Wildfires and Forest Management

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking Congressman Westerman for organizing this Special Order tonight and for his indispensable work on the Natural Resources Committee and its Subcommittee on Federal Lands.

Mr. Westerman is a professional forester, schooled at Yale University, which the founder of the U.S. Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, did so much to shape.

Mr. Westerman's H.R. 2647 represents the first step toward restoring the sound, well-established, scientifically validated, and time-tested methods that, for generations, produced healthy, thriving, and vibrant forests.

These forest management practices prevented vegetation and wildlife from overgrowing the ability of the land to support them. Not only did this assure robust and healthy forests capable of resisting fire, disease, and pestilence, but it also supported the prosperous economy.

Revenues from the sale of excess timber provided a steady stream of revenues to the Treasury which could, in turn, be used to further improve the public lands.

About 45 years ago, we replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a policy of benign neglect. In 1970, Congress adopted the National Environmental Policy Act that opened a floodgate of ponderous and Byzantine laws, regulations, and lawsuits, with the explicit promise that they would ``save the environment.''

Well, after 45 years of these policies, I think we are entitled to ask: How is the environment doing?

Well, according to every scrap of evidence submitted to our subcommittee by a broad cross-section of experts, the answer is that these laws have not only failed to improve the forest environment; they have catastrophically harmed that environment.

Surplus timber harvested from our national forests as a result of these laws has dropped dramatically since the 1980s, while acreage destroyed by forest fire has increased concurrently and concomitantly. Wildlife habitats that were supposed to be preserved are now being incinerated.

Precipitation that once flowed to riparian habitats now evaporates in overgrown canopies or is quickly claimed in the fierce competition of densely packed vegetation. We have lost vast tracts of our national forests to beetle infestations, as weakened trees can no longer resist their attacks.

The U.S. Forest Service reports that in the Tahoe Basin in my district, there is now four times the vegetation density as normal, and trees that once had room to grow and thrive now fight for their lives against other trees trying to occupy the same ground.

Revenues that our forest management agencies once produced and that facilitated our forest stewardship have all but dried up. This has devastated mountain communities that once thrived from the forest economy, while precious resources are diverted for lifeline programs like secure rural schools and PILT.

Despite a growing population, visitation to our national forests has declined significantly. We can no

longer manage lands to prevent fire or even salvage dead timber once fire has destroyed it.

Appeals, lawsuits, and especially the threat of lawsuits have paralyzed and demoralized the Forest Service and created perverse incentives to do nothing to manage our lands.

The steadily deteriorating situation is forcing managers to raid forest treatment and fire prevention funds to pay for the growing costs of wildfire suppression, creating a fiscal death spiral--the more we raid prevention funds, the more wildfires we have; the more wildfires we have, the more we have to raid our prevention funds.

Ironically, our private forest lands are today conspicuously healthier than the public lands, precisely because the private lands are free from so many of the laws that are tying the hands of our public foresters. These laws may be making environmental law firms rich, but they are killing our national forests.

H.R. 2647 is the first step toward restoring sound, rational, and scientific management of our national forests. It streamlines fire and disease prevention programs and assures that fire-killed timber can be quickly removed to create both the revenues and the room to restore fire-damaged lands. It protects forest managers from frivolous lawsuits.

In my district, comprising the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, two major forest fires are now raging. The Butte fire in Amador County has already killed two people, left hundreds homeless, and destroyed 72,000 acres of forest land. The Rough fire in Fresno County has destroyed 141,000 acres, and they are still burning tonight.

We have exhausted our firefighting budget, and, without relief, we will have to begin stripping funds intended for fire prevention.

Mr. Westerman's bill would allow these catastrophic wildfires to be funded like every other natural disaster.

Mr. Speaker, we have a very simple choice. We can continue the misguided environmental laws that, for 45 years, have become responsible for the destruction of hundreds of square miles of our national forests every year, or we can restore the sound forest management practices that will guarantee healthy and resilient forests for the next generation.

This bill has already passed the House. It is now sitting in the Senate, and it is essential that the Senate act soon to put it on the President's desk.

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