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STATEMENT OF BRIAN BRADEMEYER, BLACK HILLS GROUP 



SIERRA CLUB 



Mr. Brademeyer. Thank you, Senator. 



The Black Hills Group of the Sierra Club wishes to thank Sena- 

 tor Pressler and the Senate Small Business Committee for coming 

 to the Black Hills to hear firsthand how public land decisions are 

 affecting small businesses. We appreciate this opportunity to 

 submit our testimony to the United States Senate and will focus on 

 the two dominant public land management issues in western South 

 Dakota, the Black Hills Forest Plan Revision and the South Dakota 

 Wilderness Act. These two issues are, of course, deeply intertwined 

 due to the legal requirement to review all roadless lands for wilder- 

 ness designation during forest plan revision. 



Regarding the Black Hills Forest Plan Revision, under the cur- 

 rent plan, the Black Hills are managed neither for multiple use 

 nor for sustained yield but rather for short-term timber goals. The 

 Black Hills Forest is far and away the most developed, suburban- 

 ized, and intensively managed forest in the Forest Service region, 

 which includes Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and 

 Kansas. With 84 percent of its total acreage devoted to an intensive 

 logging program, the Black Hills produce over 42 percent of the re- 

 gion's timber. This intensive timber program is threatening to un- 

 dermine the ecological health of the Black Hills on which all small 

 business jobs ultimately depend. 



We have extensive concerns regarding what is being proposed for 

 the forest plan revision and also for what is being omitted from the 

 revision. A major portion of our concerns relate to the mainte- 

 nance of viable populations of wildlife species, which in turn reflect 

 the overall environmental health of the Black Hills. We have par- 

 ticular concerns for repairing forest interior and all growth habitat 

 and their associated species. These concerns are documented in 

 detail in our written testimony. Also, a great concern is declining 

 amounts of security habitat for big game animals such as deer and 

 elk. This is aggravated by the extremely high open road density in 

 the Black Hills and is having significant negative impacts on big 

 game hunting and associated small businesses. 



The timber emphasis is producing rotation ages too short to pro- 

 vide for much of the beneficial uses associated with our national 

 forests, such as aesthetics, recreation, wildlife, water quality, and 

 reduced fire risk. The aggregate effect of all these negative timber 

 impacts is outweighing the positive contributions to lumber-related 

 businesses. Timber products are becoming too large and expensive 

 for small contractors or local mills to bid on. Half the timber-relat- 

 ed jobs have been lost in the last decade due to mechanization and 

 increased labor productivity. Most independent contractors have al- 

 ready been pushed off the public land. These job losses will contin- 

 ue due to technology changes within the timber industry. Unless 

 major changes are made in the priorities of the Black Hills Nation- 

 al Forest, timber concentration in the hands of out-of-State corpo- 

 rations will continue. 



We have repeatedly asked that the important job of the recrea- 

 tion with its merely related small businesses be included in the 

 forest plan revision. Recreation is already the dominant economic 



