecoder.com coverage of the covered up Game and Fish Department report as well as the one I wrote last week. I am urging you to get a copy of the report and read it yourself. I got one for a friend last week just by calling and asking for it. The Game and Fish number is 328-6300. Warning: They’ll likely try to get you to take it by e-mail. Better you ask for a printed copy. Paul Schadewald, the Deputy Director, made arrangements for mine. This is way too big a report, with way too many charts and graphs, to try to read on a computer screen. Especially when your eyes are as old as mine. Plus, it’s hard to mark it up for future reference with a sharpie or highlighter on a computer screen. Hard on the screen too. They’ll let you pick up a copy out at Game and Fish, on the east end of the Expressway in Bismarck, or mail it to you. Once you’ve read it, a letter to Director Steinwand would be in order, asking him what he is doing to protect wildlife from the impacts of oil development. That was, after all, the whole reason for the study. It’s time he went to work on it. If he already has, he’ll likely write back to you and let you know what he’s up to. My letter is going in the mail this week. I’m serious. I hope you will read the report and send him a letter too.

By the way, I have two suggestions for Game and Fish:

1. It’s probably time to remove the word DRAFT from every page now. It’s being circulated widely enough that it can be finalized.
2. If you print the pages front to back, on both sides instead of only on one side like you printed mine, you’ll save a lot of paper and postage. You are, after all, our natural resources agency.

Update on Fracking

I attended the hearing held by the BLM (That’s a government acronym for Bureau of Land Management, but my Montana friends call it the Bureau of Leasing and Mining) on fracking last week. BLM is the federal agency in charge of monitoring mineral development on federal lands, including North Dakota’s million acre Little Missouri National Grasslands. Officially it was called “Hydraulic Fracturing on Public Lands Forum.” It was scheduled as a five-hour forum, and it lasted half an hour beyond that. BLM billed it as “part of an outreach program to stakeholders” for an in-depth technical review of fracking. Topics to be discussed, BLM said in its literature “will include disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids” among other things. Well, there was discussion about disclosure, all right, but there was no disclosure. Industry officials steadfastly refuse to disclose what’s in their fracking “cocktail” and BLM doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to learn. We already know North Dakota’s oil and gas regulators don’t want to know. Remember this quote from Lynn Helms, North Dakota’s chief regulator: “We’d just bury ourselves in information doing the full disclosure thing. I don’t think people read ingredients on food they buy at the grocery store. This would just alarm people.”

Of significant note: Helms says we’re drilling 2,700 wells a year right now, and we’re on our way to having 26,000 oil wells in western North Dakota. What do you think 26,000 wells will do to our wildlife, if we don’t start looking out for the critters?

ATTENTION NORTH DAKOTA NEWS MEDIA. Oh, never mind.

On A Lighter Note.

Best Facebook/Twitter exchange of the week that I saw: Terri Finneman, Forum Reporter, reporting on the North Dakota Legislature on Facebook: “Abstinence (conference) committee still deadlocked. Will need a 7^th meeting.”

Response from Facebook friend: “I’m beginning to think they just like getting together to talk about sex.”

P.S. I know, I know, this is called Weekenders and this is only the middle of the week. We had a technical glitch with our server last Friday and only got it fixed today. Sorry.

A Visit To Pyramid Park

Colonel Clement Lounsberry is best known (and actually quite well-known by NorthDakotans) as the founder and first editor of the Bismarck Tribune, and the man who brought the news of the “Custer Massacre” to the world through his telegraphed story to the New York Herald in the summer of 1876. Six years later, at the beginning of a quiet fall in North Dakota, Lounsberry and a friend took a trip to western North Dakota, getting off the train on the west bank of the Little Missouri River at the town of Little Missouri, and The Colonel wrote one of the first really good printed descriptions of the Bad Lands that I’ve been able to find. As you will see, the area was already a tourist destination. Lounsberry’s account was published in the Bismarck Tribune October 6, 1882.

LITTLE MISSOURI – Meeting Dr. Elliot of Minneapolis, who was on a search for fossils for the academy of science, we determined to stop off at this point and spend a little time in the bad lands, visiting the Burning Buttes and other points of interest.

