RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – Mountain Pine Beetles damaged hundreds of thousands of acres of forest in the Black Hills over a 20-year epidemic stretching from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s.
Experts say the destructive bugs are making a small comeback.
“It was darn hard to find even a tree that was infested with Mountain Pine Beetles for about the last eight, ten years,” U.S. Forest Service Forest Entomologist Kurt Allen said. “Last couple years, it has gone up a little. It’s not an epidemic at this point.”…