The House Agriculture and Natural Resources committee unanimously advanced a bill providing for prescribed burning of state-owned land by a person owning adjoining land.
House Bill 1001 is designed to resolve a years long issue blocking landowners from safely conducting prescribed burns near the Missouri River in order to fight woody encroachment on their pastures.
"I have customers on the river breaks that I've seen aerial pictures that were taken in the '40s, and the same pasture you take the aerial pictures today and they've lost well over half of their pasture," said committee chair Rep. Marty Overweg, R-New Holland, speaking to the spread of Eastern Red Cedar trees on rangeland in southcentral South Dakota in Thursday's meeting.
Each year, ranchers in the state lose thousands of acres of grassland to the spread of Eastern Red Cedars and other woody species. From 1990 to 2022, the state cumulatively lost 5,604,349 tons of rangeland production to tree encroachment.
To fight this, landowners have formed prescribed burn associations, or PBAs. Prescribed fire is one of the most effective ways to manage the trees and PBAs allow ranchers to work together to solve the issue. One of the most established PBAs in the state is the Mid-Missouri River Prescribed Burn Association, or MMRPBA.
Since its establishment in 2016, the MMRPBA has burned more than 8,000 acres without incident to fight Eastern Red Cedar encroachment. However, the association ran into issues in spring of 2024 when the state revoked a Memorandum of Agreement, or MOA, that allowed the PBA to burn on state land bordering the Missouri River.
This state land along the Missouri is called Title VI ground. It was previously under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers, but was transferred to the state of South Dakota and is now managed by the Department of Game, Fish & Parks.
The MOA, sometimes referred to as an MOU during the committee hearing, was originally formed between GF&P and the Mid-Missouri River PBA in 2019. With it, the Mid-Missouri River PBA could design their burn plans such that the fire would travel over the Title VI ground, removing Eastern Red Cedars on Game, Fish & Parks land, and utilize the Missouri River as a firebreak.
"It would be so unsafe to try to hold a fire from crossing the state ground when it could just go across the state ground to the water," said Heather Hammerbeck, a fourth-generation rancher who has land adjoining Title VI ground.
Hammerbeck, who testified at the committee, said due to the rugged nature of the terrain bordering the Missouri, at times it's not possible to build a firebreak, or even to differentiate between the private and state land.
Any fire-related activities on Game, Fish & Parks land falls under the jurisdiction of South Dakota Wildland Fire and the Department of Public Safety, or DPS. According to DPS, the Memorandum of Agreement was revoked because it was not compliant with state statue.
Kristi Turman, the deputy secretary for the Department of Public Safety, testified at the committee. According to Turman, state officials wrestled with different solutions with landowners after the MOA was revoked, involving numerous meetings, field visits, presentations and town halls.
"No matter the discussion it always came back to what the law says, and the fact that we as a state can't delegate our authority or responsibility for prescribed burns on state land to property owners or burn associations or entities outside state government – or even other entities within state government," said Turman. "The law gives the responsibility to the Department of Public Safety, and it makes sense because we have the Division of Wildland Fire."
Turman says the bill carves out an exemption to the law for landowners along the Missouri River to burn their land and state land together to eradicate woody species and for land management purposes.
Some of the heaviest Eastern Red Cedar presence in the state travels up the Missouri River through Gregory and Lyman counties toward I-90, making this area strategic ground for battling the state's encroachment problem.
"We heard a lot about policy today," said committee member Rep. Liz May, R-Kyle. "But I want to remind everybody that real families have paid the price for this delay."
Two burn seasons have been lost due to the MOA issue, and landowners along the Missouri are in danger of losing a third if the state does not act.
"South Dakota's largest industry is agriculture, and everybody in here needs to remember that," said May. "And when a state agency changes course and then fails to provide landowners with tools to protect their forage and manage fire, it's not just a policy failure, it's an economic damage."
