American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008

Floor Speech

AMERICAN HOUSING RESCUE AND FORECLOSURE PREVENTION ACT OF 2008 -- (Senate - June 19, 2008)

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CHANGE IN OREGON'S FORESTS

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today, I am honoring a commitment and submitting for public review a proposal to protect old-growth forests and to aggressively move to restore, through thinning, the millions of acres of at-risk forests across the State of Oregon.

The novelist Ellen Glasgow once remarked:

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.

We find ourselves today in a decades-old rut that threatens our forests and our lives like never before. It is time for change for Oregon forests, and that change can only begin with new ideas--ideas that depart radically from recent decades of forest mismanagement, old-growth destruction, catastrophic fire, and political gamesmanship.

We must break this cycle of endless fighting, of old, unwinnable battles in the woods that now endanger our forests and communities alike. We must make the preparations now to move forward, under new national leadership in 2009, to restore our treasured and endangered forests with sustainable, ecologically beneficial restoration thinning while permanently protecting the few remaining old-growth forests we have left.

We ought to be creating new and sustainable jobs in forestry for now and for the future and finally achieve the economic and ecological promise of the Northwest Forest Plan. It is my view that it is critical to change the mindset of Federal land management bureaucracies by requiring large-scale efforts to address the obscene backlog of at-risk forests and by restoring the tools and the public trust required to accomplish these jobs. In short, we must change the way the Federal Government manages forests, and especially Oregon's forests.

I am hopeful my proposal--driven by science and the will of the people of Oregon to end the destruction of old growth and to restore our at-risk forests through sustainable thinning--can help begin a new dialog that leads to change that is so desperately needed.

So I invite all Oregonians to review my proposal and to share their thoughts at my Web site: www.wyden.senate.gov. My staff and I will review those comments and seek to improve upon it before it is formally introduced as legislation in the Senate.

Our forests are the foundation of our natural, historical, and sociological culture. Unfortunately, decades of scientifically unsound forest management have created dangerous risks that now threaten our forests and our cultural identity.

Instead of making progress on the huge backlog of priority management projects that could restore our forests, Presidentially imposed political agendas have taken precedence, for well over a decade now, over commonsense opportunities to move forward to an ecologically sound, economically advantageous, and sustainable forest future.

Scientifically unsupportable agendas and the resulting cycle of mistrust, litigation, and institutional paralysis now threaten vast tracts of Oregon's forest land and especially what remains of Oregon's ancient forests.

The Federal Government owns more than half of my State. That probably is a little bit different than it is in Rhode Island, but it is the case, and most of it is forest land. Due to decades of poorly designed, even-aged management and fire suppression, we have millions of acres of choked, second-growth forest at an unacceptably high risk for disease, catastrophic fires, and insect infestation. Fire, disease, and infestation certainly don't respect geographic boundaries, but they sure present a severe risk to private landowners and communities alike.

In 2008, at our Oregon Economic Summit in Portland, I announced that I will begin work on a proposal to address the bureaucratic and political roadblocks that prevent restoring millions of acres of choked, second-growth plantations in moist west side forests and the many at-risk dry forests, particularly found in the eastern and southern part of my State. I said I would work to avoid a return of the counterproductive and senseless forest battles of the past several decades--battles fought over logging in old growth and environmentally sensitive forests, areas which tend to be far more fire resistant and play a critical role in water quality and species protection.

Today, I am honoring the commitment I made to the people of Oregon, and I intend to use my chairmanship of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests to attempt to bring my home State the changes that our forests so desperately need.

The guiding premise of my proposal is to direct and help the Federal land agencies move forward quickly with local input on what should be the most critical, least controversial objectives to restoring our Federal forests in Oregon and to move those agencies away from practices that have been widely discredited and are not supported by the public.

In short, my proposal expedites restoration of Oregon's forests by thinning the millions of acres of choked plantations and dry, at-risk forests that pose a risk to lives, forests, and property. It also attempts to begin the task of restoring public trust in Federal land management agencies by permanently ending the commercial logging of Oregon's old growth forests. Forest Service and BLM managers in my State would be given new direction based on the principles of restoration forestry. Overstocked stands that I have been referring to and stands unhealthy due to a lack of age or species diversity would become the focus of this proposal. The managers would be instructed to avoid all old growth and inventoried roadless areas and incorporate a comprehensive aquatic conservation strategy into all projects. Activities conducted under this new management direction would receive expedited administrative procedures and limits on administrative appeals because they would then be focusing on critical priorities in the noncontroversial areas.

This proposal further works to restore the trust of the public in our Federal land agencies by giving those agencies an incentive to pursue new, sustainable forest management directives and to create the first ever automatic, independent review of the agencies' forest management actions, as well as new openness, transparency, and accountability for the actions by these agencies.

