The battle against mountain pine beetles in Custer State Park this fall will limit public use of popular hiking trails to Harney Peak and Little Devils Tower.

It will also change the scenery along popular tourist routes in what park officials call a short-term aesthetic loss for a long-term gain in scenery and forest diversity and health, not to mention gains in the battle against bugs.

Park officials have hired a helicopter crew from Idaho to remove and salvage beetle-infested trees on 2,350 acres of steep, rocky terrain that includes the popular Needles Highway and Sylvan Lake areas. Officials also have let a timber sale for commercial logging on another 650 acres to help fight the spread of the beetles.

Those operations will use the main Harney Peak trailhead at the Sylvan Lake day-use areas and the nearby Little Devils Tower Trailhead off S.D. Highway 87 for access points into treatment areas. The Little Devils Tower Trailhead will be closed from Sept. 15 through the winter. The main Harney Peak trailhead will be closed from Oct. 1 until about Christmas.

"It's going to impact what people can do and cannot do in there this fall," park superintendent Richard Miller said.

Together, the timber harvest operations will bring a dramatic change to the roadside scenery in ways that some might visitors might find troubling. The operations will remove half to two-thirds of the trees in some sections of the treatment areas and leave many piles of cuttings behind.

That could be a shock to some visitors, the park's chief forester Adam Gahagan said.

"We are probably placing aesthetics lower on the list of priorities because it's so important to get in their and removes some of those trees," he said. "But in the long term, it will bring diversity through the release of aspen and hardwoods that will benefit the forest."

Most trees cut will be ponderosa pine, which have grown thick in the park and especially in the adjoining Black Elk Wilderness area. The 13,500-acre wilderness, which is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, is badly infested with beetles, but management restrictions prohibit treatment there.

So the park has for several years been thinning forest adjoining the wilderness and the 37,000-acre Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, which also has bug problems. Thinning trees makes it harder for beetles to move into new areas and limits the spread of the infestation.

Miller said there are estimates that 80 percent of all the trees in the Black Elk will be dead in two to three years, he said.

If the park doesn't take action, the forest there also could be decimated, the park superintendent said.

"We can manage it now and save what we can or do nothing and lose it all eventually," Miller said.

Gahagan expects some bewilderment on the part of park visitors who think a park should "have trees all over the place." But a forest dominated by thick stands of pine is more susceptible to fire and disease and less productive for wildlife and other plant species, he said.

"I think the average South Dakotan will understand and support this," he said.

The result of the treatment will also bring views that haven't been available for years, Miller said. It's impossible, for example, to seek Sylvan Lake form the back patio of the Sylvan Lake Lodge. That view will return after the tree thinning there.

"I'm sure some people will say, 'Boy, they sure messed up the Needles Highway,'" Miller said. "But others will say, 'Boy, I can see things out here that I've never seen before.'"

Gahagan said the initial unsightly areas of the tree removal will quickly fill in next year with new vegetation growth.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com