We found pleasant quarters at Moore’s Pyramid Park Hotel, which, by the way, will soon be enlarged and immensely improved and made as interesting as money can make it, with a view to accommodating the many who come here to hunt for game or on tours for observation. Frank Moore, the genial proprietor, will always be ready with guns or guides to make the hunt for game or the visit as interesting as possible.

The Bad Lands, for beauty called the Pyramid Park, are very interesting indeed, and at this point are seen in all their grandeur. Not only that, but they abound in game—elk, deer, antelope, and even bear, being abundant. They range from five to forty miles in width, and extend from the headwaters of the Little Missouri to its mouth. This region at one time appears to have been an immense basin covered with heavy forests, which together with an accumulation of drift, were buried by glacial action and by time converted into coal. Beds ranging in thickness from eight to twenty-odd feet are found. By some process of nature, perhaps by lightning, these beds of coal were fired and for untold ages have continued to burn, forming a series of craters of the bad lands, through which water has rushed, leaving here and there heaps of burned clay called scoria, others of unburned clay as barren as the rocks themselves, patches of slag entirely destitute of vegetation, or extensive bars or tracts of alluvial deposit on which are found the most nutritious grasses. At some points the fires were smothered, leaving portions of the coal veins intact. And here rise majestic buttes—pyramid like—from which the park takes its name.

Six miles south of the Little Missouri station are what is known as the Burning Buttes, and here may be seen the process of bad land formation in full blast. A Tribune reporter, Mark Kellogg, who was killed in the Custer Massacre in 1876, gave an interesting account of these burning buttes when on his way to the Big Horn. The Custer trail passes near it. Since then probably three hundred feet of new crater has been formed, which looks, as Sully described the bad lands—like the bottom of hell with the fires out. We stood near the brink of this newly-formed crater and heard the roaring and crackling fires, which burn not only the coal but the earth and rocks as well. The fire was under our feet. The earth had parted an inch or more here, and two or three inches there, and through the crevices here steam issued, there the flames were just beginning to creep through, and in a few days more another section will be added to the crater. Passing round to the right we found an opening in the burning mine several feet in width, the sides of which were a white heat, and from it issued flames and a strong smell of sulphur. The body of earth covering the coal is much heavier here, and as it burns and tumbles down, there will be left a huge pile of scoria or burned clay and earth. Time will fill the lower portion of the crater and make of it a rich pasture, while the mound of burned clay will remain destitute of vegetation.

Changing our position a mile or two to one of the highest points, the eye rests upon thousands of acres, covered with craters and burned buttes, as rough and broken as the ruins of a burned city—reminding one of the same.

The bad lands are drained by the Little Missouri and its tributaries. At many points along these streams there are extensive bottoms which are covered with a heavy growth of grass, a thick mat of it, probably fifteen inches in height. At some points there is a skirting of timber—small cottonwood generally, but in some instances ash or box elder, and all through the bad lands are basins similar in character to the bottoms along streams. As rough and broken as the bad lands are, they afford the best grazing lands in Dakota, and are the favorite resort of game of all kinds. They afford an interesting study and should be visited by all who seek the west for pleasure or profit.

Knowing my bias for the Bad Lands, you will understand why I think these are some of the best words ever written about North Dakota: “. . . all who seek the west for pleasure or profit.” My dad used to take us to the Burning Coal Vein north of Amidon in the 1950’s, when we were kids, and it was indeed as Lounsberry described it, fascinating and probably a bit dangerous, although I think that if you kept to a rough Forest Service walking path, you’d be okay. At that time you could actually see the glowing coals in some of the crevices in the ground. They’re out now, but the area was a tourist destination for a lot of years, and the Forest Service built a very nice campground there. As recently as ten years ago there was a coal seam still burning in the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, as I recall, but Superintendent Valerie Naylor says it is no longer burning, or at least no longer visible.

Lounsberry’s trip pre-dated the arrival of the Marquis de Mores by about six months and of Theodore Roosevelt’s first visit by just under a year. The Bad Lands haven’t been the same since.

"What I Have Failed To Do . . ."

