[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE 2020 WILDFIRE YEAR: RESPONSE AND RECOVERY EFFORTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONSERVATION AND FORESTRY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
__________
Serial No. 116-36
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Agriculture
agriculture.house.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
42-615 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota, Chairman
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas, Ranking
JIM COSTA, California Minority Member
MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio GLENN THOMPSON, Pennsylvania
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
FILEMON VELA, Texas ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD,
STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands Arkansas
ALMA S. ADAMS, North Carolina SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
Vice Chair VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER, Virginia DOUG LaMALFA, California
JAHANA HAYES, Connecticut RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
ANTONIO DELGADO, New York TED S. YOHO, Florida
TJ COX, California RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota MIKE BOST, Illinois
ANTHONY BRINDISI, New York DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina
JOSH HARDER, California RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
KIM SCHRIER, Washington TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois DON BACON, Nebraska
SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California DUSTY JOHNSON, South Dakota
AL LAWSON, Jr., Florida JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
JIMMY PANETTA, California CHRIS JACOBS, New York
ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
CYNTHIA AXNE, Iowa
XOCHITL TORRES SMALL, New Mexico
______
Anne Simmons, Staff Director
Matthew S. Schertz, Minority Staff Director
______
Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry
ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER, Virginia, Chair
MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio DOUG LaMALFA, California, Ranking
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona Minority Member
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia
CYNTHIA AXNE, Iowa RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
Felix Muniz, Jr., Subcommittee Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Johnson, Hon. Dusty, a Representative in Congress from South
Dakota, submitted article...................................... 53
LaMalfa, Hon. Doug, a Representative in Congress from California,
opening statement.............................................. 4
Submitted post............................................... 39
Submitted statements on behalf of:
Federal Forest Resource Coalition........................ 49
Sanders, Dee, General Manager, Trinity River Lumber
Company................................................ 52
Spanberger, Hon. Abigail Davis, a Representative in Congress from
Virginia, opening statement.................................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Submitted letters:
Comment letters:
S. 4431 and H.R. 7978................................ 29
H.R. 7978............................................ 30
On behalf of Chad Hanson, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and
Director; Jennifer Mamola, D.C. Forest Protection
Advocate, John Muir Project............................ 32
Witness
Phipps, John, Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry, U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C..................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Submitted questions.......................................... 97
Submitted Material
Ogsbury, James D., Executive Director, Western Governors'
Association, submitted letter.................................. 58
THE 2020 WILDFIRE YEAR: RESPONSE AND RECOVERY EFFORTS
----------
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry,
Committee on Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:37 p.m., in
Room 1300 of the Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Abigail
Davis Spanberger [Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives Spanberger, O'Halleran,
Pingree, Axne, Costa, Cox, Schrier, Panetta, Peterson (ex
officio), LaMalfa, Allen, Kelly, Balderson, and Johnson.
Staff present: Prescott Martin III, Felix Muniz, Jr., Anne
Simmons, Josh Maxwell, Matthew S. Schertz, Ricki Schroeder,
Patricia Straughn, John Konya, Dana Sandman, and Justina Graff.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM VIRGINIA
The Chair. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Conservation
and Forestry entitled, The 2020 Wildfire Year: Response and
Recovery Efforts, will come to order. Welcome, and thank you
for joining today's hearing with Mr. John Phipps, Deputy Chief
for State and Private Forestry at USDA. After brief opening
remarks, the hearing will open to questions. Members will be
recognized in order of seniority, alternating between Majority
and Minority Members. When you are recognized, you will be
asked to unmute your microphone, and you will have 5 minutes to
ask your question or make a comment. In order to get as many
questions as possible, the timer will stay consistently visible
on your screen.
Thank you for joining us here today in Washington and
online for this critical hearing on the wildfires ravaging the
western United States. We have all seen the footage from
California, Oregon, and Washington. It is surreal, and it is
terrifying. I want to talk today about what we can do to meet
the needs and face the challenges presented by this
unprecedented wildfire season out West and elsewhere. Deputy
Chief Phipps, thank you for joining us today, and for this
important discussion. I appreciate everything you and the
Forest Service do, and did to accommodate our request on such
short notice, and I do not want to take any more than a minimum
of your focus away from the important work happening to fight
wildfires in communities across our country. The Forest Service
recently lost one of its own fighting a wildfire in southern
California. I ask that before we continue, we pause for a
moment of silence for him, and for all those we have lost to
wildfires this year.
As we speak, there are over 70 large fires ranging across 5
million acres in the Southeast, the South, the Rocky Mountains,
the Pacific Northwest, and California. For some perspective,
that is the equivalent of five million football fields, one
million Major League baseball fields, or 2.5 million typical
city blocks that are currently burning. There are more than
31,000 firefighters and support personnel on the ground waging
this battle, and we have to keep their safety and their needs
foremost in our minds. We even have firefighting staff from
Canada and Mexico supporting the heroic efforts of U.S. Forest
Service staff, who are working under very dangerous and trying
circumstances, in addition to a public health crisis unlike
anything we have seen in 100 years.
Our communities are trying to manage wildfire evacuations
during COVID-19 and protect the electric grid during extreme
heat and wildfire, among other challenges. Yet as unprecedented
as this moment is, I am reminded of another moment in our
nation's history when Americans also faced great uncertainty
and hardship. During the 1930s, at the height of the Great
Depression and the Dust Bowl that ravaged the Great Plains and
much of the United States, there was a sense that Congress did
not understand the severity of the problems facing America's
farmers and families living in the midst of an environmental
crisis, and despite demands for action by both the
Administration and those impacted by dust storms, Congress
failed to act in a comprehensive manner.
It was not until March of 1935, when the dust from the
Midwest reached the Capitol steps, and lawmakers were forced to
see it and experience it with their own eyes, that compromise
could be reached on what became the first Federal conservation
bill, the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936.
In the 3 years that followed its passage, soil erosion dropped
by more than 20 percent. I can only imagine what hardship could
have been averted had Congress acted when they first understood
that there was a crisis brewing for Americans across the Great
Plains. I want to be clear that all those here and listening
virtual today, it should not take the ash of these wildfires,
or the debris and flood waters of hurricanes ravaging our
coasts, or severe heat felt by millions across the nation and
across the globe on a daily basis reaching the Capitol steps
for this Congress to take action on the environmental crisis
that we are currently facing. Climate change is real, it is
here, and the failure of this or any committee in Congress to
take action will have real human costs.
Still, I do not mean to suggest that there are not other
factors that have contributed to these and other recent
wildfires. We know that many factors are involved in the
current wildfires, and our wildfire risk, and that certainly
includes encroachment of housing and development on forested
wildlands, forest management decisions and resources, fire
management, weather events, like the historic lightning storm
that struck California in August, the actions of people, the
use of pyrotechnic devices, and the list, unfortunately,
continues. I expect that after this fire year we will look to
learn from what has happened, have a robust policy discussion
and debate, and do everything in our power to prevent such a
drastic situation from happening in the future.
Today we are here to work together on the emergencies that
face us right now. That is part of what I enjoy most about this
Subcommittee. We focus on how we can work together on behalf of
our constituents, and this Subcommittee is here to learn about
what is happening since we last spoke in July about the 2020
wildfire season, what you expect may happen as it continues,
and to explore how we can work with you to protect our
communities from wildfires this season. I look forward to that
discussion for our continued work together on the issues
related to the U.S. Forest Service. I look forward to
discussions about how we can continue our important work with
you through the farm bill and annual funding cycle to ensure
the health and resilience of our National Forests, which are
the economic drivers of small communities across the country.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Spanberger follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a Representative
in Congress from Virginia
Thank you for joining us here in Washington and online today for
this critical hearing on the wildfires ravaging the western United
States. We've all seen the footage from California, Oregon, and
Washington. It's surreal and it's terrifying. I want to talk today
about what we can do to meet the needs and face the challenges
presented by this unprecedented wildfire season out West and elsewhere.
Deputy Chief Phipps, thank you for joining us today for this
important discussion. I appreciate everything that you and the Forest
Service did to accommodate our request on short notice, and I do not
want to take more than the minimum of your focus away from the
important work happening to fight wildfires in communities across the
country.
The Forest Service recently lost one of its own fighting a wildfire
in southern California. I ask that before we continue, we pause for a
moment of silence for him, and for all of those we have lost to
wildfires this year.
As we speak, there are over 70 large fires raging across 5 million
acres in the Southeast, South, Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, and
California. For some perspective, that is the equivalent of five
million football fields, one million Major League Baseball fields, or
2.5 million typical city blocks are burning.
There are more than 31,000 firefighters and support personnel on
the ground waging this battle. We have to keep their safety and their
needs foremost in our minds.
We even have firefighting staff from Canada and Mexico supporting
the heroic efforts of U.S. Forest Service staff who are working under
very dangerous and trying circumstances in addition to a public health
crisis unlike anything we have seen in 100 years. Our communities are
trying to manage wildfire evacuations during COVID-19 and ensure
electric grid security and resilience during extreme heat and wildfire,
among other challenges.
There is no doubt that these fires and their related horrors are
intensifying as the climate warms. Now, I appreciate that there are
longstanding disagreements about how and why we are in the position we
are in. I am not here to relitigate the past or argue about the future.
We are where we are, and today, we're here to work together on the
emergencies that face us right now. That is part of what I most enjoy
about this Subcommittee, we focus on how we can work together on behalf
of our constituents.
This Subcommittee is here to learn about what is happening since we
last spoke in July about the 2020 wildfire season, what you expect may
happen as it continues, and to explore how we can work with you to
protect our communities from wildfires this season.
I look forward to that discussion, and our continued work together
on issues related to the U.S. Forest Service. I also look forward to
discussions about how we can continue our important work with you
through the farm bill and annual funding cycle to ensure the health and
resilience of our National Forests, which are economic drivers in small
communities across the country.
Thank you.
The Chair. In consultation with the Ranking Member, and
pursuant to Rule XI(e), I want to make Members of the
Subcommittee aware that other Members of the full Committee may
join us today. I would like to now welcome Ranking Member Mr.
LaMalfa for his opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DOUG LaMALFA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM CALIFORNIA
Mr. LaMalfa. Well, thank you, Chair Spanberger. I really
appreciate the effort it took to cause today's hearing today on
this very, very important subject, as well as the participation
of our Subcommittee Members, and the full Committee Members
that want to take part and weigh in. It is extremely important.
Before I really begin, though, I think it is important we
recognize the life and legacy of our former Chairman of
Agriculture Committee, Chairman Bob Smith, and right in the
back there is a candle burning for him, and a small picture, as
well as his large portrait hangs in 1302. Bob was a family man,
a team roper, a cattle rancher, banker, a contractor, and a
legislator from Oregon. He loved this institution and
understood that working across the aisle was the best way to
succeed, as we all should know. Bob was a politician's
politician, and many sought his quiet counsel. He appreciated
the hard work of staff and understood the responsibility of his
office. He was a credit to this Committee, and to the House of
Representatives. He faithfully served in Oregon's 2nd District
from 1983 to 1995, and again from 1997 to 1999, and between
1997 and 1999 that was his tenure as the Chairman of the House
Agriculture Committee. Oregonians can be proud of his service
and my prayers do go out to his family during this time. So
thanks again, Chair Spanberger.
As you mentioned, this year western states have experienced
yet another catastrophic fire season, with 7 million acres
burned, in California, 3.6 million acres burned so far. I am
afraid future fire seasons will only get worse unless we
dramatically improve the management and health of our National
Forest System. In fact, the Forest Service has identified
nearly 50 percent of the 193 million acres of the National
Forest System is currently at high risk of a wildfire, or
likely to be impacted by insect and disease outbreaks. At
current pace it will take the Forest Service nearly 30 years to
treat these acres. Our National Forests are facing an epidemic
of declining health which is in direct correlation to
disastrous policies that have led to a dramatic decrease in
management, even on the portions of the National Forests
outside of roadless and wilderness areas.
In recent years Congress has addressed fire borrowing with
a fire funding fix and provided new authorities in an attempt
to streamline forest management. While there is not a single
policy solution to solving wildfires, it is clear that our
piecemeal approach is not nearly enough. Nearly 2 years ago
California experienced its most deadly wildfire on record when
a campfire in the Paradise/Magalia area took 85 lives, and
destroyed the town of Paradise, as well as outlying areas of
Magalia, Yankee Hill, and Concal. At that time, Congress should
have acted. The House and Senate Agriculture Committees were
conferencing the 2018 Farm Bill, and we had the opportunity to
adapt a number of bipartisan House provisions that would have
helped prevent further loss of life and property from
wildfires. These bipartisan House provisions were created with
input from U.S. Forest Service under both the Obama and Trump
Administrations. However, despite good faith efforts by the
Republican farm bill conferees, the Senate Democrats refused to
even discuss these critical reforms.
Healthy forests require active management in the form of
mechanical thinning, prescribed fires, and other activities to
ensure they do not become overgrown tinderboxes, as we see now.
However, under the status quo, addressing at risk acres takes
years and years, and these delays harm the very acres we are
trying to protect. For instance, the 2018 Musick Fuels
Reduction and Landscape Restoration Project in the Sierra
National Forest had a proposed treatment area of 12,000 acres
to respond to tree mortality and remove fuels along roads. To
my knowledge, there was no litigation that delayed the project,
yet analysis took nearly 2 years to the day to complete.
Unfortunately, these easily identified fire prone acres were
consumed in the Creek Fire before the restoration work could
even begin.
We can address these issues with common sense approaches
that benefit both our forests and our rural communities. There
are many ideas we can bring to the table and act on
immediately. One example is H.R. 7978, the Emergency Wildfire
and Public Safety Act. I am proud to have worked with my
colleague, Representative Panetta, to introduce this bill to
help protect the West from these catastrophic wildfires and
implement common sense forest management reforms that will help
prevent these fires in the future. While this is a good start,
more work will be needed. Congress could consider any number of
individual authorities, from bipartisan legislation, such as
categorical exclusions for salvage, to address landscape scale
mortality events caused by wildfire, insect infestation, and
disease, and drought. I encourage my colleagues to take action
on these ideas and others without delay.
We are indeed fortunate to have Mr. John Phipps from the
Forest Service--he is the Deputy Chief of State and Private
Forestry--testifying for us today. I appreciate that. We hope
to hear about his experience with wildfire issues, what tools
the U.S. Forest Service has at its disposal, and what tools are
needed further to prevent and suppress wildfires. Before I
yield back, I would like to take a moment again to thank our
Forest Service firefighters, and the other first responders
that are currently at risk, and those that already--that was
mentioned--have given their lives to protect our forests,
homes, and communities. We are indeed forever grateful for
their service, and I hope that today's hearing will lead us to
comprehensive solutions and make their jobs easier in the
future. Thank you, Madam Chair, I will yield back to you.
The Chair. The chair would request that other Members
submit their opening statements for the record so the witness
may begin his testimony, and to ensure that there is ample time
for questions.
I would like to welcome our witness. Thank you for being
here today. Mr. Phipps began his role as Deputy Chief of State
and Private Forestry at USDA's Forest Service in 2019. He
started his career with the Forest Service in 1976, and has
since held a variety of roles within the agency. Prior to his
current position Mr. Phipps served as the Station Director for
the Rocky Mountain Research Station from 2015 to 2019.
We will now proceed to hearing your testimony. You will
have 5 minutes. When 1 minute is left, the light will turn
yellow, signaling the time is close to expiring, and you should
be able to see a clock ticking down on one of these boxes on
the screen before you. Mr. Phipps, please begin whenever you
are ready.
STATEMENT OF JOHN PHIPPS, DEPUTY CHIEF FOR STATE AND PRIVATE
FORESTRY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Phipps. Good afternoon, everyone. Chair Spanberger,
Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee, I am proud to be
representing the Forest Service today as a career professional
forester with decades of experience dedicated to our mission of
stewarding America's forests and grasslands for current and
future generations. I have experience as a firefighter, land
manager, research leader, and senior executive currently
leading the agency's State and Private Forestry programs,
including fire and aviation management. My testimony will
outline the current status of Forest Service response to
wildfires, the efforts that we have ongoing to take care of our
employees and communities before, during, and after fires
occur.
Our nation is enduring a devastating wildfire year, one
that has cut destructive swaths through states like California,
Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and Arizona, and made more
difficult by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As of September 19,
there have been almost 43,000 fires that have burned more than
7.2 million acres across all jurisdictions. In addition to
homes and property damage, these fires have taken lives
throughout the country. We are mourning the tragic loss of
Charlie Morton, Big Bear Hotshot Squad Boss who died last
Thursday in California while fighting the El Dorado fire on the
San Bernardino National Forest. Charlie's memorial service is
tomorrow in San Bernardino.
It is an understatement to say that this is an
unprecedented year. Numerous large fires since mid-August have
been in and around very large communities and developed areas
across California and the Pacific Northwest. Smoke impacts have
been horrendous and widespread across the western United
States. One of the most notable challenges this year is the
number of fires taking place at the same time, which has
stretched us thin. Since August 18 through today, the demand
for fire resources has exceeded supply across the system. As
with any fire year, it takes all partners, Federal, state, and
local government, Tribal, contractors, and volunteers to
respond. We all work together to ensure we are making the best
use of our resources to protect the public and our
firefighters. As of September 19, over 32,700 interagency
firefighters were supporting wildfire operations across the
country, primarily in California, Oregon, and Washington. This
is a record for most firefighters ever deployed.
To bolster our capabilities, we requested assistance from
the active military, as well as our international partners.
Additionally, states have requested assistance from their
National Guard. Preventing the spread of COVID among our first
responders and communities is an important addition to our
focus on safety this year. The Forest Service has been
successful with implementing our COVID prevention and
mitigation measures, like spread out fire camps, social
distancing, and mask wearing. I would like to conclude by
recognizing efforts of this Committee that took to establish
the Congressional fire funding fix. As a result, the Forest
Service no longer must delay priority work that results from
transfers of funding from other Forest Service programs to pay
for ongoing fire operations. I welcome any questions you may
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Phipps follows:]
Prepared Statement of John Phipps, Deputy Chief for State and Private
Forestry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Madam Chair, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee, thank
you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss Wildfire
Management during the 2020 Fire Year. My testimony today will outline
the current status of the USDA Forest Service response to wildfires,
the efforts that we have undertaken to take care of our employees and
communities before, during, and after fires occur, and the outlook for
the remainder of this year.
Our nation is enduring a devastating wildfire year, one that has
cut destructive swaths through states like California, Oregon,
Washington, Colorado, and Arizona, and made more difficult by the
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As of September 19, 2020, there have been
42,866 fires that have burned 7,236,139 million acres across all
jurisdictions. In addition to homes and property damage, these fires
have taken lives throughout the country. This includes one of our own
firefighters, who died last Thursday in California.
These fires threaten urban and rural communities, farm and
ranchland, municipal water supplies, timber, recreation sites, and
important wildlife habitat. They are stark reminders of the need to
partner with communities to prepare for wildfires, while also
proactively conducting forest management projects to create healthy,
fire-resilient conditions on our nation's forestlands.
Unprecedented Year
This is an unprecedented year. Since mid-August, numerous large
fires have been in and around very large communities and developed
areas across California and the Pacific Northwest. Smoke impacts have
been widespread across the western United States. Firefighting
resources have been prioritized to fires with the greatest threat to
public safety. Several tropical cyclones have also made landfall this
year, causing damage and requiring the response of firefighting and
incident management personnel. One of the most notable challenges this
year is the number of fires burning at the same time across the West.
Typically, firefighting resources move around the country to meet
demand. Right now, that demand for resources is high across the system.
As with any fire year, it takes all partners including Federal, state
and local government, Tribal, contractors and volunteers to respond. We
all work together to ensure we are making the best use of our resources
to protect the public and our firefighters.
To bolster our capabilities, we requested assistance from the
active military as well as our international partners. Additionally,
states have requested assistance from the National Guard. Our partners
all around the country are pitching in to help us through this
unprecedented event. Our fire response capabilities, both on the front
lines and in supporting our fire response and other incident response,
is our priority work, and we will need to make trade-offs with other
critical work.
We are experiencing a multi-region complex wildland fire event like
we have never seen before. The explosive growth of the Labor Day fires
was sparked by bone dry conditions, periods of high temperatures and
low relative humidity that make forest vegetation and grasslands
incredibly receptive to fire. Add in a historic strong wind event that
covered the West Coast, and wildfires grew exponentially. In a
situation like that, the primary challenge and mission becomes making
sure we get people out of the way of fire.
On September 10, 2020, all 18 National Forests in California
announced a temporary closure order due to unprecedented and historic
fire conditions. Additionally, the Agency announced temporary closures
of several forests in Oregon and Washington. Implementing fire
restrictions, burn bans or associated closures is a particularly
difficult decision that is not taken lightly. Criteria for determining
when an area should be placed under fire restrictions or burn bans is
determined locally with the input of partners, agencies and
communities. Recognizing how important public access is to so many, the
Forest Service is evaluating these closures daily, and we are committed
to lifting the closures as soon as conditions allow.
Key Partnerships with State and Local Partners
Wildfire response is inherently interagency as wildfires do not
recognize jurisdictional boundaries. Effective response requires that
all the firefighting capability--including Federal, state, local
government, Tribal and volunteer partners--work together. These
partnerships and relationships have evolved over many years, creating a
robust interagency capability to support wildfires across the country.
Many of the on-going incidents span jurisdictional boundaries and are
in unified command, which means Federal, state and local government
resources are jointly managing fires.
As of September 19, 2020, over 32,700 interagency firefighters are
currently supporting wildfire operations across the country, primarily
in California, Oregon and Washington. This is the highest number of
firefighters deployed since record-keeping began. More than 18,500
interagency wildfire personnel are currently deployed to California,
and over 9,100 personnel are deployed to Oregon and Washington.
The Department of Defense is a key wildland firefighting partner
this year, as they have been for decades, providing aircraft and
personnel to serve as wildland firefighters. Over 200 soldiers from
Joint Base Lewis-McCord in Washington are currently assigned to the
August Complex on the Mendocino National Forest in California; also 200
marines from Marine Base Camp Pendleton in California were deployed to
the Creek fire in California on September 22, 2020. In addition to the
U.S. Army and Marine activation, four military C-130s equipped with
Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) are currently serving as
airtankers, providing wildfire support in California.
The Departments of Agriculture and [the] Interior requested
assistance from Canada and Mexico, through reciprocal agreements
established under the authorities of the Wildfire Suppression
Assistance Act (P.L. 100-428). On September 2, 2020, 62 firefighters
arrived from Canada. On September 17 and 18, 2020, 444 additional
Canadian firefighting personnel arrived in the Pacific Northwest.
Mexico is providing firefighters as well. This week, 100 firefighters
from Mexico will begin working in southern California. We are in
contact with fire agencies in both Australia and New Zealand--the only
other countries with which we have reciprocal cooperative fire
assistance agreements. While they are interested in providing support,
currently they are unable to do so because of the need to meet their
own countries' COVID-19 requirements.
COVID-19 and Fire Suppression
Preventing the spread of COVID-19 among our first responders and
communities is an important addition to our safety focus this year. The
Forest Service and our interagency partners have seen success with our
COVID-19 prevention and mitigation measures. In addition to fewer cases
than may have been expected, the learning culture of the interagency
wildland fire agencies allows for lessons-learned to be shared in real
time as fire incidents occur.
All firefighters and fire camp personnel are strictly adhering to
current social distancing protocols wherever possible. Large fire camps
are no longer the norm. Most firefighting efforts are accomplished in
small groups and dispersed into isolated camps to provide firefighters
and the public better social distancing and safety from the spread of
COVID-19. Smaller fire camps allow local health officials to contain
positive cases and limit the spread of disease. Virtual communications
ensure internal and external stakeholders receive the most up-to-date
information as safely as possible. Spreading out fire camps, issuing
personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves, screening and
testing firefighters, and developing more contracts for logistical
support are all built into our firefighting plans. The Agency continues
to work with community leaders and local law enforcement to ensure
their needs are met, and wildfire threats and capacity are clearly
understood when planning firefighting strategy and evacuations.
Smoke from extreme wildfire events has posed significant risks to
public health and safety. The Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality
Response Program has developed approaches for early warning of wildfire
smoke impacts through efforts at the Forest Service Pacific Northwest
Research Station and partner agencies. Successful products include
working with the Environmental Protection Agency to provide fire and
smoke information on the popular AirNow.gov (https://www.airnow.gov/
fires/) website and phone app, which received over ten million views
over the last month. A recent pilot project adds data from low-cost
sensors and local smoke advisories to the AirNow Fire and Smoke map to
provide the public with additional air quality information they can use
to protect their health. Currently, 20 Air Resource Advisors are
assigned to 21 different fires in three (3) different geographic areas
of the western United States. Advisors provide Smoke Outlooks to inform
approximately 21 million people, many in rural and under-served
communities. Community preparation for wildfire smoke allows public
health officials to be aware and prepare for effects on individuals and
facilities vulnerable to smoke impacts.
