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Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, once again for yielding to me on so many of these important topics that we have worked on together during my relatively short time here.
This, of course, is very key to all of us in the West, and the reality of which needs to be pressed upon all the people of the country and all of our legislative colleagues across the country, especially on the East Coast that really can't quite fathom how far-reaching this is in Western States. So it is really a pleasure to be able to join with my other Western colleagues and Mr. Gohmert who have spoken here tonight.
We need to raise the awareness of yet another new map being released by the Committee on Natural Resources. Now, the map I am illustrating here, this actually breaks it down into a smaller size. This is the First Congressional District of California, this being Oregon up top and Nevada on the side, where you have that top corner there, which is part of a State that is owned approximately 45 percent by the Federal Government--actually, not by the Federal Government. It belongs to the people. It is the public's land. Our neighboring State, Nevada, is approximately 84 percent Federal land.
We know how poorly they are managed as we watch them go up in flames each summer. The visible result is that millions of acres in the West burn each year. The amount of timber and fuel reduction is done. You see most of that is done on private lands where they can actually go out and have the incentive to take care of their assets versus the other side, with U.S. Forest Service and BLM and others that don't seem to be able to get out of their own tracks on the issue.
For example, last year, 576,000 acres of Federal land burned in California--this is the public's land--about 1.3 percent of all Federal land in the State. Even worse, fires which began on national forest lands burned hundreds of thousands of acres of private and State land as well where, as part of the strategy, the Federal Government was even resorting to a backfire-setting strategy on private lands, as they are doing right now to let it burn its way out. This happened partly up in my district in Siskiyou County right now, thousands of acres of private land backfired.
We know that the Forest Service and National Park Service alone have a deferred maintenance backlog, by their own estimate, of over $16 billion--$16 billion that would have to come from the national Treasury. Yet both agencies are continually attempting to acquire even more land.
The result, of course, is that these agencies' funds are stretched more and more thinly, making the backlog even worse. At the same time, they are also complaining that, with the increased amount of fire suppression, the costs have shifted for the Forest Service from one- third of the budget just a few years ago to, now, two-thirds of their entire budget for fire suppression, making it harder for the things they should be doing, with getting out harvest permits and doing their other green work during the nonfire season. That doesn't happen anymore.
Another impact of Federal land acquisition is to deny the local governments the property tax revenue they would receive and generate and deny the rural communities the jobs and economic activity that responsible timber, ranching, farming, and mining operations would generate.
Thanks to Federal land acquisition and this administration's refusal to properly manage national forests, rural communities are heavily reliant on the secure rural schools fund, a program the Federal Government funds to help local schools, police, and local infrastructure, to the tune of about $285 million last year. Counties are also heavily reliant on the PILT fund--payment in lieu of taxes--to the tune of about $450 million last year.
In both cases, local governments have less funding than if they were simply allowed to have the functioning economies that Federal regulations have destroyed. Both of these funds are something we have to fight for each budget year to make sure they stay in place, because people seem to forget these are backfills for what has been taken away from rural communities and rural economies.
These rural economies don't want handouts. They want to have the opportunity to be self-sufficient, while not having to come begging for PILT funds or the secure rural schools fund. This means jobs for these economies, for these local areas, versus high unemployment and the social ills that come from an economy that has now disappeared, the social ills that affect families and affect homes, that affect local government and what you have now with the issues of people who are now basically in depression. More domestic violence happens because they don't have a job anymore.
However, the Federal footprint isn't limited solely to federally owned land. The map identifies not just land owned by the Federal Government, but also areas with restrictions on human activities due to Federal regulations.
As you can see, between national forests and other Federal public lands and areas under critical habitat, wetland, or other restrictions, economic activity is restricted in the vast majority of my district. These colors in green and orange are pretty much dominated by Federal land ownership or, supposedly, stewardship. The areas in white are where the offers are still for people in private areas to carry out economic activity.
You can see from the color of that map that there are not a whole lot of options left. Indeed, by the time they establish wildlife corridors and more and more of these things that are in the plans, you can see our options are going to be just about zero.
This means that local voices, once again, are ignored. Communities have little recourse when Federal agencies arbitrarily decide to close roads, limit economic activities like hunting, fishing, hiking, what have you, and expand their reach through regulations and habitat designations.
Rural Sierra Nevada communities have long been told by environmentalists that they must shift to a tourism economy now that Federal and State restrictions have nearly killed the timber and mining industries in those areas. But what happens when the same environmental agenda, extended in the form of critical habitat and other designations, even damages the fledgling tourist economy that they want to promote for these communities?
The Fish and Wildlife Service recently bent to the demands of extremist groups and listed the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog and the Yosemite toad under the Endangered Species Act, affecting much of this area on the east side in my district and extending down into Mr. McClintock's district south of mine there.
During this process, my colleagues heard from many people in the several public meetings that Mr. McClintock and I had on this very subject a couple of years ago. We wanted the public to be able to be part of this process to ensure that the Service heard the concerns of our constituents directly.
