US Government Sells Off Select Parts Of Black Hills Forest
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — Like a lot of people who consider the Black Hills National Forest a treasured public resource, Darren Haar doesn’t think it’s a great idea to sell pieces of it to private owners.
But, also like a lot of people, he wouldn’t mind having a pristine piece of it for himself and his family.
Unlike a lot of other people, however, Haar had both the opportunity and the means to buy a chunk of the national forest.
Haar’s purchase of a rectangular, 20-acre lot about 16 miles west of Rapid City is more than just a changing of hands of a piece of land. It also represents a shift in how the Forest Service spends its money, a shift brought about by the service’s concentration on fighting fires.
In a September online auction, Haar paid $451,750 for the land, which is tucked into the hills and pines on a long gravel lane off state Highway 44. The money will not go into any forest-enhancement project; rather, it will be used, along with some other land-auction proceeds, to pay for improvements to the Forest Service’s offices.
The land was, of course, originally the domain of Native American tribes; since then, the list of owners is an exclusive one.
“I told my wife we’re probably third, after the French and the U.S. government,” Haar told the Rapid City Journal ( ).
The September sale was the latest in the ongoing divestiture of up to nine tracts totaling 362 acres of Black Hills National Forest property. Congress, at the behest of the South Dakota delegation, passed legislation authorizing the sales 15 years ago.
Land and some buildings in five of the nine tracts have sold so far. The most recent sales, finalized in December and January, raised more than $1.9 million in total proceeds that are earmarked for the purchase, construction or renovation of Black Hills National Forest offices or work sites.
The divested tracts are mostly old work sites deemed no longer necessary to the management of the forest, and if all of them eventually sell, the subtracted land will amount to far less than 1 percent of the Black Hills National Forest’s more than 1 million acres.
For those reasons, Andy Stahl, executive director of the Eugene, Oregon-based Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, does not consider the sales a threat to the forest or the public’s enjoyment of it. But he said the sales reflect the degree to which the cost of firefighting has overwhelmed U.S. Forest Service budgets and forced local forest managers into creative fundraising.
Stahl, a former Forest Service employee, said the overall $5 billion U.S. Forest Service budget is doing fine and growing, but he added that the way it is allocated is problematic.
Fifteen years ago, following revelations about mismanagement and concerns about over-cutting of trees, the Forest Service began winding down timber sales. That left a revenue hole.
“Since the bureaucracy realized fighting fires earned a blank check from Congress,” Stahl said, “the Forest Service kept adding zeroes to that check, and Congress kept funding it.”
As of 2014, 42 percent of the U.S. Forest Service budget was spent on firefighting, compared with 16 percent in 1995. Fire staffing has increased 110 percent since 1998, while staffing dedicated to managing Forest Service lands has decreased 35 percent.
Tom Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, noted firefighting’s absorption of funds in August when his department issued a report on the situation. He said the average number of fires on federal land has more than doubled since 1980, and the total area burned annually has tripled. He blamed the increase in fires and the rising cost of firefighting on climate change, population growth near forests, and brush and fuel buildup.
Stahl blames wasteful spending and said the cost of firefighting could be reduced by making smarter choices.
An example, Stahl said, is the use of aerial fire retardant, which is better known as the orange stuff dumped by aircraft on buildings to protect them from approaching forest fires. Stahl said the retardant costs a dollar per gallon and is ineffective, making the use of it akin to “dumping designer water.”
“But it creates the impression that they’re out there doing something,” Stahl said.
Stahl, Vilsack and other observers all recognize that with so many resources going to fires, little is left for such things as maintaining recreational trails and renovating aging offices. Selling expendable parcels of public land and property is one way to raise the needed cash.
Haar, a Custer native whose mother formerly worked for the Forest Service, moved to Rapid City in April following an 18-year international career with DuPont. He bought the site known as the Pactola Work Center. It has a number of what one Forest Service employee described as “crummy, rat-infested buildings” formerly used to house seasonal employees. The buildings fell into disuse as the smaller ranger districts of the bygone horseback age were consolidated into the larger districts of the modern, vehicle-powered era.
What Haar paid for, more than the buildings, is the setting. The site’s buildings are far enough off Highway 44 to be hidden from passing motorists, and they’re surrounded by forested terrain.
Another set of sales was completed recently at the Reder Administrative Site in Hill City, which also includes some old buildings and land deemed no longer necessary to modern Forest Service operations.
The Reder tract was subdivided into nine parcels, two of which sold directly to people in Oregon and Nebraska who own permitted recreational residences there, and seven parcels that were sold in an online auction. Two of the auction buyers are from Hill City, and the others are from Tennessee, Wyoming, North Dakota and Yankton. Sales prices for the Reder parcels ranged from a low of $35,000 to a high of $452,100.
The total of nearly $2 million in proceeds from the Pactola and Reder sales could be used to consolidate two existing Forest Service offices in Custer. Hell Canyon Ranger District employees who work in an older building could be moved into the newer Black Hills National Forest headquarters building, pending estimates for renovations at the headquarters and a decision by Black Hills National Forest Supervisor Craig Bobzien. The money could also be used to purchase an office being leased in the Bearlodge Ranger District in Wyoming.
Bobzien said budget difficulties drove the decision to put the Pactola and Reder sites up for sale, rather than restore them to forested areas or develop them into public-use facilities.
“Congress gave specific authority to convey these excess administrative sites (former offices or work centers) with the proceeds to be invested into needed administrative facilities,” Bobzien said in an email interview. “There have not been other avenues or other recent appropriations to fund current administrative site needs, outside of this legislation.”
Stahl, the critic of firefighting expenditures, praised local forest managers for waiting through the Great Recession to sell the Reder and Pactola sites at higher prices.
“The timing reflects a little bit more savvy care with our public resources than one normally expects out of the federal government,” Stahl said.
No one is happier than Haar, who for now plans to use the Pactola Work Site as a fun getaway. Someday, he might build a home on the secluded spot.
“To me that’s a generational property,” he said. “Hopefully someday I can give it to my kids.”
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Information from: Rapid City Journal,
