Russian Investigation

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the senior gentleman from Colorado for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to discuss a couple of the terrible conservation and environmental bills that affect the district I represent, our State, and our country.

As the gentleman from Oregon mentioned, the elimination of the Conservation Stewardship Program, a program that has been successful to help preserve over 70 million acres, is, frankly, inexcusable. The Conservation Stewardship Program supports farmers, ranchers, and owners of forests who want to pursue high-level conservation stewardship activities. It is important to protect our watershed that our towns and communities rely on, to keep our air clean, to sequester carbon, to maintain diverse habitats for wildlife, and, yes, to keep our farms productive and sustainable in the long term.

Working lands conservation programs are so popular that the Natural Resources Conservation Service wound up having to have a waiting list. It had to turn away almost three-quarters of the qualified applicants. Under the proposal today it would have to turn away 100 percent of applicants.

Now, they claim that they are consolidating some programs into the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, but, frankly, those programs are very different. Whereas, the Conservation Stewardship Program helps farmers and ranchers implement advanced conservation and stewardship systems to help preserve and protect the resources on their lands.

EQIP is more of an introduction or on-ramp to working lands conservation. It is on a one-time basis to help a specific conservation practice. It is not a program that designed, nor does it provide, assistance for long-term sustainability.

That is why the Conservation Stewardship Program is so important for our forest health. Switching gears to our national forests, it seems that some Members of this body are still seeking to erode protections for our national forests.

One example in this bill, the Tongass National Forest, in Alaska, which is one of the crown jewels of our National Forest System, faces a huge threat with two amendments. One of those amendments in the bill, which was already ruled in order last night without any debate, would exempt all of the Federal forests in Alaska--more Federal forests than any State in the country--to one of the most important conservation safeguards: the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The second amendment would overturn the Tongass forest plan, which protects roadless areas and other ecologically important lands from unsustainable logging, and charts a transition away from taxpayer subsidized, industrial scale, old-growth logging, to better and new forms of sustainable economic development.

Our country's old-growth forests are, frankly, a National treasure. Clear-cutting ancient forests not only compromises our public lands; but it devastates and fragments habitat for wildlife, it introduces invasive species that compete with native species; and, yes, it pollutes the drinking water supplies for as many as 60 million people.

The Roadless Rule is very important because it provides a balanced protection between our old-growth forests and public roads, and hydropower projects. Its application in Alaska has a very positive impact on community access and economic development, and we need to maintain the rule.

As representatives and stewards of our forests, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it is absolutely critical to protect our public lands. From the Clean Water Act to NEPA, which this bill would devastate for projects that are 6,000 acres or less, to the Endangered Species Act, which has had so many great successes, we need to protect the tools we have to secure a safe environment and a diverse habitat for our wildlife.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Colorado, and others, for speaking out on the important environmental provisions in this bill.

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