Our efforts to beat the beetles

You may have read recently that a tree planted to honor former Beatle George Harrison was killed, ironically, by an infestation of beetles mountain pine beetles. The evergreen tree had been planted in Los Angeles, California, and its loss is symbolic of the impact that pine beetles have had throughout the western United States.

Here in South Dakota, our efforts to beat the beetles began in earnest in August 2011 when I launched the Black Hills Forest Initiative. This multi-faceted plan sought to leverage state, federal and private resources to fight the pine beetle epidemic.

With support from the Legislature, I pledged $4 million over three years to provide a comprehensive effort to protect Custer State Park; surveying and marking assistance to private landowners; and a cost-share program for tree removal.

Since 2011, in Custer State Park, 166,308 trees have been marked and treated. Our goal has been to treat all beetle-infested trees in the park and those efforts have paid off, with the number of infested trees dropping from more than 100,000 in 2012 to just over 30,000 last year.

In the past three years, crews have also surveyed 3,848 private properties and marked 363,982 infested trees on 186,695 acres. More than 76 percent of those trees were treated through our cost-share program, which provided $1.8 million in assistance to private landowners. In total, landowners spent more than $2.8 million in cash and in-kind contributions to treat trees on private property.

Our outreach activities have been successful as well. Since we launched http://www.beatthebeetles.com, more than 63,000 people have visited the website. Over 1,500 people have attended one of our many landowner education workshops.

In 2012, these efforts earned an Innovations Award from the Council for State Governments for our programs creativity, effectiveness, newness, transferability and significance.

Mountain pine beetles are native to the Black Hills and will continue to impact our forests. While the epidemic is slowing, it has not ended and neither will our efforts. Last March, the legislature appropriated still another $1,950,000 to continue the fight. As George Harrison noted in a 1969 interview, For the forests to be green, each tree must be green." Were going to continue working to keep the Black Hills green.

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Our efforts to beat the beetles