Improving Forest Conditions
To address the threat of wildfire, President Trump issued Executive
Order (EO) 13855, directing active management of America's forests and
rangelands to reduce wildfire risk. The EO includes specific targets to
reduce accumulated vegetation and increase active forest management.
Further, as part of its budget request, the Department submitted to
Congress a package of legislative reforms to improve forest management
and reduce wildfire risk. The proposals are intended to support healthy
forests and rangelands and aid in efforts to protect homes, watersheds
and critical infrastructure from catastrophic wildfires. The Department
would like to work with the Committee to identify solutions that match
the threat of the wildfire problem.
We continue to move forward with our shared stewardship approach to
improving the conditions of our nation's forests. Actively working with
states, Tribes and other partners is a priority to share decisions,
risks and mutually beneficial outcomes. In 2019, the Forest Service
sold 3.3 billion board feet of timber, the most in 22 years. That same
year, we were able to conduct hazardous fuels treatments on 2.7 million
acres. Over the last 5 years, more than 700,000 acres were treated
annually with mechanical treatments, and more than 2.1 million acres
were treated annually through prescribed fire or natural wildfires.
Over the last 5 years, approximately 1.7 million acres have been
treated annually within the wildland-urban interface. While there is
much work to be done, we remain committed to doing the right work, in
the right places, at the right scale.
Conclusion
The USDA Forest Service is committed to keeping our communities and
firefighters safe. Even as we continue to battle these fires, we are
also looking ahead to post-fire recovery and restoration of these
forests. The work we will need to do to restore these newly devastated
forests is in addition to the hard work already underway to improve
conditions at the right scale and right places. The dedication,
bravery, and professional integrity of our firefighters is second to
none. Many have lost their own homes as they helped save their
communities. As we work without pause with our many partners to assist
communities impacted by wildfires, we are committed, through shared
stewardship, to change this trend in the coming years.
We thank the Committee for your continued focus and help. With the
Congressional fire funding fix in place, the Forest Service no longer
must transfer money from other Forest Service programs to cover the
cost of fire suppression. Further, the authorities and capacity
provided by Congress have helped us achieve our highest wildfire fuel
reduction and prevention actions in more than 20 years. We are working
hard; but we know it's not nearly enough. The scale of our action must
match the scale of the problem and, in California that means treating
two to three times more acres per year than our current efforts. We
look forward to working with the Committee to increase the scale of our
tools and capacity to a level that matches the great challenge
associated with reducing the wildland fire threat facing the nation.
The Chair. Thank you so much, Deputy Chief Phipps. Thank
you again for being here and thank you for being patient with
us working around a voting schedule. Thank you for your
important testimony.
At this time Members will be recognized for questions in
order of seniority, alternating between Majority and Minority
Members. You will be recognized for 5 minutes each in order to
allow us to get as many questions as possible. Please keep your
microphones muted until you are recognized in order to minimize
background noise. When 1 minute is left the light will turn
yellow, signaling time is close to expiring. I will begin by
recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
And I wanted to follow up on--you said a couple noteworthy
things--well, many, many noteworthy things, but specific to
what I wanted to follow up on, you talked about the record
number of firefighters who are currently deployed, fighting
fires throughout the West. You talked about the social
distancing, and the impact that COVID-19 is having on the work
that you all are doing, and you talked about the funding needs,
so I would like to follow up on this question of resources.
Of course, Congress appropriated $1 billion for wildfire
suppression this year, and in addition to this, as you
mentioned, another $1.9 billion is available through the
wildfire funding fix. Given the current conditions, do you
anticipate the need to utilize this new budget authority, to
what full extent, and can you provide the Subcommittee with an
update as to any transfers the Department of the Interior has
made for wildfire suppression this year?
Mr. Phipps. Thank you for the question. I am going to start
with the easiest one first. Department of the Interior
requested a $47 million transfer, which we made, and earlier we
had transferred to them $2 million as normal cost-sharing
between the Departments. Relative to where we are in our fire
suppression funding, we are still within our appropriated
amount for that, and we don't anticipate going over it, and the
reason for that is that this particular fire year, all the
fires seemed to happen at once later in the summer, and we
just--the agency--the interagency community just didn't even
have the capability to spend at the rate that it would had to
have taken. Normally, fires are spread out across the whole
year, and those types of years are when we are more likely to
go over the budget and have to dip into the reserve account.
The Chair. Okay. And you mentioned interagency, and so I am
curious, I have concerns, and I would love your opinion about
what the United States has, or doesn't have, currently in terms
of a Federal strategy to reduce the risk of destructive
wildfires overall. And specifically, in your opinion, could
Federal planning, coordination, and development of strategies
for community resilience, land use planning, specifically for
development along the wildland-urban interface, help reduce the
risks posed by destructive wildfires, and what are some of the
major risks posed by development along with the WUI, and are
there precautions that could be taken to mitigate these risks
when building?
Mr. Phipps. Thank you. The wildland fire system, our
wildland fire problem, is complex. You have mentioned several
of the factors. It is development in wild areas, it is climate
factors, forest management factors for sure, and what we are
seeing on the landscape now is, we used to call them mega-
fires, but they are even larger than that. They are landscape
scale fires that can go 250,000+. We have one in California
that is 800,000 acres. And we currently operate at a lesser
scale than that. The agency doesn't have a capacity currently,
but we could. We probably need to be scaling up two to three
times more at least.
The other problem we have is that we tend to think about
these fires as they are all occurring, and as a result of how
we manage Federal forests. That is true in part, but it is
really an all lands problem that we, particularly in
California, see fires originating on private land and marching
up into the forest, and vice versa, and so we are going to have
to start thinking more comprehensively across ownerships if we
want to see a different picture. And I would assure you our
scientists suggest that these western landscapes have an
incredible capability to absorb fire and keep on going. More,
we are going to see much more of the same. And to that, I don't
think that is a desirable future, and it is pretty alarming.
And, as the Ranking Member suggested, we need to come together
and look at this differently. It is on a scale that is hard for
people to imagine.
Just one additional fact, again in California, pre-
settlement, the average forest had 64 trees per acre. Currently
the average forest in California has 320. That is 80 percent
more density. And how did that happen? It happened because we
have been trying for over 110 years to put out every fire we
can, and we have been really successful at that, but it is
creating a situation where across all jurisdictions we attempt
to put out all those fires, and as a result, we are selecting
away the good fire, and the two percent that normally gets
away, the catastrophic fire, when that happens under the right
conditions, there is no stopping it, basically. We are there to
help people get out of the way. We can; but, there is just
tragic loss of life, and these fires burn at high severity, and
it is just really a bad trajectory that we are on, and it is
going to take a paradigm shift in thinking. Thank you.
The Chair. Thank you very much Deputy Chief for your
testimony, and we have gone a little bit over with my
questions, but I want to confirm, you gave the number 64 trees
per acre before settlement, now it is up to 320. Just to ensure
that I have understood, and the rest of the Committee is
following along, that is because natural fires that were coming
through would have processed and would have taken out trees
over time so that we were at that natural rate of 64? Is that
what you are stating?
Mr. Phipps. That is exactly right, Chair Spanberger. The
way the--these forests evolved with fire and fire did the work
routinely.
The Chair. Interesting. Okay. Thank you.
Those numbers are really, really interesting to think about
in that way. I am going to continue on, and I will now
recognize Ranking Member LaMalfa for 5 minutes.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you again. Thank you again, Deputy Chief
Phipps, as well. I just want to touch on a statement you made
there too. I wholeheartedly agree on the idea that the density
and population of our forests is much more than what is
sustainable, especially if you are talking about drought
periods, as we go in and out of in the West. You mentioned that
land--private lands that are adjacent--I don't see them as
being the initial cause of very many fires, unless there
happens to be some kind of an accident on that, because private
lands are either grazed or managed, they are logged, and
forested, and all those kinds of measures, unless they are able
to get the permits to do what they would like to do, which is
sometimes a regulatory challenge that private lands would have.
I would be hesitant to say that private lands are igniting
Federal lands very often. Indeed, it is the Federal lands that
are the scary neighbor to private lands. Over in western Tehama
County one family that has approximately 70,000 acres has lost
about 50,000 of their timber land due to fires occurring on a
nearby Forest Service property, I think the 800,000 acre one
you are speaking of.
So let us talk a little bit about one of the issues with
prevention. What we are seeing you can see from space, from
satellite, the amount of smoke plume coming up from the western
states, and we see that plume going across the country, and
even felt it here in Washington, D.C. It has had an effect on
the skies here, as well as massive levels of air quality that
is way more than the unhealthy mark more locally there. I
understand it is even hitting Europe in the Jetstream. What
hasn't happened is preventative measures, including prescribed
fire, prescribed fire meaning fires that we intentionally set
at a time of year when you can control them. And we lost out
this year on the chance, and in other years, to have more
prescribed fire to burn when we dictate at a level we dictate,
and instead that was shut down, and some of it was because they
pointed to air quality issues. I guess my contrast with that
would be what kind of air quality issue are we having versus a
prescribed fire at a given amount of acres that gives you a
buffer zone, gives you a fire break? What is it we need to do
more of? Is it prescribed fire, or to allow them to burn the
way we are burning now?
Mr. Phipps. Well, it depends on what we want. If we want to
maintain forests we need to start a prescribed--we need to
safely return fire to the landscape. The way we are doing it
now, it is all well intended, it is just not at a rapid enough
pace, or at the right scale, and there are a number of papers
in the science literature that would indicate that prescribed
fire smoke, particularly given it is to be more on our terms,
is much more benign than fire at the worst time of year, in the
summer heat, and the amount--every--total consumption of
forest. This event this year was just horrendous. It was
particulate, PM2.5. that is maybe too technical, but
it was, like, record levels, and the worst air quality in the
world along the West Coast.
Mr. LaMalfa. Horrific, yes. Let me touch on another point
here in my allotted time. Talking about the loss of life, loss
of lands, loss of livestock, and we have one particularly
tragic story on the livestock side right near my home in Butte
County, and I would like, with the permission of chair, to
submit this for the record from Mr. Dave Daley. He entitles it,
I Cry for the Mountains and the Legacy Lost, on what is known
as the Bear Fire. It breaks your heart to read this. They are
still out trying to recover cattle from their area. Many
generations of family legacy that is gone there. You must read
that. Will the Forest Service make an accommodation for
ranchers that still have cattle that are looking for them by
extending the grazing permit for grazing off dates, if
necessary, and will they work with ranchers on replacement
grazing for those who have lost their allotments due to
wildfire? These are a couple small things we could do for these
folks with their horrendous losses. Can we accommodate those?
[The post referred to is located on p. 39.]
Mr. Phipps. I believe we can. There are a lot of allotment
management plans. It is complicated, and our grazing process
may be a little bit constraining, but we would certainly have
that interest to try to mitigate their loss.
Mr. LaMalfa. Okay. We would try. Do you think this is an
effort we can really push hard for? Because these losses are
very real, and when they have lost in a given forest unit, tens
of thousands of acres, as well as millions across the West,
they need a replacement for this, and the losses are already
devastating. We need a really concerted effort to do that. Can
you pledge that we will push for that here in upcoming weeks?
Mr. Phipps. Yes, sir.
Mr. LaMalfa. Okay. Thank you. Well, I am over my time; but,
the communication sometimes is a little slow too when there
might be a fire impending that these folks need to know about
and hear about when they should be clearing their cattle out of
a given area, so let us see if we can improve on that as well.
Madam Chair, I will yield back. Thank you.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes Congressman O'Halleran
for 5 minutes.
Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this hearing,
and Ranking Member. I would like to thank--I already did that.
Fire plays an important role in our environment. My district
has all or parts of six National Forests and the Grand Canyon.
But if not properly managed and planned for, it causes massive
devastation, as we have seen in recent weeks. And, in addition
to that, the loss of life is increasing time and time again.
And I know that is not just the Forest Service, that is how we
put our communities together and everything else, but the urban
interface area is critically important when you see whole
communities be devastated like they have, and the effect it has
on human life, families, the impact to the natural resources,
and in Arizona, a lot of our watershed.
This fire year Arizona has seen over 700,000 acres burn.
That is more than the last 2 years combined. Working my--time
here is--in Congress have seen--we have had expanded Forest
Service authorizations to better manage and plan for fire. Mr.
Phipps, I have a few questions about those authorizations, and
look forward to your responses today, or at a later date, if
you cannot answer today. First question: Congress implemented
the fire funding fix during the 115th Congress to rapidly fund
suppression efforts without the need to use non-fire funding. I
would like to know how well this has worked, and has the
ensuing budgetary stability resulted in increased efforts
related to fire prevention? Particularly, has there been
additional work done by the Department in the form of treatment
and controlled burns, which you mentioned a little bit ago, are
wildland-urban interfaces being prioritized?
Mr. Phipps. Thank you for the question. The fire funding
fix, it is an understatement to say it is one of the best
things that we received. It really helps stabilize the Forest
Service, and that was just a lot of chaos every year that we
had to transfer, so thank you so much for that. And that is
allowing us to better plan for a lot of things, including
focusing our treatments and implementing them, and I think that
is in large part because of the fire funding fix.
One of the things that happened prior to the fix being put
in place was that pretty much systematically over quite some
time, say 15 years, the capacity to do that kind of work was
reduced because all the money was also in the budget going
towards fire suppression. At one time 15 percent of the agency
was fire funding related, now it is around 55 percent. And now,
just at the right time where we need to ramp up and scale up to
these large landscape scales in our planning, we are lacking
the capacity. I think that can be remedied, but it is a
definite thing that we are looking forward to as now we are
trying to get the--now that we have the fire funding fix, we
need to ramp up capacity to do the work.
Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you. How have stewardship contracts
and projects, such as 4FRI in my district, improved forest
resiliency? How is the USDA supporting these large-scale
projects, on the 4FRI project we have been trying for any
number of years to get it up and working at a larger scale, so
I would like to hear your----
Mr. Phipps. Yes, the stewardship contracting and--projects
is a wonderful gift for us because, like I had mentioned
earlier, a lot of the treatments on the landscape have to be
all lands, and it allows us to pursue that.
Mr. O'Halleran. Deputy Director, I only have a couple of
seconds. I guess to the core of my question is why is it taking
so long to get these projects up and going and sustained?
Mr. Phipps. Well, it is complex for us. A lot of the
environmental work we have been trying to do things to make
life easier for the planners, but between capacity problems and
environmental review problems, we haven't implemented as fast
as we would like, and we would look forward to continuing to
work with the Committee to help streamline those.
Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I just want to
say, the district has almost 700,000 acres already NEPA
approved. They are all within that stewardship area, and I just
can't understand why we haven't gotten to them. Thank you.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes Congresswoman Pingree
from Maine, seeing no Minority Members currently present.
Congresswoman Pingree, we cannot hear you. Congresswoman
Pingree, we cannot hear you. As we continue to work out the
technical issues for Congresswoman Pingree, the chair now
recognizes Congressman Cox from California for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cox. Well, thank you so much, Chair Spanberger. And
just before I ask my question, Mr. Phipps, you were saying
earlier that the recommended density is, what 64 trees, and it
is 320, or something like that, per acre?
Mr. Phipps. Yes, that is correct.
Mr. Cox. Okay. I don't know if it is an arithmetic type
thing, but you were saying that was 80 percent over capacity,
but it is really 500 percent, isn't that----
Mr. Phipps. Yes, that is----
Mr. Cox. So it is five times, not just 80 percent?
Mr. Phipps. That is correct.
Mr. Cox. Right. Okay. Great. Yes. A bit of a difference
there. But certainly in a year that has seen record heat waves
and the coronavirus pandemic, hazardous smoke from wildfires
across the West are presenting the latest danger for the
essential men and women who pick America's fruit and vegetable
crops, and health advisories have recommended that individuals
remain indoors to abate health impacts. Farmworkers simply
don't have that option, while working in poor air quality
conditions that can damage their lungs. You certainly can't
pick a peach by Zoom. And despite efforts to distribute N95
masks to farmworkers, the unfortunate reality is that many
still do not have access to these masks, and we, as Members of
Congress, must remain vigilant in ensuring that all of our
front-line workers, especially those ensuring food remains on
America's tables, are protected. And so I certainly support the
Forest Service's decision to protect public health with the
temporary forest closures in California, and I was also glad
that this wasn't just a national decision, but one that was
made with the Board of Supervisors within the region.
And a wildfire's path, as you very well know, it is not
limited to just the structures or the trees that are burned.
And even once a wildfire has been contained, communities remain
at risk for a variety of post-wildfire impacts, such as harmful
air quality, mudslides, soil erosion, poor water quality, and
all these linger well after the flames are put out. Debris
runoff from destructive wildfires can enter our watersheds to
have negative water quality impacts. Subsequent rains can wash
toxic runoff, ash, and heavy debris into our watersheds,
harming streams, rivers, municipal water systems.
And I know that the agency has several programs to help
this, including BAER (Burned Area Emergency Response), a new
program from the 2018 Farm Bill, and that the Department itself
has even more beyond this one agency, but the agency has not
requested a funding increase for the Water Source Protection
Program authorized by the 2018 Farm Bill, and my worry--and we
are getting to the question--is that the agency will already
have to stretch their budget in order to maintain these vital
programs. And so the question, why hasn't the agency asked for
funding increases for these programs, and what can be done to
mitigate these negative water quality impacts on wildfires?
What steps is the Forest Service taking to address this during
both the wildfire response and the recovery phases?
Mr. Phipps. Thank you for the question. You are correct, in
that the BAER process--we have been doing that for 15 years at
least, maybe 2 decades, and we have our hydrologists, fish
scientists, you name it, go out and do an assessment, and then
plan for emergency application of seed, and maybe creating
dikes, and just removing wood. Currently, across the country
there are 7 million acres that have burned, and we have teams
doing the assessment. They haven't completed it yet. We think
that we have enough funding, because it is paid out of
suppression, to take care of it, and there is probably going to
be a capacity problem, and we are going to have prioritize, and
make sure that we implement the projects that have the most
meaningful effect. And it is probably going to go, the effort
is aimed at making sure we get that done before the winter
rains come, and there may be some need to go on into the
following year.
Mr. Cox. Well, no, thanks very much, and the meat of the
question is are funding increases for these programs warranted,
and something that the agency needs?
Mr. Phipps. Could you repeat that?
Mr. Cox. The funding increases, what we are asking is that
the Department hasn't yet requested a funding increase for the
Water Source Protection Programs. Is this something that the
budget is okay with? Do you need additional investments and
capital, or what?
Mr. Phipps. Well, I--we have the--adequate funding for
BAER, but I am not familiar with that program that you just
mentioned, and--but I would be happy to get back with you.
Mr. Cox. Great, and thanks so much.
Mr. Phipps. Thank you.
Mr. Cox. I will yield.
The Chair. It is the chair's understanding that Minority
Members are on their way, but in their current absence, I will
continue recognizing Congresswoman Pingree from Maine, if we
can connect this time.
Ms. Pingree. Can you hear me this time?
The Chair. It appears there are ongoing technical issues
here, local to us, Congresswoman Pingree, so we will come back
to you. The chair now recognizes Congresswoman Schrier, who is
suffering with the continued technical difficulty, the chair
now recognizes Mr. Costa for 5 minutes.
Mr. Costa. I thank the Chair. If you would give me a moment
before the clock starts until I can pull up my memo on the
effort, let me start on a question that is based upon a
Congressional briefing that--a bipartisan California
Congressional briefing that Congressman LaMalfa and I and
others participated in last week with the head of Cal-Fire, Tom
Porter, and the head of OES from California. And he cited, Mr.
Phelps--Phillips? Phipps? That, based upon the incredible
amount of wildfires we have had in California, as well as in
Oregon and Washington, and other western states, that he
thought it was necessary that we revisit the National
Management Forest Plan in terms of resources, in terms of
forest management. We have tried to work on that over the last
18 months with some changes that have been made. Clearly, given
the fact that the intensity and the impacts, it seems to me, in
California's instance, over 60 percent of the fires have been
on Forest Service land, less than ten percent on state forest
land, and then a lot of private land, of course. Would you care
to comment, Mr. Phipps?
Mr. Phipps. Yes. The interagency community has something
called the Cohesive Wildland Fire Strategy, and that was done
maybe 7, 8 years ago, has some good intentions. The Federal
agencies had something called the Fire Plan, we call it Fire
Plan 1.0, and currently we are working on Fire Plan 2.0 that
would----
Mr. Costa. Okay. For a lot of folks those are just numbers,
so what do they mean?
Mr. Phipps. Yes.
Well, it is an update to the nation's interagency fire
plan, specifying how much we should be putting into hazardous
fuels treatment, what kind of resources do we need, what do we
need in communities, that kind of thing.
Mr. Costa. Well, what do you think, under lessons that have
been learned in the last 6 months, are the changes you are
looking at?
Mr. Phipps. Well, the big lesson is we need to think big.
We have to have, if we are going to try to get a managed
landscape that is resilient to fire, we need to do much more
than we are doing now, and that has to be with participation of
communities, state lands, Federal lands, and private lands.
Mr. Costa. And in that effort, the resources, the last
couple years, a lot of the money that we have had for forest
management has been transferred over to putting fires out, and
do you have an assessment of how much appropriation really
needs to be set aside to manage U.S. Forest Service lands? Have
you made that assessment?
Mr. Phipps. Real rough, we think, two to three times more
in the land management area and fuels management.
Mr. Costa. And last year, how much was that?
Mr. Phipps. We had probably about $1 billion total.
Mr. Costa. You are saying somewhere between $2 and $3
billion?
Mr. Phipps. Yes.
Mr. Costa. Over what period of time?
Mr. Phipps. Annually.
Mr. Costa. Annually?
Mr. Phipps. It took us 110 years to get here. It is going
to take at least 10 years to get to a more desirable future
because the extent of the fuels on the landscape, it is almost
everywhere you look. It is----
Mr. Costa. On the Creek Fire that I have been exposed to,
went out a week ago, probably go back out on Saturday to survey
the update on that, one of the devastating fires, Chief Dave
Schloss, a 30 year veteran from San Diego area, but he is up
there trying to deal with this, indicated to me that, frankly,
we are stretched too thin. And in this is an area that is
predominantly forest land that you have given jurisdiction to
Cal-Fire to manage this particular fire here. That seems
unusual, but we have 14,000 firefighters out there, we have the
National Guard, just in California alone, and we are short.
Mr. Phipps. Yes, this year was an extraordinary year, and
the system was not designed, it broke the system to try to
respond to all that amount of fire all at the same time. And it
is likely the case that we need to maintain the fire
suppression capability while we are working to manage the
landscape better over at least a 10 year period.
Mr. Costa. All right. And I am sure my time has expired,
but I finally found my memo, in terms of the questions that I
wanted to direct, so I can either do that afterwards, or if you
allow a second round for questioning, I will be happy to stay
here and take that opportunity.
The Chair. Thank you for being so responsive when we needed
you to take your turn. We will be happy to put you back on the
list, Mr. Costa.
Mr. Costa. Okay. Thank you.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes Mr. LaMalfa for 5
minutes.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you again, Madam Chair. It is
unfortunate that we currently have votes on the floor on a
whole list of amendments, and a bill, as well as other
concurrent committees happening now. We would have more of our
Members here, but, that said, let me pick back up, we were
talking about grazing when I left off. And, you can talk to any
rancher, anybody that works the land in an area that has a
valley and forest interface, or much more forested areas, and
they will tell you that grazing is a very important tool not
only to keep their livestock going, but it actually helps with
the fire, helps suppress the fire. We talked about this. And
then you can take anecdotal photographic evidence where a
grazed field, you have a fire that burns right up to the fence
line, and it stops.
So there has been reluctance to have grazing be a more
widespread use. It is not anything new under the sun, and they
act like it is. Like, let us have a pilot program on grazing.
What is there to prove? We know it works. It reduces the fire
fuels down there. And, again, we don't talk about grazing
everything off, but there is certainly strategic zones where
this is useful for keeping the loads down, fuel loads, and as
well as the type of fire break zones that would be helpful for
firefighters when a fire does occur, they can have an area
where they can manage. Has the Forest Service--is it really
ready to--because we see the--what is known as AUMs, animal
unit months, the amount of feed that cattle and others can use
during a given time. Those numbers are decreasing AUMs being
put out for grazing purposes, for cattle, sheep, even goats. We
have goat herds that are going out, helping out in small zones.
