The U.S. Department of Agriculture is giving $37 million dollars to South Dakota so a number of forest districts in the country can be thinned, including one district in the Black Hills.
Sixty-five hundred acres in the Hell Canyon Ranger District of the Black Hills National Forest, which is near Custer, are already contracted and scheduled to be thinned.
With more money allocated to the Black Hills vestal project, an effort aimed at improving the health of the forest, 14 hundred more acres will be thinned. This is great news for both the Forest Service and homeowners in the area. A thinned forest means fewer fuels for fires and fewer pine beetle infested trees.
Matt Spring, a fuels specialist with the U.S. Forest Service says that the help is needed for the wildlife, “We want to thin the trees to where fires cannot get up into the crowns which makes control a lot more difficult for fire fighter safety and control the wildfire.”
The U.S. Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service are partnering on this project and private homeowners in the area can apply for financial assistance to help thin the forest on their land. The thinning project is expected to be complete in three to five years.
From KOTA Territory News: https://www.kotatv.com/news/south-dakota-news/37-million-for-restoration-project/31521578