Since 2014, every January marks the “Burning of the Beetle” in Custer, South Dakota. What’s turned into a fun tradition and artistic celebration, stemmed from a bleak time in the Black Hills.
The Black Hills National Forest is one of South Dakota’s treasures, but if you traveled there several years ago, you’d see a much different forest than you’ll see today. For years, the Mountain Pine Beetle infected more than 430,000 acres of forest, leaving millions of trees dead in its path.
Pine beetles thrive in an overly crowded forest - they crave density. So, in order to tackle the problem, federal, state, local governments, and private citizens joined together to determine the best course of action.
From the beginning, state and local partners were proactive and engaged, but in recent years, federal policy has helped, as well. The U.S. Forest Service utilized categorical exclusions from the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bill to tackle the pine beetle with local partners. The federal government gets in the way far too often, but these categorical exclusions laid out in the Farm Bill allowed the Forest Service to more quickly utilize certain practices. Proper forest management practices, like tree thinning and controlled burning, played a key role in improving the resiliency of our forest.
When you go to the Black Hills today, it’s clear which areas have undergone proper forest management and which areas have not – you’ll notice which areas have healthy trees and which areas have too many dead trees.
Today, the Black Hills are recovering from the pine beetle outbreak, but this is not the time to take our foot off the gas. We must continue to push for and meet prescribed forest harvest targets to prevent further outbreaks of the pine beetle. The Black Hills doesn’t need to face devastation again.
The “Burning of the Beetle” reminds South Dakota of an enemy we need to continue to keep at bay. As South Dakotans burn the beetle in effigy, we should remember that continuing to actively manage our forest will ensure its resilience for years to come.