I am sick in my heart at what I have learned and come to realize the last couple of weeks about the future of western North Dakota. Two weeks ago, there surfaced a report prepared by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department last summer on the potential impact of oil development on wildlife in western North Dakota. It was first reported on a blog, and then in a woefully inadequate story in the Bismarck Tribune. Strangely, it has been ignored by the rest of North Dakota’s news media. The report was compiled, but never published and never distributed to people in positions to react to what is going on, on behalf of our state’s wildlife.

I have read the report. It says, in an introduction, “The mission of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department is to protect and enhance fish and wildlife populations and their habitat for sustained public consumptive and appreciative use . . . This report (provides) a technical look at species specific impacts and potential mechanisms for mitigation.”

The 13 Game and Fish Department employees who authored the report outline the purposes of the document as identifying impacts associated with oil and gas activities on fish and wildlife, and those individuals who use those resources, assessing the cumulative effects of oil and gas development, and defining “possible methods of offsetting impacts associated with the oil/gas industry, with an emphasis on what is necessary to ‘mitigate’ the impacts associated with oil activities.”

There follows an in-depth look at what has happened in other states with similar wildlife and habitat which have already experienced this kind of rapid development, and how that might translate in North Dakota. That is the scariest part of the document, and I won’t detail it here—I really, really want you to read the report—but I’ll summarize it this way: In the not too distant future, western North Dakota could be toast. My words, not theirs. But an accurate summary, I think, by any lay person reading this document. The toll on wildlife will be devastating. Hunting, fishing and wildlife viewing opportunities will be severely curtailed. The tourism industry will be crippled. And the quality of life we cherish here will be severely diminished.

The report is dated June 2010 on its cover and says it was “submitted to Director Terry Steinwand,” but it was then set on a shelf and not released to the public and, at least to my knowledge, its recommendations were never acted on. Who’s to blame for that is the subject of some speculation. Certainly, in the end, the director of the Game and Fish Department is responsible for doing all he can to deal with any issue that arises that threatens our wildlife. That’s his job. From reading the report, it is obvious that what is going on in western North Dakota is the single largest threat to our wildlife resources since the glacier. The Game and Fish Department Director should be dealing with that. But the Game and Fish Department Director answers to a Governor who appoints him, and to the Governor’s Chief of Staff, who directs appointed officials to carry out the Governor’s wishes. If, and I stress if, the Governor or the Governor’s Chief of Staff gets in the way of action on an issue like this, the Director has to make a tough choice. At first blush, it looks like the Director made the wrong one.

Critics of our former Governor, John Hoeven, are quick to rush to the microphone and put the blame on him because he has spent the past ten years with a laser focus on the need for the creation of “good paying jobs” (and much of the last few years taking credit for North Dakota’s booming economy). Stifling a negative report on an industry which has delivered beyond his wildest dreams might be an accurate charge. But not one anybody is going to prove, since the Game and Fish Director has figuratively fallen on his sword on this one.

Here’s what John Hoeven is guilty of--if guilty is even the right word: He has opened wide the doors to North Dakota to the oil industry. But standing right behind him, just inside those doors, cheering as the industry drives through with its drilling rigs and trailers and water tankers, (and fat wallets) have been another 600,000 or so willing North Dakota co-conspirators, weary of studies and stories about the depopulation of the plains, the death of small towns and the closing and consolidation of rural schools. Instead, U. S. Senators and Congressmen, elected and appointed state officials, Legislators, mayors, county and city commissioners, township officers, indeed, almost all North Dakotans, are now puffing up our chests in newspaper and national magazine and network television stories about our state having not only a balanced budget but a billion dollar surplus, while our neighbors in every direction are raising taxes and cutting services. We are ALL guilty of THAT.

We’re in the Easter season, a time when the people of this mostly-Christian state reflect on sinners and saviors, a time when we bow our heads and confess our sins and ask forgiveness. Some of us invoke the words of the “Confiteor,” which I remember from my altar boy days, as our prayer seeking forgiveness for those sins, which include “what I have done, and what I have failed to do.”

Well, speaking for myself, what I have failed to do is walk outside those doors I have helped open to the oil industry, and say to them “Wait, before you come in, I want you to promise that you will be good stewards of the land on which you are about to leave a giant footprint. I want to talk to you about North Dakota values, and the fragility of our land and water, and all the creatures that walk on it, fly above it and swim in it. I want my state’s concerned scientists, who we have hired to watch over our land for us, to walk with you on the land you propose for your drilling site, and tell you it is the right spot, and that the path you will take to get there is the best one. I want you to assure me your company will hire your own inspectors who will know what is best for our land and our people, our plants and animals, our air and water, and who will diligently guard our interests as well as advocate for yours.”

