Secure Rural Schools

Floor Speech

Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I also thank Chairman Hastings of the Natural Resources Committee for bringing this important legislation to the attention of the American people, especially after this tremendous fire season that we've had in the West for the past 3 or 4 years, in which we have lost valuable natural resources, jobs, wildlife, livestock, people, houses. It is an unnecessary devastation that always amazes me as we would bring about legislation to address regional haze, which has no environmental impact other than to reduce the viewsheds or the damage to the viewshed, when the damage to the viewshed is being caused by our inattentiveness in managing our national forests.

I want to talk, Mr. Chairman, about forest health and about the benefits of logging to have healthy forests, vibrant wildlife, and clean water and air.

The air is cleaner when the West is not on fire. The water is cleaner when protected from the ash that goes down the hills, into the streams, choking the oxygen out of our streams, which then, in turn, kills our fish. That reduces fishing opportunities, and it reduces a vibrant fish population.

In addition to providing clean air by lack of fire, clean water due to lack of fire, by logging, we can actually have more vibrant, widespread wildlife habitat and water for that habitat. When we log and do it in a manner that preserves the natural contours in our forests, we can have high mountain meadows with forages that will keep elk, deer, and other species on those high mountain meadows longer in the year, thereby providing habitat for a vibrant, healthy, diverse, ungulate population and for the species that share that ecosystem habitat. So it's good for wildlife.

Furthermore, it's good for the health of the forests, themselves, because, if you would look, for example, at the Medicine Bow National Forest and the Routt National Forest across the border in Colorado, these two forests have been absolutely denuded of lodgepole pine by the bark beetle with the exception of the young trees in the areas that have previously been logged. The healthy areas of the Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming and the Routt National Forest in Colorado are the areas that were previously logged, because there is a diversity of the age of the trees, thereby having a young, more resilient, healthy tree intermingled with stands of medium-maturity and high-maturity trees. The combination of the old growth, the medium-maturity trees, and the young trees makes for a more vibrant, healthy forest that can better withstand an onslaught like the bark beetle epidemic that has devastated so much of the Intermountain West.

So we have addressed clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat through the opportunity for high mountain meadows, and we have addressed the health of the trees, themselves. All this can happen while we have jobs in logging, while we have opportunities for revenues for schools.

The point here is we are all part of this ecosystem--the people, the animals, the air, the water, the trees. All can benefit by this bill. This is a commonsense solution that has taken Americans decades to understand and appreciate the importance of, but that has never been more apparent than it was this summer.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this important dialogue.

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