Concerns over Forest Fires in the Western United States

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Hastings for organizing this discussion and for his work on H.R. 1526, the Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act. This act takes on a poignant and crucial importance to my district in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California where the Yosemite rim fire continues to burn through nearly 400 square miles of forestland.

For years foresters have warned us that the excess timber will come out of the forest one way or another. It will either be carried out or it will be burned out, but it will come out. For generations we carried the excess timber out of our forests through sound forest management practices, leaving room for the remaining trees to grow healthy and strong. We had far less frequent and less intense forest fires, healthy trees that were disease resistant and pest resistant, and a healthier watershed as well as a thriving economy.

But today, extremist environmental regulations have driven that harvest down by more than 80 percent in the Sierras in the past 30 years. We now consign the forests to a policy of benign neglect. And rather than harvesting a small percentage of the trees to keep our forests healthy and fire resistant, we are watching more than 400 square miles of Sierra Nevada incinerated. If we had just harvested a small fraction of those trees, it's quite possible that we could have spared the Sierras from the conflagrations that are now feeding on excessive fuels. It is also likely we could have snuffed out those fires almost immediately after they started.

A generation ago, small harvesting crews operated throughout the mountains and they moved along well-maintained timber roads. When a fire first broke out, it took no time for a crew with a bulldozer to get to that fire and stop it before it got out of control. Today, those crews are gone, the roads are in disrepair, and so fires that a generation ago consumed just a few acres now consume hundreds of thousands of acres.

The result of these misguided policies is now clear and undeniable: economically devastated communities, closed timber mills, unemployed families, overgrown forests, overdrawn watersheds, jeopardized transmission lines, rampant disease and pestilence, and increasingly intense and frequent forest fires. That is the story of the towns throughout the Sierra Nevada--once thriving and prosperous communities that have been devastated by these policies. This is not environmentalism. True environmentalists recognize the damage done by overgrowth and overpopulation and they recognize the role of sound, sustainable forest management practices in maintaining healthy forests.

If there is any doubt of the connection between the reduction of timber harvesting and the increase in acreage incinerated by forest fires, I ask you to look at this chart. It shows the board feet of timber harvested from our public lands since 1983 and the forest acreage destroyed by fire. There is nothing subtle about these numbers. As the timber harvest has declined, the acreage destroyed by fire has increased contemporaneously and proportionally. It is either carried out or burned out, and at the moment it's being burned out.

They say there isn't enough money for forest thinning, And yet we used to have no problem keeping our forests thinned and healthy when we sold commercially viable timber. The problem is that if they take place at all, timber harvests are restricted to small diameter trees with no commercial value. I mean, can you imagine a fishery or a wildlife policy limited to taking only the smallest juveniles of the species? Thus, the U.S. Forest Service, which once produced revenues through timber sales, now consumes revenues, and even that isn't enough to maintain the acreage the government owns and controls. The mountain communities that once thrived economically are now economically prostrate, with unemployment levels that rival those of Detroit.

This act is long overdue. By streamlining regulations and refocusing the Forest Service's mission on sound forest management practices, H.R. 1526 will mean environmentally healthy

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forests and economically healthier communities.
Ironically, just 2 weeks before the Yosemite rim fire broke out, Congressman Nunes and I hosted a public meeting on a proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that would add more restrictions on nearly 2 million acres of the Sierras. Our expert witnesses warned urgently of the fire dangers these policies have created, yet these warnings were actually ridiculed by leftist newspapers like the Sacramento Bee. How sad. Two weeks later, the Yosemite rim fire was burning out of control.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the people of my district, I want to thank the gentleman from Washington for this important reform. I only wish it had come in time to prevent the environmental devastation we are now suffering this summer in the Sierras.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

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