I know those are the things “I have failed to do.” I fear that most of us have failed to do them. And so I cannot lay all the blame for not being diligent at the feet of our politicians. Because these days, a friend of mine says, instead of falling asleep at night with the sadness in our hearts that we live in a dying area of the country, we North Dakotans now awake each morning with the giddy eagerness of someone who has just won the lottery, ignoring all the dangers that come with instant wealth.

The Game and Fish report goes into great detail on each species of wildlife that might be affected, and each section of the report concludes with this sentence, as if it could not be repeated too many times:

“It should be understood by all North Dakotans that the jobs and revenue associated with the O/G industry could come with a very high cost to our quality of life; namely diminished hunting and outdoor recreational opportunities through the loss of habitat due to direct and indirect effects of O/G development.”

A friend of mine who is a wildlife professional reads that statement and worries that, because the money available from energy development is so huge, and environmental concerns have so far been so glaringly absent, that North Dakota will continue down a path of ignoring, or worse yet, denying, there are any adverse impacts to natural resources until an irrefutable case is made to the contrary. That, he says, is why this report is so important. It is done by professionals, and it begins to make that case. And that, he says, is why the Game and Fish Department needs to take the lead. He is right. Additionally, this report must be read by all our leaders. It must be summarized and reported on by our media. It must be responded to by all of us. We must begin to do now, what we have failed to do so far.

Thirty-five years ago, our then-Governor, Art Link, looked out his window and saw the coal industry approaching our state, and he put on his hat and coat and went and met with them, and then, with his own scientists in government, and with his Legislature, he implemented reasonable laws and regulations that guaranteed both the success of the coal industry in North Dakota and protection of our natural resources. We revere him to this day. And yet, what he really was dealing with was a handful of coal companies, who had a handful of mines, to supply a handful of power plants. The reality was, that was a manageable task. He spoke of a time in the future when “the draglines, the blasting rigs, the power shovels and the huge gondolas cease to rip and roar” that he hoped we would be able to say we did our job in making sure they were good stewards. In reality there were less than half a dozen of those big draglines, and they are still operating today, and the coal companies are reclaiming the land behind them. With Art Link’s leadership, and with each of us doing our part, we succeeded.

What seemed like such a large task then, seems almost inconsequential now, in the face of thousands (soon to be tens of thousands) of well sites, with a road to each, in most cases where a road had not been before, and where most of the tracks were from mule deer and pronghorn antelope and bighorn sheep, not from semi-trucks and white pickups. Because the scale is so much bigger today, the task is more difficult—and more urgent. We have little time to lose now.

There is an appendix to the Game and Fish report which contains some simple suggestions, from a wildlife perspective, on things we might do, starting now, to deal with this impact. It doesn’t presume to tell the oil companies how to do their business. It simply calls to their attention the science behind being a good neighbor. It says these are some of the things that any good North Dakotan would do when setting out to change the use of our landscape. This is the part of the report the oil companies themselves should read, and then come to our oil and gas experts and our wildlife experts and say “Okay, help us to be more responsible by providing us the information we need to do this.”

And at the same time, we need to give our own government oil and gas experts, our health department scientists and our wildlife officers the resources they need to work with these companies to make sure they are good stewards. Together, we can alleviate some of the impacts of oil and gas development. Sadly, I fear, no matter how much we do, it will not be enough. And so we must also provide the resources to mitigate the damage with enhancements elsewhere.

This week I drove through Bad Lands oil country with a friend and had my eyes opened. We drove a long stretch through an area with extensive new oil development and didn’t see a single hoofed animal. And then we drove past that area into an as-yet undeveloped area of the Bad Lands, and there were several small herds of pronghorns enjoying the sun on a fine Spring day. And I thought that, when I got home, I would try to make up for some of those sins of “what I have failed to do” by at least writing about this. That’s a start. Now I need to call my Game and Fish Department and urge them to get to work. I need to offer to help. I need to tell you to do the same thing. We need to do this so that, as Art Link said “those who follow and repopulate the land (will) be able to say, our grandparents did their job well. The land is as good and, in some cases, better than before. Only if they can say this will we be worthy of the rich heritage of our land and its resources.”

