Continental Divide Trail Completion Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. PANETTA. Madam Chair, I rise today in support of the Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act.
Let me, of course, thank Representative Neguse for his strong leadership on these issues, as well as Leader Hoyer for getting this bill to the floor.
I also acknowledge and understand my good friend Mr. Westerman's complaints about regular order, but I also know that he understands how urgent of action is needed, especially when it comes to us getting a grip on the conflagrations, the devastation, and the destruction that we are experiencing in the American West when it comes to wildfires.
Right now we have a record drought that has led to record levels of dryness. Dead and dying fuels have created vast swaths of wilderness that are flammable, ignitable, and combustible just from a single spark, a simple downed power line, a smoldering campfire, or a strike of lightning that can absolutely wipe out not just our forests and our parks, but lives and livelihoods.
This legislation contains a number of bills that would help reduce that threat, including my Save Our Forests Act that would authorize the Forest Service to hire more employees to help manage not just forests but the people who visit our forests.
Eighty percent of wildfires are caused by humans, so more Forest Service personnel are needed to manage humans acting like humans.
Additionally, the Wildfire Emergency Safety Act, which I authored with Senator Feinstein, provides a strategy and the authority to start thinning out the undergrowth of overgrown forests and then set prescribed burns to eliminate those dead and dying fuels.
This bill would do that at the national level with large-scale restoration projects, and it would do that at the local level with non- Federal lands through partnerships with our Federal stakeholders.
Let me also make one thing clear to our environmental allies. This is not a slippery slope to clear-cutting or commercial logging. This is not about timber harvesting for economic interests. This is about smart, science-based, commonsensical stewardship for our forests. It is a solution to deal with our drought and a strategy to not just suppress wildfires, but, also, to do everything we can to prevent them.
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