A Black Hills forest advocate says the current scale and pace of logging in the forest is unsustainable.
In a letter to the forest service, the Norbeck Society says the pace of logging has stayed consistent, despite insect infestation and wildfire depleting the merchantable volume of timber.
The Norbeck Society is requesting the forest service put a pause on selling timber and asking for a collaberative meeting with forest service officials and the timber industry to work out a plan for 2020.
The call comes after the group posted photos on Facebook of the removal of large trees they say came from the Black Hills.
Mary Zimmerman is the Norbeck Society vice president.
She says the group would like to see the sale volume decrease temporarily, until more data comes in.
She says they want to see logging at a level that matches conditions in the forest.
“What we’d really like to see is more thinning and preservation of stands that are capable of withstanding bugs and fire,” Zimmerman says. “Just a little more common sense. I think the high volume of sales is driving a lot of imprudent decision making on what should be cut.”
Forest Service officials say they’re waiting on the forest inventory analysis, which is expected in December.
Scott Jacobson is a communications person with the Black Hills National Forest. He says that data is gathered about once every seven years. It’ll be the first time data has been gathered since forest officials declared the mountain pine beetle epidemic over in April of 2017.
“When there was concern that some of the merchantable timber volume was going down in the forest we requested to have an accelerated inventory on what’s available on the forest,” Jacobson says. “So we could make a determination on the way ahead in terms of volume harvested on the forest.”
Jacobson says Norbeck Society is a key partner in managing the forest.