Art, it may be too late. But we’re going to give it a try.

Here is the list of the Game and Fish Department employees who contributed to the Research Project on the Impacts of Oil and Gas Development on North Dakota’s Natural Resources. We thank them and applaud their efforts. They are heroes. We hope their work has not been in vain. Following this list is the appendix to the report with their suggestions on how we might begin to deal with the impact of oil and gas development on North Dakota’s natural resources.

Energy Task Force

Steve Dyke, Conservation Supervisor

Dave Fryda, Missouri River System Fisheries Supervisor

Daryl Kleyer, District Warden Supervisor

Jeb Williams, Wildlife Resources Management Supervisor

Spatial Analyst

Brian Hosek, Geographic Information Systems Specialist

Wildlife Biologists

William Jensen, Big Game Biologist

Sandra Johnson, Nongame Biologist

Aaron Robinson, Upland Game Biologist

Fred Ryckman, District Fisheries Supervisor

Bruce Stillings, Big Game Biologist

Michael Szymanski, Migrator Game Biologist

Stephanie Tucker, Furbearer Biologist

Brett Wiedmann, Big Game Biologist

Appendix A

Potential Mechanisms or Tools to Help Alleviate Oil/Gas Impacts

Impact Avoidance:

There are a plethora of ways to reduce impacts from oil/gas development (Sportsmen 2010). They range from seemingly simple steps such as keeping vehicles and equipment clean and free of weed seeds to more complex concepts such as using remote monitoring on well pads. The ideas put forth here are fairly ambitious large picture mechanisms that if implemented would result in meaningful impact reductions.

A. Co-locate multiple wells on one site. Current technology allows directional drilling for a distance of up to 2 miles horizontally. Assuming that mineral leases were not an obstacle, well pads could accommodate up to 4 wells and provide 8 section spacing. This would greatly reduce the number of well sites, associated roads, power lines, etc.

B. Encourage different oil companies to share minerals (joint minerals) on 640 acre and 1280 acre spacing. If companies were more agreeable to joint minerals, fewer wells would be required.

C. Encourage well sites that pipe the raw product (oil, water & gas) to a centrally located ‘separation’ facility. Pipelines could be placed in the road right of way. This would greatly reduce daily traffic such as saltwater and oil tankers.

D. Promote underground electrical lines where possible.

E. Encourage oil companies to use electronic monitoring technology and/or surveillance cameras to reduce or eliminate daily maintenance trips. Maintenance trips could be reduced to every other day or every three days if more remote monitoring were used.

F. In sensitive areas where ground water or surface waters (wetlands, creeks) are present, or in erosive areas where stability is an issue, oil companies should capture the cuttings and drilling fluids in a closed loop system and haul it away to an approved disposal area.

G. Encourage directional boring of utilities and pipelines in rugged areas or in crossing drainages and wetlands.

H. Require testing of production water prior to its use for de-icing roads.

I. Encourage oil companies to ‘unitize’ wells to allow for co mingling of production.

J. Discourage pads and roads from being located on native prairie and woodlands. Often pads are located on land of lesser value (grazing land) than cropland.

K. Provide access to oil companies to obtain NWI (National Wetlands Inventory) maps or maps designating wetlands, especially temporary and seasonal wetlands as often companies are putting roads and pads in wetlands that they are not even aware of.

L. Encourage the Oil and Gas Commission to increase personnel to complete inspections of existing wells. It currently appears that the majority of staff are working on new wells and older wells are not being inspected. It’s likely that numerous small scale problems are occurring without being reported.

M. Require native grass seed on new roads, especially native prairie.

N. Utility corridors should be established to utilize the same routes to the degree possible. Currently there are pipelines being routed all over the landscape taking the most direct route with little thought being given to reducing impacts to habitat.

Mechanisms or practices to offset impacts by oil/gas development

A. Implement projects that maintain and/or enhance habitat to sustain or reestablish optimum wildlife populations (juniper control in bighorn sheep areas, native grass plantings, wetland restoration).

