Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this morning, in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, there was a very valuable hearing on a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Sportsmen's Act, obviously designed to promote hunting and fishing activities which are so important to Oregonians and something our people just enjoy immensely.

I was not able to sit through the whole hearing because we had important business in the Finance Committee, but I got a flavor of it by listening to parts of it here and there. When it came to my turn to ask questions, I pointed out that one cannot go into the woods and hunt and fish if the woods are burning up. My sense is--particularly after what I learned last weekend--that is exactly what we are going to be facing, particularly in the West, and we are going to be facing it sooner rather than later.

We all know the Senate left on Wednesday in order to avoid the snowstorms, so I basically flew all night to make it to Medford, OR, for a fire briefing on Thursday. The idea that we would need to have a fire briefing in March was pretty much unheard of years ago. The fire season was something we faced in the summer or maybe in the early summer we would have a briefing on the challenges and what resources the local officials and Forest Service would need, such as tankers and the like.

Fires are now a year-round proposition. They are getting bigger, hotter, lasting longer, and they are infernos.

What I was told last week in my home State in Medford is that they are facing the driest fire season in 25 years. They took out the map and showed us California, which looks bone dry. After that eye-opening briefing, I went on to Lane County, which is closer to Portland. It is further up the valley. They said they had the least snow in 10 years and so they were just as concerned as Medford.

Malheur County has already asked our Governor to declare a State drought emergency due to record low snowpack and below average water runoff, and these drought declarations usually don't come until months and months later.

One of the reasons I wanted to come to the floor is to highlight how serious this fire season is going to be. This ought to be a wake-up call for all Americans because this is going to put pressure on scarce resources, in my view, like we have never seen before.

These firefighters, as the Presiding Officer knows, are incredibly dedicated and patriotic people. But when we have fires in multiple areas, trying to move resources around quickly becomes a huge challenge, and it is particularly challenging when the system of fighting wildfires in America is broken. I can't describe it any other way than it being essentially broken and badly in need of repair.

The heart of the problem is that Federal policy has consistently shorted the prevention accounts. So what they need to do is go in there and thin forests out and deal with underbrush, such as small trees that pose the greatest risk of fire, and those accounts have been shortchanged for quite some time.

It gets hotter and drier on the forest floor. We can have a debate about why that is. I happen to think climate change is a part of it, others will cite other considerations, but what is indisputable is what is happening. It is hotter, drier, and in our part of the country there are frequent lightning strikes which can cause an inferno that leaps across Federal and State and private lines.

When we have a huge fire on our hands, often what happens is the government runs out of money to fight that megafire, and the handful of others like it, so the government then--really the agencies--borrow from the prevention fund in order to put the fire out, and the problem just gets worse and worse and worse.

What Senator Crapo and I have proposed in the Senate--and there is a similar bipartisan effort in the House--is to change that. What we have said is that it is time for the government to fight these megafires--just the 1 percent or so of megafires--from the disaster account and not shortchange the prevention fund because that is how we prevent these infernos from taking place. We go in there and do the thinning, we deal with the small trees and underbrush, and we prevent those big fires.

The budget office has actually given us an analysis that this is pretty close to a wash from a budget standpoint, because if we only fight those megafires--the 1 or 2 percent--and we get solid, substantial benefits from prevention because we have prevented a megafire, we really have not added to the budget.

By clearing away the fuels and reducing both the number and intensity of future fires, reducing the amount of fuel on the ground simply makes it easier for our courageous firefighters to stop a fire in its tracks.

I brought this poster to the floor this afternoon. It is not too hard to tell what the benefits are when we actually go out and receive these fuel treatments. It is clear this is a useful tool for holding down the damage for communities and taxpayers. These fuel treatments can be particularly beneficial for reducing wildfires and protecting our populated areas.

My hope is that now we are finally starting to see what this fire season is going to be like, that focusing on prevention and not raiding the prevention fund to deal with those 1 percent of the megafires will help us get out ahead of the problem instead of spending substantially more money and trying to play catchup as the infernos rip their way through the West.

I will close by saying that I think the bill Senator Crapo and I have introduced is not the only answer to what we are going to be dealing with this fire season, but it is an important one. Another approach I think makes a great deal of sense is the Forest Service Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Programs because, again, these help bring together people of differing political views and differing philosophies to clear flammable materials from our forests while producing saleable timber for the mills.

In the Malheur National Forest in my home State, for one, the Southern Blues Collaborative Project is a real success story. The stewardship contracts there not only helped clear the forests of unhealthy snags and hazardous wildfire fuels, they helped to bring the Malheur Lumber Company mill back from the brink of closure at least once.

There is an effort at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to encourage these collaborative partnerships across the country. I commend the Department of Agriculture, Chief Tidwell in particular, for these collaboratives because they are vital to the health and vitality of our country's forests, and they are a solid foundation for wildfire response.

I would also like to thank the President and the Forest Service for supporting the bipartisan efforts of Senator Crapo and me, and a similar one that is underway in the House. To me, the bottom line is if we can pass the legislation I have described here today and shore up our priority as being prevention while, at the same time, making better use of existing money by saving the megafires we deal with for the disaster fund, that gets us off to the races in terms of having a more sensible system for fighting wildfires; then, if we support the collaboratives I have just described that are really floundering across the country, and we are seeing more of them, we are seeing bigger collaboratives; that is the kind of policy that helps us get out in front of what is going to be, in my view, another dangerous fire season. If we are just crossing our fingers and hoping somehow this fire season isn't going to be as bad as I was told last week in Medford and in Eugene--that doesn't make any sense to me, particularly given some of the other activities in the Senate that have been bipartisan priorities.

That is why I felt compelled to come to the floor this afternoon because of the hearing this morning on sportsmen. We want to have those opportunities for sportsmen and fishermen and all of the people who want to use our great natural resources. They are part of our heritage and they are a big shot in the arm economically as well. We are not going to be able to go into those woods this summer to hunt and fish if they are burning up.

So I am very hopeful we can quickly pass the bipartisan legislation to change the way in which we fight wildfires, that we can shore up our collaboratives which, dollar for dollar, are about as useful as anything that is done in the natural resources area. I encourage my colleagues this afternoon, given what is looking us in the eye with respect to this fire season, to join me in fixing the wildfire budget and encouraging collaborative partnerships that get us out in front of the fires and end this catastrophic growth of wildfires, particularly in the Western United States.

Mr. President, I note that one of my colleagues is ready to speak.

I yield the floor.

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