Pine Beetle versus Dead Tree Extraction via Helicopter.......Removing dead and diseased trees to slow further Beetle infestation across the Inter-Mountain West

Pine beetle battle goes airborne

• Kevin Woster

 Pilot Bill Mitchell flies logs out of US Forest Service land on the slopes of Mount Elmo on Friday morning, March 25, 2011.

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It's just another tool in the box of potential solutions to the pine beetle problem in the Black Hills, Craig Bobzien says.It's a big tool that makes a lot of noise. It's costly, too. That's why the U.S. Forest Service and other natural resource agencies use helicopter logging sparingly, in situations where other forms of tree removal just don't work. "We've used helicopters before and will again," Bobzien, supervisor of the Black Hills National Forest, said Friday. "But it's expensive, so we have to be real thoughtful about where we do it."

These days, the Forest Service is using it on 171 acres off S.D. Highway 87 on the route to Sylvan Lake. It's high-profile forest near popular tourism stops, located between private land and Custer State Park.

It's also the kind of steep, rugged terrain that is difficult to reach and almost impossible to work on effectively with vehicles on the ground. It also tends to be relatively fragile ground, with slopes prone to erosion and thin topsoil easily damaged by the weight of heavy machines.

Trees hit by pine beetles are being cut and hauled out by the helicopter to ground crews and machinery in more accessible areas nearby. Most of the trees will have commercial value as lumber, small poles and chips.But this operation is more about bugs than commerce."The removal of the trees is greater than the value of the timber," Bobzien said.

Crews started on the helicopter project area early this month and still have a few weeks left to go. The helicopter is from a business in Idaho that was selected both because of its bid and its experience in helicopter logging, Bobzien said.The $400,000 budget for the project came from a special $2 million allocation secured last year for pine beetle work by the state's congressional delegation. Along with cutting and removing bug-infected trees, crews also are strategically thinning the forest to make it more difficult for newly hatched beetles to fly and infect other trees this summer.

"Our biological clock is we want to be out of there before the bugs start flying in June," Bobzien said.
The use of helicopters represents "way less than 1 percent" of forest treatment operations. But it's an important percentage and often the only practical solution for thinning and bug-tree sanitation in challenging parts of the forest, Bobzien said.

"It allows us to get the work done and still protect the resource," he said. "It's the environmentally sensitive way to go in some areas."