Making Forests Safer

Floor Speech

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Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, we will soon be heading into fire season, unfortunately, in the West. What does that mean? Each year, hundreds of thousands, even millions, of acres of forestland are lost due to wildfire due to the nonmanagement of these lands.

The U.S. Forest Service needs to increase its pace and scale dramatically to get the work done out there that will make a forest safer and also use the product that we grow in this country. Since China is now buying a little less materials these days, the U.S. has gone from number two to number one as a wood importer.

Why in the heck are we importing wood products when we have the timber in our Western lands, which we have to instead watch burn year after year?

We could be putting jobs back in this country in these rural communities that have been boarded up in so many cases.

We are losing lumber mills every day because the Forest Service is not acting quickly enough or with the pace and scale that needs to be done. We need to have the jobs and harvest here and the healthy forests and much less wildfire that comes with all that.

It is a win-win-win. Let's get to work.

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