Why are we seeing a downward trend in this when this is a very
effective tool?
We talked a minute ago about fire, prescribed fire, and you
have the unpopular component of smoke coming from that, air
quality issues, but, as you mentioned there, the air quality is
going to be a lot different under a controlled fire than the
masses we have here. But if you want to get away from that, why
isn't grazing used as a much broader tool that benefits--
several win-win categories here?
Mr. Phipps. Thank you for that question. I think, yes,
there are areas where grazing can be very helpful. As I would
mentioned earlier, a lot of the nation's western forests have
an incredible density. It really wouldn't lend itself to
grazing. In the aftermath of fires, of course, that changes,
and salvage, so I think that range managers are always looking
for opportunities to increase the animal unit months.
Mr. LaMalfa. Do the range managers consult with livestock
owners on what they think that density is? Because they have
turned them loose in some pretty dense stuff. You might not
have every thicket be grazable, but there is area in between.
Mr. Phipps. Yes, as----
Mr. LaMalfa. Is that a strong consult with those that own
the livestock?
Mr. Phipps. Yes. Routinely, I would say, in my experience--
I actually administer grazing permits in Idaho. I believe that
we are always attending to relationships with ranchers, and
asking them what they think about things, and how can we better
manage the grazing resource together.
Mr. LaMalfa. Can we get a greater commitment to this as an
effective tool? There are those that don't want to cut trees,
there are those that don't want to have prescribed burns. This
seems like a win-win to me. Can we get a bigger push for this?
Mr. Phipps. Yes. The Forest Service will look into this and
get back to you.
Mr. LaMalfa. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Costa was alluding too to
the, and you responded, to the talk about readiness. Of course,
an unprecedented bout of lightning strikes happened at one time
in California, and turned out a lot of fires from that, but we
run into the problems with VIPR (Virtual Incident Procurement)
contracts, you know what those are, that contract with people
ahead of time, and the system seems broken, such that if you
don't do it exactly the perfect way, on timing or what have
you, they kick you out, and you can't talk to them for 3 years.
A Mr. McNeil has talked about how he was working with one
person in one office in Sacramento, and, as he had been for
many years, he is a contractor to help service heavy equipment
that would be out on the fire line. Then he finds out he gets
rejected, and he was told after the fact, you have to talk to
this other office to get your contract going. Well, how is he
supposed to know that, especially since he has a track record
of working with the one? They work with the other office, and
they submit the thing by FedEx and--timely, and they get
rejected on that.
So now we have a person who has been an ace mechanic for
many years, helping with these contracted pieces of equipment
out there, helping on the fire lines, being kicked out until
they decide later, we would better reinstate him. So that, as
well as many other stories you could talk about with the VIPR
system, the e-mails not being returned, the website being not
timely, folks not processing these. If we want to have a state
of readiness, there is so much private equipment--I drove past
some in Siskiyou County today. There are still about 20 water
tender trucks sitting along the freeway there that had not been
contracted because of a breakdown in the ability to process
them. What can we see in improvement in that area for, in this
case this mechanic, Mr. McNeil, and others just trying to be
part of a solution, whereas, we are overwhelmed with Forest
Service and other agencies, the personnel and equipment they
have?
Mr. Phipps. Yes, thank you for that. We acknowledge that we
had problems in California not with the VIPR system, per se,
but how it was staffed. There are technical and administrative
issues, and we brought in more people, and I understand that
the contracting issues have pretty much subsided.
Mr. LaMalfa. Okay, because there needs to be a makeup
opportunity for that. If it is a 3 year term, then that needs
to be waived so that people can get signed up back into the
system, because we are still not by any means out of the fire--
--
Mr. Phipps. Yes.
Mr. LaMalfa.--woods yet, so to speak, in the north, and in
the south, probably year-round. I will yield back. I see Mr.
Balderson has come into the room, and I would like to welcome
him as a newer Member of the Committee, and as a Member of the
Subcommittee as well, good to see you here, thank you, Madam
Chair, I will yield back.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes Congresswoman Pingree
for 5 minutes. Deputy Chief Phipps, thank you for bearing with
us through these technical challenges. We truly appreciate it.
While we are working out the technical challenges, and
continuing to do so, the chair now recognizes Congressman Costa
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Costa. I thank the Chair again for allowing me a second
round of the questioning. I wanted to follow up on some of the
comments that were made by my colleague from California as it
relates to some of the health issues. But, as you know, Deputy
Chief, these fires are not only major issues for western
states, but for our constituents. Even if you are not in a--
directly in the fire, the smoke has been like a nuclear winter,
I mean, when you have been able to see the sun it is been
orange, and ash coming from 30, 40 miles away. And they,
obviously impact air quality, as well as water quality, in an
area in--that is a closed-in basin, the San Joaquin Valley,
that already is a non-attainment area.
I know the Forest Service and meteorologists are working
with Federal and state leaders to improve the use of satellites
modeling to predict things like smoke movement. These smoke
impacts, in terms of smoke maps, are critical for public health
efforts. Have you folks looked at doing more in that area in
research so that you can provide efforts--we have a lot of
people who are asthmatic, a lot of people who have other health
issues, pre-existing conditions, and, of course, we have the
pandemic, COVID-19.
Mr. Phipps. Yes, thank you for that question. We are very
concerned about that because we know that smoke does have quite
an impact on the American public. This last event, friends out
on the West Coast, even quite some distance from the fire, just
like you said, had less than \1/4\ of a mile of visibility.
Mr. Costa. We had three Category One fires, and smaller
fires.
Mr. Phipps. Yes, I mean, it is just terrible, and people
had to stay inside, and I had heard that people that stayed
inside were coughing, and it was quite an impact. The best
option for us, I believe, is to manage the landscapes to
prevent that, but until we do, the best thing we can do is give
notification in advance. We have a lot of modeling and efforts
that we have been working with, NOAA and others, on these
different models to try to give as much notice as we can so
people that are particularly sensitive to smoke can get out of
harm's way.
Mr. Costa. Well, I want to make a suggestion to the Chair,
and the Subcommittee, in working with the full Committee. The
impacts of this throughout the country, but certainly in the
West, are such that I would hope that the Subcommittee would--
and Congress Member Panetta has had his own fire in his
constituency, so it's important that we try to focus on this--
not only this--the end of this year, but next year, in terms of
providing the support necessary for the U.S. Forest Service.
And I know both Congresswoman Spanberger and Congress Member
Panetta are concerned, as well as Congressman LaMalfa, but,
Deputy Chief, you ought to come back with recommendations to us
as we look at the two--what would you call them? Plan One and
Plan Two? What did you call them? What was the technical term?
Mr. Phipps. Yes, updated fire plan. Yes.
Mr. Costa. Yes, the updated fire plan. And this ought to be
the subject, Congressman Panetta, because I know your concern,
as we try to reassess next year with the budget, with the
appropriations process. While you were gone, Congressman
Panetta, they estimated that if we are really to try to manage
this, it is somewhere between $2 to $3 billion to do the forest
management service, and that is nowhere near where we have
provided budget for management of the forests, right?
Mr. Phipps. That is correct.
Mr. Costa. So let me close on this note. I gave a speech
last week about this after Chief David Schloss took me through
the Creek Fire, and I learned a lot, and I am going to go back
to Saturday. One, we have to better manage our forests from
every element that is contained therein, and that is from
thinning, to clearing brush, to dealing with both the forests
and the chaparral country that is different in different
regions of the country, and different regions of California.
Number two, we have to re-examine land use policy. We have
hundreds and thousands of people living where they did not live
before 30 years ago. And three, climate change is a part of
this, and we are going to have to focus on all of the above.
The climate change is a little longer-term, the other issues
are more immediate, but we have to have a strategy, Congressman
Panetta, that employs all of the above, both with long-term
efforts, as well as the short-term efforts that we can apply in
the next Congress. There will be some other questions I want to
raise, and I will submit them to the Subcommittee afterwards,
and I thank you for giving me this second round.
Mr. Panetta [presiding.] Thank you, Jim, I appreciate that.
The gentleman's time has expired. I now yield 5 minutes to the
gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Balderson.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It changed on me.
There is--thank you. Thank you for being here today, Mr.
Phipps, and in your role as the Deputy Chief for State and
Private Forestry within the USDA, I look forward to your
comments. And I have missed most of them, obviously, but thank
you. In your testimony you described the unprecedented
challenges millions of Americans have faced this year. You say
that as of last week over 7 million acres of land have burned.
This has devastating impacts to those who have lost their loved
ones, their homes, and their livelihoods.
These fires have even impacted the State of Ohio through
changes to the air quality, and stretched Federal resources in
the middle of a pandemic. Of the land that is burned this year,
what is the breakdown of Federal versus non-Federal land?
Mr. Phipps. Well, I don't have the exact figures, but
roughly half of it, maybe a little bit more, was on Federal
lands.
Mr. Balderson. Okay. Thank you. In your testimony also you
talk about the steps being taken by the White House to reduce
the risk of wildfire. Specifically I am referring to President
Trump's Executive Order 13855. I support these types of
actions, but I also believe Congress should be more active.
What tools can we in Congress provide to the Forest Service
that would enable you to better prevent these fires?
Mr. Phipps. Well, it is not only the authorities. We have a
lot of them, and right now it is an organizational capacity and
funding problem to ramp up to the scale of the problem. That is
probably the biggest one. And then we need incentives for
private landowners to contribute and be part of the solution,
because it doesn't do any good to manage forests on one side of
the line when you have non-fire resilient private land on the
other.
Mr. Balderson. All right, thank you very much. Mr.
Chairman, I yield back my remaining time.
Mr. Panetta. Thank you, Mr. Balderson.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you.
Mr. Panetta. I appreciate that. At this point I will yield
myself 5 minutes, not just because it is my prerogative as
chair, but I guess I am in order, so I will do that.
Chief, good afternoon, and thank you for being here. I
appreciate, not only your expertise, but I appreciate you being
able to talk about such a relevant and topical topic,
especially concerning this type of issue, with the 2020
wildfire year response and recovery efforts, especially with
someone like me, who comes from the Central Coast of
California, and actually had to be evacuated within the last
couple months because of the Carmel Fire that was coming up
over the hill about \1/2\ mile from my house, in which I saw
the flames. But that being said, I was one of the fortunate
ones, one of the fortunate many thanks to the good work of Cal-
Fire, and our firemen and first responders, who did a good job
battling that blaze, and we were able to return to our home.
Obviously this is something that literally is not just
relevant, it is something that is important to all of us,
obviously, in California, and I echo what Congressman Costa was
saying in regards to how we have to address this. But with you
I want to hit on four areas in my questioning, just to let you
know, kind of lay it out for you, forest management, or
reforestation, Forest Service staffing, and prescribed burns.
The first thing is I want to start with forest management
projects and wildfire risk reduction. In your testimony you
highlighted the importance of proactively conducting forest
management projects to create healthy fire resilient conditions
on our forest lands.
Mr. Phipps. Yes.
Mr. Panetta. Can you provide your vision of what I just
said, proactive forest management, and does it include wildfire
risk reduction projects? And if so, how should we best
implement those types of projects?
Mr. Phipps. Thank you, great question. Yes, my vision of
this is that we have these large landscapes that we have to
plan across the entire landscape, all lands. And, yes, a lot of
the work has to be done on National Forests, and we have to
strategically treat these landscapes--if they are too dense, we
will have to thin them out, but ultimately we have to do
prescribed fire. That is really the only thing that is going to
get a large landscape, particularly in California, back into a
fire resilient condition. And it takes a lot of cooperation,
and imagination, by the way, to make that happen, particularly
in a state like California, with so much population.
Mr. Panetta. Yes, understood, and I appreciate that. And
obviously I believe, as you heard Congressman LaMalfa talk
about, that one of these first steps, at least how we can help
out, is through the Wildfire and Public Safety Act. And then
obviously--I know I am running short on time. I want to just
kind of remind you about the REPLANT Act, H.R. 7843, when it
comes to forest restoration, but then I also want to hit on
another topic that is important, near and dear to my district
in the Las Padres National Forest, Forest Service staffing. I
have spoken with Chief Christensen, I have spoken with Under
Secretary Hubbard, about the shortages that are not just
affecting but really plaguing our National Forests, and so I
want to basically let you know that I understand the 2020 fire
funding fix will kick in soon, but I have also gotten mixed
reviews on whether this funding fix will actually help address
the shortages of staffing. In your opinion, Chief, will the
fire fix--what will it due in terms of filling those vacancies
of non-fire positions, and what can we do in Congress to help
you?
Mr. Phipps. Well, it does provide the opportunity, we
think, because it is putting some of the fire suppression off
the books, if you will. There is an amount of money, if it were
to be reinvested into staffing, that could make an incredible
difference, because, on average, everything other than fire is
about 60 percent less than what it used to be.
Mr. Panetta. Understood, understood. And just going back,
actually, to forest restoration, when it comes to
reforestation, would lifting the spending cap on the
Reforestation Trust Fund help address the issue of
reforestation post-disaster?
Mr. Phipps. I think there are a number of other
constraints, but the Forest Service could use that, I am sure.
Mr. Panetta. Okay, great. Now, in regards to prescribed
burns, I know we have had a pretty good discussion on this
during the time you have been here, can you talk to me about
Forest Service plans to better utilize prescribed burns in the
state, moving forward, as compared to the past 50 years, and
would a prescribed fire center that trains individuals in
prescribed fire methods, would that help as well?
Mr. Phipps. I believe it would. I would say that in the
Southeast, that is quite a fire culture there, both on private
and Federal lands, and they are burning through their acreages
at quite a frequent basis, and there is a lot of skill. We need
to develop that out West as well.
Mr. Panetta. Understood. Thank you, my time is up. I
appreciate your answers. Thank you very much, Chief. I now
yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from South Dakota, Mr.
Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it. Of
course there has been a lot of attention, and rightfully so,
given to all of the wildfires. I mean, the images are just
tragic. The numbers, the data, is just tragic. We don't see as
much news coverage, it seems to me, on how proactive fuels
management can really reduce that risk. There are not anywhere
near as many projects on Forest Service land as I would like to
see that make it all the way through to implementation, and so
sometimes those mitigation stories are fewer and further
between than we would like. To that end, I want to highlight
for my colleagues some of the examples from South Dakota where
this proactive forest management really worked.
I mean, we really can break the fire triangle by managing
fuel loads, and we can protect lives, and property, and, of
course, the critical habitat, not just for creatures, but for
obviously humans who use that area for all manner of
recreation. And so one example is just 3 weeks ago, and it was
a hot, dry, windy day, and the Bear Fire started on the Black
Hills National Forest. This was southwest of Deerfield Lake,
and that is a highly popular recreation area. The fire was
started by a lightning strike, which obviously is not that
uncommon. And even though the weather conditions were critical,
this fire only burned for 5 acres.
It could have been so much worse, so why was it only 5
acres? And a large part of that is because the fire burned in
an area that had recently been thinned because of timber sales.
And, frankly, another timber sale was active nearby. And that
harvest, it reduced the fuels, and it improved the roads, the
access crisscrossing the area, and that made for a quick
response, obviously, for our firefighters. And having that fuel
out of there meant that what did burn didn't burn anywhere near
as hot. And, of course, Chief, I am not telling you anything
you don't know, you are the professional, but I do want to
highlight some of these successes.
And that is certainly not the only example. It is the most
recent. How about--I brought some pictures from 2015 where we
had a very similar situation happen. The North Pole Fire
started, and so here we can see--this has been actively
managed. There had just been a timber sale here, and so you see
a relative thinning of the trees. The burn area was far more
modest than you would expect. And, again, because we had these
access roads that had been improved for the timber sales, the
men and women whose job it is to go out and fight these fires
were able to get there so much more quickly, and were able to
put this fire out so much more effectively than they otherwise
would have.
And so that framework, that preface, sir, really creates
the jumping off point for my questions. And I would--Mr.
Chairman, I would like to enter in--or Madam Chair, enter into
the record these photos, smaller versions, as well as an
article from 2015 in the Rapid City Journal that lays out this
story well. And if there is no objection, I would like to have
that entered into the record, Madam Chair.
The Chair [presiding]. Without objection, so entered.
[The article, and photos, referred to are located on p.
53.]
Mr. Johnson. Very good. Thank you. Deputy Chief, the 2014
Farm Bill--and in response from individual states, the Forest
Service designated 46.7 million acres as eligible to use the
expedited NEPA authorities, and then in the 2018 Farm Bill we
made some tweaks to that. What is the status of those 46.7
million acres? This was all about treatment for infection for
bugs. I mean, to what extent has that treatment worked or is
ongoing?
Mr. Phipps. Thank you for your question, and your model
that you laid out, it works. Thinning and then doing prescribed
fire really makes a difference, particularly if it is at an
adequate scale. And thank you for those authorities that
allowed us to increase our pace and scale. And I don't have the
exact figures about what that--but I know that we have been
actively treating fuels, and harvesting timber to reduce
density so we can do prescribed fire.
Mr. Johnson. And I understand you don't have the exact
number, but if you could follow up with my office, sir, I would
be interested to know the status of the 46.7 million acres,
because if, for whatever reason, the Forest Service hasn't been
able to attack that full flexibility granted by the 2014 and
2018 Farm Bills, then we would like to know if there is
something more we can do to help you all do your job better.
Mr. Phipps. Okay. Be happy to do that.
Mr. Johnson. And then, given my short time, I won't ask
another question, but I will just note that I also have an
interest in making sure that we continue to have a vibrant
forest products industry. I think a managed forest is a healthy
forest. That has absolutely been the case in South Dakota,
although we are falling short with our targets for the number
of hundred cubic feet that have been harvested, and so I will
be following up with your office, sir, your agency, so we can
talk about the size of that gap, and the most appropriate way
to deal with it.
Mr. Phipps. Okay.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you very much.
Mr. Phipps. Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. Thanks for your indulgence, Madam Chair.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes Congresswoman Schrier
for 5 minutes.
Ms. Schrier. Thank you, I have forgotten how to do this.
Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to participate in this
Subcommittee hearing today, and thank you, Deputy Chief Phipps,
for being here and taking our questions. Right at the
beginning, when our Chair spoke she said that this was
terrifying, and I would wholeheartedly agree. Coming from
Washington State, many parts of my district were on fire. In my
own home, we were essentially locked in the house for a week
with hazardous air quality, with AQIs over 300 for over a week.
And one of the scariest and most terrifying parts is that this
may be our new normal, and it should lend a real urgency and
seriousness to how we address climate change, how we manage our
forests and forest resiliency, but also about being thoughtful
about where we build, with respect to the WUI.
I wanted to bring up one issue before I ask a question. One
of the areas in my district that was on fire was the Evans
Canyon Fire. It was big enough that it spanned two big
counties. Most of it was in the neighboring county, but much of
it was in the one in my district. Our full force of
firefighters contributed to the effort to put it out, but
because of some rules about FMAG grants, only one of the
counties got assistance, and the one in my district didn't. And
so we are working with FEMA to get that assistance, but I may
at some point need to call on you to see if perhaps we could
lend your weight to that discussion.
My question--and we have spoken before about COVID, I will
get to that in a moment, if I have time, but I wanted to talk
about what happens after a fire, the landslides, the erosion,
the lack of habitat. And I know that there is something called
the Burned Area Emergency Response Teams, the BAER Teams, and I
wanted to talk about the fact that, just like the Evans Canyon
Fire spanned different areas, it is not just confined to
National Forest, the same thing happens really everywhere in
the State of Washington, National Forests, state forests,
community forests, and they all essentially feed to the same
place. And I was just wondering how the BAER Teams coordinate
the national, or the Federal, and some of those more local
efforts, because when there is a landslide, it rushes through
all of it, it affects all of the surrounding water areas. Can
you help me understand that?
Mr. Phipps. Yes. BAER Teams are quite resourceful. A lot of
them are out there even sometimes before the fire is totally
out, working to do assessments. They do coordinate with local
interests, and other governments, and within the USDA, the
NRCS, for example, to try to bring the BAER everything that is
needed to prevent further tragedy once rains come, basically.
Ms. Schrier. Right.
Mr. Phipps. They try to do seeding, scarification, re-
establishing drainage. And they are quite effective at it, and
we do have funding to do that. It is going to be a challenge,
because doing that over 7 million acres this year will require
prioritization to make sure we go after the most potentially
impactful areas first.
Ms. Schrier. And do you do that also in community forests
and state lands, or do you just confine those efforts to
Federal lands?
Mr. Phipps. Well, the BAER teams would coordinate, there is
probably not any large--well, let me put it this way. All these
large fires include private lands. If they happen to be state
lands, they would coordinate with them as well to make sure
that collectively they get the best outcome.
Ms. Schrier. Great. One more question. We spoke back in
July about COVID plans. You had phenomenal plans, keeping fires
small, keeping firefighters in cohorts, doing whatever you
could to prevent the spread within a cohort, but also to
prevent mingling, and then all those best laid plans--I don't
know, I won't say went up in smoke, but it became very
challenging when all of a sudden now we have all these forest
fires raging at the same time, they are all too big, mingling
of groups, even people coming in from out of state or out of
country. How are you doing with testing, and people converting
to coronavirus positive? How are you handling the pandemic?
Mr. Phipps. Well, we have actually done a lot. Thank you
for that question. Before the fire season really got going, we
did an assessment on a state by state basis about testing. We
had a number of teams developing our protocols. We decided that
if somebody tested positive, we would pay for the test, if it
wasn't free, that we would pay for lodging for quarantine,
trying to manage the incentive system of that, the social
distancing, the fire camps spread out. And, I was quite
concerned, particularly after this big fire siege that we have
had, but we are not seeing the rate of infections. In fact, we
are--not yet. I think people have been--they have been
modulizing, trying to stay away, and it is been quite
remarkable. I think the fire community did a really nice job
this year.
Ms. Schrier. That is great, thank you, and congratulations.
That is great news. Thank you.
Mr. Phipps. Thank you.
The Chair. Again, Deputy Chief Phipps, thank you for being
here today. Thank you for your testimony. How we come together
to help our western states respond to, recover from, and build
stronger can be a defining act in these times. In addition to
our important conversation today, there is so much more work to
be done beyond the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee, including
support for community and home rebuilding for rural
development, for healthcare services, for emergency management
and response needs in areas devastated by wildfires, and taking
meaningful actions to further reduce our carbon footprint
across all sectors of the economy, and work to build a more
resilient and sustainable economy.
There is so much more work that needs to be done by this
Subcommittee, and this Committee, on both questions of what are
the solutions we can look for within the agricultural and
forestry sectors. I stand ready to continue this work, and as I
said at the top of this hearing, we should not have to wait for
the ash of the wildfires to reach the Capitol steps to take
action. I look forward to our continued work together as a
Subcommittee, Committee, Congress, and a nation as we support
these efforts. I would like to thank the USDA staff and our
witness today for being here. Thank you for being patient with
our technological challenges and thank you for being patient
during our vote timeframe. The chair now recognizes the Ranking
Member for a closing statement.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you again, Madam Chair. It is too bad on
the competing votes, and committees, and such today, but we
have covered a lot of good ground in our time here. With your
permission too, I would like to submit a statement as well from
the Federal Forest Resource Coalition.
The Chair. So ordered.
[The letter referred to is located on p. 49.]
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, that is speaking about a lot of the
issues with critical habitat designations, and the hands-off
approach to management that has actually failed us for so long.
I will submit that. And thank you again, Mr. Phipps, for your
attention to these important issues, because our fires are
still burning, and it is going to take an incredible amount of
effort. As you mentioned, we have a 110 year problem that we
hope we can catch up in only 10 or less. But it will require
going at what is known as a pace and scale much higher than
what we have seen in the past. We need to be able to work
through restrictions that are caused by NEPA. NEPA is well
intended, but--and a lot of times we are plowing the same old
ground on that. We don't need a NEPA document for doing the
types of practices we already know are good practices. We can
do this on a one-pager, instead of 18 months or more of study,
and lawsuits, and all that.
I talk about the Ranch Fire, from a couple years ago, over
on the west side of the northern part of California, 400,000
acres, and, after 2 years of wrangling, they wanted to put in a
process to do some accelerated work along roadways and other
key areas, 7,000 acres. 7,000 out of 400,000 that had been
burned, of salvage, of revitalization along roadways, as a
strategic area to recover and more hardened from fire. So what
happens on that? A lawsuit, and the court throws out all that
work, and we have yet more delay.
