Fix Our Forests Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chair, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 471, the Fix Our Forests Act.

Many forests across the Nation continue to be undermanaged and face significant forest health challenges. This includes forests such as the Allegheny, located in my district, which has its own difficulties with invasives among other issues.

The devastating fires in Los Angeles and throughout southern California are the latest reminder of what can happen when we fail to properly manage our forests and the risk of catastrophic fire in fire prone areas.

Unfortunately, these fires show that much work remains to help mitigate or prevent such catastrophes from occurring in the first place.

Even with the additional treatments the Forest Service has been performing, tens of millions of acres of national forest and adjacent lands throughout the west are still at risk of wildfire and are in need of treatments. Many of these acres are tinderboxes ready to ignite due to decades of mismanagement, which has led to declining forest health and dangerous levels of overgrowth.

We have continued to witness some of the most destructive wildfires on record in just the past decade, leading to significant property loss, recovery costs, and most sadly, the loss of human life. This truly is an urgent crisis that must be immediately addressed, and Congress must do more to better support the Forest Service and firefighters.

As Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, I am proud of the forestry title we included in last year's farm bill to expand the Forest Service's tools and authorities. Such reforms will enable the agency to improve forest health; reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire; increase the pace and scale of restoration; and ultimately protect communities, property and lives.

Similar to the farm bill, the Fix Our Forests Act will provide the Forest Service with such tools to proactively address invasive species, forest health, and wildfire conditions which threaten many rural communities across the national forest system.

With that, I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense legislation and encourage a YES vote on final passage.

In conclusion, I thank the firefighters and first responders for their work these past weeks and many sacrifices they have made. And we keep the those affected by these devastating wildfires in our thoughts and prayers as they endure this difficult time.

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