Forest Management and Wildfires
Floor Speech
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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry, I am pleased to open this Special Order to discuss forest management and wildfires.
Over the course of this year, many Western States, including Alaska, have gone through a catastrophic wildfire season, with more than 9 million acres burned to date. This is a continuation of an unsustainable trend where the average number of acres burned each year has doubled since the 1990s. To address this, government spending on wildfire suppression has also doubled; yet the total amount of spending on forestry activities has remained the same.
Because the cost of wildfire suppression efforts has continued to climb over the past 15 years, the U.S. Forest Service has repeatedly had to transfer money from its nonfire programs to firefighting efforts. In fact, this year alone, more than 50 percent of the Forest Service budget went toward wildfire suppression, taking funding away from programs and activities that promote forest health and reduction of underbrush, wood waste, and dead trees, which help these wildfires spread.
Fire transfers also undermine timber harvesting, which is critical for the health of the forests as well as our rural communities and counties.
In contrast to this 50 percent, only 20 years ago, the Forest Service was only spending as little as 13 percent, or one-sixth, of its budget on fire-related activities. However, this is not simply a question of allocating more money for fire suppression. The real solution to this problem is how we maintain our forests.
I am pleased to be joined tonight by bipartisan members of the Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee.
I am pleased to yield to the ranking member of that committee, Michelle Lujan Grisham.
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Mr. Speaker, having served on the subcommittee with the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Schrader), he is a great advocate for forest products, for healthy forests, for economically healthy rural communities. We share that passion. I am just very thankful that he was able to, in a very busy schedule, make time this evening to be part of this Special Order.
I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Schrader).
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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman for lending your passion and your knowledge to this important debate tonight. And I share your hope, that we raise the level of awareness.
We are talking a lot about western forests, but I have to tell you, having an eastern forest, I represent the Fifth District of Pennsylvania; when these large wildfires occur out west, there is a large sucking sound of resources, both personnel and money, being taken out of our eastern forests.
These are monies that are used to make our forests healthy. These are monies that are used to do timber marketing, marketing of timber and timber sales so that we can generate revenue to our countries, our school districts. So these monies really are taken away from active management, and active management is the key in helping cut down on the amount of wildfires in our forest.
This involves mechanical thinning, hazardous fuel reduction projects and, of course, a sustainable amount of timber harvesting per the forced Allowable Sale Quantity, or ASQ.
Now these various activities are essential in order to help ensure that the forest doesn't become an overgrown tinderbox. Areas that aren't properly maintained not only become tinderbox, as a risk of wildfires, but also for invasive species outbreaks.
I don't know of anyone in Congress that has more expertise on this than our next speaker. He is a professional forester. He brings tremendous education and experience to Washington. We are real proud to have him as a part of our team working on this issue, really leading on this issue.
Our next speaker is actually the author of H.R. 2647, which has been passed by the House of Representatives, the Resilient Federal Forest Act of 2015, so I am honored to yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).
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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman. I thank you for your leadership and bringing your expertise to Washington. It is great to serve with you, and I appreciate all the leadership that you are showing, not just on this issue but so many different issues that are good not just for the folks of Arkansas, but for the entire Nation. So thank you so much for being part of this Special Order tonight.
Mr. Speaker, a healthy forest is so incredibly important because a healthy forest represents, also, wealthy communities. Our rural communities are so dependent on the active, proper management of our national forests.
These national forests didn't always exist. At one time, our predecessors--some going back 100 years or more--came to the table with the local communities, and they made a commitment that for the good of the Nation they would create national forests.
Now, let's be clear. National forests are not national parks. They are completely different. National forests are not managed by the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service. National forests are managed by the Department of Agriculture, because they were set aside and established so that our Nation would always have an abundant, ready supply of timber. Timber was one of the initial industries that we had. It was so important to the past of our country, but important to the future of our country as well.
As Mr. Westerman really articulated well, when you have a healthy forest, you have carbon sinks and you have filters. A lot of our watersheds originate in our national forests, so it is good for clean water if they are properly managed. It is good for clean air, and it is good for the economy.
Mr. Speaker, from time to time, I spend some time as a lay pastor and I will fill the pulpit. When I am talking to the churches, I talk about how a healthy church is like a healthy forest. If I go into a church and I see that everyone sitting in the pews has my hairline, a little bit of salt on the side here with gray hair, that is not a healthy church. It is just kind of one generation. Well, forests are the same way. If you want a healthy church, you need multiple generations in the pews. If you want a healthy forest, you need multiple generations of forest because it is good for the wildlife, it is good for the birds, and it is good for the mammals, because they need different types of forests at different points in their maturity in order to support that wildlife.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things that leads to putting pressure on certain species is, when we stop harvesting trees, we stop active management, because we know that almost every species, at different times in their life, need that kind of open area. They need time in young forest growth right through to more mature forest growth. Without that, these species can't be supported.