We can't keep having these sorts of things happening, so
help us help you with the U.S. Forest Service. Bring to us,
please, legislative ideas to help with the roadblocks that you
face for so many in the Service that would like to get these
projects done at a pace and scale that is going to be
realistically helpful in the short-term so we have a better
long-term. My constituents are very, very tired of it. They are
tired of the roadblocks to the work, they are tired of the
hurdles to getting contracts to be part of a solution there for
equipment. They are tired of constantly being in danger, and
the air quality problems are right there in their backyard, ten
times the scale of what would be deemed unhealthy in some
cases. We are all feeling it, and when we see our urban friends
even feeling it, not only in the Bay Area, but all of
California, and even here on the East Coast, then I hope it
really sounds the alarm that we have to do something, and it
has to be a lot more dramatic.
And some of it might, on its surface, be unpopular, when we
are talking about prescribed burning. On one of those burn
days, it is not going to be popular, but we need to be able to
educate people and say, ``This is necessary, because when we
don't do it, we have a scale of fire that is multiple times
worse for air quality, and, of course, for habitat, for
wildlife, the forest asset on public lands that belongs to all
of us.'' And so we will have to be bold, and step over lines,
say, ``No, we must do this, because, as we have talked about,
110 years of putting the fire out without doing the other half
of the equation that nature used to do.'' Now, when nature did
it, you can go back a long ways in history and find nature used
to burn millions of acres at a time, and it would go all year,
until whenever the next rainy season would be. That is nature's
way, and we respect that, but if we have the hybrid of mankind
helping out, using nature's tools, using what the Native
Americans used to use, we can have a winning equation here, and
that is what we really need. That is what the public demands.
That is what they cry out for when--in the letter that Mr.
Daley, and others, many others wrote, or could write to us.
Thank you again for your appearance, and for taking this back
to the surface there. And, again, Chair Spanberger, I really,
really appreciate you putting this together for us today, and
having this opportunity before Congress might adjourn for the
year, we will see, but thank you so much.
The Chair. Thank you very much, Ranking Member LaMalfa, and
thank you for always advocating for this Subcommittee's strong
work in the area of forestry, and my heart is with your
constituents, as I know they continue to face challenges.
Under the Rules of the Committee, the record of today's
hearing will remain open for 10 calendar days to receive
additional material and supplementary written responses from
the witness to any question posed by a Member. This hearing of
the Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:09 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
Submitted Comment Letter by Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a
Representative in Congress from Virginia; re: S. 4431 and H.R. 7978
September 16, 2020
Hon. Diane Feinstein,
United States Senate,
Washington, D.C.
Re: Comments on The Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act of
2020 (S. 4431)
Dear Senator Feinstein:
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we write to express our
concern with certain sections and attributes of S. 4431, The Emergency
Wildfire and Public Safety Act of 2020 introduced by Senator Diane
Feinstein and Senator Steve Daines and the companion bill, H.R. 7978,
introduced by Congressman Doug LaMalfa and Congressman Jimmy Panetta.
The 2020 fire season in California is having an unprecedented
impact on our communities, forests, and other natural landscapes.
Collectively, we have been working with Federal and state agencies,
landowners, Tribes, and other stakeholders to harden communities and
vital infrastructure and improve the resilience of forest landscapes to
extreme fire. We believe it is appropriate and necessary for
policymakers to seek solutions to the tremendous challenges posed by
today's unprecedented wildfires, including taking actions to
aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle the climate
crisis.
We agree that it is essential to prioritize actions that reduce
wildfire risk to communities and to take prudent science-based steps to
restore resiliency and manageable fire conditions to degraded forest
lands, including expanded use of prescribed and managed fire. The
actions and programs defined in Sections 102, 106, 201, 401, 402, 403,
and 404 of S.4431 are much needed and would increase the capacity of
agencies and stakeholders to reduce risk and improve resiliency; in the
case of Section 201 we see opportunities to refine the language and
improve the effectiveness of the program. These sections also highlight
the critical need to increase funding to Federal agencies to support
new programs like these and expand existing efforts to reduce fire risk
to communities and increase the resilience of forest landscapes.
However, we believe, based on our many years of experience with
these issues in California, that other sections of the bill do not
improve our ability to reduce the impacts of extreme wildfire in ways
that are collaborative, strategic and use the best available science.
The following summarizes our concerns with several provisions that
affect the management of Federal public lands.
Section 101. Forest Landscape Projects.
Many of our organizations support and are actively participating in
the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP)
established in 2009. Similar to the program proposed in Section 101,
the successful CFLRP encourages collaboration within National Forest
landscapes to reduce wildfire risk to communities and improve forest
resilience. However, CFLRP has enjoyed success because it does not
alienate stakeholders by undermining environmental and judicial review
procedures as proposed in Section 101. We cannot support shortcuts to
environmental review and limits posed on judicial review because they
undermine collaborative public engagement, diminish the role of
science, and can lead to bad decisions that degrade the forests,
watersheds and wildlife habitat. Based on the evidence of CFLRP and
other collaborative forest restoration efforts, we also know that legal
shortcuts are not necessary to achieve restoration and wildfire risk
reduction outcomes. We believe that the intent of this section could be
achieved by expanding the successful CFLRP program.
Section 103. Establishment of Fuel Breaks in Forest and Other Wildland
Vegetation.
We are generally skeptical of efforts to legislate categorical
exclusions because it undermines established NEPA procedures and
because Congress lacks the knowledge and expertise to conclude that
certain management actions will not have significant effects on the
environment. We object to this provision because it would enable
damaging activities that could affect wildlands and other high value
areas that are remote to communities at risk, without adequate public
review and comment. Furthermore, the Forest Service already has
considerable legislative authority to create fuel breaks, including
authority under the 2018 amendment to the Healthy Forest Restoration
Act of 2003 (HFRA) that applied expedited judicial review requirements
to firebreaks and fuel breaks, as well as numerous other authorities
for these types of management actions.
Section 104. Emergency Actions.
We agree that the agency should prioritize actions to mitigate harm
to life, property, and important natural or cultural resources, but we
object to this section because it expands the Forest Service's
authority to declare ``emergency situations'' in terms that are overly
broad and allows for reduced environmental and judicial review of
actions, including controversial salvage logging on up to 10,000 acres.
Salvage logging and logging to treat insect and disease infestations
are controversial, and there is a lack of agreement among scientists
about the efficacy of such practices. These types of actions are
therefore among those that benefit from application of best available
science and robust evaluation, including the development of
alternatives to refine and improve the land management decision. Use of
the programmatic and tiered decision-making available to the agency now
will generate better outcomes than emergency waivers for controversial
actions. Finally, the provision would remove the legal requirement that
projects must be consistent with land management plans; waiving this
requirement ignores this foundational legal element of land management.
Section 105. New Information in Land Management Plans.
We object to this section because it undermines the integrity of
the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by excusing Federal land managers from
reinitiating consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on
both plans and projects in some circumstances when ``new information''
comes to light indicating the need to list imperiled species or
designate critical habitat for a listed species under the ESA. This is
problematic and harmful to the conservation of imperiled species
because the limitations imposed on ``new information'' allows the best
available science to be ignored and therefore impacts to imperiled
species to occur in the absence of corrective action. The issue of
reinitiating consultation for new species listings and critical habitat
designations was debated and addressed in the 2018 Omnibus
Appropriations Act.
In summary, we appreciate the bill's sponsors' commitment to
improving wildfire management and support many aspects of the
legislation. Unfortunately, we cannot support the entire bill at this
time as written given the significant concerns noted above. As
stakeholders engaged in on the ground efforts to reduce risk to
communities and restore resiliency to California's forests, we look
forward to working with you and other policymakers to solve our
wildfire challenges.
Sincerely,
Pamela Flick,
California Program Director,
Defenders of Wildlife;
Susan Britting,
Executive Director,
Sierra Forest Legacy;
Ryan Henson,
Senior Policy Director,
California Wilderness Coalition;
Isabella Langone,
Conservation Analyst,
California Native Plant Society;
Steven Frisch,
President,
Sierra Business Council.
______
Submitted Comment Letter by Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a
Representative in Congress from Virginia; re: H.R. 7978
September 23, 2020
Dear Members of Congress,
On behalf of our millions of members and supporters nationwide, we
write to urge opposition to H.R. 7978 the ``Emergency Wildfire and
Public Safety Act of 2020'' introduced by Representatives Panetta (D-
CA) and LaMalfa (R-CA). With devastating fires burning in the West, we
certainly recognize the extraordinary pressure to legislate solutions.
But H.R. 7978 is a misguided step in the wrong direction that will not
adequately protect communities from wildfire. Rather than advancing
best scientific practices to safeguard communities, the bill promotes
logging of National Forests many miles from communities while
undermining bedrock environmental laws and an independent judiciary.
Some provisions in the bill could actually exacerbate the wildfire
crisis and divert limited resources from where they are most needed
Rather than supporting H.R. 7978 in the name of fire safety, we
urge support by the House for legislation which focuses on science-
based methods to mitigate wildfire risk. The most effective way to
protect communities from wildland fires through cost-share grants to
create defensible space and fire-safe retrofits, rather than logging
miles away from communities. Empirical evidence, including the Forest
Service's former top fire science researcher, has demonstrated that the
most effective means of protecting structures is to create defensible
space immediately around the building and install fire safe retrofits--
not logging miles away from communities.
Most important to this issue is the reality that human caused
climate change has increased droughts; in turn, this has increased fire
risk and prevalence in the West. In addition to mitigation efforts, we
urge the House to address the root causes of climate change.
Our primary concerns with H.R. 7978 include:
Section 101 seeks to establish ``three pilot projects'' that
would proceed through expedited environmental and judicial
processes. These ``forest landscape projects,'' which could
each be as large as 117\2\ miles, will leave forests with
diminished environmental protection and legal protections.
Moreover, management activities including but not limited to
logging/thinning and creating firebreaks up to \1/2\ mile wide would be
governed by short-circuited environmental and judicial review
procedures. This would happen by undercutting the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to limit the number of alternatives
(Sec. 101(d)(2)) and the scope of environmental analysis topics to be
analyzed. (Sec. 101(d)(3)).
Section 103 of H.R. 7978 creates a categorical exclusion for
the creation of fuel breaks, but the efficacy of these
treatments is speculative at best (flying embers do not stop at
firebreaks), and would be permitted in roadless areas and other
sensitive areas. Congress already has given the Forest Service
considerable legislative authority to expedite the creation of
fuel breaks and other hazardous fuel reduction activities in
the ``Fire Funding and Forest Management Fix'' that was signed
into law March 23, 2018, and the agency has more than 30 other
authorities for this kind of land management. There is no
evidence suggesting that the Forest Service needs additional
authority to reduce hazardous fuels including doing work
adjacent to communities.
Section 104 codifies and broadens existing agency authority
to declare an ``emergency situation'' to implement actions
purportedly to mitigate harm to life, property, or important
natural or cultural resources on National Forest System land or
adjacent land. Of significant concern is that this section is
designed to expedite post-fire logging that the best available
science concludes is a very destructive land management
practice, causing harm to soils, water quality, and wildlife
habitat that sets back natural regeneration and reduces carbon
sequestration in the forest. H.R. 7978 will lead to rushed and
poorly planned logging projects with major impacts on soil,
streams, and wildlife, and could result in increased wildfire
risk.
The goal of Section 105 of the bill is to exempt the Forest
Service and Interior Department agencies from the requirement
to re-initiate Endangered Species Act Section 7 consultation
based on new information, thereby reducing protections for
threatened and endangered species even if those activities
would hasten extirpation. The bill would disqualify new
information about endangered species produced by Federal,
state, Tribal and fish and wildlife agencies, nongovernmental
organizations, and other scientific experts. This section goes
significantly beyond the ``Cottonwood'' language included in
the 2018 Omnibus Act that overrode a Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals decision and threatens the integrity of the ESA
consultation process by allowing Federal land managers to
ignore most sources of relevant scientific information.
Section 301 would lift the current export ban on unprocessed
timber from Federal lands in the West. We oppose this
precedent-setting provision that could result in the unintended
consequence of creating unsustainable demand for Federal
timber.
In short, this bill does not advance policies that will adequately
mitigate fire risk to homes and communities most at risk from
wildfires. Over 50% of freshwater supplies in the West come from
National Forests. Increased levels of intensive logging could result in
the dumping of sediments into watersheds, pollution of critical
drinking water supplies, and potentially cost taxpayers and counties
hundreds of millions of dollars.
Again, we appreciate the urgency with which Members want to address
the fire crises in the West. However, we encourage Members to support
legislation that is science-based and better suited to protect
communities than H.R. 7978. Moreover, to truly address fires and their
root causes, the House must address the climate crisis--which is
exacerbating grassland, chaparral, and forest wildfires. Rather than
proposals to expedite backcountry logging, Congress should enact
policies that provide communities with grants to develop community
plans, update wildfire hazard maps, improve emergency response, and
implement home and critical infrastructure hardening.
Respectfully submitted:
Center for Biological Diversity Montana Wilderness Association
Earthjustice New Mexico Spor[ts]men
Natural Resources Defense Council Oregon League of Conservation
Voters
National Parks Conservation Oregon Wild
Association
Sierra Club Rio Grande Indivisible
Southern Environmental Law Center Rio Grand Valley Broadband of the
The League of Conservation Voters Great Old Broads for Wilderness
The Wilderness Society San Juan Citizens Alliance
Western Environmental Law Center San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council
Endangered Species Coalition Santa Fe Forest Coalition
Environmental Protection Sequoia ForestKeeper
Information Center
Forest Issues Group Soda Mountain Wilderness Council
Friends of the Bitterroot Swan View Coalition
Friends of the Inyo The Nuestra Tierra Conservation
Project
Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness The Forest Advocate
Alliance
GreenLatinos The Lands Council
Greenpeace USA Upper Gila Watershed Alliance
High Country Conservation Advocates Ventana Wilderness Alliance
Idaho Conservation League Western Watersheds Project
John Muir Project Wild Watershed
Kettle Range Conservation Group WildEarth Guardians
Klamath Forest Alliance William Community Forest Project
Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center Yaak Valley Forest Council
Los Padres ForestWatch
______
Submitted Letter by Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a Representative in
Congress from Virginia; on Behalf of Chad Hanson, Ph.D., Chief
Scientist and Director; Jennifer Mamola, D.C. Forest Protection
Advocate, John Muir Project
October 7, 2020
Hon. Collin C. Peterson, Hon. K. Michael Conaway,
Chairman, Ranking Minority Member,
House Committee on Agriculture, House Committee on Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.;
Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, Hon. Doug LaMalfa,
Chair, Ranking Minority Member,
Subcommittee on Conservation and Subcommittee on Conservation and
Forestry, Forestry,
House Committee on Agriculture, House Committee on Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.
Re: The 2020 Wildfire Year: Response and Recovery Efforts Hearing
Dear Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members and Staff;
We virtually attended your September 24th Conservation and Forestry
Subcommittee Legislative Hearing. We were specifically interested in
the Subcommittee's treatment of H.R. 7978, Emergency Wildfire and
Public Safety Act of 2020, and the overall discussion between
Subcommittee Members and the witness related to the current wildfire
season and forests in the West. While we applaud the recognition, by
the Subcommittee chair, that the climate crisis is the driving force
behind the 2020 Wildfires and appreciate the acknowledgement that these
extreme weather events are largely due to the failure of Congress to
take meaningful steps to mitigate climate change we were dismayed by
the overall focus of the hearing. Rather than focusing on constituents
and their communities, or recognizing that more than half of the
acreage burning in California was not in forests or on public land,
Members of this Subcommittee focused almost exclusively on how we can
ways to continue to manipulate vegetation through the logging of our
National Forests. In fact, most of the `solutions' proposed at the
hearing for addressing western wildfires simply repackage old policies
which are not only ineffective against fire, but will push us further
into the climate driven crisis our western communities are currently
facing. Policies such as funding and promoting the use of fossil fuels
to accelerate the removal of trees and native vegetation from our
forest and shrubland ecosystems, ecosystems which are constantly
pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, under the guise of
``hazardous fuels reduction'', ``thinning'', and logging. Livestock
grazing was also mentioned as a solution to mitigate wildfires, yet not
only does this historic practice increase greenhouse gas emissions, it
also exacerbates fire behavior by replacing fire adapted native plant
species with easily ignitable invasive grasses.
We are writing this letter to hopefully bring some balance to the
testimony that was presented and to address the problematic underlying
narrative which is shifting Members' attention away from actions that
will actually make a positive difference for people and the planet. It
is imperative that Congress refrain from oversimplifying the complex
ecosystems that make up the American West and demonizing fires that
burn in our wildlands and instead focus attention and resources on the
true issue at hand, hardening homes and protecting people from the
inevitable wildfire season.
1. To protect communities, we must focus on communities
Fires, and especially the ones the West has experienced this
year, are ultimately weather and climate driven events,
similar to hurricanes. Accepting this will enable us to
pursue policies which will ensure that our communities will
be protected and remain resilient to the extreme weather
events that are becoming more frequent as our climate
changes. Outside of putting resources into stopping human
ignitions via more recreational and law enforcement patrols
near communities during high fire weather and educating the
public about fire-safe activities, once a fire starts under
extreme weather conditions it is going to burn until the
weather changes.
According to the scientific research the only effective way to
protect homes from wildland fire is to focus on making the
homes themselves more fire-safe, and to conduct annual
defensible space pruning within 100 of homes. Beyond 100
from houses, there is no additional benefit to home
protection from altering vegetation.\1\ Congressional
resources should be put into such efforts, and there is
currently a bill in both houses of Congress that takes a
first step in this direction, S. 2882/H.R. 5091, the
Wildfire Defense Act.
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\1\ Syphard, A.D., T.J. Brennan, and J.E. Keeley. 2014. The role of
defensible space for residential structure protection during wildfires.
Intl. J. Wildland Fire 23: 1165-1175.
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Because we cannot suppress weather-driven fires, we cannot stop
the smoke that they create. What we can and must do is
promote measures that will keep people safer and help
communities adapt: by devoting resources to help create
better wildland fire warning and evacuation systems; by
developing programs which ensure that homes have air
filters for smoke and access to appropriate respiratory
masks (as mentioned at the hearing); by creating community
smoke centers for sensitive groups to find relief from
smoke on particularly heavy days; by creating options for
emergency housing and daycare; by facilitating rideshares
to work and always ensuring that these services are
available to everyone, regardless of income.
Unfortunately, employing forest ``management'', by way of
logging and removal of vegetation from our forests, as a
``fire fix'' as H.R. 7978 recommends, not only diverts
scarce resources away from measures that would actually
make people safer, but also gives communities a dangerous
and false sense of security because such actions will
neither stop nor alter weather driven fires, like the fires
of 2020. We saw an example of this in the Camp fire of
2018, which burned so rapidly through a heavily ``managed''
landscape during the first 6 hours of the fire, that people
within the towns of Paradise and Concow had very little
time to evacuate, with tragic results. The so-called fuels
reduction thinning and extensive post-fire removal of dead
trees did not save these towns from this weather driven
fire, it made the tragedy worse.\2\ Our forests are already
resilient to fire, having evolved with fire over hundreds
of thousands of years, but our homes remain flammable. In
order to protect homes and communities our resources need
to be directed towards homes and communities, and not into
the forest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ https://johnmuirproject.org/2019/01/logging-didnt-stop-the-
camp-fire/.
2. Vegetation is not driving wildfires: our forests aren't
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
overstocked
Contrary to the statements made at the hearing, a century of
fire suppression has not exacerbated fire risk or intensity
in our forests. Our forests are not ``overgrown''. Forests
don't actually do that, they grow in accordance with the
variation in soil and weather conditions. Their vegetation
changes, sometimes dramatically, over time. This is
completely natural. They get denser, then growing
conditions change, causing trees and plants to die off,
reducing density, then conditions change and they once
again become dense and so on, and so on. In fact, the
densest forests do not burn more intensely than less dense
forests, nor do dead trees increase fire risk or intensity.
Forests are not static or in need of human intervention in
order to manicure them into something that resembles your
backyard. These are dynamic ecosystems that evolve with
fire.
The number one driver of fire behavior and extent is the
climate, specifically high temperatures, extreme wind
speeds and very low humidity. Climate change is making
these conditions more prevalent, more often. The result is
not more intense forest fires, or an excess of fire in
forests. We have always had fires in the West and always
will, and there is wide agreement among scientists that we
currently have less mixed-intensity fire in our forests
than we did historically, before fire suppression, and fire
intensity in forests is not increasing.\3\ The real issue
is that, increasingly, climate and weather factors drive
fires that humans are not able to suppress. Fires that
cannot be suppressed, especially when they are started by
human ignitions or infrastructure, have the potential to
burn into and affect communities.
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\3\ (a) DellaSala, D.A., and C.T. Hanson (Editors). 2015. The
ecological importance of mixed-severity fires: nature's phoenix.
Elsevier Inc., Waltham, MA, USA; (b) Keyser, A.; Westerling, A. Climate
drives inter-annual variability in probability of high severity fire
occurrence in the western United States. Environ. Res. Lett. 2017, 12,
65003.
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There are several ways that we know it is climate conditions,
rather than the density of forests or presence of dead
trees, that is driving fire behavior. First, and most
informative are the field-based studies that have looked at
the effect, if any, that decades of successful fire
suppression have had on fire intensity. Specifically, seven
studies have investigated whether areas that have not
experienced fire in a very long time (i.e., areas that have
had the chance for vegetation to grow unimpeded for nearly
a century or more) burn at higher intensity than areas
which have experienced fire more recently. Three of the
seven studies found unequivocally that areas that have not
burned in a very long time do not burn at higher
intensities than areas that have burned in recent decades,
three of the remaining four studies found that the most
long-unburned forests (the densest forests) burned at lower
intensities than other forests, and the final of the seven
studies speculated that long-unburned forests would burn
slightly more intensely but would still be dominated by
lower-intensity fire effects (and this study, unlike the
other six, involved a theoretical model, and its conclusion
was not based on actual fire data from long-unburned
forests).\4\
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\4\ (a) Miller J.D., Skinner C.N., Safford H.D., Knapp E.E.,
Ramirez C.M. 2012a. Trends and causes of severity, size, and number of
fires in northwestern California, USA. Ecological Applications 22, 184-
203; (b) Odion, D.C., E.J. Frost, J.R. Strittholt, H. Jiang, D.A.
DellaSala, and M.A. Moritz. 2004. Patterns of fire severity and forest
conditions in the Klamath Mountains, northwestern California.
Conservation Biology 18: 927-936; (c) Odion, D.C., and C.T. Hanson.
2006. Fire severity in conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada,
California. Ecosystems 9: 1177-1189; (d) Odion, D.C., and C.T. Hanson.
2008. Fire severity in the Sierra Nevada revisited: conclusions robust
to further analysis. Ecosystems 11: 12-15; (e) Odion, D.C., M.A.
Moritz, and D.A. DellaSala. 2010. Alternative community states
maintained by fire in the Klamath Mountains, USA. Journal of Ecology,
doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01597.x; (f) van Wagtendonk, J.W., K.A.
van Wagtendonk, and A.E. Thode. 2012. Factors associated with the
severity of intersecting fires in Yosemite National Park, California,
USA. Fire Ecology 8: 11-32; (g) Steel, et al. 2015. T3Ecosphere 8:
Article 8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next, we have empirical research which has investigated whether
the number of dead trees in a given area drives fire
behavior. The most comprehensive scientific studies
(including one prepared by NASA) found that forests with
more dead trees burn the same as other forests or burn at
lower intensities.\5\ While it may seem counterintuitive,
soon after trees die (such as from drought and native
beetle activity), they shed their needles and small twigs,
which fall to the ground and decay into soil, after which
there is no real mechanism to carry flames. Thus the
provisions in H.R. 7978 which would eliminate the export
ban on raw laws from public lands and expedite the logging
of not just dead, but dying trees as well, would do nothing
to mitigate future fire behavior or protect communities as
the title of this bill misleadingly implies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ (a) Hart, S.J., T. Schoennagel, T.T. Veblen, and T.B. Chapman,
2015. Area burned in the western United States is unaffected by recent
mountain pin beetle outbreaks. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the USA 112: 4375-4380; (b) Meigs, G.W., H.S.J. Zald, J.L.
Campbell, W.S. Keeton, and R.E. Kennedy. 2016. Do insects outbreaks
reduce the severity of subsequent forest fires? Environmental Research
Letters 11: 045008.
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Importantly, our forests currently have significantly less tree
biomass in them than they did historically, due to decades
of logging. Claims that our forests are ``overstocked'' are
quite simply misleading.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ (a) McIntyre, P.J., et al., 2015. Twentieth-century shifts in
forest structure in California: Denser forests, smaller trees, and
increased dominance of oaks. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America 112: 1458-1463; (b) Erb, K.H.,
et al., 2018. Unexpectedly large impact of forest management and
grazing on global vegetation biomass. Nature 553: 73-76.
