Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Land Into Trust

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, although I am still very angry at her for her decision to retire from the House at the end of this term. I don't think anyone blames her for wanting to deprive herself of the pleasure of our company, but I do blame her very much for depriving all of us of the pleasure of her company. She will be sorely missed.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3079 would transfer two 40-acre parcels owned by the Forest Service to the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians. These parcels are landlocked Forest Service property that are caught between a private property owner to the north and east, and tribally owned lands to the south and west that are currently in the process of being converted from fee to trust.

These new parcels would be added to the tribe's existing tribal conservation area and would be forbidden from being used for gaming.

This bill has the full support of the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors, the elected land use agency in this jurisdiction. The private property owner whose lands abuts this parcel also supports the transfer. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate by Senators Feinstein and Boxer.

The Federal Lands Subcommittee has held extensive hearings into the maintenance backlog of U.S. Forest Service properties and the horrific fire danger posed by these overgrown Federal lands. Acreage in the Sierra now typically carries four times the timber density that the land can support. This region has been devastated by forest fires in the past decade because the Federal lands have been so badly neglected. The land in question is designated as a High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. The tribal chairman testified that the Forest Service has done no thinning of these parcels throughout his lifetime.

Now, in my district that spans the Sierra Nevada, forest fires have utterly destroyed more than 1,000 square miles of forest in just the last 3 years. The Rim Fire, the largest in the history of the Sierra and one of the largest in the history of the State, came within just a few miles of this parcel.

When I visited the command center at the Rough Fire just south of Tuolumne in August, the beleaguered firefighters begged me to carry back one message to Congress: that forest treatment matters. Where the fire ran into treated acreage, it slowed enough to extinguish, but there just wasn't enough of it. So that fire burned for more than 10 weeks and destroyed 151,000 acres of forest land.

By adding these parcels to the existing tribal conservation area, we ensure that this acreage will be properly maintained, which means additional fire protection for the region. It will add 80 acres of properly managed and maintained forest land where excess timber can be carried out before it burns out. And in association with the tribe's other conservation work, that just could make the difference in stopping or slowing the next catastrophic fire in the region. It is, at least, a start.

I thank the gentlewoman for the time, and I thank the House for hearing this bill today and ask for its adoption.

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