McVey burn area restoration a hot topic

The McVey Fire, one of the five largest fires recorded in the Black Hills, decimated approximately 21,000 acres of forest outside of Hill City in 1939. The burn area is once again a hot topic. 

The U.S. Forest Service launched a restoration project to restore the natural landscape of the McVey burn scar outside of Hill City in 2019. Several forestry and non-forestry groups as well forest product industry leaders have been developing plans to treat the area and manage the vegetation.

The purpose of the project was to correct what the Forest Service said was a planting mistake made after the area was replanted with non-native Ponderosa Pine seed. The seed came from Nebraska and Colorado and did not adapt well to the Black Hills soil. Many were infected with gall rust, a disease that can be detrimental to young tree growth.

“Unfortunately, that seed did not grow very well here. It grew in poor form. It was susceptible to disease and that poor form made a wildfire hazard and did not provide the quality of habitat that we look for on this forest,” said Ben Wudtke, the executive director for Black Hills Forest Resources Association. 

The mortality from the recent mountain pine beetle epidemic left many dead and downed trees which added to the hazardous fuel conditions and poor wildlife habitat in the area. 

The restoration was broken into four separate projects: Alvin, Simon, Theodore and finally Artemis. For each project, part of the plan was to bring the area back to a more natural and healthy state by removing the non-native trees, burning slash piles, commercial thinning and restoration of hardwood and meadow sites, prescribed fire treatments and re-seeding of the area. 

Following  an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to increase timber sales in national forests, Dave Mertz, former Forest Service employee, is concerned that clear cutting will be one of the ramifications down the road. In an interview by KOTA at the burn site, Mertz said “This is called clear-cutting. This is what they’re going to have to do. They’re going to run out of options.” 

The comment spurred some agencies from the Black Hills Resilient Forest Partnership to jump into action, feeling that Mertz was misleading the public on what the site’s intended purpose was, which was not a commercial timber sale. 

“It’s unfortunate that some have tried to deceive the public on saying that this is what a commercial timber sale looks like,” said Bill Coburn a consulting forester with Black Hills Forestry. 

Mertz feels as though he was misunderstood. He said, “The point I was trying to make is that if indeed that happens, and the timber harvest levels go up to the degree that the timber industry is asking for, that at some point down the road, they are going to run out of options, and that they will have to resort to clear-cutting, like what’s out there.”

Wudtke says the timber industry in the Black Hills is generally opposed to clear-cutting outside of the rare occasion it’s prescribed for habitat reasons. 

The Black Hills Resilient Forest Partnership wants to make the public aware of the intended purpose of clearing the area.

“This is not a project to produce commercial timber. This is not at the behest of the forest products industry or elected officials, and those types of messages are intentionally misleading the public,” said Wudtke. 

Four signs were placed at the site to help inform the public of the restoration project and help avoid the spread of misinformation. 

The Black Hills Resilient Forest Partnership was formed in 2010 to coordinate an approach to the mountain pine beetle epidemic in South Dakota and Wyoming. The partnership continues to create comprehensive and strategic approaches to identify goals and objectives and prioritize actions to create a forest that is healthy and resilient.

“The Black Hills Resilient Forest Partnership really got its start back in 2010 right when the mountain pine beetle epidemic was really kind of building. State, local and federal agencies all kind of wanted to work together to try to figure some management strategies and how to get a hold of the pine beetle epidemic and how to slow the spread somewhat,” said Scott Guffey, the Pennington County Natural Resources director. “We worked with industry as well, they’re a key partner in this.”

The group is designed to come up with “management strategies to keep the forest managed in a healthy condition so we don’t have another mountain pine beetle epidemic,” said Guffey.

“There’s certain, specific types of treatments that you do for specific reasons,” said Coburn. “I’ve got to hand it to the Forest Service. They did a really good job here...they’re looking at the long term.”