B. Preserve unique habitat through purchase of conservation easements (developing easements along river systems, grasslands easements on tracts of native prairie).

C. Acquire crucial/critical habitat when acquisition represents the best option for sustaining this habitat (sagebrush steppe, riparian areas in the Yellowstone confluence).

D. Improve coordination and consultation with the energy industry through addition of staff (are (federal) PR/DJ funds being put to their intended purpose as increasing staff time is spent on processing energy related development work).

E. Fund research to document population level impacts of energy development. A goal of this research should be to determine the point at which continued incremental or piecemeal development causes unacceptable declines in fish and wildlife populations.

In carrying out the aforementioned aspects of habitat maintenance and preservation, consideration should be given toward establishing an access program on lands where habitat improvement/maintenance is implemented. The program could be fashioned after the Department’s PLOTS program.

Count Your Change

I came across what I think was a pretty good scam attempt the other day, and thought I might warn you about it. I was retrieving a friend’s car from the short term parking lot at an unnamed central North Dakota airport not so far from my house while he and his wife were on vacation. As I drove up to the toll booth window, I grabbed a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and handed it and the parking ticket to the fellow in the booth. He stuck the ticket into his machine and said “That’ll be four dollars.”

I nodded and he proceeded to make change. He was a fifty-ish looking fellow, a little on the stout side, dressed in plain work clothes, and probably didn’t earn much more than minimum wage as a parking lot attendant. Now, normally, change from a twenty-dollar bill, for a four dollar charge, would be a ten, a five and a one–sixteen dollars. But this fellow instead grabbed a fistful of bills and began counting out change. I was at a bit of a disadvantage because my friend’s car is a little foreign job, so my head was somewhat below the level of the window of the booth. Still, I could see that he was making quite a production out of getting my change, counting through what appeared to be a stack of one dollar bills. Counted once, twice, and then turned and handed me the stack of bills. At the same time, the crossbar in front of me rose to let me escape the parking lot.

Now, this is the point where, I’m guessing, most people would have just grabbed the handful of bills (just picture for a minute six one dollar bills in your hand–they’re a bit crinkled, and they’re a real handful, and they can leave the impression you have plenty of change there) and, distracted from the money by the bar rising in front of the vehicle, driven off, stuffing that wad of bills into a purse or pocket. Most people in that situation are probably returning from an airplane trip, are tired, are thinking about all the stuff that needs to be done at home, and they really just want to get out of there.

But something about the whole encounter just didn’t feel right. I HADN’T been on a trip, I WASN’T tired and I found myself wondering why he had given me a ten and and a bunch of ones instead of a ten, a five and a one. I had my wallet in my hand and was about to stuff the bills in there when I noticed there was a one on top of the stack and a one on the bottom. So I fanned them out, to make sure that I had the right change. Indeed, six one-dollar bills–but no ten. I puzzled over that for a minute, and checked the stack again but still found no ten. I glanced up in my rear view mirror and saw the guy behind me was looking a little impatient. Then I looked over and up at the attendant and said “I gave you a twenty.”

“Okay,” he replied, and immediately handed me a ten-dollar bill that had to have been either in his hand or right on the counter next to it. That’s all he said. “Okay.”

I had my correct change now, the bar was still up, the guy behind me, who probably HAD been on a plane, and probably WAS eager to get home, was about ready to honk, so I drove away. But as I drove, I replayed the whole incident in my head, and that’s when I decided that getting the wrong change was no accident.

At the end of a trip, like most people, I think, I tend to be a little careless with details like change, and if I noticed later that I seem to be ten dollars short, I wouldn’t have figured out where it went, or I would have decided I was wrong, I only gave the parking lot attendant a ten. And that would have been that.

So I thought about it for a while, and then decided not to report the guy, because, for one, I couldn’t prove it, and two, the guy looked like he needed the job and probably wasn’t suited for much else.

Now, I could be wrong. It could have been an honest mistake. I’m generally a pretty trusting fellow. There’s no way I’ll ever know. But somehow, it just didn’t feel right. So I’m just warning you, and warning myself again by writing this–always count your change. Especially when you get six ones instead of a five and a one. And especially at an unnamed central North Dakota airport not far from my house.

