Fires aimed at forest preservation in Custer State Park
State will burn up to 1,000 slash piles in a season if conditions permit
Another round of starting fires to prevent forest fires is here in South Dakota.
Visitors to Custer Sate Park this winter shouldn’t be alarmed if they encounter flaming piles of wood debris while navigating Iron Mountain Road or Needles Highway. At least not if what’s burning are man-made piles of tree limbs, leaves and pine needles that line the Black Hills tourist attraction.
Those heaps of dead vegetation are known as slash piles, and they’re designed to be burned in order to reduce the amount of fuel available for forest fires and to lessen the risk of fires starting or spreading.
“Custer State Park typically burns slash piles each year if the conditions allow,” South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks’ Nick Harrington said of the forest-health preservation practice that entails burning as many as 1,000 slash piles in a season.
But in dry years with infrequent snow fall, that’s not the case. That’s because GFP along with its slash-pile burning partners at South Dakota Wildland Fire (SDWF) require no fewer than six inches of snow to light any piles, which are made both by hand and with heavy machinery.
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In the Black Hills, the length of the burning season can range from just a few days to an entire winter season, with temperatures and wind also requiring mindfulness before burning.
“The park will not burn if any one of the factors does not meet the requirements,” Harrington said.
Ensuring branches, wood debris and other unsalable forest materials are completely dry is also a consideration, which requires piles cure for six months or more. That’s so piles will readily burn, even if covered by several inches of snow, according to SDWF’s “Small Slash Pile Construction and Burning Procedures” manual.
And if that happens, expect some haze in Keystone.
“Snow covered piles will create a great deal of smoke until the snow is burned off,” the manual reads.
