PIEDMONT, S.D. – A $5 million program to help private landowners in the Black Hills manage their forest lands and prevent wildfires is on hold as part of President Donald Trump's widespread freeze of federal loan and grant programs.
The forest funding for South Dakota was allocated in 2024 after getting approved by former President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The South Dakota funding is one small part of a much larger $350 million federal program aimed at helping landowners, state and local agencies and tribal governments manage private forests, reduce fire risk and mitigate impacts of climate change across the country. Funding for the entire program appears to be on hold.
The $5 million allocated to South Dakota is for a cost-sharing program with Black Hills landowners for "climate mitigation and/or forest resilience practices,” according to the U.S. Forest Service. In all, 37 states were approved to receive about $140 million for private landowners.
The five-year grant funding is largely aimed at thinning overgrown forests on private land, which helps prevent forest fires from starting and spreading.
About 60% of forest land in the U.S. is privately owned, according to the forest service, making the landowner forest management program a key part of overall wildfire mitigation efforts across the country. The funding freeze comes at a time when the Trump administration has fired or laid off thousands of workers, including in the forest service and wildland fire agencies.
One fire reveals difference in managed forests
Pennington County businessman Dean Henderson, who owns woodlands near his ranch and construction company offices north of Rapid City, saw the benefits of forest management up close in October 2021.
Henderson, who owns Blue Ladder Construction, watched that fall as a fire that broke out between Haines Avenue and Deadwood Avenue torched woodlands around his business and began to threaten buildings.
Several years prior to the fire, Henderson had obtained grant funding to manage his land. As the fire raged, it was clear to see which areas had been thinned of trees in the past, he said.
Stu Whitney
"In areas where we had thinned, it helped out immensely," Henderson said. "In areas where it was thick and overgrown, it was total devastation, totally cleared out by a very hot fire."
Henderson's buildings were saved, and he remains a supporter of government grant funding to aid private landowners with forest management. "It made it so I could afford to do that because otherwise it wasn’t cost effective," he said.
Bob Burns of Piedmont is a landowner who also serves as co-chair of the South Dakota Family Forests Association, a nonprofit group committed to forest management and resiliency in the Black Hills.
The family forests group was selected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to administer the South Dakota forest management funding, which is provided as 80% reimbursement to landowners who mainly hire contractors to thin their forest lands.
The Black Hills has been hit by several small wildfires and a few major blazes in recent years. The Jasper fire south of Custer burned 83,000 acres of timberland in 2000, and the Custer State Park fire in December 2017 torched about 53,000 acres of forest.
Managed forests promote healthier trees, landowner says
Thinning of forests also promotes growth of healthy trees and reduces the likelihood of insect infestations, including from the mountain pine beetle, which destroyed or damaged pine trees on about 450,000 acres of the northern and central Black Hills during an epidemic lasting from the late-1990s to the mid-2010s.
Bart Pfankuch
Proper forest management allows for improved flow of moisture from rain or snow and leads to increased growth of mature trees that are suitable for logging, which can aid the struggling logging industry in the Black Hills, Burns said.
Until recently, Burns said his group was operating under the assumption that since the grant program was fully approved by Congress and the former president, it could begin soliciting grant applications from qualified Black Hills landowners.
After receiving about two dozen applications, however, he learned the federal money was on hold. No official notice of the funding freeze was given, but Burns said that after some investigation on his own, he figured out that, for now at least, the money is not available.
"We’re in limbo right now," Burns told News Watch. "We’re not going to sign people up to do this work unless we know that these funds are going to be flowing to us to reimburse them."
In one of his first executive orders after taking office, Trump froze all funding within the Inflation Reduction Act. He also paused most federal loan and grant programs in late January as his administration undergoes a review to ensure spending aligns with the president's executive orders and goals and to root out potential fraud or wasteful spending.
Burns said the forest resiliency programs are highly controlled and that grant funding is closely monitored.
“There’s nothing approaching fraud or waste in this, and every dollar will be used to do something good for the Black Hills,” he said. "It seems odd to me that this came from an act passed and signed by the president and Congress, so how someone can come and stop it dead in its tracks, I don’t understand that."
Burns said he has contacted representatives in the office of U.S. Sen. John Thune but has not received any updates on if or when the forest funding will be released. A spokesman for Thune told News Watch in an email that the senator's office has communicated with Burns but was unable to provide an update on funding.
"Our office has been in touch with Bob Burns and various other stakeholders in South Dakota assisting them as agencies have been transitioning and getting set up," the spokesman wrote.
The South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources said landowner forest management efforts help maintain and sustain healthy forests in the state.
"We (DANR) work with private landowners to draft forest management plans that identify objectives for their forests and provide management options and tools to accomplish those plans," the department said in an email to News Watch. "Proper forest management, whether on federal lands or private property, is important to reduce the risk of large disturbances such as wildfires or insect outbreaks while accomplishing other ecological services."
Black Hills forest program 'really benefits everyone'
Forested lands in the Black Hills are naturally regenerating, meaning that seeds living in the soil do not require planting of new trees.
Fire has historically served as nature’s way of thinning the forest and leading to growth of new, stronger trees, but in the modern world, with intermingling of homes and businesses in the national forest, “we can’t have wildfires thinning the forests, we just can’t,” Burns said.
While controlled burning can help, the most effective method of reducing fire fuels is through forest management that includes regular thinning of trees that are small or too close together.
The program will benefit the forests that need management and also create jobs and revenues for professional loggers and foresters, Burns said.
“This money really benefits everyone,” he said.
About 800,000 acres of forest in the Black Hills are suitable for logging, and about 290,000 of those acres are privately owned, Burns said.
To participate in the grant program, landowners must have more than 10 acres and be members of the family forests association, which means they must pay for a state-approved forest stewardship plan that guides how the land should be managed.
Grant participants must obtain three separate bids from foresters and submit the low bid for approval. Once approved, the landowner then qualifies for an 80% reimbursement of the contract costs, paying the final 20% from their own pocket. The cost of thinning trees by a professional forester can range from less than $1,000 an acre up to more than $3,000 an acre, so managing tracts of land averaging about 40 acres in size can get expensive, Burns said.
To date, the family forests association has about 160 members who own about 46,000 acres, Burns said. Unless the funding is unfrozen soon, forest thinning efforts could be stalled until fall because forest management efforts stop during summer
Burns and his wife, Mary LaHood, are both active not only in managing their own tree farm located west of Interstate 90 near Piedmont but also in promoting forest management among other landowners.
For their longstanding leadership and land management efforts, the couple in 2021 was named National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year by the American Forest Foundation. As a team, now married more than 40 years and managing their forest together that entire time, they're committed to maintaining the quality and beauty of the Black Hills region that they and their adult children call home.
"People don't realize it, but when they drive through the Black Hills, they're driving past thousands of acres of private lands that are beautiful and well preserved," Burns said. "I understand that everyone wants to make sure that tax dollars are being spent wisely, but this is such a wonderful way to increase forest resiliency and protect the Black Hills."
This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit organization. Read more stories and donate at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email to get stories when they're published. Contact Bart Pfankuch at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.
