Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Ranchers offered plane rides to find livestock, disposal begins Wednesday

Butte County Emergency Management Director Martha Wierzbicki, left, and Marc and Sheri Crandall made arrangements Monday for Crandall's offer to take ranchers up in his Sturgis-based airplane to look for livestock. Monday the Spearfish and rural Vale resident said the low fog would have made flights impossible.

There's a lot going on for Butte County ranchers identifying lost or dead livestock, according to Martha Wierzbicki, Butte County Emergency Management director.

She announced Tuesday morning that beginning Oct. 16, the South Dakota State University Extension Office will help record, photograph and GPS dead livestock on county road rights of way, including recording brands and ear tags.

Starting Wednesday, she said, the county highway department will begin removing dead livestock from county rights of ways to be buried on county property.

Wierzbicki said her office will contract producers with copies of the documentation.

Help also is available for ranchers to find livestock.

Marc Crandall said he's a private pilot with a ranch background who will offer area ranchers a plane ride to help them find their livestock faster and easier than on horseback or four-wheeler.

Crandall and his wife Sheri met with Wierzbicki Monday in Spearfish to make arrangements and let the public know they're willing to do what they can to help ranchers hit by torrents of cold rain and an avalanche of early October snow.

Crandall is a custom sprayer with a Wyoming ranch background. He currently lives in Spearfish and has a place near Vale in Butte County. He's a Newell Fire Department volunteer.

And he has a Piper Pacer airplane based at the Sturgis airport.

"I'm not commercial, I'm just a private pilot," Crandall said. "It's a four-place airplane, but I'd be more comfortable with just myself and a passenger - I think we'd be more safe."

He figures the plane would have an endurance of about three and a half hours in the air per flight, depending on weather and dips up and down to potentially identify livestock.

He said the plane usually has decent cell phone service. "I'd rather locate them (missing livestock) and call."

He has a GPS on the plane to help document where livestock are found.

Crandall said he knows many of the lost cattle and sheep, even horses, may be dead from the fall storm, but ranchers need to know where they are. Nothing could help look through draws and gullies faster and safer than an airplane.

Sheri said the two don't currently have livestock, but they know what ranchers are going through.

Wierzbicki said she takes ranchers' losses not only seriously, but personally. "My family lost 80 percent of its herd. Some were found with cow and her calf standing on bare ground, both dead."

Marc added, "How do you buy those genetics back?"

Sheri said it's a matter of ranchers having to start over.

Even when losing a family member, she said, daily life continues. Loss of a ranch family's cattle or sheep means losing a lifestyle.

Wierzbicki added that this is the time of year ranchers are usually selling calves and lambs to pay their taxes and bank loans.

The storm hit before many could pull their livestock off summer pasture to take to market.

She added, "Now they're snowblind and stressed."

Many cattle strayed for miles: "We'll sort it out later. They're stressed enough."

Sheri said, "We wanted to do something, and not everybody has access to an airplane."

Marc said, "I'm a private pilot; I can't charge anybody, but we live here, we're part of the community."

Sheri added, "We do ask that people use it from need to survey damage."

She added that townspeople often don't realize what the storm losses mean to them.

"I don't think they understand it's the only thing that sustains this part of the country," she said.

"The story is the dead animals."


Story and Photo:  http://rapidcityjournal.com

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