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Forest Service Considers Prescribed Burns in Black Elk Wilderness area

By Steve Miller, Rapid City Journal

For the first time, prescribed fires may be set in the Black Elk Wilderness to improve wildlife habitat there and in the surrounding Norbeck Wildlife Preserve.

The same project could include prescribed burns, as well as thinning and logging of pine stands, all to improve wildlife habitat within the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, according to Kelly Honors, the interdisciplinary team leader for the Norbeck Wildlife Project.

The main part of the Norbeck covers approximately 27,000 acres southeast of Hill City and northeast of Custer. It takes in the 13,500-acre Black Elk Wilderness, Black Hills National Forest land, private land, part of Custer State Park and all of Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Black Hills National Forest officials will outline the draft proposals for the project at a public meeting on Tuesday, May 19, in Hill City.

Forest service officials two years ago offered a proposed action, which included reducing pine trees in some areas within the Norbeck, to improve habitat for 12 focus species.

Since then, a resource planning team, in cooperation with the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department, has developed drafts of two more action alternatives, which will be presented at the Hill City meeting, Honors said Monday.

Objectives to improve habitat include encouraging hardwood stands, such as aspen, by taking out conifers and taking pines out of meadows, Honors said.

The project also aims at enhancing forage, stand diversity, meadows, large trees, spruce, shrubs and old-growth trees.

Honors said the alternatives were developed in response to issues identified during a process of gathering public concerns. Issue categories include: wilderness values, wildlife and wildlife habitat, the presence of large trees, prescribed burning, the effects of transportation systems on other resources, and the presence of mountain pine beetles.

The Norbeck Wildlife Preserve is still managed in accordance with the 1920 Norbeck Organic Act, which established the Norbeck and explicitly states that the unit is to be managed for game animals and birds, Honors said.

In May 2007, GF&P and U.S. Forest Service officials developed a list of 12 focus species to guide habitat management. The 12 species are: mountain goats, bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain elk, whitetail deer, Merriam's turkey, mountain bluebird, golden crowned kinglet, brown creeper, roughed grouse, song sparrow, northern goshawk and black-backed woodpecker.

Honors said the alternative action plans being considered all would provide some habitat for each of the species. Some alternatives put more emphasis on some species and less on others, she said.

For example, she said mountain pine beetle infestations help some species such as the black-backed woodpecker, which uses dead trees, or others that like hardwood stands. "Other species that use dense mature pine stands would be impacted in an opposite way," Honors said.

Thinning of ladder fuels could lessen the impact of wildfire, helping large trees thrive, she said.

Honors said although prescribed fire has been used in the Norbeck outside of the Black Elk Wilderness, prescribed burns have not been previously used inside Black Elk.

At the May 19 meeting, resource specialists from the planning team will be available to answer questions.