The overwhelming body of scientific evidence assigns a negative ecological value to the cutting down of Oregon's remaining old growth forests. Science has demonstrated time and time again that old and mature trees play an indispensable role in preserving water quality for communities, preserving critical wildlife habitat, and storing the carbon gases that contribute to global warming. Further, the evidence shows that those older trees are far more resistant to fire than younger trees. Equally important, after the disappearance of over 90 percent of Oregon's old growth, the people of my State no longer support the cutting of what little old growth remains on our public lands.

In the drier forests found predominantly, but not exclusively, on the east side of Oregon, the old growth picture is a bit more complicated due to decades of questionable management. Many scientists and environmentalists agree that more active forest management will have to be pursued quickly on the east side forests if there is going to be a genuine effort to save the native older trees and restore a healthy, diverse, and more fire-resistant mix to forests currently under a relentless and devastating assault by fire, disease, and insects.

For these reasons, I propose a permanent protection from logging for all remaining old growth and mature trees in Oregon's Federal forests. In the mostly west side ``moist'' forests, no tree currently 120 years or older would be allowed to be cut ever again for commercial purposes. In the drier forests, no tree currently 150 years or older would be allowed to ever again be cut for commercial purposes. The decades-old debate over the fate of old growth in Oregon would finally come to an end.

This is a crisis which cries out for action across the millions of acres of choked, at-risk forests in our State, and reasonable people on both sides of the forestry issue need to come together so that we get fresh policies and Oregon doesn't suffer foolishly and needlessly lose more forests, property, and lives.

What I propose today is to shift the focus of our Federal land agencies off of logging old growth and other environmentally sensitive areas and on to addressing the horrific backlog of desperately needed restoration thinning in the Federal forests. This involves harvesting ground and ladder fuels in areas that ought to be considered noncontroversial, fuels that currently endanger old growth in other healthy forests--Federal, State, and private alike--as well as endangering human and animal life. The new required management focus will also allow for the economic potential of the Northwest Forest Plan to be secured.

This proposal envisions that in many cases it is going to be possible to achieve the goals I have set out by bringing about collaboration from timber industry groups and environmental leaders. I have already seen great collaborative successes like this in the Siuslaw, Colville, and other national forests, with the help of organizations such as Oregon Wild, the Nature Conservancy, and K-S Wild. My proposal creates incentives for these partnerships, but due to the enormous and dangerous backlog of work, it is my view that collaborative efforts such as these must be stepped up; they must come at an accelerated pace.

Unfortunately, history has shown that it is not possible to rely just on good will, and that is especially the case if you don't find a way to discourage the cycle of endless administrative appeals and litigation that has produced Federal agency inertia and undermined even the most commonsense management efforts in our forests.

Under my proposal, each Oregon Federal forest and BLM district would be empowered to create a landscape-level restoration project of up to 25,000 acres designed by local collaboration organizations. If collaboration is not achieved, the land agency would be allowed to go forward but on a smaller scale of up to 10,000 acres.

One of the reasons there have been endless appeals and litigation is that over the past several decades, the level of public trust of Federal public land agencies has fallen to such unhealthy levels that it is impossible to conduct even routine and commonsense forest management projects. An era of mistrust of these agencies and the accompanying legacy of public protests, appeals, and litigation have produced what I consider to be an institutional paralysis in these land agencies, and it must be reversed. To begin to restore public trust and empower the land agencies to move forward aggressively, I believe the proposal I offer today will bring an unprecedented level of scrutiny, transparency, and accountability to the forest projects that are conducted under the new authorities I propose.

I borrow in this regard from a model that has been used by fisheries regulated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency that employ observers to monitor the bycatch of fish. Under my proposal, independent forest observers hired and managed by the independent inspectors general of the Agriculture and Interior Departments, who will monitor all of the projects that are conducted under the proposal I offer today to make sure the prohibitions against cutting old growth and mature trees, and cutting trees in roadless areas--that those protections are strictly observed. The forest observer reports will be made available to the public online, and Federal forests found violating the Federal protections would lose their ability to provide expedited project authorities for several years as a penalty.

Finally, for the sake of our environment, economy, and our way of life, my hope is that an approach such as I offer today is going to make it possible to create thousands of new jobs and restore the health of our forests. The only way to produce this kind of change is to put new ideas forward, bold ideas that break out of the old rut that has produced so much institutional paralysis, and move to an approach that protects our forests, protects our communities, and protects a new opportunity to create family wage employment.

I am certain there are many additional issues Oregonians are going to want to consider and suggestions they will have to improve this proposal. I wish to make it clear that starting today, with this proposal online, I invite and welcome the people of Oregon to weigh in so that it will be possible, at the end of their opportunity to be heard and offer their suggestions, to go forward with a concrete, specific proposal to break bold, new ground with respect to forestry and provide the changes the public so desperately desires.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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