So there are all kinds of reasons, let alone the economic health of our rural communities. That was a promise that was made by our predecessors when they took this land out of the private sector and put it into the public sector. It was done with a promise that they would always do active management in such a way to generate the revenue to be able to backfill for those property taxes that would have been lost.
We have really failed at that as a nation. Our rural communities in and around our national forests are so challenged. Don't get me wrong. I think we have great people that are working for the Forest Service. I spend a lot of time with them. They are dedicated professionals.
I think the Chief of the Forest Service, Tom Tidwell, is an outstanding individual, has strong character. I like the Chief because his first job in the Forest Service was when he was going to college and he worked summers as a firefighter. I am an old firefighter. He has done all the jobs. He knows what it is to manage an active forest.
We have a lot of pressures, though, that the bureaucracy has placed on him. We have a lot of external pressures with special interest groups who claim they are trying to save the forests. But the end result of their actions where they limit, they sue, and they prevent forest plans from being implemented and prevent timber management from occurring, they are actually killing the forests.
Forests are living entities. If they are not actively managed, they will get sick and they will die. When they do, they become emitters of carbon. When a forest is healthy, it actually absorbs carbon. It is a carbon sink, as I said before.
Mr. Speaker, let me talk about some of the statistics that show that much of our national forest system is unhealthy. In fact, the Forest Service has identified up to one-quarter of nearly 200 million acres of national forest land as a wildfire risk. We have seen a dramatic reduction, Mr. Speaker, of the harvest from our national forests from nearly 13 billion board feet in the 1980s to roughly 3 million board feet in past years.
Let me put that into perspective and share some statistics on that. Let's go back to 1995. In 1995, Mr. Speaker, one-sixth of the Forest Service budget was used for wildfire management and mitigation. It was reasonable. At that point, when we were using one-sixth of the Forest Service budget, we were harvesting in 1995 3.8 billion board feet.
Let's fast-forward to 2015. Now, the numbers I am going to share with you are from August of 2015. I readily admit I don't have the past couple months in this, but at this point, the Forest Service is spending 50 percent of its budget on fighting wildfires--50 percent.
Think about 50 percent of your household, 50 percent of your family's budget, your business, or a local school. To take 50 percent of your budget just for this type of crisis management doesn't work. It just doesn't work.
At the same time, Mr. Speaker, we have only projected to harvest, at that point, 2.4 billion board feet. It is a big part of the lack of active management. We need to provide the Forest Service tools to be able to help them do their jobs. The high-water mark was back in 1987 when we had 12.7 billion board feet harvested. That is a variance from this year of 10.3 billion board feet.
We are constantly talking about the economic crisis that we are in here, and we are. We have got a debt that has been out of control. I am very proud to be a part of a Republican-led Congress that, for a number of years, on the discretionary side, we have actually reduced our spending, and we are starting to get our arms wrapped around mandatory spending. So we are doing our job.
But there is a need for more resources, and we recognize that. There is a need for more revenue. We are literally burning that revenue up in our national forests each and every year, dramatically. How much revenue? I would have to say that, if you take, every year, 10.3 billion board feet, if that is the amount that we could get our annual harvesting to, you have to ask yourself: How much more healthy would the forest be?
If the forest is healthy, Mr. Speaker, so many fewer wildfires would occur at just an incredible cost, including the loss of lives. We have lost a tremendous number of American heroes, our firefighters from both the U.S. Forest Service but also volunteer firefighters like myself. Perhaps some professional firefighters have lost their lives because of the incident. It is just the crisis that we have in wildfires.
If we would increase our harvesting, we would increase the health of the forest, and we could reduce wildfires and that risk. We would also increase revenue. I am not prepared to tell you what the average value of a board foot in timber harvest off our national forests is. I know that varies greatly.
Mr. Speaker, I happen to represent the Allegheny National Forest. I am proud to say that it is actually the most profitable national forest in the country. It is kind of puny compared to my colleagues out west. We are about 513,000 acres, but we have got the world's best hardwood cherry. Our hardwoods are what increase the value. I know that is a wide variance on what the value of 1 board foot in 2015 of timber harvested in our national forests is. But whatever that number is, multiply it by $10.3 billion, and that is a lot of revenue that is owned by the taxpayers of this country--given the fact it is their national forest--that we could be bringing in.
