The North Dakota Game and Fish Department has released its first four spring fishing previews. Bottom line: Things are looking pretty good out there going into another open water season. This week’s previews include the Northeast, North Central and South Central fishing districts along with Lake Sakakawea, Lake Audubon and the Missouri River System.

MEDORA, N.D. — A resolution passed by the North Dakota Legislature is the first step in seeking federal protection to ensure the future of the wild horse herd at

Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Legislators this week overwhelmingly

passed

Senate Concurrent Resolution 4006,

which urges Congress to pass legislation protecting the herd.

“It’s important because it puts North Dakota on record saying they’re important and should have full protection,” said Chris Kman, president of Chasing Horses Wild Horse Advocates of Dickinson, a leading proponent for keeping a viable herd.

Park officials proposed eliminating the wild horses from the park in a recent environmental review and are injecting the mares with birth control to prevent reproduction in the herd.

The resolution notes “significant concerns regarding the management of the wild horse herd by Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the long-term health and preservation of the herd” and urges Congress to enact legislation “establishing federal protections for the wild horses to ensure the herd’s long-term health and preservation.”

A herd of about 200 wild horses, grouped in separate bands, has roamed the south unit since before Theodore Roosevelt National Park was established in 1947. A study found

the ancestry of the herd likely traces back to the open-range ranching era of the 1880s,

when Roosevelt ranched in the Badlands.

Following public outcry,

park officials in April 2024 abandoned an environmental review

— which Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., flatly called a horse-removal process — and agreed to maintain a herd of horses but said they would reduce the size of the herd.

Six months later, in October 2024,

the park conducted a helicopter roundup of the horses.

During the roundup, all mature mares were injected with GonaCon, a birth-control drug the park has used aggressively since 2009.

Most of the mares have received multiple injections of the drug, which Colorado State University researchers found to be highly effective after two doses — and determined that

19 of 24 mares failed to regain fertility after two doses.

As a result of the park’s use of GonaCon, horse advocates fear the park is deliberately creating a non-reproductive herd. Kman said Bruce McCann, the park’s chief of natural resources, told her late last year that the park is using GonaCon with the intent of creating a sterile herd.

The park has not responded to The Forum’s request for comment on the assertion that it is deliberately working to sterilize the herd.

Rangers were out darting mares in the park on Thursday, March 27. Park records show every mare was dosed with GonaCon last year, Kman said.

“GonaCon is not meant to be used every year, so what are they doing?” she said. “Eradicating the herd.”

Now that legislators have sent a clear message to Congress, Kman said she will ask the North Dakota congressional delegation to press the National Park Service to impose a moratorium on any further horse removals and the use of birth-control drugs.

“Federal legislation takes a long time, as you could imagine,” and likely would take several years to pass, if successful, she said.

Hoeven is preparing to take legislative action to protect the horses, spokesperson Alex Finken said.

“Last year, Senator Hoeven secured a commitment from the National Park Service to maintain wild horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and he is working to introduce legislation to ensure the NPS maintains a herd of free-roaming horses on a permanent basis,” Finken said.

The herd, which the State Historical Society of North Dakota has said is historically significant, is threatened by the park’s usage of birth control, Kman said.

“The use of GonaCon absolutely has to stop,” she said. Births in the horse herd have dropped sharply, with 10 foals born last year, two of which died. There were more than 40 births in 2017, a number Kman said was too high. A healthy balance must be struck to maintain the herd’s genetic viability, she said.

As a result of the removal of young horses and the aggressive use of birth control, the horse herd is rapidly aging, Kman said. A 24-year-old mare named Tanker recently died, and many other horses are also reaching the end of their lifespan, Kman said.

“There’s a lot of older horses in the park that are going to be dying over the next few years,” adding urgency to the need for federal protection, she said.

There are precedents for federal protection of National Park Service horses, Kman said. The horses at Cape Lookout National Seashore on North Carolina’s Outer Banks and Ozark Scenic Riverways in southern Missouri are protected by federal law, she said.

Patrick Springer first joined The Forum in 1985. He covers a wide range of subjects including health care, energy and population trends. Email address: pspringer@forumcomm.com
Phone: 701-367-5294

BISMARCK — The North Dakota Senate voted on Wednesday to enshrine guidelines for academic tenure in century code in a surprise reconsideration of a failed bill.

