Army National Guard, Reserve, and Canadian Armed Forces came together to serve Native American Reservations in South Dakota. A key mission during the Golden Coyote exercise is supplying Native Americans with timber collected from the Black Hills National Forest. Released by the SD National Guard Public Affairs Office
Golden Coyote participants conducted timber hauls, repaired and upgraded roads and buildings, and identified hazardous wilderness areas that needed to be made safe for public use.
“It was nice to get out of our State, go somewhere we hadn’t been before, get new experiences and see how we work as a company,” said SGT Philip Funk of Kansas’ 731st Composite Truck Company. “We had training for reacting to IEDs [improvised explosive devices], we had haul missions and we had people who were brought in to be an oppositional force against us. It gave us real-life training on what to do when non-friendly people encountered us.”
Working closely with federal agencies like the Black Hills National Forest and Custer State Park, participants were given the chance to support the local community while gaining useful training.
“[Federal agencies] provide the opportunity; we provide the labor and equipment,” said MAJ Weber. “In the end, we both gained.”
A timber haul operation in the Black Hills National Forest gave participating transportation units hands-on training loading and hauling more than 200 loads of timber to be delivered throughout South Dakota.
Those federal entities will go into the forest, make sure it’s healthy and start timber stacks in big piles that eventually need to be hauled off,” MAJ Weber said. “The transportation units love coming because it is great loading training. We go into the National Forest and it’s good training for the drivers because it’s not just going down the interstate – sometimes you are on back roads. Then, they have to do the loading part of it and make sure it’s secure.”
