Montana Wildfires

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. President, I left Montana yesterday morning to come back to Washington, DC, to do the work of the American people but, as always, my heart remains in Big Sky Country. That is especially true right now as fires burn across our State. In fact, just yesterday, of the top 30 wildfires in the Nation, 28 of those 30 wildfires were in Montana.

Our crisis in Montana isn't water. It is not too much water. It is not hurricanes. It is fire. It is smoke filling the air and filling our lungs. It is communities being evacuated, Montanans standing on the side of the road looking at the fires moving toward their homes. We have seen the loss of homes and many structures. Montanans are looking at the tons of fuel just lying on the forest floor waiting for a spark to ignite. In fact, in this year alone, over 1,600 fires have burned nearly 1 million acres in Montana. That is nearly the size of the entire State of Delaware.

At my invitation, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke both came to Montana, just about 2 weeks ago--in fact, 2 weeks ago tomorrow--so they could see firsthand the impact wildfires are having on our great State. We went out and saw the Lolo Peak Fire. The impact is devastating.

We need to be sure Montana gets the resources it needs, first of all, to stop the fires. I am very grateful to the men and women who are risking their lives to fight these fires, going on virtually very little sleep, living in tents, fighting these fires. The firefighters battling on the ground are away from their families, and they are giving everything to protect our lives, our lands, and our property.
Tragically, already in Montana, two firefighters have lost their lives--Trenton Johnson, age 19, and Brent Witham, age 29.

Preventing wildfires is impossible, but we can do much more to lessen the severity and impact of these fires. Seven million federally controlled acres in Montana are at high risk for wildfire. Five million acres--five million acres--have been designated for accelerated forest management due to insect infestation. We are talking about dead trees.

Yet, since 1990, our State of Montana has lost over 40 percent of its forestry workforce and two-thirds of its mills. The remaining mills that we have are not running around the clock, multiple shifts, which they could do, except for the fact they can't get enough logs. We are literally bringing in logs from out of State and even out of the country to our mills in Montana to keep them going.

Let's talk about Mineral County, MT. Mineral County was founded in 1914. This county in Western Montana is well known for its dense forests and abundant natural resources. The first sawmill came to this area around the turn of the 20th century. Multiple others followed suit. For decades, the timber industry thrived. Montanans worked hard, and they earned good money in the timber industry. In fact, the timber industry produced tax revenues to support their schools, teachers, infrastructure, and allow our counties to prosper, but in the early 1990s things changed. Across the State of Montana, environmental lawsuits became a barrier to timber contracts that were awarded to Montana's small businesses. A community that once thrived on the abundant resources surrounding them now sits with one of the highest unemployment rates in the State.

Today, Mineral County has just a single lumber mill. Folks living there today are watching the very resources that supported their grandparents burn. In fact, in Mineral County alone, over 25,000 acres have been torched this fire season, and the fires continue to burn. The weather outlook for September continues with above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation. This fire season is not over. We are going to be in it for quite some time.

The mismanagement of our Federal forests and radical environmentalists have prevented hard-working Montanans from having jobs, and this just adds more fuel, literally, to these wildfires. Our inability to act and treat these acres further deteriorates the health of our forests and the communities that desperately depend on them.

I can tell my colleagues--and I can speak on behalf of all of Montana--that we are tired of being told that others know better than we do when we watch our forests burn every summer, our mills close, our neighbors lose jobs, and our counties lay off road crews because they don't have the funds anymore to support basic infrastructure, and our communities suffer from the lack of management of our Federal lands.

A safe forest, a vibrant forest is a managed forest. A healthy forest is a managed forest, and timber jobs are good jobs. A properly managed forest is also good for wildlife habitat. We have teamed with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Their headquarters are in Missoula, MT. If you want to see more elk, if you want to see more wildlife, you need to manage the forests. It is good for wildlife habitat and good for water quality. A wildfire is devastating to the watershed because what happens is the wildfires come through, they wipe out the trees and grasses, and then when the spring rains come--when the snow melt comes from the spring--we see tremendous erosion and devastation of fish habitat and the loss of good sources of water for our communities.

Let's talk about the unspeakable amount of carbon emissions that are produced by these wildfires. I can tell my colleagues that we are done listening to radical environmentalists when they tell us otherwise. Too many forest management projects have been held up in frivolous litigation at the expense of the people of Montana. One such project-- the Stonewall project--was halted because of the terrible Cottonwood decision, which is the 21st century poster child for radical environmental activism. Two fires blazed on the very lands that were set to be managed had it not been for these radical environmentalists. This is wrong.

We need litigation relief. We need to reform the process that our land managers go through to get these projects done. The National Environmental Policy Act--NEPA--was established to provide guidance for land managers to analyze all project alternatives and allow for public comment. This process has become so bogged down with additional steps and litigation that projects now at times take years to get through it.
Others never even make it.

When it takes this long to analyze whether to even start a project, the forests continue to get more and more overstocked, more and more littered with fuels. A forest is a renewable resource, but if we do not manage the forests, they become unhealthy. They become prone to wildfire. Something needs to be done to streamline the process while allowing more collaboration between stakeholders. We can't wait any longer.

We need our colleagues to come to the table because we need comprehensive forest management reform.
How many more thousands of acres in Montana and all over the West must burn before we act? Tying the hands of the State, tying the hands of the local communities, tying the hands of the people of Montana who best know how to manage these lands has not served us well. We need to change course.

I will work with anyone of any party and at all levels of our government to ensure that forests are managed in a way that reduces the severity of wildfires because Montanans deserve it, and because, quite frankly, it makes sense. Montanans are tired of seeing and breathing the smoke. The firefighters risking their lives out there deserve it as well.

Here is the bottom line. Either we are going to manage the forests or the forests are going to manage us. It is time to put the loggers of Montana back to work. I urge my colleagues to join me in this effort.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source