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF A SATURDAY MORNING WALK

Some years ago, I was out for a Saturday morning walk on Bismarck residential streets and happened by a rummage sale. I'd never have stopped if I had been driving by, but I wandered into the garage, which was quite close to the sidewalk, and spotted a box of books, with a price tag on it for something like five or ten dollars--pretty steep price for rummage sale books, I remember thinking. There were some old paperbacks, a few old North Dakota books, and, under them, a couple dozen old copies of North Dakota History magazine. Intrigued by that, I paid the lady whatever the asking price was and asked her to hold on to them until I came back with my car. Which I did after finishing my walk.

When I got home, I dug down to the bottom of the box and found the real treasure: Almost all of the first six volumes of North Dakota Historical Quarterly, the predecessor to North Dakota History, beginning with Vol. I., No. 1, October, 1926, and ending with Vol. VI, No. 2, January, 1932, all in near-mint condition. (I tried to decide if I felt guilty enough to go back and tell that lady what was in the box, and as I recall, I decided I should do that, but then I just couldn't remember where the house was any more.) I'm missing Vol. I, No. 2 to make the set complete, so if anyone has a copy they want to get rid of, just call. I've read through many of them, and usually found at least one great piece in each issue. I'm going to share a few of those stories with you over the next few months, because they surely are some of the best things ever written about North Dakota. Here's a start, some highlights from a story in the very first issue of North Dakota Historical Quarterly, back in the fall of 1926.

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF A ROWBOAT JOURNEY FROM MEDORA TO BISMARCK

By Clell G. Gannon

In June, 1925, the writer in company with George Will and Russell Reid of Bismarck completed a rowboat journey down the Little Missouri River from Medora to its mouth at Elbowoods and thence down the Missouri River to Bismarck. The journey covered approximately 350 miles by water and was accomplished in 13 days, the limit of our vacation period.

Whoa! How’s that for an opening paragraph! A short history lesson: Clell Gannon was one of the best known Bismarckers at the time, a poet, writer and artist, and for those of you who know Bismarck, the man who built the rock house at the top of the hill on North Mandan Street. He also did the Illustrations for the seed catalogs which George Will, owner of the Will Seed Company, sent all over the world. Russell Reid was just four years away from becoming Superintendent of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, a position he would hold for 35 years. And the water trip from Medora to Bismarck leaves everyone who has ever launched a canoe on the Little Missouri with pangs of envy, since the trip became impossible after the Garrison Dam was closed in the 1950’s. To continue:

Our boat was an 18-footer, built especially for the trip, of the flat bottom type which, when supporting a weight of about 1000 pounds drew 5 inches of water. It was christened the Hugh Glass, after the intrepid trapper of the early fur trading days, whose adventurous career has become one of the classics of western frontier life. (More about Hugh Glass another day—Jim)

Our equipment consisted of a 7 x 7 miner’s tent, a waterproof sleeping bag for each member of the party, food, clothing, several cameras with auxiliary equipment and maps. The maps carried were those of the Missouri River published in 1894 (I have a set of those maps; they are fascinating; I’ve scanned the cover to go with this article—Jim) and plat maps for each township from Medora to Bismarck, which we had prepared from available sources. The latter maps were drawn in waterproof India ink and bound in full pigskin (these guys were really serious about this—having a boat built and maps hand-drawn—Jim).

There was no particular motive for the trip. It was a vacation and done for the mere joy of it, although back of it all was a passionate love for the Bad Lands and the Missouri River, and an intense interest in ornithology, geology, archeology, and the historic associations with which the region is especially rich.

Our project was not altogether a new one. The journey down the Little Missouri and the Missouri Rivers had probably been made a number of times before by the furtraders and adventurers of the early nineteenth century and perhaps many times by the Indians before them. Undoubtedly the first white man to ever make the voyage was Baptiste Le Page, who came down the Little Missouri from the Black Hills in the summer of 1804, and presumably down the Missouri as far as the Indian villages on the Knife River. It was at that point he became a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition . . .

