CHARLES MIX COUNTY, S.D.- An 89-year-old woman has died as a result of injuries sustained in a two-vehicle crash on the evening of Friday May 3, two miles east of Wagner SD.

Preliminary crash information indicates the driver of a 2012 Dodge Ram was traveling eastbound on SD Highway 46 near mile marker 292. At the same time, the driver of a 2013 Ford Edge was also traveling eastbound on SD 46 near mile marker 292. The driver of the Ford Edge slowed down preparing to turn into a driveway.  The driver of the Dodge did not see the Ford and rear ended the Ford.  The driver of the Dodge sustained minor injuries.  The driver of the Ford was taken by ambulance to Wagner Community Hospital where she was pronounced deceased.

The South Dakota Highway Patrol is investigating the crash. All information released so far is only preliminary.

The Highway Patrol is an agency of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety.

 

SOUTH SIOUX CITY, NE – A fatal crash occurred in South Sioux City, Nebraska Saturday evening resulting in the death of one of the drivers.

According to authorities, first responders received a call just before 6:30 p.m. of a three-vehicle crash at the intersection of College Way and the Highway 77 Bypass.

Police state two adults, and a child were taken to the hospital for potential injuries.

A 64-year-old female driver of one of the vehicles suffered fatal injuries during the accident.

No names have been released at this point in time and the investigation is currently ongoing.

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mail delivery times will suffer, that’s the conclusion of just about everyone except for the United States Postal Service.

The USPS is moving ahead with a proposed consolidation of mail processing centers across the nation, including moving the duties of the Huron plant to Fargo, ND and the Sioux Falls plant to Omaha, NE.

Todd West is the President of the South Dakota Postal Workers Union and he says that when the moves are done the primary impact will be slower mail delivery.  He adds that in areas where the USPS has completed the consolidation procedure in other parts of the country delivery times have slowed down by 36 percent.

Montana Senator Jon Tester has introduced legislation to prohibit unnecessary and harmful consolidation of mail processing operations nationwide.  His bill, called the Protecting Access to Rural Carriers for Every Location (PARCEL) Act is being co-sponsored by South Dakota Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds.

The legislation would prohibit the consolidation of mail processing operations unless it meets the three criteria below:

• Does not result in processing operations being relocated outside of state boundaries or harming local mail delivery.
• A geographical review is completed, particularly examining mountain passes and the implications of moving operations.
• Public input reflects favorably on the decision to move operations.

 

PIERRE, S.D. (Seth Tupper and Joshua Haiar, South Dakota Searchlight) – South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem was in political freefall Friday as embarrassing revelations continued to emerge from the scrutiny of advance copies of her memoir, which doesn’t officially publish until Tuesday.

Noem was already reeling from near-universal backlash against her disclosure in the book that she shot and killed a dog named Cricket and a billy goat years ago — the dog for its failures on a hunting excursion and its attacks on a neighbor’s chickens, and the goat for chasing after Noem’s children and smelling bad.

Thursday and Friday, news emerged from outlets including Politico and The Dakota Scout of inaccuracies in Noem’s book, the title of which — “No Going Back” — is now ripe with irony. The most glaring inaccuracy is Noem’s recounting of a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during her time in Congress — a meeting that never happened.

“I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un,” Noem wrote. “I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”

The Dakota Scout published a story Thursday casting doubt on the meeting. Noem’s spokesman, Ian Fury, eventually said the anecdote was one of “two small errors” in the book that were the fault of others.

“This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor,” Fury said, according to the Scout. “Kim Jong Un was included in a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been.”

Yet there seems to be no way Noem could’ve been unaware of the errors. She’s been promoting the book for weeks, there is no other writer credited in the book besides her, and she’s already voiced an audio version of the book.

The Scout also questioned Noem’s anecdote in the book about canceling a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron over Noem’s dislike of his comments about the Israeli-Hamas war. The French president’s office released a statement that Macron had never extended a “direct invitation” to Noem for a meeting, the Scout reported, but the office left open the possibility that the two could have been scheduled to attend the same event.

Politico reported on a story Noem related in the book about a 2021 conversation with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Noem wrote that Haley, who would go on to unsuccessfully seek the Republican presidential nomination, “threatened” Noem politically. A spokesperson for Haley told Politico that Haley had called to encourage Noem, and “how she would twist that into a threat is just plain weird.”

Politico also reported that a Colorado county Republican group canceled a Saturday fundraiser Noem was scheduled to headline, after the group received death threats and information about a planned protest related to Noem’s treatment of animals.

Reacting to the cascade of negative news, political science professor Jon Schaff of Northern State University in Aberdeen said Noem’s short-term national ambitions “have been weakened, considerably.” Until recently, Noem had been widely considered to be a potential running mate for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

But Schaff said it’s too early to tell what it all means for Noem long-term. He said she is popular in South Dakota, and it would be naive to count her out in future races, such as a U.S. Senate race in the eventuality of a retirement by Sen. John Thune or Sen. Mike Rounds. Thune is 63 years old, Rounds is 69 and Noem is 52.

“Rounds and Thune won’t be there forever,” Schaff said.