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Finally, fire behavior is driven by climate and weather--fires
are anticipated to grow when the weather forecast is for
hot, dry, windy conditions (conditions which facilitate the
issuance of a Fire Weather Watch or Red Flag Warning from
the National Weather Service),\7\ whereas relief that the
fires will stop growing is expressed when there is a
forecast of rain and cooler temperatures. These statements
are universal, around the world, regardless of the
ecosystem or vegetation involved and whether logging
activities or prescribed burning had preceded the fire.
(Please contact us for press stories).
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\7\ (a) https://www.fire.ca.gov/programs/communications/red-flag-
warnings-fire-weather-
watches/; (b) https://www.weather.gov/mqt/redflagtips.
3. Since weather and climate are overwhelmingly driving wildfires,
vegetation management, thinning and other forms of logging,
and prescribed burning are not necessary and are often
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
counterproductive
Climate and weather are driving wildfire behavior, but to the
extent that density of vegetation has an influence, it is
the opposite of what many assume. Numerous studies have
investigated this issue, measuring forest density directly
and how it relates to fire behavior. These studies, similar
to the ones referenced above, also found that the densest
mature forests generally burn at lower intensities. This is
because denser forests have more trees, which provide more
shade, which keep conditions cooler and more moist. Whereas
forests with fewer trees, especially as a result of
logging/mechanical-thinning, burned at higher intensities.
This is because logging/thinning reduces the cooling shade
of the forest canopy, creating hotter, drier conditions,
while also removing trees which have a buffering effect on
wind speeds, eliminating the forest's ability to slow fire
spread. Far from being a ``fire'' solution, logging/
thinning does not stop fires, and fires often move more
rapidly through these areas. Further, the most
comprehensive scientific study ever conducted on this
question found that forests with the most logging, a.k.a .
``forest management'', burn the most intensely, not the
least.\8\
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\8\ (a) Bradley, C.M. C.T. Hanson, and D.A. DellaSala. 2016. Does
increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in
frequent-fire forests of the western USA? Ecosphere 7: article e01492;
(b) Zald, H.S.J., and C.J. Dunn. 2018. Severe fire weather and
intensive forest management increase fire severity in a multi-ownership
landscape. Ecological Applications 28: 1068-1080; (c) Meigs, G., D.
Donato, J. Campbell, J. Martin, and B. Law. 2009. Forest fire impacts
on carbon uptake, storage, and emission: The role of burn severity in
the Eastern Cascades, Oregon. Ecosystems 12: 1246-1267; (d) Cruz, M.G.,
M.E. Alexander, and J.E. Dam. 2014. Using modeled surface and crown
fire behavior characteristics to evaluate fuel treatment effectiveness:
a caution. Forest Science 60: 1000-1004; (e) DellaSala, D.A,, C.T.
Hanson. 2019. Are wildland fires increasing large patches of complex
early seral forest habitat? Diversity 11: Article 157.
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Prescribed fire does not stop wildland fires either. In fact,
vegetation subject to prescribed burning can return within
as little as 10 months depending on the ecosystem. A recent
example of wildland fire burning unabated through an area
that was intentionally burned for ``fuels reduction'' only
2 years prior was seen in the Australia fires of 2019.
There, the fires driven by extreme weather similar to our
current experiences with fire here, burned right through
the largest prescribed burn ever done in Australia's Morton
National Park.
While we do currently have a deficit of all types of fire in
essentially all of our forest ecosystems in the west (as
discussed below), historically, forests burned every few
decades, not every 2 years.\9\ If we attempt to
``fireproof'' the landscape with prescribed fire, we would
be imposing far more fire than is natural on ecosystems and
we would be doing so at a time of year when it is not
natural for fires to burn, impacting biodiversity and
damaging soils and forest productivity all while creating
vastly more smoke than currently occurs with wildland
fires. All of this would be happening, and none of it would
ensure that weather driven wildland fires would not burn
during the summer and fall anyway.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ DellaSala, D.A., and C.T. Hanson (Editors). 2015. The
ecological importance of mixed-severity fires: nature's phoenix.
Elsevier Inc., Waltham, MA, USA.
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Pursuing a ``vegetation management'' approach to fire
fundamentally ignores and denies that climate is driving
fire behavior. Logging, clearing vegetation and prescribed
fire in the wildlands will not solve our community
protection problem, will not eliminate or lessen smoke
impacts or assist with climate adaptation, but such
activities will exacerbate rather than mitigate the climate
and extinction crises we currently face, and will likely
increase, not decrease fire impacts to communities.
4. Forests, as they exist right now, are a climate solution, not a
climate problem
Our forests are currently substantial carbon sinks, absorbing
more carbon than they emit, but they could absorb much more
carbon than they currently do, if they were protected from
logging. Logging is the real source of carbon emissions
from forests. In U.S. forests, for example, logging of all
types (e.g., thinning, clear-cutting, group selection,
etc.) emits ten times more carbon than is emitted from
wildland fire and tree mortality from drought and native
bark beetles combined. Dead trees and downed logs decay
extremely slowly (decades to a century or more), and
eventually return their nutrients to the soil, which helps
maintain the productivity and carbon sequestration capacity
of the forest.\10\
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\10\ (a) Harris, N.L., et al., 2016. Attribution of net carbon
change by disturbance type across forest lands of the conterminous
United States. Carbon Balance Management 11: Article 24; (b) Meigs, G.,
et al., 2009. Forest fire impacts on carbon uptake, storage, and
emission: The role of burn severity in the Eastern Cascades, Oregon.
Ecosystems 12:1246-1267; (c) Campbell, J.C., J.B. Fontaine, and D.C.
Donato. 2016. Carbon emissions from decomposition of fire-killed trees
following a large wildfire in Oregon, United States. Journal of
Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 121: 718-730.
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Wildland fires, including large mixed-severity fires, only
consume about 1% to 2% of the biomass of trees in the
forest, and therefore only release this small portion of
the carbon stored in trees into the atmosphere, and the
carbon emitted is soon re-absorbed by post-fire regrowth,
which is enhanced by nutrient cycling resulting from the
fires. We know this from field-based studies of actual
fires in actual forests. The problem is that Federal and
state agencies use theoretical models to estimate carbon
emissions from forest fires and dead trees, but the models
wildly exaggerate carbon emissions from decay and fire. For
example, in the 257,000 acre Rim fire of 2013, field-based
data determined that only \1/10\ of 1% of the carbon in
trees was actually consumed, whereas the theoretical models
falsely assume levels of consumption that are dozens, or
hundreds, of times higher than this.\11\
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\11\ Stenzel, J.E., et al., 2019. Fixing a snag in carbon emissions
estimates from wildfires. Global Change Biology 25: 3985-3994.
5. The proposals supported by the witness will harm our environment,
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biodiversity and the climate
There was much discussion at this hearing of logging as an
answer to the ``fire'' problem. But we actually don't have
a fire problem in our forest ecosystems. We have
substantially less mixed-intensity fire now than we had
historically, before fire suppression. Any increase in
wildland acres burned this year, as opposed to previous
years, is merely getting us closer to the amount of fire we
had on the landscape before fire suppression. It should
also be noted that fires burning in our forests, especially
the large fires that burn at mixed-severity, transform
forest ecosystems but do not destroythem. In fact, such
fires create natural heterogeneity across large areas,
creating and rejuvenating wildlife habitat to such a degree
that the biodiversity in mature forests that experience
high-intensity fire is similar to levels of biodiversity
found in unlogged old-growth forests.\12\ The same is true
for forests which have experienced drought and high levels
of new snags from native beetles.\13\ These natural
processes create ``snag forest habitat'', which is an
ecological treasure, not a loss. In addition, forests are
naturally regenerating vigorously, even in the largest
high-intensity fire patches.\14\
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\12\ See hundreds of scientific studies summarized in chapters 1
through 5 of: DellaSala, D.A., and C.T. Hanson (Editors). 2015. The
ecological importance of mixed-severity fires: nature's phoenix.
Elsevier Inc., Waltham, MA, USA.
\13\ (a) Mosher, B.A., et al., 2019. Forest birds exhibit variable
changes in occurrence during a mountain pine beetle epidemic. Ecosphere
10: Article e02935; (b) Matseur, E.A. 2017. Abundance of black-backed
woodpeckers and other birds in relation to disturbance and forest
structure in the Black Hills and Bear Lodge mountains of South Dakota
and Wyoming. Master's Thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia; (c)
Stone, W.E. 1995. Impact of a mountain pine beetle epidemic on wildlife
habitat and communities in post-epidemic stands of a lodgepole pine
forest in northern Utah. Doctoral Dissertation, Utah State University.
\14\ (a) Owen, S.M., C.H. Sieg, A.J. Sanchez Meador, P.Z. Fule,
J.M. Iniguez, L.S. Baggett, P.J. Fornwalt, and M.A. Battaglia. 2017.
Spatial patterns of ponderosa pine regeneration in high-severity burn
patches. Forest Ecology and Management 405: 134-149; (b) Hanson, C.T.
2018. Landscape heterogeneity following high-severity fire in
California's forests. Wildlife Society Bulletin 42: 264-271.
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While we do not have a fire in our forests problem, we most
certainly do have a problem with fire affecting our
communities and a climate change problem. We therefore need
solutions to protect and adapt communities and to combat
climate change. Logging, whether you call it thinning,
vegetation management, forest management or biomass
removal, will remedy neither of these problems and is
simply another part of the carbon economy. Since no one at
the hearing addressed the carbon cost of logging, we
thought we would share some statistics here. Because most
of the carbon in trees that are logged is incinerated as
``slash'' (branches and tree tops) and milling/
manufacturing waste for energy production, approximately
81% of the carbon in trees that are logged ends up in the
atmosphere almost immediately, with only 19% ending up
being stored in wood products.\15\ Logging also removes
nutrients from forests and compacts soils, reducing the
overall productivity and function of the forest ecosystem
as well as its carbon sequestration and storage
capacity.\16\
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\15\ Hudiburg, T.W., Beverly E. Law, William R. Moomaw, Mark E.
Harmon, and Jeffrey E. Stenzel. 2019. Meeting GHG reduction targets
requires accounting for all forest sector emissions. Environmental
Research Letters 14: Article 095005.
\16\ (a) Walmsley, J.D., et al., 2009. Whole tree harvesting can
reduce second rotation forest productivity. Forest Ecology and
Management 257: 1104-1111; (b) Elliot, W.J., et al., 1996. The effects
of forest management on erosion and soil productivity. Symposium on
Soil Quality and Erosion Interaction. July 7, 1996, Keystone, CO.
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The witness at the hearing repeatedly promoted increased
logging--i.e. , increased removal of carbon from our
forests--supposedly as a wildfire solution. This is a form
of climate change denial because it not only denies the
ability of our forests to continue acting as carbon sinks,
but also denies the role of logging in making climate
change worse. Notably, numerous studies find that logging
conducted under the guise of ``thinning'', ``fuels
reduction'' and fire management actually causes a large net
loss of forest carbon storage and a substantial net
increase in carbon emissions.\17\
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\17\ (a) Campbell, J.L., M.E. Harmon, and S.R. Mitchell. 2012. Can
fuel-reduction treatments really increase forest carbon storage in the
western U.S. by reducing future fire emissions? Frontiers in Ecology
and Environment 10: 83-90; (b) Hudiburg, T.W., et al., 2013.
Interactive effects of environmental change and management strategies
on regional forest carbon emissions. Environmental Science and
Technology 47: 13132-13140.
6. The Proposals for Woody Biomass Supported by the [Witness] and
[Representatives] Would Harm our Environment, Biodiversity
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
and the Climate
Cutting and incinerating trees for energy production (biomass
logging) generates substantially more greenhouse gas
emissions than burning coal, for equal energy produced.\18\
Biomass logging will exacerbate the climate crisis through
increased greenhouse gas emissions, which will in turn
exacerbate the potential for fires driven by extreme
weather events. In addition to releasing more carbon
dioxide (CO2) than coal, incinerating trees to
create energy also releases all of the same types of
pollutants as burning coal, including carbon monoxide (CO),
particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOX),
sulfur dioxide (SO2), dioxins/furans, acid
gases, radioactive pollutants and toxic metals like
arsenic, chromium and mercury. A lose, lose for communities
and the planet.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Sterman, J.D., L. Siegel, and J.N. Rooney-Varga. 2018. Does
replacing coal with wood lower CO2 emissions? Dynamic lifecycle
analysis of wood bioenergy. Envir. Research Letters 13: Article 015007.
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Even given this reality, H.R. 7978 dedicates $100,000,000 to
incentivize the cutting and incinerating of trees and other
native vegetation for energy production (biomass logging),
as well as the creation of new biomass energy facilities.
However, new biomass incinerators are not held to the same
air pollution control requirements as new coal power plants
are, making them not only worse for climate, but also worse
for communities. Across the country biomass energy
facilities are currently located in either communities of
color or lower-income white communities creating an
environmental justice issue. In fact, H.R. 7978
specifically offers incentives for biomass burning
facilities that are placed in low income areas,
guaranteeing a perpetuation of this environmental
injustice. By prioritizing grants for biomass energy
facilities that are in low income areas, H.R. 7978 would
continue with the trend of climate, racial, and
environmental injustices that is currently plaguing our
country.
Given the above, it was truly disheartening to see that many of
the Subcommittee, including legislators who care about
climate change and racial and social justice issues,
promote biomass energy from forests as a climate and
wildfire mitigation policy.
7. Targeted Livestock Grazing Won't Preclude Large Wildfires
As we've previously stated above, the fires that H.R. 7879 is
purportedly designed to ``halt''--are being driven by
extreme fire weather conditions including drought, low
humidity, high temperatures, and high winds and not by
vegetation. Thus focusing on removing native vegetation
will not mitigate the impacts of these fires on people and
will merely damage the environment and further exacerbate
climate change. Though the bulk of H.R. 7978 is aimed at
increasing the logging of our public lands, there is also a
provision for targeted livestock grazing as a claimed
solution for wildfire.
First, livestock grazing, in an attempt to alter fire behavior,
has a slew of unavoidable ecological impacts. These
include: water pollution, soil compaction, negative
influence on soil carbon stores, loss of plant and animal
biodiversity, the social displacement of wildlife (like
elk), the loss of forage wildlife and insects, greenhouse
gas emissions, and exorbitant costs.\19\
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\19\ Fleischner, 1992; Wuerthner and Matteson, 2002; Wilcove, 1998;
Freilich et al., 2003; Flather, C.H. L.A. Joyce and C.A. Bloomgarden,
1994; Filazzola, A. et al., 2020.
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In addition, livestock grazing, just like logging, often
exacerbates fire behavior, specifically because it
facilitates the spread of cheatgrass, an annual exotic,
that is extremely flammable.\20\ Livestock grazing not only
spreads cheatgrass, but it also facilitates its
colonization via the trampling of biological soil crusts
(BSC) which, when intact, naturally inhibit the growth of
this flammable invasive.\21\ Maintaining healthy stands of
perennial grasses, not eliminating them via grazing, has
been shown to inhibit cheatgrass spread.\22\ Targeted
livestock grazing in the wildlands is simply not a solution
for wildfires or climate change.
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\20\ (a) Williamson, Matt. A. et al., 2019. Fire, livestock
grazing, topography, and precipitation affect occurrence and prevalence
of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) in the central Great Basin, USA Biol.
Invasions https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-019-02120-8(0123456789().,-
vols() 0123458697().,-volV); (b) Belsky, A.J., and J. L. Gelbard, 2000.
Livestock Grazing and Weed Invasions in the Arid West, Oregon Natural
Desert Association, Bend, Ore, USA, 2000.
\21\ Root, Heather et al., 2019. Grazing disturbance promotes
exotic annual grasses by degrading soil biocrust communities.
Ecological Applications, 0(0), 2019, e02016.
\22\ Strand, E. et al., 2017. Do perennial bunchgrasses
competitively exclude Bromus tectorum in post-fire rehabilitation
across spatial scales? Fire Science JFSP PROJECT ID: 15-2-01-22.
We hope that you have found the above information helpful and we
urge you to reject the false claims made about how increased logging
and targeted grazing while rolling back environmental laws as proposed
by H.R. 7978 will supposedly protect our communities, reduce fire
occurrence, or do anything to eliminate the weather and climate driven
fires we are experiencing today. We would be happy to answer questions
or provide additional information, so please feel free to contact us if
you would like to continue this dialogue.
Sincerely,
Chad Hanson, Ph.D., Jennifer Mamola,
Chief Scientist and Director, D.C. Forest Protection Advocate
John Muir Project; John Muir Project.
______
Submitted Post by Hon. Doug LaMalfa, a Representative in Congress from
California
[https://calcattlemen.org/2020/09/23/legacy/]
I cry for the mountains and the legacy lost
The Bear Fire
By Dave Daley, Butte County Rancher & CCA Immediate Past President
[September 23, 2020]
Rancher observing damage to land, cattle and legacy, post
fire.
It is almost midnight. We have been pushing hard for 18-20 hours
every day since the Bear Fire tore through our mountain cattle range on
September 8th, and there is so much swirling in my head I can't sleep
anyway. The fire destroyed our cattle range, our cattle, and even worse
our family legacy. Someone asked my daughter if I had lost our family
home. She told them ``No, that would be replaceable. This is not!'' I
would gladly sleep in my truck for the rest of my life to have our
mountains back.
I am enveloped by overwhelming sadness and grief, and then anger.
I'm angry at everyone, and no one. Grieving for things lost that will
never be the same. I wake myself weeping almost soundlessly. And, it is
hard to stop.
I cry for the forest, the trees and streams, and the horrible
deaths suffered by the wildlife and our cattle. The suffering was
unimaginable. When you find groups of cows and their baby calves
tumbled in a ravine trying to escape, burned almost beyond recognition,
you try not to [retch]. You only pray death was swift. A fawn and small
calf side by side as if hoping to protect one another. Worse, in
searing memory, cows with their hooves, udder and even legs burned off
who had to be euthanized. A doe laying in the ashes with three fawns,
not all hers I bet. And you are glad they can stand and move, even with
a limp, because you really cannot imagine any more death today.
Euthanasia is not pleasant, but sometimes it's the only option. But you
don't want more suffering. How many horrible choices have faced us in
the past 3 days?
We have taken cattle to the Plumas National Forest since before it
was designated such. It is a steep and vast land of predominantly mixed
conifers and a few stringer meadows on the western slope of the Sierra
Nevada mountains straddling Butte and Plumas Counties. My Great, Great
Grandfather started moving cattle to the high country sometime after he
arrived in 1852 to the Oroville area looking for gold. The earliest
family diary of driving cattle to our range in the mountains dates back
to 1882. Poor Irish immigrants trying to scratch a living from the
land.
The range is between the South Fork and Middle Fork of the Feather
River, the drainage that fills Lake Oroville. It is 80" rainfall
country from October to May with deep snow at the high end, and then it
goes completely dry. Three major streams/rivers and hundreds of creeks
and springs punctuate the land. My friends from the arid west can't
understand why it is hard to gather--``don't you just go to the
water?'' Not that simple in this environment. It is difficult country,
in some ways more suited to sheep because of the browse, but politics
and predators killed the sheep industry in the country years ago. But
the cows love the range and do well. Cool days and nights, no flies,
higher elevations avoiding the hot summers in the valleys. A great
place to summer cattle. They actually like to go as much as we do!
For those of you who have never seen this land, this isn't riding a
horse into a meadow or open ridge where you can see cattle. This is
literally ``hunting'' through a vast forest of deep canyons, rivers and
creeks, and the high ridges in between. It is not an easy place to
gather or even find cattle in the best conditions.
There are six generations who have loved that land, and my
new granddaughter, Juni, is the seventh. And I find myself
overcome with emotion as I think of the things she will never
see, but only hear in stories told to her by Grandad. We all
love the mountains. They are part of us and we are part of
them. All destroyed. In one day. I am angry.
As a child in the early 1960s, days ``going to the mountains'' were
the greatest ever for my family. It was our playground and our quiet
spot. Sure, we worked, but we learned so much about the world, the
trees, birds and flowers. And in my family sometimes that may have
included learning the scientific name or at least the family of the
plant. There were lessons on botany, forestry, geology, archaeology. We
didn't even know we were learning but we imbibed it until it became a
part of our souls.
And then my kids. For them, the mountains were the best! Rolling
into a little seat behind Grandma and Grandpa to ``go hunt for cows''
as we gathered in the Fall. Hot chocolate from Grandma as soon as we
got there. On cold, dusty or wet days, it was sometimes discouraging,
but they loved it and still do. It was their sanctuary where ``no
matter what happens, this will always be here.'' And now it is gone. It
is a death and we are still in shock and not sure how to move forward.
What will my granddaughter know of the truth and grounding that comes
from nature? Will we gather cows in the mountains while I sing cowboy
tunes off key and she sips hot chocolate? I am overcome.
When the news broke of the fire in our cattle range, my son Kyle,
who ranches with me, and I were sure it could not be as bad as it
sounded. We had close to 400 cows, most of them calving or close to
calving in our mountain range, ready to gather and bring home in early
October. They were the heart of the herd. Old cows, problems, bought
cows and first calf heifers stayed in the valley. Only the good cows
who knew the land were there. That first day, we had no access and were
relying on spotty reporting posted to local news or social media. My
daughter Kate, a veterinarian, who practices about 4 hours away, ``I'm
on the way.'' My youngest son, Rob (named for his Grandad) a soldier
stationed in Louisiana, ``I have a lot of leave and I'm on a plane
tomorrow.'' All three have been unbelievable and we have all needed
each other to navigate this heartbreak.
At first, we couldn't get into the range and were frantic as it was
completely locked down because of safety. We knew cattle were dying as
we waited. I received a call from a Pennsylvania number and answered
before thinking. A wonderfully nice man from the Forest Service was
calling to tell me about the fire since I had a cattle allotment in the
Bear Fire area. I had to help him find it on the map! Frustrating. And
he knew less than me. Later I got a call from San Bernardino (500 miles
south), another fire resource officer from the Forest Service. I asked
about access. ``Well,'' he said, ``maybe next week and only if we
provide an escort. We have to make it safe first.'' He, too, had no
idea where the allotment was or the challenge that I faced. All the
cattle would be dead if I waited a week. I politely told him I would
figure out an alternative--through private timber land and common
sense!
I called our County Sheriff who has been a great friend of the
cattle community. I had to wait one day, but he provided two sergeants
to navigate the road-blocks until I was in the range. Was it dangerous?
Yes. Were animals dying? Absolutely. Local solutions are always better.
Thanks to Sheriff Honea, of Camp Fire and Lake Oroville Dam breech
fame, and Sergeants Tavelli and Caulkins who got us access. All
incredible people who get it. Local.
On our first day, Kyle and I make a fast trip up to reconnoiter. We
are unprepared for the total destruction of everything we have always
known. Nothing left and active flames on both sides burning trees and
stumps. Shocking. Surreal. We make it to our Fall River corral somewhat
hopeful that there would be green and water to mitigate the disaster.
Everything is completely gone and we see dead cows as we start down the
hill. Everywhere. This is our first step in what will be an impossible
week. We go home hoping against hope that we have seen the worst.
Little did we realize that it was just the beginning and it could get
worse.
It is 3:30 in the morning now and time to start this nightmare
again. To find the courage to throw some things in the truck, run with
the kids to check and feed the survivors, and hit repeat. I dread it
but know we must. And I work to be optimistic because that is who I am.
Not easy.
As we make a plan and split up to run four-wheelers up and down
logging roads hunting life and death, I think how lucky I am. So many
people have offered to help. I am grateful but it is difficult to
explain how challenging it is to gather in almost 90,000 acres of
incredibly difficult terrain (and that's on a flat map!). Each canyon
and ridge is dotted with logging spur roads that could be choked with
down and burning trees. Much of it is unrecognizable, even to me. Only
those with deep, local knowledge of these mountains can help.
Fortunately, my family, the Carter boys (Devin and Doyle), Brian
Jones--all friends of my kids--and now friends of mine, plus my best
friend Sean Earley all stepped up. They know the mountains well and
have helped us for years. They just showed up and said, ``We're here.
We're going. What can we do?'' So, we strap chainsaws and some alfalfa
on four-wheelers and set out hoping against hope to find something
alive.
We split up and my crew takes the Lava Top and Ross Creek
drainage, while the other half goes towards Twin Bridges and
Fall River. It is eerie, and as Rob said, ``There is no sound
in the Forest, just death.'' We are learning. When we
traditionally gathered cows, they were always towards the ridge
top in the morning and down by water in the afternoon. Now, we
find nothing high up, except the occasional dead cow that
wasn't fast enough. We just hunt for the deep holes where there
was a chance for water and life.