Academic tenure gives professors a permanent position and protects them from being dismissed or fired without cause. The practice is intended to guarantee academic freedom because it protects professors from being let go for the type of research they are conducting or the papers they publish.

House Bill 1437

requires institutions of higher education to establish a tenure policy. Under the guidelines laid out in the bill, the institution’s president must implement a process for annual evaluations of nontenure, tenure-track and tenured faculty. They must also develop a procedure to evaluate post-tenure faculty at least once every five years.

The bill also states that the policy must define the outcome of an unsatisfactory review of post-tenured faculty, which may include removal from their position.

HB 1437 previously passed the House in a 84-5 vote. It failed on the Senate floor Tuesday in a 26-20 vote. However, one senator, Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, R-Williston, was absent for Tuesday’s vote. When he was present Wednesday, he made a motion to reconsider the bill. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, enough senators changed their mind on the bill to pass it in a 28-19 vote.

The bill now goes back to the House for a vote of concurrence before it can go to the governor for a signature or veto.

Lawmakers said they were surprised the bill was brought back for reconsideration and the chamber had to take a small recess to prepare because the senate staff had not been informed that a reconsideration would be happening.

Multiple senators who changed their vote for the reconsideration said that they were on the fence about the bill but changed their mind after doing more research between days.

The bill received opposition testimony from representatives of the Council of College Faculties, the North Dakota University System, North Dakota State University, the University of North Dakota and Bismarck State College.

Many of the institutions of higher education took umbrage with the bill specifying how to structure a committee to evaluate post-tenure faculty. The bill mandates that each committee include the faculty member’s administrative supervisor, at least one ranking administrator, and tenured faculty making up no less than one-third and no more than one-half of the committee.

“HB 1437 represents an overreach into the governance of higher education in North Dakota, which is constitutionally vested in the State Board of Higher Education,” President of the Council of College Faculties Rachelle Hunt said in written testimony.

Sen. Jonathan Sickler, R-Grand Forks, said the Legislature nixed a similar bill on academic tenure during the 2023 legislative session due to concerns over its constitutionality. He said that after the bill was defeated, the State Board of Higher Education (SBHE) took the concerns raised by the Legislature and spent over a year reviewing tenure practices at institutions of higher education in North Dakota.

He said that the SBHE’s Ad Hoc Committee on tenure had adopted most of the policies called for in HB 1437 since the bill’s introduction in January. He argued that the bill would institute a less-robust review process than what is currently being done by most institutions and expressed concern that the bill does not include any avenue for faculty to appeal the results of an evaluation.

“We need higher ed to be flexible,” Sickler said on the floor Tuesday. “By putting this in code, my concern is that we are locking the board into practice that will not work for it. We’re also putting a single process over a university system that has two-year campuses, polytechnic campuses, four-year institutions and research institutions where tenure policies may need to be different.”

SBHE member Kevin Black submitted written testimony in favor of the bill. He said that the amended version of the bill eliminates tenure as a “right” to continuous employment, clarifies post-tenure review, increases transparency and accountability, and is a step toward fixing the employee-employer relationship at institutions of higher education in North Dakota.

“We should not eliminate tenure, and I’m grateful for this bill’s amended approach,” Black said. “Working together, we can put the necessary guardrails around tenure policies that both drive accountability and reward our highest-achieving faculty members.”

Sen. Chuck Walen, R-New Town, who changed his vote between Tuesday and Wednesday, said he originally voted against the bill because he agrees with colleges taking care of issues such as tenure themselves. However, he added “after reading it, I’m going, this isn’t really hurting the colleges. It is just saying these are the steps to follow. And I thought that’s reasonable, so that was the reason for my (vote) change.”

Sen. Judy Lee, R-West Fargo, said that there had been significant friction between the university system and the executive branch decades ago, which established the independence of the SBHE.

“(Former) Gov. Langer was looking to fire faculty members at the research university in Fargo — and he was quite intrusive into that process — because he didn’t like some of the things he thought they were teaching,” Lee said. “The students rose up and they were successful in making sure that there would be a legal barrier between the Board of Higher Education and the executive branch in that case, but we are part of the legislative group that still shouldn’t be treading on those toes.”