Meanwhile, Dan Ahlers, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, said the negative news is unlikely to end Noem’s career, given that past scandals have not seemed to hurt her. Those scandals have included published allegations of an affair with former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, accusations of misusing the state airplane, and allegedly intervening to help her daughter earn a real estate appraiser’s license.

“These things don’t end any of these Republican politicians’ careers anymore,” Ahlers said. “They end up raising more money and smelling like roses.”

Noem went on “Hannity” on Fox News on Wednesday and blamed “fake news” for the fallout from the dog and goat stories. This weekend, she’s scheduled to attend a Trump campaign donor retreat in Florida, according to Politico. Sunday, she’s scheduled to appear on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

“We’ll get into the controversies surrounding her upcoming memoir,” said a Friday tweet from the show.

 

PIERRE, S.D. (Joshua Haiar, South Dakota Searchlight) – State wildlife officials are not bringing back a popular method of estimating South Dakota’s pheasant population, despite requests from the public to do so.

South Dakota is one of the top states for pheasant hunting in the nation, with millions of birds and millions of dollars in economic impact from the hunters that flock to the state each fall.

When the Department of Game, Fish and Parks recently released the draft of its new pheasant management plan for 2024 to 2028, the end of the document said that “by 2028,” the department planned to “improve existing population monitoring programs to develop survey methods to inform biologists on population status, reproductive success, and relative densities of pheasant populations.”

After reading that draft plan, some people wrote in to tell the department that the way to improve population monitoring programs is to reinstate the old method — commonly called the “brood count.”

“I continue to be amazed and disgusted that GFP no longer conducts the summer brood count survey,” John McDermott wrote in a comment to the department.

“Reinstate the statewide pheasant annual brood survey,” Larry Fredrickson wrote.

“Bring back the brood survey,” Mark Schaefer wrote.

In response, the department deleted the language in the draft plan that sparked the comments.

GF&P Senior Upland Game Biologist Alex Solem told the GF&P Commission on Friday that the change to the plan came “after just some kind of public comments and that sort of stuff.” The commission unanimously approved the new version of the plan, without the language calling for improved population monitoring programs.

The state started the brood count as early as 1960 and ended it in 2019, citing concerns at the time that reports of lower pheasant numbers ahead of the hunting season deterred out-of-state hunters from traveling to South Dakota.

The department explained the rationale for ending the count in a Pheasant Hunting Marketing Workgroup and Plan. It said ending the count would “ensure that South Dakota is not unintentionally deterring hunters from coming to our state based on the media headlines reporting of low bird numbers.”

Prior to the brood count’s end, department staff conducted it by driving the same rural routes annually to count groups of young pheasants and hens. Those observations and other variables, including a winter male-to-female ratio count and hunter harvest numbers, were fed into a formula to determine a pheasant population estimate ahead of the hunting season. The last brood count in 2019 reflected a 17% drop in pheasants counted per mile.

Now, according to the new management plan, the department uses hunter surveys to estimate how many pheasants are harvested, how many people hunted pheasants, the economic impact of pheasant hunting, and hunter satisfaction.

George Vandel, a former wildlife director for Game, Fish and Parks, said the brood count was a more accurate way of estimating the pheasant population.

“It wasn’t barbershop biology,” Vandel said.

The numbers were also used to help inform changes to the federal farm bill’s grassland conservation programs, he added. The programs help provide habitat for pheasants and other wildlife.

“It showed them how long and when grasses should be left alone before being hayed or grazed, to give pheasants and similar wildlife the best chance possible,” Vandel said. “And they did away with that.”

The hunter surveys that the GF&P now relies on were only one of the variables in the brood count formula.

Chuck Dieter, a retired professor of natural resource management at South Dakota State University, does not like the new method.

“I think it’s ridiculous to use that one variable to extrapolate a population estimate,” Dieter said.

Last month, Solem shared the draft pheasant management plan with the GF&P Commission. He explained how the department estimates the population “through harvest surveys, hunter questionnaires — that sort of thing.”

Solem said about 15,000 resident and 15,000 non-resident hunters participate. Questions include how many birds they harvested, when and where, and their satisfaction level with hunting pheasants in South Dakota.

At the time, Solem referenced the draft pheasant management plan’s goal of improving population monitoring programs but did not offer specifics.

“We want to use and improve on current population harvest and public opinion surveys to, obviously, monitor these population trends as well as the economic impact that hunting, harvest levels and hunter satisfaction have on the landscape,” Solem said about the draft. “It’s no secret that pheasant hunting in the state of South Dakota has a huge economic impact, and we want to make sure that we continue to provide good populations out there for a lot of hunters to come in and harvest birds.

Prior to Friday, GF&P Commission Chair Stephanie Rissler told South Dakota Searchlight that the commission is confident in the department’s current method for counting pheasants. She said department staff can use harvest surveys, habitat and weather conditions for a preseason pheasant forecast, without reinstating the brood count.

“I feel we have come a long way in modeling since 1960,” Rissler said in an email.

After Friday’s vote to approve the amended management plan, Solem shared the department’s annual pheasant harvest report. The report showed about 135,000 hunters harvested 1.2 million pheasants outside of private preserves in South Dakota — representing a 6% increase in hunters and a 7% increase in pheasants harvested compared to the prior year.