Former UW prof: abuses on BHNF well-documented

Ponderosa pine only reached the Black Hills about four thousand years ago and as many readers are aware the first US Forest Service timber sale took place near Nemo but only after nearly all the old growth of every native tree species had already been cleared for mine timbers, railroad ties and construction. So, Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is correct when she said the Black Hills National Forest has been poorly managed. I maintain that has been happening since 1899 and Forest Service Case Number One. 

Forty years ago I logged in the Buckhorn and Moskee, Wyoming areas of the Black Hills when much of it was owned by Homestake Mining Company. At that time it was home to some of the last old-growth ponderosa pine stands in the region. We operated a belt-driven portable sawmill powered by a John Deere tractor on private ground where I cut and skidded some huge bug-killed trees. 

Republican donor Jim Neiman waited until Donald Trump was forced from the White House then shuttered his sawmill in Hill City and blamed the Forest Service. In September Wyofile ran an article on how the Neimans became a timber industry monopoly in the Black Hills then logged it into the dirt.

While the local museum depicts Moskee as a bustling hive of activity, the former logging camp has disappeared without a trace — today it’s nothing more than an open field along Interstate 90. On the road to the South Dakota town of Belle Fourche, a timber-frame coal tipple near the old Aladdin mine crumbles behind a barbed-wire fence, a sign warning of its imminent collapse. [Wyo loggers fear extinction as federal forest policy evolves]

Dennis Knight is Professor Emeritus of forest management and ecology at the University of Wyoming and lead author of Mountains and Plains: The Ecology of Wyoming Landscapes.

First, the Black Hills logging industry developed a bad reputation in its early days. Something clearly had to be done. Wood production requires a long-term investment, at least to the end of the century. During this time frame, peer-reviewed research indicates that ponderosa pine forests will become less dense and less widespread in the Black Hills. Without planting, open meadows are likely to become more common (as seems to be happening in a large area following the 2000 Jasper Fire). I too have seen ponderosa pine growing like a “weed” in some places, but those dense patches of trees typically originated during a period of abundant seed and favorable climatic conditions for seedling survival. [The rest of the Black Hills forestry story]

Neiman is currently logging within the Sioux Ranger District on a national forest named for a war criminal. 

ip photo: mule deer move through the Jasper Fire area.