DRAMATIC NEW PICTURES SHOW FOREST
THINNING WORKS
CUSTER, SD: AUGUST 23, 2007
Ponderosa pine forests that have been thinned, prescribed burned,
and logged are shaking off worsening pine beetle attacks and increasingly
difficult wildfires, officials say.
“The proof that thinning works is there for anyone to see,”
said Kurt Allen, an entomologist for the Forest Service’s
Rocky Mountain forest health unit in Rapid City.
Aerial photography taken from a helicopter in the Black Hills National
Forest Sunday and Monday, August 19 and 20, shows the devastating
march of beetles across many areas of the Black Hills. Particularly
hard hit areas include upper Spring Creek near the Medicine Mountain
Boy Scout Camp, the entire forested area around Harney Peak, the
Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, parts of Custer State Park, and a large
area around Deerfield Lake.
Those same photos show large areas where logging and thinning took
place and those areas are now free of insects and at low risk from
catastrophic fires, Allen said.
“Our goal is to have healthy forests, forests that are green,
diverse, and productive and great homes for wildlife and fish,”
said Craig Bobzien, Black Hills forest supervisor. “To that
end we need to actively thin our forests to help them fend off mountain
pine beetles and reduce the risk of crown fires, especially in light
of the continuing drought.”
“Pine beetles affected more than 150,000 acres of the 1.2
million acre Black Hills forest in the past few years,” Allen
said. The attacks have been increasing in intensity and severity
since about 1996 and have increased dramatically through the last
seven drought years, he said.
“We’re thinning more than 50,000 acres a year,”
said Dave Thom, Black Hills natural resources staff officer, “focusing
on key areas like Hill City, Keystone, the Deerfield Lake area,
and the community of Custer.” Thom said trees in the areas
being thinned are shaking off insect attacks and are allowing foresters
to more easily control wildfires and prescribed fires.
Foresters are not trying to cut the bugs out of the forest by going
after trees that are already dead, Thom said. “We’re
thinning and logging in areas of high risk from insects and fire
so the bugs can’t get established and fires can burn at low
intensity.” Trees that are thinned and logged and treated
with prescribed fire don’t have to compete with so many other
trees for water and nutrients. They grow faster, are healthier,
and result in stronger more resilient forests, Thom said.
An important benefit of thinning forests is that wildfires are
then much easier to control. Large hot fires have been burning an
average of over 25,000 acres each year in the Black Hills. “Fires
in thinned areas are ground fires and relatively easy for us to
fight,” Thom said. “Fires in the thick bug-killed stands
are showing extreme behavior that has given firefighters so much
trouble this summer.” When the dead trees fall in a couple
of years, the severity of fires resulting from all the large dead
trees on the ground will make firefighting very difficult and cause
severe damage to soils and forest flora.
“Thinning is working to keep forests and communities healthy
and growing, and we have a lot more work ahead of us,” Bobzien
said.
Officials are asking homeowners, realtors, city and county governments,
and other landowners to immediately begin taking steps to ensure
that homes and communities meet Firewise standards and that newcomers
to the Black Hills understand the dangers as well as the pleasures
of living in a fire environment.
View Video
and Still
Images from the aerial flight.
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