Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003-Conference Report

HEALTHY FORESTS RESTORATION ACT OF 2003-CONFERENCE REPORT

Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, this is truly a historic day. As the Presiding Officer knows, we have worked literally for a decade or more to try to find a path forward in the area of finding a solution to the problems we face in our national forests.

In recent years, we have seen an average of 4 million acres a year burn. We have seen devastating wildfires this year that have destroyed not only tremendous amounts of property and environment in our forests, but have also taken lives. We have seen insect infestations that have jeopardized the future of one of the most incredible environmental resources we have in America, our forests.

All of it has occurred while we have been battling in the courts, trying to find a path forward simply to allow our forest managers the ability to implement their forest management decisions, to deal with insect infestation, to deal with the threat of catastrophic wildfire, and to help preserve the great legacy we have in America, in our forests.

I stand today to thank those in our Senate conference who have worked with us to build and strengthen the bipartisan solution that has brought us to this point.

Sitting here beside me is the Senator from Mississippi, THAD COCHRAN, chairman of the Agriculture Committee. Without Senator Cochran's able leadership, without his patience and his wisdom in guiding us through this process, we would not be here today. I want to personally thank him. I thank him, as well, on behalf of a grateful Nation for the skill and the patience he has given us to help bring this bill forward.

Also, I thank Senator LARRY CRAIG, my colleague from Idaho, who has worked on this issue tirelessly for the better part of the last decade to try to help bring America to an understanding of the need for reform, and for helping us work through a bipartisan solution in the Senate. Senator Craig deserves great praise and commendation for his untiring work to help give us the possibility of being here today-just a short time away from successfully passing in both the House and the Senate this Healthy Forests legislation.

Also, Senator Domenici, chairman of the Energy Committee, has worked tirelessly on this issue and he deserves to be thanked for his tremendous efforts. Not many people follow it this closely, but there is forestry jurisdiction in both the Energy Committee and the Agriculture Committee. Senator Cochran chairs the Agriculture Committee, and Senator Domenici the Energy Committee. By coincidence, both of the Idaho Senators chair the respective subcommittees on forestry. Senator Craig chairs the subcommittee on forestry in the Energy Committee, and I chair the forestry subcommittee on the Agriculture Committee. Together, on the Republican side, we have developed a strong team to work in the Senate.

I also thank Senator BLANCHE LINCOLN, from Arkansas, for stepping forward as the ranking member on the forestry subcommittee and working with me to develop the senate bill that set the mark for improving this legislation and moving it through the Senate. We then expanded that bipartisan base and worked with Senators FEINSTEIN from California, WYDEN from Oregon, and others, including additional Republicans and Democrats, all of whom came together to bring a bipartisan solution to the Chamber.

It was not easy. There were many who wanted to use this issue to further their political efforts, to either cause further strife and conflict on the issue surrounding our forests or to simply promote some agenda that was not consistent with our efforts to move forward on a bipartisan basis to protect and preserve our forests.

We fought many battles over the last 2 or 3 months, and they were the resulting, concluding battles in a crescendo that has been developing over the last decade. When we were done, we needed to work with the House of Representatives. There was concern at that point. There was actually another filibuster to stop us from even going into conference with the House because there was concern that the bill would be changed too much in ways that would not allow us to find a common consensus-based path forward.

Yet we have gone on together, again, in that bipartisan fashion that we developed in the Senate to work in a bicameral fashion and bipartisan fashion with the House to come together with this legislation that is now before us.

As many of us said as we developed this legislation, it is not necessarily what any of us would have written had we had complete control over the issue. But it is the result of what can happen if we work across party lines, across the lines of the rotunda between the House and Senate, and across regional lines in our Nation, to try to make sure that we get past the politics, the partisanship, past the personal attacks, and focus on the principles that will allow us to move forward and develop positive legislation such as that.

I am confident this legislation will pass the Senate today. I am confident that when it goes to the President's desk, he will sign it. The United States will have taken a very big step forward in terms of preserving one of the great environmental legacies we have-our forests; we will have taken a step to protect and preserve our rural areas in America; we will have done much to protect our great firefighters, many of whom gave their lives this year, and in previous years, in trying to protect our forests and our communities; we will have put statutory protection in place for old-growth forests in our Nation; we will have worked to develop small-diameter timber and other uses of those parts of our forests that need thinning; we will have taken steps to make sure that rural communities such as Elk City, ID-literally at the end of the road-do not face the potential devastation a wildfire could cause not only to their economy but to their safety and the community at large; we will have protected the wildland urban interface, where so many of the people who now live in urban areas find their homes and lives and property threatened by the danger of uncontrolled wildfire.

All of these things will be brought together because we were successful today and, over the past few years, in bringing together the kind of politics that America wants, the kind of politics that is good and beneficial, that helps us to cross the divisions and eliminate those conflicts that so often bring us to a stalemate or a stall on the floor of the Senate or on the floor of the House.

Mr. President, again, I thank all Senators and all of the House Members who have done so much to look past their own individual concerns and to work together for the collective good of the whole as we built this strong bipartisan solution to a critical issue facing our Nation.

With that, I yield the floor.