You learn as you ride through the apocalyptic murk. Rob's head goes
up and I catch the scent at the same time. The scent of death and
charred flesh mingled with the acrid smoke that burns your eyes. You
begin looking in the draws hoping it is not cattle. It always is. Eight
cows and three baby calves in a pile at the bottom of a ravine, rushing
in terror to escape. A sight you won't soon forget.
But today, when we meet up, Kyle and Kate had great news. They
found sixteen head at our Twin Bridges corral! The largest group to
date. I had baited it with alfalfa last night and there were cattle
standing in the little corral of temporary panels. Remarkable. Two of
them are heifers that I gave Kyle and Jordan (my daughter in-law and
Juni's mom) for their wedding. Kyle branded them with my Dad's original
brand just to keep them straight. Someone in our crew said Dad gathered
them for us so we wouldn't miss them. Maybe he did. My Dad was a cow
whisperer who has been gone over 4 years after roaming the mountains
for almost 90. Maybe he is still helping lead us and the cattle home. I
turn away as I feel emotion begin to rise. Again. For some reason, I am
more emotional when I find the live cattle than those that died. I
don't know why? Maybe thinking what they went through and I wasn't
there to help? And, more frightening, death has become more expected
than life.
I completely dread taking my Mom to see this tragedy. She will be
90 in less than a month and still loves the mountains and gathering
cows. She is tough but this could break anyone. She worked these
mountains with my Dad from 1948 when she was 18, he was 21, and they
had just married. She told me in later years that she had always loved
the outdoors but really was ``sort of afraid of cows'' since she had
not ever been around them. She never told Dad though and learned to be
one of the best trackers and gatherers the mountains have ever seen,
knowing every plant, tree and road.
You can learn more from old people. They may not use PowerPoint or
Zoom. They may not be elegant in politics, but they have life
experience. We are quickly losing that vital perspective from the land
before we have allowed them to teach us. Far more valuable than a
visiting scholar or great consultant. Local knowledge and observation.
I wish we would listen.
I am again angry at everyone and no one. Why did this happen? I am
absolutely tired of politicians and politics, from both the left and
the right. Shut up. You use tragedies to fuel agendas and raise money
to feed egos. I am sick of it. And it plays out on social media and
cable news with distorted and half-truths. On both sides. Washington,
D.C. is 3,000 miles away and is filled with lobbyists, consultants and
regulators who wouldn't know a sugar pine from a fir. Sacramento is 100
miles south and feels even more distant than D.C. And to the regulators
who write the Code of Federal Regulations, the policies and procedures
and then debate the placement of a comma, you mean well, I know. And I
am sure you are good people. But you are useless when it comes to doing
things to help the land. And the ``nonprofits'' (yea, right), lawyers
and academics, this is all too often a game for you to successfully
navigate your own institution. ``How do I get a grant to study
something that if I looked closely, generations before already knew?''
Nothing happens on the ground to make change. I do understand that most
folks truly care and start with the best intentions.
For those of you on the right who want to blame the left and
California, these are National Forest lands that are ``managed'' by the
feds. They have failed miserably over the past 50 years. Smokey the
Bear was the cruelest joke ever played on the western landscape, a
decades long campaign to prevent forest fires has resulted in mega-
fires of a scope we've never seen. Thanks, Smokey.
The U.S. Forest Service is constantly threatened with litigation
from extremists who don't want anyone to ``use'' the Forest. It is to
be ``preserved.'' Great job in helping to get us where we are. And I
feel bad for Forest Service personnel. Most of them are great people
who work there because they love the land like I do. But they are
chained to desks to write reports and follow edicts handed down from
those who don't know. One size fits all regulations are not a solution
in diverse ecosystems. And, the Forest Service budget is consumed by
fire suppression and litigation. What funds are left to actually work
on the land?
And, for those of you on the left who want to blame it all on
climate change, the regulations at the state and Federal level have
crippled--no, stopped--any progress towards changing the unmitigated
disasters facing our landscapes. I wonder how many of you have walked
the canyons or ridges or seen the wildlife and beauty at a secret
stream?
Politicians stage drive by photo-ops to raise money at the fringe.
None of us really like you. We just are forced to deal with you. Of
course, there are many exceptions and you know who you are. I hate to
visit an office to discuss issues when the legislator is far more
interested in talking than listening. It seems that nobody can be a
centrist and make sense and win. There is plenty of blame to go around
on both sides of the aisle.
And just maybe it's both--horrible forest management and
climate change. Don't you think months of massive smoke
covering the West may impact the climate, especially added to
our other pollutants? Does it matter which came first? Why not
invest in solutions rather than using sound-bites to gin up the
base? And locally, we know the solutions. And those investments
should be locally conceived and locally driven.
I grew up hearing the stories from my Dad and Grandad of the ``last
man out'' lighting the forest floor to burn the low undergrowth. Their
generations knew to reduce the ladder fuels that spread the fire to the
canopy, to open it up for the wildlife. It was a pact between our
friends the Native Americans who had managed it this way for 13,000
years, the loggers, miners and ranchers. They knew ecology and botany
and wildlife. They worked together because they loved and knew the
land.
It was the early 1960s and snow was already on the ground in
December on our foothill ranch. I would have been about 4 and holding
my Grandfather's hand as he lit some piles of brush on fire to open the
landscape. It was the practice he had learned from generations before.
And the CDF (now Cal-Fire) crew showed up, put out the fire, and
lectured him for burning. My Grandad was the kindest, gentlest and
funniest man I have ever known. And he was mad. It was the beginning of
the end for our forest home. And it has proceeded at an unprecedented
rate.
I am angry. Try a control burn in the winter now and watch someone
cite you because it is not an approved ``burn day,'' you had the wrong
permit and approval and you might impact air quality. It is beyond
moronic. How is the choking air quality that has blanketed the west
this past month, when people can't go outside without a mask, a better
alternative? Are you kidding me? Bureaucrats and well-intentioned
regulators who don't know they don't know have tied our hands, and the
blame is shared at the both the state and Federal levels.
Lest you think I am a complete rube, I earned my PhD in Animal
Science 35 years ago at Colorado State. I loved teaching and ranching--
so I did both. But I am a cattleman at heart. And, I have been involved
in industry activities for many years, serving as Past President of the
California Cattlemen's Association, current Chair of the California
Cattle Council, Chair of the Forest Service committee for the Public
Lands Council and Chair of Federal Lands for the National Cattlemen's
Beef Association. I have walked the halls of Congress, met with
legislators in both Sacramento and DC and I am willing to advocate for
the cattle community to anyone who will listen. I have dined with
legislators in D.C., Chicago and Sacramento at wonderful restaurants
noted for fine dining. The company, food and conversation were
enjoyable. And I have had bologna sandwiches and beer in the mountains
with ranchers and loggers. Somehow, the air seemed cleaner and the food
was better with the latter. Something about straight forward honesty
and hard work is appealing.
I invite any legislator or regulator, state or Federal, to come
with me to this devastation. Leave your photographer behind, put on
boots and let's go. I will buy the bologna. We have created tragedy
after tragedy across the West, and we need solutions.
Look at the mega-fires California has experienced in recent years.
If you study them closely, almost all of them start on state or
federally owned land. Fifty percent of California is owned by the feds
or state, land that has unmanaged fuel loads because of the
restrictions to do anything on the land. Right now, the only buffer to
these disasters are private, well managed, grazed landscapes. They may
still burn, but the fires are not as catastrophic and can be
controlled. Butte County alone has recently had the Camp Fire which
destroyed the town of Paradise, population of 20,000 where almost a
hundred people died. And now the Bear Fire where Berry Creek, a small
community of about 1000 residents had at least 14 deaths, an even
higher percentage.
Our segmented view of the landscape has led us to tragedy after
tragedy. As a rancher on the Forest, I am required, in the name of
ecosystem health, to monitor meadow utilization, browse of willows and
streambank alteration. Fine. I comply. If I hit 41% meadow utilization
I can get a letter of non-compliance since 40% is considered the
maximum. The Bear Fire did not leave 60% of the meadow! I wonder if I
will get a letter of non-compliance? Again, the forest for the trees.
It is not the Forest Service range conservationist's fault that I
have to monitor these three factors. It is the guidelines they were
handed. But they are arbitrary and ineffective measures to ``protect''
the environment, and of no use against decades of unmitigated fuel
growth. Can anybody look up and see the meadows and water disappearing?
Is the health of the meadow crippled by unchecked understory growth
that sucks the water out and allows invasion of conifers? It is easier
to blame the cow. Look up. Watch nature. She will talk to you . . . .
I think it is as simple as not seeing the forest for the trees. And
in my academic life, it was the norm. I worked with wonderful faculty,
staff and students who were committed to research and teaching.
However, we rarely looked at the big picture because we were encouraged
to publish in our disciplines without seeking out how our work
connected with others or how our small piece was part of a larger
solution. That ``siloed'' thinking plagues most bureaucracies and
agencies. We only know what we know. And, in most disciplines in the
academy, most faculty are now several generations removed from a direct
connection with the land.
Listen to the generations before. Mega-fires are a recent
product of lack of use of fire, less grazing and over-
regulation. And if you look at recent history, almost every
mega-fire that I can recall has started on state and Federal
lands. Mismanagement. And those catastrophic fires contribute
to climate change. Yet the guidelines followed by the feds on
National Forest and the state on state parks lands are ``one
size fits all.'' It is beyond dumb. And no one's fault. And
everyone's fault. Listen to the Forest. Listen to the locals.
The fire in Santa Rosa in 2018 was estimated to produce more
CO2 and pollutants in 1 week than all of the cars in
California in 1 year. We have already had six of the largest twenty
fires in California history in 2020. The Bear Fire has eclipsed 250,000
acres and is still burning. To me this is very personal, but this is a
much bigger problem than my family having our cattle killed.
I get frustrated with experts and consultants who drive by and
``know just what to do.'' For 35 years I have attended conferences,
given presentations and listened. What I have learned is solutions are
local and specific. What happens in one watershed in Plumas or Butte
County may be entirely different in the Lassen National Forest just
next door. But experts of all kinds are glad to tell you how to do it.
``Let's prescribe graze, use virtual fences, change your timing, change
your genetics.'' Prescribe graze the forest and canyons? Yea. Right.
They don't know what they don't know but they will take the honorarium
anyway and have a great dinner on your dime. Another game where the
people who live here and the land rarely benefit.
I have traveled and given presentations nationally and
internationally for decades as the odd ``academic cowman.'' I learned
quickly that it is insulting to make suggestions if you don't know the
land, the people and the culture. I love these canned ``you should do
this and this'' PowerPoint talks. It is frustrating. My approach has
always been ``this is what I do and why--it may not fit here so don't
force it.'' I loved those trips not because of what I taught but of
what I learned from the locals.
Cattle, like the wildlife, follow the season in this wildland we
love. They start at low elevation in June and work east and higher
until early October. As leaves begin to change, they start west and
down. How and why would you fence this land? Again, an expert from afar
who wrote a text or did it in a different ecosystem thought it was a
great idea. It is exhausting.
Yesterday was day four of the recovery effort. I now understand
what first responders mean when they say, ``rescue to recovery.'' I
hold out little hope for live cattle. We have to get to Hartman Bar
ridge between the middle fork and south branch of the Feather River. It
is the furthest north, most breathtaking and the hardest to access. One
road in and one road out, choked with downed and sometimes burning
trees. We see a burnt bear cub trying to climb a tree, 2 miles further
a mature bear, burnt but staying in the water trying to ease the pain.
We give them both a chance because they made it this far. We don't
euthanize even though our brains say we should. Our hearts say let them
try.
We have about 6 miles of road to make passable to get stock
trailers through, but we make short work of it. Sometimes you can
travel \1/4\ mile and sometimes 100. But chainsaws and strong hands
get us there.
I have passed several streams today and tried to wade across
one looking for cattle. It strikes me as strange. All the
creeks have close to double the flow of last week. I see some
springs running that haven't been active for years. And it hits
me. We have released the water that the brush was sucking from
the land. The Native Americans were right again. Observe. Let
nature talk.
We pulled up the grade to Hartman and Whiskey Hill, and there were
cattle tracks in the burn! Lots of them. I couldn't believe it. The
fire roared up out of the middle fork so quickly I expected nothing to
be alive. I had myself prepared. But we found cattle and some in pretty
good shape. It was slow going. Incredibly steep and rugged with lost,
hungry cattle. In one pocket we picked up 14 head with nary a scratch.
Two old cows (12+ years which is old for a cow) and a bunch of young
stock. Those old ladies knew where to hide! Wisdom from days gone by.
After a long day, we had 32 alive and loaded. Some may not make it
but we had to bring them home to give them a chance. They made it this
far. More jarring, though, was to walk down the drainage by the old
Mountain House Ridge corral and find 26 dead, spread from top to
bottom. That fetid smell of death permeated the walk I used to love.
Even with the dead cattle on Hartman Ridge that we found, why did
we find over half alive here and nowhere else? If anything, I assumed
this steep ridge gave them no chance at all. And I realized that there
had been a much smaller fire here about 5 years ago. The country was
more open and the fire moved quickly. Less fuel and more things lived.
Trees, wildlife, and cows.
I observed the same phenomenon in the remnants of the town of
Feather Falls--where only a school and cemetery remain. The school had
over 80 students less than 50 years ago, until the lumber mill closed
and the village died. The school was destroyed by fire. The cemetery,
however, still stands with green stately pines respecting the graves of
mostly Native American veterans with flags at each grave. The cemetery
was maintained free of deadfall and litter by family members. All the
trees lived.
Day five begins.
We move as fast as we can, opening roads with saws and running
four-wheelers down every logging spur. We hope against hope for cow
tracks but there are none. Hartman Ridge is about 10 miles long with
the only narrow paved Forest Service road in the entire mountains.
Nothing new but the cow tracks from those we found yesterday. Nothing
at Socrates Spring, Harry Waite's, the Lower Reservoir, DeJonah, Sheep
Tank Meadow, Stag Point, Steward Ravine--and a hundred more name places
that are being lost. Nothing.
Up by Tamarack Flat, I run into five pick-ups belonging to timber
reps from Sierra Pacific, the private land holder who we lease from and
who has private property throughout our range. I am walking the logging
road looking and listening, as I had run out of gas a mile or so ago.
Too much country to cover! They were no doubt shocked to see me in that
desolation striding down the road, covered in ash from head to foot. I
know most of them. Foresters by trade who, like me, love the land. ``It
is all gone,'' they say. Almost. I told them I could show them a few
pockets where trees survived. But very few. We are sad and angry
together.
By the end of a grueling day, we have seven head loaded. Five of
them are cattle we had seen before and were just able to get portable
panels to and load, three of which are badly burned and will get a
chance for feed and water before they will most likely die or need to
be euthanized. We know of three more live cattle that we have seen and
not loaded. That may be it. Over 100 brought home, so far, but I will
be surprised if eighty live. Many of those who live will have lost
their baby calves to fire. There are no words. 20% of the herd we drove
to the mountains on June 1. Maybe.
Our crew will be smaller today. Rob flies back to his duty station
in the army. Kate is back working as a veterinarian. They leave with
overwhelming sadness and ``we will help any way we can.'' Most of the
rest of our crew have to get back to their jobs, but ``are a phone call
away with a stock trailer'' if we find something to load beyond the two
trailers we will haul ourselves. I doubt we will. Kyle and I will start
the search, compulsively walking creeks and canyons that we have
already searched, hoping something straggles in behind. You never know
and you can't quit. That is not who we are.
And now we go on. What will happen? This is devastating emotionally
and financially. And I am not sure of the next steps. I do know this:
We must change our land management practices if we expect the West to
survive. It is best done locally, not from D.C. or Sacramento, but I
have tilted at windmills before.
We won't quit. We need to get tougher and stronger. We never have
quit for 140 years and I won't be the first. Suffer the bureaucratic
maze and try to make incremental change. And, as always, work with
nature. I have to. Juni Daley, and the next generation, needs to see
the mountains the same way we have seen them forever, to have hot
chocolate on a cold fall morning and gather cows. It can't be just
stories from her Grandad.
We found an orphan heifer calf today, about 2 weeks old. Her
mother didn't make it. Kyle stumbled on her hiding in one of
the few living willow patches along a stream. He followed her
for over an hour straight up from the bottom of a canyon. We
caught her and she is now on a bottle getting milk replacer.
That rescue was good for my heart. My Granddaughter Juni's
first heifer I decide! They can grow up together.
We saw life at Fall River today. Green grass trying to sprout at a
spring. Life is resilient. So are we. Next year. And the next 100.
Dave Postscript
It is day 12 and we still are at the same pace because we have no
choice. We are finding one or two per day that have lived so it is
difficult to stop, but that is dwindling so we have to shift our focus
to those that lived. It is hard to do. We have put 1,200 miles on the
four-wheelers on old logging roads and skid trails in the last few
days. I quit counting the number of tires we have ruined and how much
chainsaw work we are doing. Unfortunately, today we had to begin
euthanizing some of the cattle that we brought home. But they were
home, fed and watered.
The fire is still not contained and takes runs depending on the
wind. I am not sure what next year will bring.
______
Submitted Statement by Hon. Doug LaMalfa, a Representative in Congress
from California; on Behalf of Federal Forest Resource Coalition
The 2020 Fire Season Should be the Watershed Moment for Federal Forest
Management
The wildfires that came in the late summer of the 2020 Fire Season
have created unprecedented challenges for our public and private forest
landowners. Yet these fires are just the latest in a series of
catastrophic fire seasons over the last decade. The Wallow Fire in
Arizona in 2011 scorched over \1/2\ million acres mostly on the Apache
National Forest, burning stands of Ponderosa pine in a stand replacing
fire because of overly dense conditions. The King Fire of 2014 was one
of many serious and fast-moving fires that summer which burned across
Federal forests and on to private lands. The summer of 2017 saw a
season-long fire siege in Montana and Idaho that stretched until the
fall rains arrived, while the Chetco Bar fire blew up late in the
season and devastated parts of Oregon.
The fire storms of early September 2020 have more than eclipsed
these traumatic experiences. In Oregon alone, about 800,000 acres of
forests--about half of which is Federal lands--has burned in the last
several weeks. These fires consumed forests at all stages of
development, although they largely began during a wind event that
brought down powerlines, mostly on Federal lands. In California, about
three percent of the land area of the state burned this year, and five
of the ten largest fires in state history were burning at one time in
September. Three Forests in particular, the Mendocino, the Plumas, and
the Sierra, have been impacted. While the final fire perimeters will
take some time to establish, it appears that most of the Mendocino has
been burned in high intensity fire. The Sierra National Forest, which
had experienced a large-scale forest mortality event in recent years,
saw the majority of the acres impacted by that event destroyed in the
Creek Fire, which is still burning and is expected to burn until
Halloween. The North Complex on the Plumas is approaching 300,000 acres
and containment isn't expected till mid-November.
We're already aware of two fires--including the Creek Fire on the
Sierra National Forest and the White River on the Mount Hood National
Forest--that destroyed areas where the Forest Service had attempted to
reduce hazardous fuel loads but were stymied because of red tape or
litigation. The Crystal Clear Restoration Project on the Mount Hood,
which sought to reduce fuels on about 11,000 acres, was the subject of
nearly 4 years of analysis and litigation, which led to the Forest
Service publishing over 1,900 pages of analysis on this relatively
minor project. This analysis concluded that ``if a fire were to move
through the area without reducing fuels, it would likely be more
severe.'' A portion of the project area burned in intense fire
conditions during the White River fire. The project had been sent back
to the Forest Service for additional analysis by a misguided decision
from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On the Sierra, the Musick Fuels Reduction project moved relatively
quickly through the analysis process, but the Creek Fire began 2 years
almost to the day from the initial scoping effort for the project. The
entire project area was destroyed in this highly predictable fire.
The story of this September's Oregon and California fires has been
repeated across the National Forest System, as noted in Arizona,
Colorado, Montana, and elsewhere. Millions of acres have burned,
frequently in uncharacteristically hot, stand-replacing fires. Some of
these events have been primarily wind driven, others have been big and
hot enough to generate their own weather. We have no doubt that both a
warming and drying climate and the generally overstocked conditions on
our National Forests have contributed to both the extent and intensity
of recent blazes. The conditions on California's National Forests are
emblematic of this problem.
According to Forest Inventory Data and research conducted by Dr.
Malcolm North of the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research
station, by 2015, California's National Forests were carrying an
average of over 320 conifer trees per acre. Historically, these forests
supported less than \1/5\ of that number, about 64 trees per acre.
These less dense forests in California were historically able to
survive multiple disturbances, including wind, fire, and insect
outbreaks. As we've seen dramatically in the last several years, our
current, overstocked forests cannot.
This basic pattern repeats itself across of much of the National
Forest System. Forests which typically had frequent fires are
overstocked, full of suppressed trees that help create intense fires
they cannot survive. Forest types adapted to higher intensity fires
lack age class diversity, meaning that fires which would have burned in
a mosaic of intensities instead scorch entire watersheds and destroy
wildlife habitat. Together, they create a dangerous setting in which we
ask our firefighters to risk their lives, and which threatens entire
communities with obliteration.
We appreciate the opportunity to submit this testimony, and provide
comments in two major areas, first, the immediate response required to
begin restoring these forests so they can once again sequester carbon
and begin to reestablish wildlife habitat and future timber supplies,
and second, taking steps to make it easier to manage acres on the
National Forest that are not in restricted land uses such as Wilderness
and inventoried roadless areas.
Immediate Response: Focus on restoring access for forest
management, prioritizing reforestation, converting NEPA ready projects
to salvage: While we are still sorting through the results from this
fire season, it's clear that there are several main tasks which will
require immediate action and--it seems likely--a significant investment
of additional resources: restoring access, prioritizing reforestation,
and allowing NEPA ready projects to go forward without delay.
Damage to timber along both state highways and Forest Service roads
will severely restrict access to these forests if immediate action is
not taken to remove hazard trees and restore damaged infrastructure.
Failure to quickly remove hazard trees will only increase future fire
danger by restricting access for firefighters and egress for
homeowners, residents, and recreationists.
Congress should immediately authorize the Forest Service and Bureau
of Land Management to conduct roadside hazard tree removal out to 200
on either side of roads impacted by wildfires in the last 2 years.
Existing administrative authorities for such removal are limited, and
if experience is any guide, in many areas, the Forest Service will opt
to close roads indefinitely unless they receive relief from
administrative review and adequate funding to complete this task.
We also believe that a significant contributing factor to increased
fire activity in the west is decreasing road access to our Federal
lands. This factor is often overshadowed by both climate change and
fuels accumulation when the topic of wildfire is discussed in public
forums. However, we believe that the deteriorating road infrastructure
on our National Forests has also significantly contributed to recent
spikes in wildfires. This deterioration has been a result of both
reduced funding for road maintenance and the Federal agency's
subsequent direction to reduce their overall road networks to through
road decommissioning. The outcome is a forested landscape that is
increasingly inaccessible to fire suppression agencies, delaying direct
attack on nascent fires. Reversing this trend is vital to effective
initial attack, as well as providing safe evacuation routes for
impacted communities.
Second, the Forest Service should prioritize salvage and
reforestation of as many acres as possible. In many places, salvage
logging can help take some of the standing dead trees off the
landscape. Using these trees for lumber will lock up carbon in long-
lasting wood products while creating better growing conditions for the
next stand of trees, which will sequester more carbon. The Forest
Service should be able to remove hazard trees and take aggressive steps
towards reforestation on non-reserved (i.e.,--not Wilderness or
Inventoried Roadless Areas) acres without further environmental review.
The Forest Service should consider using aerial seeding techniques on
high-cost, steep slope acres to keep reforestation costs down.
Third, the 2020 fires damaged millions of board feet of timber
under contract, and tens of thousands of acres which had recently been
through NEPA review in preparation for fuels reduction work. While some
of the volume under contract will have lost all remaining value,
Congress should direct the Forest Service and BLM to rapidly survey
burned areas, and allow the agencies to convert projects that were
damaged to salvage sales without further environmental review if they
determine that the project still meets the original purpose and need
statement. These projects should be converted to salvage sales within
60 days. All such sales should be allowed to proceed under HFRA's
judicial review provisions.
Going Forward: We Need to Manage Unreserved Forests Like Their
Future_and Ours_Depends on it.
Since the mid-1990's, Forest Management on National Forests west of
the Mississippi has proceeded from one relatively simple premise: That
the best way to conserve sensitive wildlife species is to not
manipulate forests through management or timber harvests. This has been
expressed through recovery plans and critical habitat designations for
a wide variety of species, including the various Spotted Owls, Canada
Lynx, Grizzly Bear, Wolves, and others.