The Service's initial habitat maps were riddled with obvious errors, like the inclusion of parking lots and other areas which contained zero amphibian habitat; and over 20,000 public comments were submitted, which were overwhelmingly opposed to the designation of this so-called critical habitat.
However, when the final designations were released just a few days ago, they differed little from the initial maps. Nearly 2 million acres of Sierra Nevada, all down the east side of California--about half within my district, the other half pretty much all within Mr. McClintock's district--were designated as critical habitat.
Again, throughout this process, the Fish and Wildlife Service claimed there would be no negative impacts to Sierra communities. We learned that claim to be false almost immediately.
For years, a race called the Lost Sierra Endurance Run, a 50- kilometer, has been held on existing trails and roads throughout the town of Graeagle in Plumas County, California. Run by a local small local nonprofit, the race generates thousands of dollars for trail maintenance and has a significant economic impact on a little town know as Graeagle, with local hotels, restaurants, and shops benefiting from the visitors the race draws to the area, as well as people being able to enjoy the outdoors and see what their public lands are all about.
However, last year, before the critical habitat designation was even complete, the nonprofit was told they would need to pay to conduct a study on the impacts of the race on the yellow-legged frog--an impact study. Federal agencies were concerned that runners using existing trails might negatively impact the frogs.
The study the Federal agencies demanded was costly enough to more than wipe out any proceeds from the race, and the organizers were forced to cancel it. Not only would runners not be visiting the area, but now, trail conditions will deteriorate without the funding the race generated. Yes, the funding that the race generated was there to help keep the habit and the trails maintained.
This is the second year that the race has not occurred, and it is likely that it, with the visitors it brought to the area, is gone permanently. What is next? Limits on walking through the area within a critical habitat?
Colleagues, it may sound absurd, but Federal agencies have already expressed concern that running within this designation could harm frogs. Imagine all the other activities--using off-road vehicles, hunting, fishing, camping, bird watching, hiking--that agencies likely view as dangerous to frogs.
As we watch the West burn this time of year, we observe the failure of Federal ownership and nonmanagement of the public's lands.
Compare private timberlands versus the public. Private is fire- resistant and healthy, by and large, where they are able to manage their own lands. You can fly over it and see the checkerboard pattern of public versus private. Before a fire, you see it being managed. After a fire, you see the private lands, where they go back out there and get the lands re-covered and replanted again. Public land sits there with a bunch of snags, dead timber, brush growing up, and becomes the next tinderbox in 5 or 7 years.
Indeed, the damage from these massive fires we have these days, these catastrophic fires, isn't just to the trees. It is to the habitat, to the wildlife--the very habitat they are fighting against us on.
When you have these devastating fires, the next winter, what do you get? Ash and silt all washing down into the creeks, streams, rivers, and lakes, making it bad for the fish. You don't have the habitat there for owls or anything else that used to be there when the forest was still standing. Somehow, there are a handful of extremists that think this is somehow good. Oh, we need these burned lands.
California is full, at this point, with about 66 million dead trees, by the U.S. Forest Service's own estimates. This isn't just an isolated tree here and there. Now you can see entire groves that are just waiting for the next lightning strike or the next spark, and it is going to be big-time problems for those areas to try and put them out.
The Forest Service even goes so far as to resist the opportunity for doing land swaps with land that has already been managed, thinned, properly left by private concerns. Where they can then move on to take some trails into public ownership, that would be beneficial for the public as well as private entities being able to manage the formerly public land. They resist these kind of swaps because they want to buy more, acquire more, with money we don't have.
Each new national monument, wilderness, critical habitat designation, or study area limits the tools to promote healthy forests. With the desire and even mandate for new renewable electricity--especially the mandates in California--forest biomass is one of the greatest opportunity potentials we have. It is something we need to be doing yesterday, in order to generate the electricity and bring the jobs that would come from removing that extra material in a way that is good for the ecology, for the forest, and bring those jobs right in the district--not building solar cells in China or wind machines in Europe, but jobs right in our own backyard; thinning these forests, using the material and putting it into a power plant that can generate renewable electricity to meet the mandate of 50 percent California sees and that other States will probably start adopting. We can be putting these jobs back home, improving forest safety and fire safety, preserving the habitat, keeping the water quality up, and, yes, bringing the jobs home for those paper and wood products that we still all need.
Instead, we watch them burn because they are unwilling to do what needs to be done. They are afraid to do what needs to be done. There is not enough money in the U.S. Treasury to go out and try to recover all that habitat, plant those forests back, which is what the private sector could be doing when it manages it and is allowed to make a little bit of living at a time.
So we have got a lot of work to do in getting this message across on the way the West is dominated by poor management at the Federal level. I hope those people listening tonight will take this to heart and give us the backing we need to accomplish better policy goals and make it so that our Western lands, our Western economies, our Western habitats can actually be preserved with wise management, not this debacle we see happening every fire season.
So, again, to my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, I thank him so much for having this time here tonight for us to be able to spotlight this once again for our American people and for our colleagues. I appreciate it.
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