Drought in the Western United States

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I will speak on a related matter, and that is how our Forest Service approaches fire in our densely overcrowded and drought-stricken forest.

Madam Speaker, on July Fourth, lightning struck a tree in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Alpine County, California, starting a small fire that smoldered just over a quarter of an acre of rugged terrain.

Now, instead of immediately attacking this fire, the U.S. Forest Service decided to monitor it instead--that is to say, to do precisely nothing.

On July 16, 12 days later, that small fire of a quarter of an acre, now called the Tamarack fire, exploded out of control. It has now consumed 70,000 acres as of this writing. One of the towns in its path is Woodfords, California.

In 1987, the Woodfords Fire Department responded to a report of fire on Forest Service land near their town in the same forest. They, too, were turned away. In fact, Federal officials threatened Woodfords' residents with arrest for even trying to extinguish the small blaze.

Hours later, that fire exploded to 6,500 acres, costing 25 families their homes. Apparently, the Forest Service has learned absolutely nothing in 34 years.

This let-burn policy of Federal land managers began back in 1972 during the height of the radical environmental movement. It stems from the premise that fire is nature's way of cleaning up forests and that active suppression of fire leads to a buildup of excess fuels.

That is right, as far as it goes because an untended forest is just like an untended garden. It will grow and grow until it chokes itself to death and will ultimately be consumed by catastrophic fire. That is how nature gardens.

The U.S. Forest Service was formed to remove excess growth before it can burn and to preserve our forests in a healthy condition from generation to generation.

In California, active land management reduced acreage that was annually lost to wildfire for more than 4 million acres a year in pre- Columbian times to just a quarter-million acres during the 20th century.

Federal foresters marked off excess timber and auctioned it to timber companies, which paid the Federal Government for harvesting rights.

Environmental laws adopted in the 1970s now require years of environmental studies at a cost of millions of dollars before forest thinning can be undertaken. That essentially brought the era of active land management to a halt.

The result? California's wildfire damage has returned to its prehistoric level, more than 4 million acres lost to catastrophic wildfire last year. You see, nature is a lousy gardener.

In 1988, when the Federal let-burn policy produced the disastrous Yellowstone fires, President Reagan reversed it. ``I did not even know'' the policy existed, he said. ``The minute that this happened out there and Don Hodel went out, he made it plain that, no, we were withdrawing from that policy.'' That is what President Reagan said.

Unfortunately, Reagan left, and the policy returned. The devastation that it has caused since then is tragic, avoidable, and incalculable.

Especially given the hazardous conditions of today's forest, sensible policy would give top priority to extinguishing the small fires before they can explode out of control into mega-fires.

Scrambling to explain their obvious dereliction of duty, Deputy Forest Supervisor Jon Stansfield complained that they just didn't have the resources to put out the small fire when a water drop by helicopter could have stopped it cold.

Yet, they had the resources to photograph it by helicopter, and they had the resources to do countless airdrops after they had allowed it to explode out of control.

Now, the Federal Government owns 96 percent of Alpine County, leaving it with virtually no tax base and entirely dependent on tourism attracted by the national forest. The fire has not only taken people's homes and destroyed their businesses, but it has severely damaged the forest resource that Alpine County's entire economy depends on for tourism.

It is dangerous nonsense to monitor incipient fires in today's forest tinderbox, even if they seem to pose no immediate danger. No person in his right mind would monitor a rattlesnake curled up in his bedroom because it isn't doing much of anything at the moment. He would kill it before it does.

In our national forests, only the Forest Service can prevent small blazes from becoming forest fires, and it is about time they did.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source