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rupted critical fire prevention programs.
• Last year, the Forest Service treated or restored 4.4 million acres, according to agency records. Next year that is projected to drop to 3.5 million. The number of acres treated for hazardous fuels is projected to fall from 1.8 million last year to 685,000 next year. Harbour said the agency is focusing on heavily populated areas, which are more expensive to treat.
• A study for the Interior Department found it is more cost-effective to try to prevent fires than to just extinguish them once they erupt.
• In a 2010 blaze in Arizona, for example, researchers found that the fire cost about $135 million. They calculated that every dollar spent on basic prevention, such as trimming dead branches and carting out downed trees, could have saved $10 in firefighting costs.
• One of the study's co-authors, Diane Vosick of Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute, likened the removal of old and easily ignitable trees -- whether by prescribed burns or mechanical harvesting -- to vaccinating people against a deadly disease.
• "We know what to do and the investment up front is much easier than the aftermath, which the poor people of Colorado are dealing with right now," Vosick said.
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• VERMILLION, S.D. (AP) -- The South Dakota Board of Regents says enrollment at two of the state's off-campus university centers dropped during the last academic year.
• University Center-Sioux Falls served 3,117 students over the past year, a decrease of 2.5 percent from the prior year.
• Capital University Center in Pierre reported a 25 percent decrease in the number of credit hours in the 2012-2013 academic year to 2,112 total credit hours. Total unduplicated headcount also decreased by 14 percent.
• In its first full year of classes at its new location, University Center-Rapid City saw its credit-hour delivery increase 1.2 percent to 21,693 hours in the 2012-2013 academic year.
• The state's three off-campus centers reported program delivery and enrollment figures Wednesday to the Board of Regents at the board's monthly meeting in Vermillion.
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