Black Hills tornado accelerates hardwood release

I've logged a number of timber salvage operations after fires and blow downs in the Black Hills, Bighorn Mountains and in Idaho. It's dirty, dusty and destructive.

Tornadoes and strong thunderstorm microbursts have gone through this area of the Black Hills before so despite being a literal windfall for the Neimans the overgrowth of ponderosa pine on the limestone plateau portion of the Black Hills has become unhealthy especially for aspen and hazelnut.

Pinus ponderosa is not native to the Black Hills having reached the region less than four thousand years ago. When the Custer Expedition came through the Black Hills bringing invasive cheatgrass for their horses stands of ponderosa pine were sparsely scattered but a century and a half of poor ranching and land management practices have created an unnatural overstory best controlled by the mountain pine beetle, prescribed fires, periodic wildfires, yes even mechanical treatments as long as no new roads are built and burns applied to stimulate hardwood release.

European settlement in the New World and the Industrial Revolution took hardwoods for charcoal then humans allowed fast-growing conifers to replace lost forests. After Case #1, the first Forest Service timber sale in US history near Nemo, the Black Hills National Forest ceased being a wild thing. While ponderosa pine is relatively new to the Black Hills native limber and lodgepole pine have been mostly extirpated from He Sapa, The Heart of Everything That Is.

Today in the Mountain West aspen and other hardwoods have been choked out by fire suppression and the timber industry exacerbating climate change. Aspen leaves reflect sunlight in the summer and aspen communities hold snow pack into the Spring while pine needles absorb heat and accelerate snow melt warming the planet.

Restoring and rewilding American ecosystems are parts of the Green New Deal so with some coaxing from the public land managers within the Black Hills National Forest might come to their senses and just leave it to Wakan Tanka and Mother Earth to heal.