This `hands off' approach to management was adopted, in our view,
without much regard for how much of our Federal estate is already off
limits to much--if any--management. Fully \1/3\ of all National Forest
acres in the Northwest Region (Oregon and Washington) are either
Congressionally designated Wilderness Areas or Inventoried Roadless
Areas. In California, the total in these two restrictive categories is
47 percent. Nation-wide, some 94 million acres of National Forests is
either Wilderness or Roadless, fully 48 percent of the entire National
Forest System. This tally does not include the millions of acres set
aside as National Parks, including over 1.7 million acres of mostly
forested National Parks in California. Millions more acres are
difficult to manage because of assumptions about harm to species due to
disturbance from harvest. As we've seen, if we don't manage unreserved
forests, we will wind up with disturbances from wildfires far more
disruptive than a modest thinning project.
Americans should be proud of the conservation legacy they have
created by setting up the Federal land management agencies and
establishing protected areas like Wildernesses. However, the simple
fact is that when the Forest Service tries to manage unreserved Federal
lands, activist groups have abused a series of well-meaning laws to
delay or stop needed management. As these forests mature after a
century of fire suppression and decades of passive management, the slow
pace of management the Forest Service has been able to achieve is
simply slower than the fires we are experiencing.
The Congress has, over the last 17 years, provided the Forest
Service with some tools which can help them put forest management
projects on slightly faster tracks. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act
was first passed in 2003, and has been amended several times, including
in the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills. The Forest Service has a few
legislated Categorical Exclusions, Designation by Prescription
authority, Good Neighbor Authority, and some other tools to expedite
the NEPA process. This Committee deserves much of the credit for
enacting these laws.
While we've seen an uptick in management, and a slow increase in
timber harvests in the last 12 years, we still see Forest Service staff
shy away from managing what should be unreserved acres because of
concerns that harvest will disrupt wildlife habitat. Instead of
managing unreserved lands, we see small projects which leave many
overstocked acres untouched, and even these go forward only after a
laborious process that often involves administrative objection and
litigation.
We are aware of legislation, including H.R. 7978, that would
authorize a few larger projects on some National Forests, while also
allowing work on some fuel and fire breaks. We are supportive of the
concepts in this bill and look forward to expanding them to make them
more relevant to the scale of the challenges we are confronting.
Passive management, reduced access, combined with climate change
and the development of homes in the wildland urban interface, have led
us to spot where wildfires have likely caused more emissions than
either cars or electric power generation in both Oregon and California
this year, according to some early estimates. An equally passive
approach to restoring these forests--and managing the remainder outside
of Wilderness areas--will not help the global carbon balance. It's time
for Congress to weigh in here in favor of actively managing unreserved
lands. Leaving the Forest Service to wrangle with environmental
litigants and the vagaries of the court system is not an option.
We look forward to working with this Committee to restore our
National Forests so that future generations can look back and thank us
for the legacy we are passing on to them.
About the FFRC: FFRC is a national coalition of wood products
companies, local governments, conservation groups united by
concern for the National Forests. FFRC supports improving the
management of the Federal lands to support healthy forests and
vibrant rural communities.
______
Submitted Statement by Hon. Doug LaMalfa, a Representative in Congress
from California; on Behalf of Dee Sanders, General Manager, Trinity
River Lumber Company
August to September
It is Monday morning and I am driving north on Interstate 5 in
northern California.
Off to the west I can see the smoke rising from a few fires started
from the recent lightning storm the day before. I am also aware that
there are some other lightning caused fires started across the north
end of California. Not unusual for late August and September in
northern California.
My mind quickly focuses on the hope that the U.S. Forest Service
will quickly get on top of the fire starts and not try and manage the
fire with the current risky extreme conditions. We have burned so many
acres in the last several years by not being aggressive enough at the
start.
Unfortunately, very few of those acres have been logged and
reforested after the devastation but only left to grow back as brush
fields to fuel future fires.
I think of the decline in Forest Management over the last 50 years
since my career started in the National Forest of northern California.
How did we get here? A little bit at a time. Passing laws with good
intentions only to tie the hands of the professionals hired to manage
the forest we are trying to protect. Unfortunately, again we have
destroyed all the resources we were trying to protect, Fish, Wildlife,
Timber, Recreation, Water and clean air. Oh! How I wish for some fall
days that were not filled with smoke.
Arriving back home I drive by our local airport to see several
helicopters that have been brought in to provide support for fighting
fire started in the Wilderness Area. Hopefully, the Forest Service is
aggressive and not risk burning up a large acreage.
It is now several weeks later, and the weather forecast is for
strong north winds early in the week. The lightning fires are still
burning, and my concern grows regarding the potential for the
development of a catastrophic event.
It has happened again, we now have several very large fires with
the loss of life, homes, businesses, and resources. Some of the fires
grew faster in size than any fires in history, burning over 100 acres a
minute. The Wilderness fire (Red Fire) that was a few hundred acres to
start with and had several helicopters available to fight is now over
90,000 acres. The August complex is now over 800,000 acres doubling the
largest fire in California history from 2 years ago, reaching from the
middle of the Mendocino National Forest into the Shasta-Trinity
National Forest on over to the Six Rivers National Forest. The North
Fire is w[e]ll over 200,000 acres and destroyed the community of Berry
Creek with the loss of life and homes. The community of Happy Camp was
destroyed by the Slater fire.
Here is a quote from a rancher with grazing permits on the Plumas
National Forest, after the destruction of the Bear Fire (Part of the
North Fire).
``I cry for the mountains and the legacy lost.
It is almost midnight. We have been pushing hard for 18-20
hours every day since the Bear Fire tore through our mountain
cattle range on September 8th, and there is so much swirling in
my head I can't sleep anyway. The fire destroyed our cattle
range, our cattle, and even worse our family legacy. Someone
asked my daughter if I had lost our family home. She told them,
[`]No, that would be replaceable. This is not!['] I would
gladly sleep in my truck for the rest of my life to have our
mountains back.
I am enveloped by overwhelming sadness and grief, [then] and
anger. [I'm] angry at everyone, and no one. Grieving for things
lost that will never be the same. I wake myself weeping almost
soundlessly and it is hard to stop.
I cry for the forest[,] the trees and streams and the
horrible deaths suffered by the wildlife and our cattle. The
suffering was unimaginable. When you find groups of cows and
their baby calves tumbled in a ravine trying to escape, burned
almost beyond recognition, your try not to [retch]. You only
pray death was swift. A fawn and small calf side by side as if
hoping to protect one another. Worse, in searing memory, cows
with their hooves, udder and even legs burned off who had to be
euthanized. A doe laying in the ashes with three fawns, not all
hers I bet. And you are glad they can stand and move, even with
a limp, because you really cannot imagine any more death today.
Euthanasia is not pleasant, but sometimes it's the only option.
But you don't want more suffering. How many horrible choices
have faced us in the past 3 days?''
The company I work for has lost all or portions of seven timber
sales, that we have under contract on the Plumas, Mendocino, and Six
Rivers National Forest, in the current fire siege. Operations were
ongoing in three of those sales. Now the questions becomes, how fast
can we get the Forest Service to move and make a decision on how we can
go forward with operations on the timber sales destroyed?
Will we be able to harvest and get the forest on the road to
recovery or will we see hundreds of thousand acres left with no rehab
and nothing replanted.
Why isn't the Chief of the Forest Service in Congress everyday
pounding on your desk, asking for help in giving the Forest Service
some room to deal with the devastation.
[Or] will we sit on our hands, writing environmental documents,
while the timber goes to waste and nothing gets replanted.
Our National Forest's future is in your hands, please help.
______
Submitted Article by Hon. Dusty Johnson, a Representative in Congress
from South Dakota
[https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/blaze-burns-60-acres-more-
fires-feared-without-timely-precipitation/article_b495e733-07b1-5cd6-
8d09-a5e2265610bb.html]
Blaze burns 60 acres; more fires feared without timely precipitation
Seth Tupper (https://rapidcityjournal.com/users/profile/Seth Tupper)
Mar. 12, 2015, Updated Feb. 1, 2016
Winston Cadotte, of the South Dakota Department of
Agriculture Black Hat Crew, works on the North Pole Fire
Wednesday morning west of Custer. The fire started on Tuesday
and burned about 60 acres.
Chris Huber, Journal staff
The North Pole Fire west of Custer burned just feet from
Barney Fleming's home but caused no damage thanks to
firefighters using a backburn technique.
Chris Huber, Journal staff
The North Pole Fire burned roughly 60 acres of ground Tuesday
west of Custer. Strong winds from the south drove the fire. but
most of the burning was contained to the grass and didn't get
into the tree canopy.
Chris Huber, Journal staff
Eric Johnson cleans up a hot spot Wednesday morning west of
Custer while working at the North Pole Fire.
Chris Huber, Journal staff
John Stahl sprays out hot spots Wednesday morning at the []
North Pole Fire west of Custer. The fire mostly burned grass
along the ground and spared many of the pine trees.
Chris Huber, Journal staff
Firefighter Ben Maisel works on the North Pole Fire Wednesday
morning west of Custer.
Chris Huber, Journal staff
Chris Bennett left, and Eric Johnson work on hot spots
Wednesday morning at the North Pole Fire west of Custer.
Chris Huber, Journal staff
Custer D It was a scene that already seems familiar in this
warm, dry late winter:
Eight soot-covered, hard-hatted, gear-laden firefighters rested on
the ground alongside Linda Fleming's driveway at noon Wednesday,
munching on sub sandwiches after taming a nearly 60 acre wildfire.
``They've done a wonderful job,'' Fleming said through smoke from
the still-smoldering fire, ``and I don't think they get thanked
enough.''
Around 2 p.m. Tuesday, Fleming spotted smoke in the forested hills
above the house she shares with her husband, Barney, about 7 miles west
of Custer along S.D. Highway 16. She thought someone might be
carelessly burning trash, so she called the local sheriff's office.
Then she got a better vantage point and saw flames about 500 from her
home and the couple's nearby rental cabins.
Firefighters arrived and worked to contain the fire, which grew to
59.3 acres on mostly Forest Service land. No structures were known to
have sustained significant damage, but the fire got within a few yards
of some dwellings.
The blaze was named the North Pole Fire, because North Pole Road
leads into the affected area. The cause was still under investigation.
The mood at the scene was calm by Wednesday afternoon, but there
was widespread anticipation of a busy and early fire season if the
Black Hills area doesn't receive significant precipitation soon.
Jared Hohn, fire management officer for the Forest Service's Hell
Canyon Ranger District, said the lack of snowpack has exposed a lot of
dormant grass and other dry vegetation, which can be fuel for fires.
``Next week, if we get a heavy rain, we could have an early green-
up, which would then alleviate a lot of the threat for large fire
growth,'' Hohn said.
Without that precipitation, the green-up will be delayed and the
fire risk will remain heightened. On Wednesday, the official fire
danger ratings throughout the Black Hills were ``very high'' to
``extreme,'' the two highest ratings on the five-point scale.
Last weekend, the Rapid City Fire Department battled two grass
fires and went to a third that was out by the time firefighters
arrived. On Friday night, Feb. 6, near Rockerville, a fire ignited by
carelessly discarded ashes from a stove or fireplace wasn't fully
controlled until the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 9.
Even as crews were at the North Pole fire Wednesday afternoon,
firefighters with the South Dakota Division of Wildland Fire
Suppression and the Hayward, Hermosa, and Keystone volunteer fire
departments jumped quickly on a fire threatening a home in the area of
Turkey Ridge and Ghost Canyon roads.
The fire, burning in grass and timber, grew to about 7\1/4\ acres
before its forward advance was stopped around 5:15 p.m., about 90
minutes after it was reported.
As of Wednesday evening, the North Pole Fire was 60 percent
contained. Officials planned to lift all road closures by 8 p.m.
Wednesday, according to Jeni Lawver of the South Dakota Division of
Wildland Fire Suppression.
Mop-up operations will continue on Thursday. Smoke plumes will be
visible for the next several days while crews continue to work in the
area extinguishing burning stumps and ground litter in the fire's
interior, Lawver said.
The area scorched by the North Pole Fire previously was thinned by
loggers who removed some of the fire's potential fuel. Most of the fuel
was close to the ground, in the form of dry, dormant vegetation that
grew thick during last summer's plentiful rain. The fire fed on that
material, leaving behind a carpet of charred pine needles and grass
that looked like thick, black tufts of horsehair.
Forest Service firefighters and others from several area fire
departments, along with state workers and Department of Corrections
inmates, used hand tools and bulldozers to dig flame-stopping lines
around the fire and also used hoses at the fire's edge. An estimated 80
to 90 firefighters were on scene during the fire's peak.
Because the fire stayed low to the ground where the fuel was, tree
damage was minimal. The bottom 2 to 3 of some trees were charred, but
many firefighters at the scene said they expect most of the trees to
survive.
Moderate winds fanned the fire only minimally, pushing it to the
north-northeast. The cool night and morning conditions also were
favorable to the firefighting effort.
Scott Wheeler, the division supervisor for the fire and an
assistant fire management officer with the Hell Canyon Ranger District,
said fighting the blaze felt similar to controlling a prescribed burn.
``It just happened to not be planned,'' he said.
Wednesday morning, Forest Service firefighters were on ``mop up''
duty, which included pulling hot embers away from potential fuel
sources, spraying foamy water that soaked into hot spots, and using
picks and shovels to expose hot areas to the cool morning air.
Wheeler said some firefighters would remain on the scene for at
least another day, and then would patrol the area regularly for several
more days.
There were no forced evacuations, and the Flemings stayed in their
home Tuesday night as firefighters stood guard next to firetrucks in
the driveway.
Barney Fleming, a retired veterinarian formerly of New Orleans,
said the fire was concerning but not nearly as alarming as a Louisiana
hurricane.
``We stayed in our house last night and I slept like a baby,'' he
said.
Contact Seth Tupper at [email protected].
______
Submitted Letter by James D. Ogsbury, Executive Director, Western
Governors' Association
September 23, 2020
Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, Hon. Doug LaMalfa,
Chair, Ranking Minority Member,
Subcommittee on Conservation and Subcommittee on Conservation and
Forestry, Forestry,
House Committee on Agriculture, House Committee on Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.
Dear Chair Spanberger and Ranking Member LaMalfa:
In advance of the Subcommittee's September 24, 2020 hearing, The
2020 Wildfire Year: Response and Recovery Efforts, attached please find
two Western Governors' items related to wildfire, forest, and rangeland
management in the West:
Western Governors' Association (WGA) Policy Resolution 2017-
10, National Forest and Rangeland Management, and;
The June 2017 Special Report for the Western Governors'
National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative.
I request that you include these documents in the permanent record
of the hearing, as they articulate Western Governors' policy positions
and recommendations on these important issues.
Thank you for your consideration of this request. Please contact me
if you have any questions or require further information. In the
meantime, with warm regards and best wishes, I am
Respectfully,
James D. Ogsbury,
Executive Director.
attachment 1
Western Governors' Association
Policy Resolution 2017-10 National Forest and Rangeland Management
A. Background
1. The American West encompasses a huge landmass representing 2.4
million square miles or over \2/3\ of the entire country.
Over 112 million people live in these states and they
reside in large, densely populated cities, smaller cities
and towns and in rural areas.
2. Perhaps more than any other region, terrain, forces of nature,
and land ownership patterns in the West underscore the
purpose and vital need for a more active Federal role in
forest management. Western states include more than 75
percent of our National Forest and Grassland system. These
public lands serve as critical economic drivers, and they
provide numerous conservation benefits, water supply, and
recreational opportunities for Western communities and the
nation.
3. States have a particular interest in improving the active
management of Federal forest lands. State governments have
trust authority over water, wildlife and forest resources,
along with primary authority and expertise to protect
community health and safety. Poorly managed forests can
have significant and broad impacts on the landscapes and
communities of the West, including negative impacts to air
quality and public health, degradation of rivers and
streams and associated water quality (including drinking
water), reduced forage for domestic livestock, impaired
habitats for wildlife and fish, and the loss of forest
products and associated jobs.
4. Relative to decades past and other forest landowners, forest
managers today operate under a constrained decision space
as they work to address contemporary issues such as climate
change, invasive pests and diseases, habitat diversity,
fuel build-ups and fire risk, and legacy impacts. Adding to
this challenge are concerns about the economic and social
vitality of rural communities that experience impacts from
reduced timber supply and compromised forest health.
Displaced workers, declines in school enrollment, aging
demographics, property loss, business closures and revenue
impacts due to wildfire, and high unemployment are not
uncommon to these communities.
5. States are managers as well, and many western states own
extensive public land holdings that require forest products
infrastructure to achieve community vitality and land
management goals, including ecological restoration
objectives and healthy and resilient forests.
6. The U.S. Forest Service business model has historically been
based on a combination of Federal appropriations that were
supplemented with revenue from resource sales and fees.
Until the early 1990s, the Forest Service was a net
contributor to the Federal Treasury. Over the past 20
years, timber sales have dramatically declined.
7. In addition, the last decade has seen several large, very
expensive wildfires, which have increased the U.S. Forest
Service wildfire suppression costs from 13 percent of the
agency's FY 1991 budget to nearly 50 percent over the last
several fiscal years. Consequently, under the current
agency budgeting framework, forest management, hazardous
fuels reduction, habitat improvement, and outdoor
recreation programs have been negatively impacted across
National Forests and Department of [the] Interior lands.
8. An April 2015 study by the U.S. Forest Service, the Collaborative
Forest Landscape Restoration Program 5 Year Report, FY
2010-2014, found that the past century of wildfire
suppression and legacy management practices have
contributed to forests being overstocked and primed for
larger and more intense blazes, and that changes in land
use and increasing social pressures make it difficult for
the agency to let fire play its natural role of clearing
the forest understory in certain forest types. Active
forest management has historically played a pivotal role in
the growth and mortality cycle of forests to manage fuel
loading, which in turn can reduce fire-fighting costs and
improve habitat resilience. Today, the U.S. Forest Service
estimates that roughly 90,625\2\ miles--an area larger than
Utah--is at high or very high risk of severe wildfire and
in need of treatment.
9. Insect infestation and disease have damaged many of the forests
throughout the West. Severe drought conditions that are
impacting western states, particularly California, have
only exacerbated insect infestations and tree mortality.
The impacts go well beyond fire risk, and timber and fiber
production are negatively impacted, threatening the
viability of the surviving forest product infrastructure.
The significant decline in forest health has also created
serious threats and challenges to watershed integrity,
wildlife and fisheries habitats, recreational uses,
businesses and tourism. All of these impacts present
substantial challenges for forest-dependent communities
across the West.
10. The dire forest conditions, unmet management needs, and the
failure to provide lasting protections for some landscapes
have brought diverse stakeholders together to find
solutions. Community collaboration on forest health
projects is robust in numerous places across the West
forging broad agreements among diverse stakeholders on
projects that encompass fuels reduction, fiber production,
habitat restoration, long-term protection for critical
areas, and other community objectives. It is not uncommon
to find mill owners, hunters and anglers, loggers, small
business owners, conservationists, and local elected
leaders working together around the table.
11. Collaborative planning and project implementation across National
Forests and state and private forest lands on a larger
scale allows for more diverse interests to address their
particular needs for a landscape or a watershed. Taking a
broad look at a landscape for planning purposes minimizes
the challenges associated with managing lands for the
benefit of a particular species or to address a specific
need. Well-planned projects that are strategically placed
across a landscape can result in a higher level of benefits
than those that are more randomly or opportunistically
placed. Processes associated with planning and implementing
a project have become so time consuming and expensive for
National Forests in particular that a disincentive often
exists for their managers to proceed with management
actions that are needed to attain desired ecological,
social, and economic objectives.
12. Collaborative efforts have shown initial successes in reaching
consensus, but there is a shortage of formal mechanisms
that encourage their creation in areas with conflict or
reward their success within the context of public process.
Further, there is little to no formal incentive for the
management agencies and collaboratives to ensure
collaborative work happens in a timely and efficient manner
that achieves a pace and scale of management that matches
the ecological, social, or economic needs of public and
private forestlands and surrounding communities.
13. Despite this good work the full benefits of these collaborative
efforts have not been realized on the land. Working
constructively with collaborators requires resources to be
productive and the Federal agencies often lack the
necessary staff and funding. In addition, the Federal
agencies have sometimes been reluctant to embrace
collaboration, because they either have unclear legal
authority to favor collaborative efforts or don't welcome
the input.
14. Further, and even when collaborative forest health projects enjoy
broad support from diverse stakeholders and the agencies,
administrative objections and litigation remain a too
frequent outcome. One result is that community
collaborative efforts become fatigued, and future
opportunities are lost. Another outcome is that Forest
Service restoration projects often go through exhaustive,
time-consuming analysis, driving up costs and preventing
the agency from scaling up management to meet the scope of
the problem.
15. Today the costs associated with planning and implementing a
management project on National Forest lands are
significantly more than those of the private sector. This
cost, along with the time associated with drafting,
analyzing, incorporating public involvement, and responding
to appeals and/or litigation at the project level, lead
many Federal managers to focus their limited staff, funds
and time on projects with the least likelihood to be
challenged. This approach does not adequately address the
larger socioeconomic and ecological needs of our National
Forests and dependent communities.
16. The 2014 Farm Bill provided the Forest Service with several new
tools to accelerate forest restoration. A Governor could
nominate landscapes substantially affected or threatened by
insects and disease to the Secretary of Agriculture for
designation as Priority Areas for expedited NEPA and
administrative process and judicial review. 16 Western
Governors nominated areas for this designation, the vast
majority of which were approved by the Secretary of
Agriculture.
17. In addition, the new farm bill authorities provided for a
categorical exclusion (CE) for insect and disease projects
on areas as large as 3,000 acres that are the product of a
collaborative effort. The new CE has the potential to
greatly magnify the role of collaboration and strengthen
the results of those efforts, and to reduce the time and
cost for forest health projects, resulting in on-the-ground
restoration work that is accomplished more quickly and
across a larger landscape. Not yet in wide use, the farm
bill also added expanded ``Good Neighbor'' authority that
enhances the ability of states to partner with the Forest
Service and implement projects on Federal land.
18. The shortcomings of Federal forest management have also impacted
local governments directly. In 1908, when Congress created
the National Forest System, it also passed the National
Forest Revenue Act in 1908 directing the Forest Service to
share 25 percent of gross revenues with local governments.
Then in 1976, Congress passed ``Payments in Lieu of Taxes''
(PILT) legislation providing Federal payments to local
governments regardless of gross revenues that result from
timber harvest and other forest management activities.
After revenues from the sale of timber dropped
substantially, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and
Self Determination Act (SRS) in 2000, allowing counties to
choose between a payment based on historical average and
the 25 percent revenue share. SRS has expired several
times, and PILT has been subject to funding uncertainty as
well. Western Governors support efforts to ensure counties
and states continue to receive payments under the Secure
Rural Schools program, and that these payments should be
based upon historic Federal land management receipts. These
payments are vital to providing state and county public
goods and services, such as roads, emergency response, and
wildlife and natural resources protection in communities
adjacent to Federal lands.
19. There have been several efforts in Congress to reform Federal
forest management, and recent legislation reflects the
continued frustration of Congress as it attempts to find a
path forward to address this issue in a productive,
bipartisan manner.
B. Governors' Policy Statement
1. Western Governors support sound forest management policies that
maintain and promote ecologic, economic and social balance
and sustainability.
2. Today, the Forest Service's forest management program is
primarily a byproduct of restoration projects intended to
reduce wildfire risk and/or improve forest resilience,
water quality, watershed health, key wildlife habitat, and/
or intrinsic value. Western Governors recognize and support
these forest values, but also believe it is reasonable to
expect that some portion of the Federal landscape will be
focused on long-term, ecologically-sound forest
management--where jobs, forest products, and revenues are
priorities and generated through sound stewardship.
3. Western Governors encourage the Forest Service to develop and
help fund new technologies and wood based markets for some
non-traditional products. USDA's Forest Products Laboratory
is a hub for research and innovation. We should continue to
encourage the application of their knowledge and experience
in a practical way in the western United States so that
some of the federally funded infrastructure that develops
from such efforts could first be demonstrated on private
lands. Also, since Federal forests are now more focused on
large landscape forest health projects, there is a good
opportunity to ensure we have a broader suite of outlets,
in addition to traditional sawmills and existing biomass
facilities.
4. We can achieve sustainable forest management across every acre of
our Federal and non-Federal forestlands while including an
equitable mix of uses to meet many ecological, social, and
economic needs.
5. Western Governors believe that our citizens are capable of
rolling up their sleeves and working together with the
Federal agencies to address difficult issues such as forest
management, and that not enough is done to incent and
reward the current collaborative work that is occurring
across the West.
