Secure Rural Schools

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson) is recognized for 12 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.

Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Chairman Bishop and Chairman Hastings.

As an individual from Pennsylvania, from the eastern portion of the United States, I do get it. This is a problem that obviously--as you've heard from my colleagues from the western part of the country--is devastating there. It's devastating in communities in Pennsylvania's Fifth Congressional District. We have the Allegheny National Forest there. I have four counties--schools, municipalities--which struggle because of a failed policy in terms of forest management. They struggle economically.

When we do not have healthy forests, we do not have healthy communities. So I stand here very appreciative to Chairman Hastings' work and certainly supportive of H.R. 1526.

As chairman of the Agriculture Committee's Forestry Subcommittee, I continually point out that the Forest Service is housed within the USDA--rather than the Interior--and was done so for very specific purposes.

This decision was made long ago because our national forests were intended for multiple use. The most important function of that mission is to properly manage these forests and grasslands in order to retain the ecological health of those resources for sustained economic and recreational use.

You can't adequately manage a forest without harvesting timber. Just look to our private and State forests to see how to manage a forest cost effectively and environmentally responsibly. National forestlands, when managed correctly, will be more ecologically healthy and economically beneficial to the local communities.

Representing a forested district and as an outdoorsman, I've been very alarmed at how precipitously our annual harvests have dropped off in the past 20 years. Between 1960 and 1989, the Forest Service was harvesting roughly 10 billion to 12 billion board feet per year. Since the early nineties, the annual harvest across Forest Service lands fell below 2 billion board feet and hit its bottom in 2002 at 1.7 billion feet. This is about one-fifth of what they've been harvesting in an average year.

We have seen firsthand the economic impacts of reducing our harvesting levels in national forests. Under longtime Federal law, 25 percent of the timber receipts generated on national forests are required to be returned to the county of origin. The purpose of this is that since there is no tax base there for the local government, timber receipts were to provide a consistent source of revenue to the counties to be used for schools, police, and local expenses.

In 2000, this lack of timber dollars plummeted so low that Congress created the now expired Secure Rural Schools program to make up for the loss of the county revenues in the national forestlands. This program simply would not have been needed if the Federal Government was keeping its promise to these rural areas by managing and harvesting the appropriate amount of timber.

In the Allegheny National Forest located in my district, we have slightly inched up in meeting the recommended level of harvest, but we are still nowhere near where we need to be. This is especially true across almost every other national forest around the country where they typically are generating only a few percent of the recommended level.

Too little harvesting will have a significant impact on overall forest health. Decreased timber harvesting means more dead trees and more highly flammable biomaterials that do little more than serve as fuel for wildfires. According to the Forest Service, the instances of wildfires each year have actually decreased in recent years. However, fires that we've been seeing recently are much more intense than they have been in past years. Why? The reason is because of increased flammability in the forests as a result of materials that have been accumulated and not removed through management activities.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, 65 million to 82 million acres of forestland are at high risk of wildfires. Last year, wildfires burned 9.3 million acres while the U.S. Forest Service only harvested approximately 200,000 acres. This means that 44 times as many acres burned as were responsibly managed and harvested.

As an original cosponsor of H.R. 1526, I want to applaud Chairman Hastings for his leadership and introduction of the bill. This legislation will provide responsible timber production on forestlands and does so in areas specifically identified by the agency.

Access and retaining the multiple-use mission of the Forest Service is paramount to ensuring that our rural forest communities continue to flourish and be viable.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to recognize my good friend, a Western Caucus colleague, Mr. Pearce.

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