Then the prosperity, Mr. Speaker. If we could unleash and get timber in closer to that sustainable rate, what that would do for our school districts, our kids, our families, and the jobs that would be stimulated in the forest products industry. It would just have an amazing impact, Mr. Speaker.
Now, as we examine these issues, Mr. Speaker, it becomes easier to see how everything is corrected. Trees which should have been harvested years ago have been allowed to become fuel for forest fires, leading to the rise in the acreage burned that we have seen in recent years.
There are many prospective solutions to this problem, including the Agricultural Act of 2014, also known as the farm bill. I am very proud that all the Members were involved with the farm bill. It was a great bipartisan bill that we did. It includes provisions to include improved forest management. So we have taken action. We have enacted into law some tools for the Forest Service.
There is just more that we need to do, Mr. Speaker. Those tools include an expedited process in the planning for projects and the reauthorization programs, such as the stewardship contracting and the Good Neighbor Authority. These all improve forest health, timber sales, and restoration.
Now, the House passed the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015, which Mr. Westerman very appropriately talked about, in July.
The goal of this legislation was to provide the Forest Service with direction and the tools to address the challenges of litigation. I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, we have forest plans that are about active timber management, but we have these outside groups that sue the government because the government reimburses their costs, even when they settle out of court.
That is not why the Equal Access to Justice Act was originally written; not for some group that is not a direct stakeholder in terms of having property that is in the forest or adjoined to the forest. But it is litigation, it is funding, no doubt about it, it is the process, it is basic timber harvesting, and essential active management. I will come back to some of those in just a bit. I want to share some outcomes from the most recent hearing that we had with the Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee.
I am proud to cosponsor this important piece of legislation. I believe that it should become law. It will have a major impact on reducing catastrophic wildfires across the Nation.
The district that I represent, Pennsylvania's Fifth Congressional District, is the home of the Allegheny National Forest, the only national forest in the Commonwealth. It encompasses more than 513,000 acres across four counties, and for generations, it has formed the economic bedrock of small communities in that region.
In some ways, the Allegheny is very different from our western forests--I have mentioned some of those--but it has many similar challenges, including a lack of timbering, reduced county budgets, and outbreaks of invasive species.
Reforming the way we deal with wildfires and forestry management will have a positive effect in forests and in rural communities, not just in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, but, quite frankly, across the Nation.
I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues, and taking opportunities in the future to host more of these Special Orders, in looking at ways so that we can confront the very real challenges in national forest regions.
I wanted to share some of the outcomes from our most recent hearing that we had on this issue back on October 8. We had some great speakers come in, witnesses, that provided testimony from all over the country. I will just share with you, Mr. Speaker, some of the things that would be helpful, things that we need to consider. I am going to start in the category of increasing the efficiency and the effectiveness of forest management that we have, starting with giving an opportunity for State primacy.
This was an idea that came out from a rancher in Washington State. The States tend to have less bureaucracy, they have less of a target on their back by these outside groups that are suing. So the State's success at increasing active timber management and a higher level of forest health. But State primacy is something that was an idea that came out that needs to, at least, have further consideration.
Expanding what we call categorical exemption from NEPA analysis. That doesn't mean that we are not looking at the environmental impacts. That couldn't be further from the truth. For where it makes sense, what we need to do is provide a categorical exemption from a full-blown NEPA analysis, but we need to do that more on a landscape perspective, so a landscape management. We are talking large scale, 100,000 acres or more, being able to more efficiently, being able to more effectively, manage the forest.
We have provided some categorical exemption opportunities within the farm bill to the Forest Service for regular maintenance activities, where they had to spend a tremendous amount of resources just to clear a power line or to do trail maintenance, or replant after a forest fire, wildfire. Quite frankly, their sister agencies: the Bureau of Land Management and the Corps of Engineers, they didn't have to do that. So this is just kind of common sense.
We need to protect our active management funds. We can't be dipping into the funds that we use to manage the forest. That is what happened. That is what I referred to as that large sucking sound. It is not just resources. My forest supervisor, who does a great job, she was detailed. She went out west for a period of time. She wasn't on our forest doing her job because of the need for her expertise in the west during one of those wildfires this past year in the west. We need to protect our active management funds.
There are some things that came out: a recommendation for larger air tankers to be able to deal with the size and the scale of the wildfires that are out there. We need to, obviously, reduce this litigation. Out of 311 projects this past year, 16 wound up in the courts. That is a significant number. Quite frankly, it is not necessary. Unfortunately, it has become a fundraising scheme for the most part. It is not contributing towards forest health. It, actually, is deteriorating our forest health. We have an increase in invasive species. We are burning up our forest at a record level.
