- This event has passed.
SD Game, Fish and Parks May Commission hybrid meeting, in Custer and Zoom
May 8 @ 1:00 pm - May 9 @ 12:00 pm
SD Game, Fish and Parks May Commission hybrid meeting, in Custer and Zoom,
When close to the date visit this page for agenda and documents presented to Commission: https://gfp.sd.gov/commission/information/
Agenda: https://gfp.sd.gov/UserDocs/nav/Commission_Agenda_Public_May_2025.pdf
RESULTS OF MEETING
The Commission moved forward a rule change proposal of a moratorium on beaver hunting/trapping in the Black Hills. They will vote on it at their June 5th-6th Commission meeting and written comments are due Sunday night June the 1st. Peoples comments in support of the moratorium are needed. https://phas-wsd.org/event/deadline-for-written-comments-to-the-sdgfp-commission-june-meeting/
Beaver draft Action Plan was also released for comment. We are not sure of the Comment deadline but it might be in a month. – https://phas-wsd.org/wp-content/uploads/beaverActionPLan-May_2025_Commission_Book_-2.pdf
Written comments are due on a Northern River Otter Management Plan for staff review on May 23rd or for the June Commission meeting as the Commission votes on the Plan then.
Deadline to Comment on the draft “North American River Otter Action Plan, 2025-2029.”
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You could have testified in person or remotely by Zoom at 2 pm MT.
Written Comments were due 5/4/25 – the Sunday before the Thursday, before midnight MT posted at https://gfp.sd.gov/forms/positions/
We will want people to testify in in support of a moratorium on beaver trapping and hunting in the Black Hills Fire Protection District. We want them reduce the months of beaver hunting and trapping season outside of Black Hills from 12 months to either 5 or 6 months.
Nov 1st-March 31st stops beaver trapping when river otters having babies and Nov 1st-April 30th, stops trapping when beavers start having babies.
This allows trapping during the period of thick pelts, but stops when the beaver start breeding in May. The river otter who are strongly associate with beaver and are incidental take in beaver trap. They start breeding in April.
State law allows people whose land is harmed by “conflict” beaver to call up GFP and get permission to kill the beaver all year long – so removing the 12 months season does not prevent landowners from removing “conflict” beaver year round.
We want folks to testify in support of northern river otter populations recovering western SD. Otter now only occur east river. GFP has no plans to relocate some west river or improve habitat along west River’s rivers/streams to make the riparian habitat better for otters. While otters are in the Missouri River and good habitat exists for them in the far western part of SD, the eastern part of western SD has low flow rivers and many degraded riparian areas. Please ask SDGFP to reintroduce otters west River, make this a comment on Northern River Otter Action Plan.
SD Game, Fish and Parks may be proposing increasing the harvest limit on the east river – river otter hunting/trapping season. This should be opposed as various monitoring data indicate a likely drop in the otter population.
Here is the petition for rule making on the beaver hunt/trap season that PHAS submitted to the Commission, asking for changes to beaver season. On May 8th-9th they will consider moving this petition forward – opening it to formal public comment and the rule making process with a vote on it on July 10th-11th.
Here is an attachment to that petition:
https://phas-wsd.org/wp-content/uploads/BH-Beaver-Information-Item-GFP-Dec-2023-final-1.pdf
You can also go to our web site under drop down from Campaigns, Wildlife, Beaver/Otter https://phas-wsd.org/beaver-and-river-otter/
or drop down from Alerts, Beaver https://phas-wsd.org/beaver-alert/
Here is a one page alert that can be printed – https://phas-wsd.org/wp-content/uploads/BeaverHunttrap-alertF2R.pdf
Here is a one page discussion of benefits of beavers that can be printed : https://phas-wsd.org/wp-content/uploads/Benefits-of-Beavers-2025.F2.pdf
Here is a link to video on value of beaver that we recommend
May 4th, 2025 written comment deadline –https://phas-wsd.org/event/written-comment-deadline-sdgfp-commission-may-meeting/