Hello again!  We didn’t talk about this too much before because we were waiting for our NEW interim superintendent to arrive. 

She’s here!

When we met with Deputy Director Lands, he told us that he had reached out to NPS Regional Director, Bert Frost, and told him that he needed him to send THE BEST person he had to Theodore Roosevelt National Park as the next interim superintendent.  Deputy Director Lands said that Bert Frost was sending his Chief of Staff to the park while they continued to search for a permanent replacement. 

We received the following email this afternoon:

Hello Ms. Kman,

My name is Rachel Daniels, and I am the new interim superintendent at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Deputy Director Lands informed me of your meeting and passed along your note. I have arrived on site in Medora. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind trying to get up to speed on a variety of issues, but I am looking forward to the opportunities here. 

Maybe we could find some time to meet after the Thanksgiving holiday, I know December can be a hectic time as well, but we may be able to find a window. 

I hope you and yours have a pleasant holiday this week.

Rachel

____________________________

Rachel A. Daniels
Acting Superintendent
Theodore Roosevelt National Park  
315 2nd Avenue
Medora, North Dakota 58645

Deputy Director Lands assured us that Rachel would be great to work with and assured us that he had every faith in her personally to do this job.

We are working on getting a date together so we can have our first formal meeting with the new interim superintendent.

We will keep you posted on this meeting.

Two other things we wanted to share with you:

1. We emailed our current governor – Doug Burgum – and congratulated him on his appointment to Secretary of the Interior on behalf of our organization.  His Chief of Staff, Jace, thanked us and said he would pass the message on to Governor Burgum.  I also asked Jace if he could try to help us with our current fight to get the collars taken off the 15 horses that were placed during the October roundup.  We know from the March 2024 report that this is completely unnecessary.  He told us they would see what they could do.  I did share this information with the new Superintendent as I asked for an update on this request that was made to Deputy Director Lands while we were in Washington, DC.  We will keep you posted on any new developments.
2. We spoke with one of our state legislators today that is helping us with our legislation for the 2025 session.  Legislative counsel asked for some clarification, so we visited today to answer their questions and get the updates resubmitted to them.  I wanted to share some of what he said to us today.

I am sure you remember House Minority Leader, Josh Boschee.  He has now moved over to the Senate side.  As we were talking about this legislation, I asked him what we could do to help make sure this legislation passes. 

In our discussion, we talked about that while it may seem like the stars are aligning to help us in our push for state and federal legislation, it’s not that simple.  CHWHA needs to continue the hard work we have been doing consistently for the last two years.  The contacts we have made, the connections and relationships we have worked hard to build are all playing their part in where we are now.  He said that this was a testament to the hard work that has been done by CHWHA over the last two years. 

Please, take a moment and be proud of the work that we have done together.  THAT was quite the compliment!  Especially from a longstanding member of the North Dakota State Legislature. 

Now, I want to tie that into our blog from earlier today. 

In December of 2022, I took the first step and picked up the phone and started calling our North Dakota state legislators.  I did not know any of them.  We had no previous relationships or communication.  I didn’t really have much communication with Governor Burgum’s office or even our federal legislators. 

Saving this herd of wild horses was that important to me that even though my nerves were firing in every direction possible, I knew if I didn’t speak up at that time, the horses would not have any chance.  At the time, I didn’t know how, but I KNEW that our state and federal legislators would be the key to saving this historic wild horse herd. 

The last two years have been a refresher course in Civics 101.  WE elect these people to represent us at a state, county, district and even a federal level.  They are really there to help us. 

They can’t help if we don’t take that first step to establish relationships with them. 

I hope this helps empower you to send the emails we asked you to in our blog earlier today.   

Thank you for your support and have a great day!

---