(Here are some of Gannon’s descriptions of parts of the trip—Jim)

We reached the vicinity of Redwing Creek for noon. The scenery all the way had been sensational, and every bend of the river brought the unexpected, however, to our way of thinking none of it quite equaled the Redwing country in scenic grandeur. Rain and wind had washed the buttes into grotesque and weird shapes. Cedar dotted the slopes, and sagebrush covered the river flats, adding variety to the soft purples, yellows and greys of the buttes . . . Early (the next) morning we passed Cherry Creek which enters the Little Missouri a mile above its original mouth by means of a cut-off. This creek has a wide valley, which in pre-glacial times, with Tobacco Garden Creek, was the course of the Little Missouri into the Missouri River. When the glacier blocked that portion of its course it was diverted into an easterly direction forming the valley that it now occupies. At noon we reached a point directly north of the Killdeer Mountains and climbed the high river bluffs, through heavy thickets of black birch, aspen, and oak, to view them some eight or ten miles to the south. The view from the top overlooking a canyon-like reach of the Little Missouri was of the kind that gains little and suffers much from the inadequacy of a written description (emphasis added—a problem that has plagued almost every writer trying to describe the North Dakota Bad Lands for the last century-and-a-half—Jim). To the south the breaks of the Bad Lands faded into a rolling plain which reached away to the Killdeers, looming blue against the sky. To the east the river stretched in serpentine curves for miles, bordered by a fringe of cottonwoods. To the north and west the Bad Lands toppled and rolled, seemingly without order or design until lost in the blue haze that melted into the horizon. Large, white cumulus clouds floated motionless in the deep blue above, casting intricate patterns of sun and shadow across a vast expanse of land dripping with color . . .

It was with something of a thrill that we entered the Missouri River on the afternoon of the next day, June 15. In fancy we could see it peopled with the explorers, furtraders, and adventurers of other days in mackinaw or keel, or Indians in their bull boats of skin. Lewis and Clark, Maximilian, Catlin, Ashley, Lisa, Colter, Glass and scores of others passed by in pageant fashion. Soon we, too, were caught in its clutch and hurried along in the swirl of the June flood . . .

It had been a most worth while vacation. Geo. Will, who has traveled extensively, remarked that he had seen nothing in the way of scenery to surpass that along the Little Missouri. Of all else the Bad Lands are first of all a land of color. Verendrye the younger, who in 1742 was probably the first white man, together with the other members of his party, to see the Bad Lands of North Dakota, took note of that fact and recorded in his journal:

“I noticed in several places soils of different colors such as blue, a vermillion shade, meadow green, shining black, chalk white and others the color of ochre.”

Gannon went on to list the species of birds, wildlife, plants and trees they observed, as well as providing a commentary on the geology of the area:

The geology of the Bad Lands region is intensely interesting. Erosion, wind and the burning out of lignite beds are agencies constantly at work sculpturing new and intricate forms. The coal beds and petrified stumps tell a story of the centuries gone by, and the cutting of the river gives wonderful cross-sections of the earth’s secrets. Brick-red scoria, resulting from the action of heat from the burning lignite on the clay above and below, forms one of the most characteristic colors of the Bad Lands landscape.

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of a “canoe trip gang” that has been canoeing the Little Missouri and Missouri Rivers together for a long, long time. This will be our 36^th consecutive year. We’re planning a four-day float on the Little Missouri in May and another on the big Missouri in Montana in September. Thanks to General Pick and Director Sloan, we can’t do them together. But it was pretty obvious that those three historical figures, Gannon, Will and Reid, enjoyed their float immensely, just as we do ours.

Post Script

It’s Spring, and there are hundreds of flower and vegetable plants, started from seeds, growing in my basement in preparation for being transplanted into my garden. I want to share with you a wonderful, thoughtful Spring poem by Clell Gannon, author of today’s entry into the catalog of the Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota.

A SEED

by Clell G. Gannon

A seed is such a very little thing,

Unlovely, uninspired, a wrinkled mite;

But it becomes a living thing at Spring

And bursts from darkness into warmth and light.

There is a force beyond the might of man,

A dormant power that waits its measured time

To consummate fulfillment of a plan

And make from ugliness a thing sublime.

The cycle from the seed to fruit repeat,

The miracle of life that mystifies

The wisest man; for all is made complete

And death apparent has its own disguise.

Here in a seed lies dormant the same power

That drives the universe and makes it flower.