The U.S. Forest Service closed its visitor center at Pactola Reservoir for the season Thursday as part of $1.6 million in budget cuts and shifts in the Black Hills National Forest to help pay for firefighting expenses in other states.

Shutting down the visitor center 12 days earlier than the normal Labor Day closure was a small part of a much larger package of cuts by officials for the Black Hills National Forest as they join other forest administrations across the nation in covering a projected $400 million total deficit caused by firefighting costs.

Deputy forest supervisor Dennis Jaeger of Custer said the cutbacks also include budget shifts and canceling scheduled improvements in forest facilities, including campground upgrades, road maintenance, and the replacement or improvement of signs, cattle guards and fences. Planned botanical and archaeological surveys in preparation for the release of a draft environmental impact statement on a proposed travel-management plan will be delayed, Jaeger said.

That could delay the eventual implementation of the much-discussed, long-awaited travel management plan in the forest. But Jaeger said every national forest nationwide is being asked to help make up the spending deficit caused by fire-suppression costs in other states, especially California.

With six weeks left in the fiscal year, Jaeger said Black Hills National Forest cuts include about $900,000 in contracts not yet awarded, "for everything from fencing projects to toilet replacement to signs."

The cuts come as the Black Hills National Forest enjoys a relatively tame and inexpensive firefighting season, thanks to regular moisture and continued green growth.

"We love seeing that green out there," Jaeger said.

But he doesn't love seeing the green disappear from the forest budget or the cutbacks it means in programs and projects. A string of dry years and sizzling fire seasons with especially costly wildfires in and near communities in California and other states have required almost constant budget shuffling by the Forest Service to pay for fire suppression costs. This year, though, the costs are being absorbed more directly in the field. Firefighting costs now make up about half of the Forest Service budget, squeezing other programs in forests across the nation.

Along with the early closing at the Pactola Visitor Center, the Mystic Ranger Station on U.S. Highway 16 south of Rapid City will no longer be open on Saturdays. And forest officials are limiting training expenses and overtime and may delay filling staff positions to save money, Jaeger said.

"Our hope is to limit impacts to the public," he said. "But if it's not an emergency or related to health and safety, we're having a hard time justifying any of these expenses."

Cuts also could affect tree-marking contracts related to timber sales, some of which could help open the forest and reduce the chance of wildfires. But Tom Troxel of Rapid City, director of the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, said the impacts of the cuts go far beyond lumber and have actually unified many forest interest groups.

"This really is one of those issues that on a national level has the entire spectrum of folks who work on national forest issues fired up," Troxel said. "It's one of those things where politics make strange bedfellows."

Forest interest groups are unified on the need to provide a different funding mechanism to cover the costs of catastrophic fires, Troxel said. A bill in Congress aims to do that.

"The Forest Service needs a funding mechanism that will treat these fires like the emergencies they are and not rob all of their other programs to pay for them," Troxel said.

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, commonly referred to as the FLAME Act. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., was a co-sponsor of the act, which would create a new account to pay for emergency fire suppression by the Interior Department and the Forest Service, which is in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"Right now, Forest Service officials in the Black Hills have to make difficult decisions about forest management as they watch resources from their already scant budgets go toward fighting fires in other parts of the country," Herseth Sandlin said by e-mail. "By creating a separate account that treats large, catastrophic fires as emergencies, the FLAME Act would put an end to 'fire borrowing.'"

That would assure that the Forest Service has the resources necessary to practice sound forest management practices that are good for the health of the forest and prevent catastrophic fires in the long term, she said. The act is now waiting committee action in the Senate.

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