When you burn forest, you ruin that water filter, you impact water quality, you impact as a carbon sink. So we need to reduce the litigation and take steps to be able to do that.
We do need personnel, there is no doubt about it. We have 49 percent fewer foresters than just in 2010. It is our professional foresters, the silviculturists, who are out--of knowing how to mark the timber, of knowing when to harvest the timber when it is at peak value. That is an asset owned by the American people. We shouldn't be waiting until that tree blows over, burns down, or is eaten by some type of bug, invasive specie, until we harvest it. We should harvest it really at its peak value. That is demonstrating a fiduciary responsibility for the American people with this asset.
And then certainly we need more collaborative work. Again, H.R. 2647 would achieve that.
So that is more efficient, more effective forest management.
Let me look briefly at response. We do need to fund this appropriately. I am a supporter of a concept that would look at larger fires, more widespread. I don't know how we gauge that--by acreage or dollar value lost or dollars needed. Those really are natural disasters. They are as every bit a natural disaster as an earthquake, a hurricane, or a tornado. Those larger fires should be dealt with as natural disasters.
And then other fires on a smaller scale, underneath whatever that threshold is set, then let's do that through regular order with the Forest Service budget with what we appropriate. There is a definite difference. That would be a recommendation. That was something that came out of a discussion.
And then safe harbor for mutual aid. One rancher from Washington talked about a Forest Service where there was a--I don't know if it was a State or a private individual with a bulldozer--a CAT came up to the Forest Service line. Two situations. One time they asked the Forest Service person, who was working under the direction of somebody in the bureaucracy. They welcomed him in, and they saved a tremendous spread of that fire. And then another time where the Forest
Service personnel said: No, we have to fill out the permits first. Well, you have got the wildlife burning, but we have got to fill out the permits, and we have got to do the paperwork. I am not judging that Forest Service employee because they were probably doing whatever they were told to do, and there was more catastrophic loss there. So some type of safe harbor that allows better use of mutual aid.
I want to yield to a friend of mine because it kind of speaks to the efficiency and the effectiveness on the Equal Access to Justice Act. This is the law that we kind of talked about that really has encouraged radical environmental groups to file lawsuits and stop forest plans from occurring.
I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) to speak on the topic.
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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I appreciate the gentleman's perspective on that.
The Equal Access to Justice Act was a righteous piece of legislation when it was passed. But it was passed to be able to protect those who are kind of landowners, who were the big brother--the National Forest, or the Federal Government, was impinging on your private property rights.
We all know that most individuals don't have a whole lot of money to be able to defend themselves. Unfortunately, the Federal Government has the pockets of every taxpayer. It was never meant to be hijacked by the way it has been. I appreciate the leadership of the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis), who has been a great leader, championing kind of just returning to the original intent of the Equal Access to Justice Act. I look forward to working with the gentleman on that.
Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Open book access is just a great thing, and I appreciate it.
Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I appreciate that.
Mr. Speaker, I have one last category I want to cover here, and that is how we increase the markets, because you have to have a place to sell timber that is harvested. There are a number of things that we can do.
Just quickly, we need to expand our trade. That is why I am so pleased with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The trade ambassador and his chief negotiators actually have eliminated basically all of the tariffs that really hindered our ability to export whether it was raw timber or boards or pellets. It was just very difficult in the past. This trade proposal, members of the subcommittee and members of the full Agriculture Committee worked very closely with the trade ambassador to make sure that that was one of our priorities that was achieved, and it looks like it has been achieved. I think that is going to increase markets. We need to do that with all of our trade agreements.
We need to expand the use of timber products within the green building standards, LEED standards. It is an original renewable, but it was excluded from those. It makes no sense whatsoever.
We need to develop the lamination technology that has taken timber, and being able to use that really for skyscraper type construction very successfully. The research is done by our U.S. Forest Services, as well as our land grant universities, such as my alma mater of Penn State. There is great research being done, actually supported through the farm bill in terms of forest services, forest products.
We need to encourage and develop the woody biomass of biofuels, taking that timber, that fiber, to use it for chemicals, to use it for fuel.
We need to prevent the loss of market infrastructure that results in no beds or low beds for timber sales. In some parts of our country, our sawmills have been decimated. As small businesses, we need to help people with small businesses keep that foothold that we have and regain it.
Those are just a few of the things--all not my ideas. Those all came out of our hearing with the October 8 subcommittee that we had on wildfires.
I very much appreciate the bipartisan participation tonight by my colleagues on this very important issue. I think we have done some really good things with the farm bill to help our forest products industry. Again, this truly is about the health of the forest. It is about revenue for the country, but it is about the prosperity of rural America.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to have this Special Order.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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