After fire town hall meetings in Eastern Oregon, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Hood River) today called on the U.S. Senate to pass meaningful forest reform legislation to help reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire.
"While we need to change how we pay for these fires -- to be more reasonable and rational -- that's nothing compared to the real issue. The real issue is we don't do enough to manage these forests before the fires to thin them out, and after the fires to salvage the burned, dead timber while it still has value so we can pay for reforestation and rehabilitation of the watersheds, the habitat, and the forests," Walden said in a video message from Joseph in Wallowa County. "People are pretty hot in Eastern Oregon about what happened this summer, and they want changes in federal forest policy, which legislation we passed in the House would give them. It's long overdue for the Senate to take action."
This week, Walden held town hall meetings in Lakeview, Canyon City, Baker City, and Enterprise. These were Walden's 24th through 27th town halls so far this year (at least one in all 20 counties in Oregon's Second District). He also toured first damage from the Cornet/Windy Ridge and Canyon Creek Complex fires. In Baker and Grant counties alone, these fires burned a combined total of over 213,000 acres and destroyed 47 homes.
The Resilient Federal Forests Act (H.R. 2647), which passed the House on a bipartisan basis in July, would help bring active management back to our forests to reduce the threat of wildfire. For more information, please click here. The bill also helps solve the long-standing "fire borrowing" problem by allowing the Forest Service to request FEMA disaster funds for fire suppression without having to continually rob their internal fire prevention accounts. For a summary of the fire borrowing provisions, please click here.
During the last session of Congress, the U.S. House twice passed bipartisan legislation coauthored by Walden to help reform federal forest policy. Unfortunately, the Senate failed to take meaningful action on forestry legislation.