Black Hills National Forest looking for public comment on project

The Black Hills National Forest has experienced a mountain pine beetle epidemic for years.

Now that the epidemic is slowing down in most parts of the forest, the infestation has left behind a changed landscape.

Jerry Krueger says, "We made a tremendous investment, the taxpayers of the United States has made a tremendous investment in the Black Hills National Forest, principally within the last few years through the Mountain Pine Beetle Response Project. What we're looking to do is to leverage that investment and to maintain the healthiest forest that we can."

That's where the Black Hills Resilient Landscapes Project comes in, to level vegetation conditions in the Black Hills.

Deputy Forest Supervisor Jerry Krueger says it's a direct result of changed conditions from the mountain pine beetle as well as treatment and thinning of the forest that's already taken place.

Krueger says officials developed a plan in 2005 that described their ideal forest and what it might look like now, but he says that plan now does not exist.

Krueger says, "Mountain pine beetles and the treatments that we've done and wildland fire, like the Jasper Fire, so those conditions have really changed, and we acknowledge those changes and we're looking to see what the public thinks about us trying to make an initiative with regards to the treating the forest to try and bring it back in alignment with what was our decision back in 2005."

The Black Hills Resilient Landscapes Project is now in the public comment period, where officials are looking for feedback on what tools they plan on using for this project.

That includes reduction of hazardous fuels, prescribed burning, enhancement of hardwood and grasslands, timber harvest, non-commercial thinning, and associated actions.

Krueger says they're looking at about 800,000 acres of the forest and hope to implement the plan by the fall of 2018.

If you would like to submit a comment, you can do so by going online to http://tinyurl.com/BHRLProjectComment.

Comments will be accepted until September 23rd.