6. It is important to retain citizens' rights to question
governmental decisions through administrative and legal
means. However, there are situations where the threat of
litigation is a key factor resulting in either delay of
agency activity and progress or the stifling of productive
collaborative work. The lack of funding and resources for
Federal agencies is also a significant factor. Western
Governors believe an effort needs to be made to better
understand the scope and scale of this problem. There may
be an opportunity to further streamline appeals and
litigation associated with National Forest decision making
in association with other changes designed to incent
collaboration and provide more certainty as to outcomes.
7. The 2014 Farm Bill authorities are significant expansions of
Forest Service authority and are powerful new tools to
boost forest management, promote collaboration, and limit
the impacts of administrative objections and litigation.
Western Governors encourage Federal agencies to fully
implement the tools provided in the 2014 Farm Bill.
8. Western Governors are on record as strong supporters of ending
the practice of fire borrowing, and Congress should pass
legislation to fund Federal wildfires off-budget as many
states already do, and ensure the Forest Service budget for
forest restoration, recreation, road maintenance, hazardous
fuels reduction, and wildlife/watershed protection is fully
restored.
9. Western Governors believe clear, coordinated and consistent
application of Federal vegetation management practices is
integral to maintaining the health of western forests,
preventing dangerous and damaging fires, and maintaining
grid reliability. The Governors support effective and
efficient cross-jurisdictional coordination that enables
utilities to undertake necessary vegetation management
actions on Federal transmission rights-of-way--and to do so
without fear of strict liability imposition for necessary
vegetation management actions taken adjacent to
transmission rights-of-way.
10. Western Governors are well-suited to engage in a productive and
bipartisan dialogue on the broader topic of Federal forest
management reform, engaging westerners and examining on the
ground realities across western landscapes. Western states
are land owners and managers and well understand the
challenges associated with forest management under changing
social, economic and environmental conditions.
11. A meaningful and successful discussion of forestry reform in the
West will require a transparent and inclusive process that
engages those diverse interests who have a direct stake in
forest management outcomes. The impacts of forest
management are felt most directly by those who live, work
and recreate in and adjacent to those forests, so the
discussion needs to begin there. This is perhaps where
Western Governors can provide the most productive
bipartisan contribution to this national discussion. Our
nation's forests belong to all Americans, and in the end
and through their elected representation all Americans will
determine the scope and success of any efforts to reform
forest management.
12. There is significant dissatisfaction in the West among many
stakeholders with the current level of National Forest
management. There is a general sense that the current level
of forest management is not meeting anyone's needs, whether
it's putting logs on trucks, protecting water quality,
addressing fire risk, protecting key habitats and
landscapes, providing for recreation, or other important
community needs. Successful forest management reform will
achieve a balance among all of these important objectives,
and provide the opportunity for certainty such that diverse
interests will be encouraged to work together to achieve
shared outcomes.
13. It is time to reconsider the business model of the U.S. Forest
Service. Western Governors believe it may be possible to
reform the Forest Service business model in a manner that
reduces project planning costs, sources funds from non-
Federal partners and recognizes that the agency no longer
generates large revenues from commodity programs.
14. Any discussion of forest management reform must include
consideration of the financial relationship between the
Federal and local governments, the existence of PILT, and
the limited tax base for counties with significant Federal
ownership.
15. Western Governors support the recommendations identified over the
course of the WGA National Forest and Rangeland Management
Initiative, and incorporate the recommendations into this
resolution by reference.
C. Governors' Management Directive
1. The Governors direct the WGA staff, where appropriate, to work
with Congressional committees of jurisdiction and the
Executive Branch to achieve the objectives of this
resolution including funding, subject to the appropriation
process, based on a prioritization of needs.
2. Furthermore, the Governors direct WGA staff to develop, as
appropriate and timely, detailed annual work plans to
advance the policy positions and goals contained in this
resolution. Those work plans shall be presented to, and
approved by, Western Governors prior to implementation. WGA
staff shall keep the Governors informed, on a regular
basis, of their progress in implementing approved annual
work plans.
Western Governors enact new policy resolutions and amend
existing resolutions on a bi-annual basis. Please consult
http://www.westgov.org/resolutions for the most current copy of
a resolution and a list of all current WGA policy resolutions.
attachment 2
Special Report
Western Governors' National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative
The Chairman's Initiative of Montana Governor Steve Bullock
June 2017
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
Like many of you, I had the luxury of growing up in the West. As a
kid, I enjoyed a wealth of outdoor activities: hiking in the forests
outside Helena, fishing in some of Montana's best rivers and streams,
camping in our National Forests and public lands and visiting
Yellowstone and Glacier National parks, and standing in awe of the
literal ``Big Sky'' that surrounds us on the open range.
As an adult, I still enjoy those same activities, and retain a
strong sense of wonder and appreciation for our western lands as I
begin to share those experiences with my kids. Most of us living here
feel the same way: we love the land, the people, the life we are able
to live in these beautiful places. Although the western economy is
increasingly diverse, many of us still make a living from the natural
resources found on our public lands: as ranchers, loggers, mill
workers, hunting and fishing guides, and in the tourism industry. The
good news is that these lands are diverse and plentiful enough to
support us, regardless of how we may depend upon them.
Most of us, however, also realize that these special places are at
risk. Our wildfire seasons are longer, and more expensive, and they
present increasing risks to the public and firefighters. Our forests
and rangelands face unprecedented threats from insects, disease and
invasive species. As the health of these lands declines, we risk not
only our quality of life, but fish and wildlife habitat, clean and
abundant sources of water, and the diverse economic opportunities that
are inextricably tied to them. One sector of our economy is at
particular risk: our forest industry is struggling to secure a
predictable supply of timber and compete in a global marketplace. Mill
closures are eliminating markets and jobs that are critical to our
rural communities and that provide the resources to help pay the costs
of restoring these landscapes.
As these same conditions converged in Montana, we responded by
coming together to seek solutions. Through our Forests in Focus
Initiative, state and Federal agencies and stakeholders representing
very divergent interests have invested in collaborative projects that
restore the health and resiliency of our forests and rangelands, and
support the communities that depend upon them. Our results to date have
been remarkable: we've invested over $2 million to accelerate 27
Federal projects that will reduce wildfire risk, restore watersheds,
support over 3,000 jobs, and eventually produce over 160 million board
of timber. Equally important, we are building a foundation of greater
cooperation that will help achieve even more in the future.
Montana was the first state in the nation to implement a
stewardship project on U.S. Forest Service lands, and among the first
to sign a Good Neighbor Agreement and implement a project using that
new authority. We are focused not only on outputs, but on outcomes as
well: healthier forests, more resilient watersheds, and as I learned
from a young man from Seeley Lake, helping Montana's hardworking timber
families feel more secure about their future.
Responsibly managing our western forests and rangelands is a vexing
concern for anyone who loves the West. From private landowners to
conservation advocates to the agricultural and forest industries that
provide jobs, food, and homes for our people, we all want to see these
landscapes sustainably managed. As Chair of the Western Governors'
Association (WGA), I saw an opportunity to build upon Montana's
successes and learn from our neighbors through the National Forest and
Rangeland Management Initiative.
The Initiative is a mechanism to bring states, Federal land
managers, private landowners and other stakeholders together to discuss
issues and opportunities in forest and rangeland management. Although
achieving balance between competing interests in the West is difficult,
we believe it is possible to provide economic opportunities for our
citizens, while conserving and protecting the spectacular landscapes
that inspire residents and visitors who travel across the world to
experience them.
Through this Initiative, we conducted four workshops, four
webinars, and solicited comments to gather information on what is
working, and how we need to improve. Hundreds of people have
participated, and we've learned that throughout the West people are
working together to build and achieve a shared vision for these
landscapes and the communities that rely upon them. It has been an
encouraging start to a process that I hope will continue to thrive in
the years ahead.
The recommendations in this report are not exhaustive--nor do they
offer quick fixes. The problems we face took decades to develop, and
the solutions will take patience, dedication, and persistence from all
partners to implement. I hope this report will inspire further
commitment among western Governors, Federal agencies, non-governmental
organizations, Tribal and local governments, businesses and private
landowners to continue working together, on a bipartisan and
collaborative basis, to promote the health and resilience of our
forests and rangelands.
Although we approach these challenges from various locations on the
political spectrum, as citizens of the West, we are more closely tied
by our similarities than differences. Our landscapes, natural
resources, and our western work ethic will bind us as we seek solutions
to the challenges facing us. Thank you for joining me as we continue to
advance this Initiative in its second year.
Sincerely,
Steve Bullock,
Governor of Montana.
Dear Friend of the West:
Public lands management. As a phrase, that sounds dry and academic
and bureaucratic. But what it connotes is rich and interesting and
wildly important. Because when we talk about land management, we're
talking about nearly every activity undertaken on western lands. We're
talking about wildfire (firefighting, prevention and mitigation). We're
talking about recreation (camping, hunting, fishing, hiking, biking,
climbing, skiing and motorized exploration). We're talking about
economic activity (grazing, timber and mining). And we're talking about
nature and water quality and species diversity and conservation.
In fact, we are talking about those very things that make the West
abundant and special and truly extraordinary.
Western lands are marked by different ownership patterns and
management regimes. Adjacent lands in the same biome can look, produce
and react very differently from one another depending on how they are
being managed and by whom and for what purposes.
Under the leadership of Montana Governor and WGA Chair Steve
Bullock, WGA has been proud to launch the Western Governors' National
Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative. During the course of this
effort, by focusing on the steps we can be taking to increase the
overall health of our forests and rangelands, we are also taking steps
to increase their resilience to wildfire, and other threats like
insects, disease and invasive species.
The initiative is producing recommendations on best management
practices and tools that can help Western Governors, the Federal
Government and local communities to strengthen their forests and
rangeland habitats, revitalize forest health, and help break the
current vicious cycle of catastrophic western wildfires.
Over the past year, Western Governors hosted workshops across the
West. The Governors' bipartisanship and spirit of collegiality
encouraged substantive and constructive conversations about forest and
rangeland management. At the same time that we processed a wide range
of divergent opinions, we were struck by a sincere and common desire
among participants and contributors to improve the health, protect the
beauty and ensure the abundance of our precious western lands for
generations to come. As has been said many times, we do not inherit the
[E]arth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.
The Western Governors' Association looks forward to continuing the
work initiated by Governor Bullock in the coming year, guided by the
spirit of cooperation and collegiality continually modeled by Western
Governors.
Respectfully,
James D. Ogsbury,
WGA Executive Director.
Executive Summary
Upon assuming the role of Chair of the Western Governors'
Association in July 2016, Montana Governor Steve Bullock proposed that
WGA pursue the National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative. The
goals of the initiative are to:
Examine existing forest and rangeland management authorities
and programs to determine their strengths and weaknesses;
Perform a detailed investigation of the role of
collaboratives in landscape restoration;
Create a mechanism for states and land managers to share
best practices, case studies and policy options for forest and
rangeland management; and
Recommend improved forest and rangeland management
authorities and encourage more effective collaboration.
Montana Governor Steve Bullock launched the National Forest
and Rangeland Management Initiative to bring states, Federal
land managers, private landowners and other stakeholders
together to discuss issues and opportunities in forest and
rangeland management.
The initiative has since assembled a wide range of experts and
stakeholders from throughout the West to share insights on land
management practices and identify improvements that will enable western
states to develop healthy, resilient landscapes and communities.
That effort was greatly aided by the participation of Western
Governors, who invested time and effort to host workshops in their
respective states: Montana Governor Steve Bullock; Idaho Governor C.L.
``Butch'' Otter; South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard; and Oregon
Governor Kate Brown.
The Initiative's reach was extended by live-streaming regional
workshop sessions and posting those meeting sessions to WGA's YouTube
page, as well as by posting live updates on Twitter. WGA also hosted
webinars that addressed discrete topics in forest and rangeland
management.
Based upon the input from state and Federal land managers, private
landowners, local governments, businesses and non-governmental
organizations, WGA sought to identify best practices and offer
recommendations to put western states on a path toward healthier, more
resilient ecosystems, while continuing to support diverse economic
opportunities for western communities.
This report outlines the launch year of the Initiative and includes
both administrative and legislative recommendations that touch upon the
following areas:
Reforming Federal wildfire budget practices to allow for
more investment in efforts to build resilience and reduce
catastrophic wildfire risk;
Partnering to advance forest and rangeland management
projects across ownership boundaries to achieve landscape-scale
goals and streamline processes;
Western Governors C.L. ``Butch'' Otter of Idaho, left, Dennis
Daugaard of South Dakota and Kate Brown of Oregon hosted
Chairman's Initiative workshops in theirrespective states.
Providing state-led investment to support collaboration,
prioritize limited resources, and ensure coordinated and
effective Federal, state and local government engagement;
Augmenting capacity and streamlining environmental analysis
and implementation of Federal forests and rangeland restoration
projects;
Strengthening markets for forest products and diversified
rangeland goods and services that can support forest and
rangeland restoration objectives; and
Pursuing new statutory flexibility and authorities to
advance landscape-scale restoration projects, and support high-
impact programs.
The launch year of the National Forest and Rangeland Management
Initiative is just the beginning of WGA's work on this initiative.
Recognizing that good policy development and implementation takes time,
WGA initiatives are designed to work across multiple years.
WGA's focus now shifts from information-gathering to implementation
of the launch year recommendations. Western Governors will encourage
state and Federal agencies to apply these recommendations to their
management activities, and advocate for the adoption by Congress of the
legislative reforms identified by the initiative.
Background
How did we get here?
The West's forests and rangelands are facing an unprecedented
health crisis. The causes are manifold, including a history of past
fire suppression, an increase in large-scale outbreaks of insects, a
changing climate, disease, and invasive species, and an increase in the
frequency, size and severity of wildfires. The symptoms are staggering.
Today our fire seasons are, by some estimates, 78 days longer than they
were just 2 decades ago. Six western states have had their largest or
most destructive wildfire events in the last 6 years. During that time,
32 million acres of National Forests have succumbed to a devastating
bark beetle epidemic, and over 100 million dead trees have littered the
forests of California's Sierra Nevada mountains in the aftermath of the
state's severe drought and changing climate. Amid these trends, the
benefits our forests and rangelands provide (from food and fiber to
recreation, water supplies and beyond) are at risk.
A tumultuous and polarizing era in Federal forest and rangeland
policy--characterized by entrenched legal battles and punctuated by a
great recession--has influenced the management of our forests and
rangelands. This history--coupled with constrained budgets, high
administrative costs, increasing fire suppression expenses, and other
challenges--have left Federal forests and rangelands exposed to health
problems.
The capacity of local communities, states and Federal agencies to
respond to these threats has been diminished by forces beyond their
control. In 1995, 16 percent of the United States Forest Service's
(USFS) budget was dedicated to fire suppression. By 2015, that number
had soared to more than half of the USFS's budget. Over 2 decades, non-
fire staffing within the USFS has been reduced by 39 percent. Today,
the rising costs of fire suppression, and the complicating need to stop
work mid-season to address and pay for urgent wildfires, have reduced
agency capacity to support forest and rangeland restoration--including
the very measures that can reduce risks of uncharacteristic wildfire in
the first place.
Meanwhile, as communities have grappled with new costs from
declining forest and rangeland health and increased wildfires, a global
financial crisis exacerbated impacts to a key sector for restoration:
the forest products industry. New home starts plummeted from 2005-2010,
resulting in the decline of worker earnings by 22 percent, and the loss
of 79,000 jobs in the wood products sector in the West. During 2009 and
2010, West-wide harvest and lumber output were at their lowest levels
since the late 1940s. The region has suffered the permanent loss of
more than 30 large mills and scores of smaller mills, while countless
others significantly curtailed operations. Today, maintaining and
strengthening the capacity of the restoration economy across all
sectors and addressing the capacity constraints of Federal agencies
remains of paramount concern.
In the face of these increasing pressures, Federal agencies,
states, counties, conservation organizations, industry and a host of
other partners have rallied to achieve considerable success in
cooperative restoration activity. Since 2008, USFS has increased the
acres treated to restore forest and watershed health, and increased
timber volume sold by over 20 percent. Through the Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration program alone partners have treated: more than
1.45 million acres to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire; more than
84,570 acres to achieve healthier forest and watershed conditions
through timber sales; more than 1.33 million acres for improved
wildlife habitat; and more than 73,600 acres to address concerns from
noxious weeds and invasive plants. New and extended authorities, such
as those included in the Agricultural Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-79, aka the
2014 Farm Bill), have helped Federal agencies work more efficiently and
extensively with partners, including governors and states, and further
advanced restoration activities.
What do we mean by healthy and resilient ecosystems?
Healthy and resilient forests and rangelands are those that
can regenerate naturally after disturbance and adapt to changes
in climate, invasive species and insects and disease, wildfire,
and precipitation. They are characterized by:
Dynamic growth and complexity.
Diverse habitat, able to sustain a wide range of
wildlife and fish.
Healthy soils.
Tolerable levels of invasive species, insects and
disease.
High quality and sustainable water supply.
Economic and ecological sustainability: maintaining
ecosystem function
while meeting needs for aesthetics, recreation, health,
and forest and range-
land products.
The evidence from across the West is clear: we can buck the trends
and overcome an uneven history of Federal forest and rangeland policy
when we work together. States, industry, local governments, and non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) are playing an increasingly critical
role in bolstering management capacity, reinvesting in restoration
partnerships and advancing innovative approaches that not only restore
degraded ecosystems, but also protect communities and provide economic
engines for rural America. Equally important have been the locally and
regionally-driven efforts that have emerged from Federal agency
partners. These parties have redoubled their commitment and leadership
to foster effective collaboration, pursue efficiencies, and drive the
flow of resources to achieve mutually agreed upon objectives to improve
the health and resiliency of our western forests and rangelands.
Whether through collaborative efforts to determine appropriate
timber and grazing prescriptions, reintroduction of fire to control
fuels and support wildlife habitat, projects to combat invasive
species, or improvements to watershed functions, new and diverse
partnerships are emerging across land ownerships to help improve the
health and resiliency of western landscapes. Now more than ever,
sustaining and building upon this progress in the face of unprecedented
threats to our forests and rangelands requires our collective attention
and action.
Workshops of the Chairman's Initiative gathered a wide array
of stakeholders at workshops in Montana, Idaho, South Dakota
and Oregon.
Why the Western Governors' Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative?
State-led innovation across the West--coupled with engagement from
Federal land managers, including NGOs and industry--has created fertile
ground for learning, dialogue and advancing a bipartisan reform agenda.
To address the challenges we face, Western Governors recognize a need
to examine these excellent but separate endeavors through a single
lens: to encourage collaboration among those with different
perspectives, capacities and expertise in a regional discussion of
needs for the restoration and sustainable management of western
rangelands and forests. The Initiative has brought together experts
from a variety of sectors--from researchers to ranchers--and across a
broad range of policy interests--from timber industry representatives
to conservationists--to share the best available science and practical
experience in examining our current forest and rangeland management
policies and practices.
The Initiative also offers an opportunity to elevate successful and
innovative ideas and better understand the impacts and effectiveness of
a broad range of investments in collaboration and forest and rangeland
restoration. As United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
said, a ``state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and
try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of
the country.'' This has certainly been true with land management
practices. Different states have employed a wide variety of strategies
to address needs ranging from wildlife and fish habitat conservation,
to water quality and watershed protection, to timber management,
livestock grazing, invasive species, and extractive industries. The
Initiative has enabled states to share their successes and, in some
cases, their failures with each other and allow them to build on the
insights of collective experience.
What do we mean by restoration?
Restoration is the process of creating and maintaining
healthy, resilient forests and rangelands capable of delivering
all the benefits that people get from them: clean air and
water, habitat for native fish and wildlife, forest products,
food sources, opportunities for outdoor recreation, and more.
Restoration can foster economic opportunities to revitalize
communities and benefit the environment at the same time.
During the past year, the Initiative has brought together a host of
different interests and all levels of government, and the cooperative
dialogue has been highly encouraging. There is a strong sense that we
must work together if we are to address the challenges facing western
lands and communities. Working together requires we put aside parochial
interests and find ways to work across land ownership boundaries. The
urgency of the threats requires all parties--states, Tribes,
landowners, Federal agencies, nonprofit partners and Congress--to
cooperatively implement, expand and refine the restoration management
tools that currently exist, and reinvest in the many benefits our
rangelands and forests provide.
What are the Initiative's management principles and philosophy?
Collaboration--Solutions born from bipartisan cooperation among
diverse interests always yield the most durable returns. Collaboration
is not easy: it requires participants to respect different viewpoints;
consider ideas outside their normal comfort zones; and engage in the
arduous work of incorporating a wide variety of views into a coherent
and workable plan of action. Growing experience with collaboration
offers an opportunity to assess best practices that improve the
integrity and efficiency of decision-making and help achieve solutions
that are both innovative and durable.
Partnership--If collaboration is talking the talk, then partnership
is walking the walk. Effective partnership involves a commitment to
work together for mutual benefit and to invest the time, money, and
effort needed to accomplish an objective. Partnership helps us
prioritize limited resources and augment capacity when and where it is
most needed. It also demonstrates that our commitments to common goals
are substantive and establishes joint accountability to ensure that
these goals are pursued and achieved.
Urgency--The pace, scale and quality of restoration must increase
amid the threats to western forests and rangelands. Since 2010, over
102 million trees on 7.7 million acres of California's forests have
succumbed to drought. In Colorado, it is estimated that 1 in every 14
standing trees is dead (a total of 834 million trees whose deaths are
attributed to insect infestations, disease, and the suppression of
natural wildfire). Invasive cheatgrass infests over 100 million acres
of rangeland in western states. Every state in the West faces
challenges in conserving forests and rangelands. While Western
Governors and our partners acknowledge laudable progress to address the
management of our lands, it is imperative that we scale up our
successes to a landscape level and increase the pace of restoration
efforts. Working at landscape scales not only will help address urgent
threats, it can help create predictability in the achievement of forest
restoration, conservation and economic development objectives.
Resilience--Resilient forests and rangelands and communities go
hand in hand. Managing for resilience ensures our lands can continue to
provide for sustainable economies and that we optimize economic, social
and environmental goals including the production of clean air and
water, wildlife and fish habitat; and carbon sequestration in forests
and wood products. It can also help us better protect communities and
firefighters from increased risks, and expand and maintain diverse
economic opportunities, customs and culture in rural America linked to
public lands. Through provision of water supplies, recreational
opportunities and the fiber needed to sustainably build and rebuild our
cities of the future, resilient forests and rangelands also provide a
critical linkage to our urban communities. Western Governors recognize
that the long-term health of the forest and rangeland industries and
enhanced markets for diverse forest and rangeland products, goods and
services remains critical to meeting restoration goals. For the
landowners, businesses and partners that comprise an emerging
restoration economy supply-chain, a predictable and sustainable program
of work helps foster a business environment conducive to investment
that develops and maintains critical infrastructure and capacity.
Recommendations
The Western Governors' Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative
is a multi-year effort to examine and improve Federal forest and
rangeland management. WGA Chair Steve Bullock work during the launch
year of the effort. Under his leadership, WGA has conducted an
extensive examination of current land management practices, both at the
Federal and state level, to evaluate what is working (and what is not)
in the management of western rangelands and forests. A broad range of
stakeholders contributed their best ideas to the discussion of how to
improve land management across the West. These recommendations
represent a synthesis of the ideas presented at the Initiative
workshops, webinars, and other Initiative opportunities.
The recommendations are divided into two sections. First, an
administrative section presents those actions that can be implemented
within the framework of current Federal statutory authorities. Some of
these recommendations have already been implemented on a limited basis
in states or in connection with specific projects. These
recommendations are included in the hope that their use will be
expanded in scale. Others have been identified by various stakeholders
as worthy of consideration and implementation by states and Federal
agencies.
Second, a legislative section includes recommendations for
consideration by Congress. These recommendations would create greater
flexibility for Federal and state land managers to address pressing
restoration and resilience needs. Western Governors encourage Congress
to examine these bipartisan reforms as it considers legislation to
improve statutory authorities.
Finally, there is a section on implementation and next steps. This
includes a short examination of issues that were discussed over the
past year, but which require further consideration before concrete
recommendations can be offered (e.g., issues surrounding litigation and
the use of alternative dispute resolution) as the Initiative moves into
its multiyear implementation phase.
Administrative Recommendations
States, Federal agencies and other partners have made significant
progress toward optimizing the use of existing statutory land
management authorities. Scaling up these early successes is perhaps the
most significant opportunity to improve efficiency, incentivize action
and achieve sustained progress toward forest and rangeland restoration
goals.
Many of these administrative recommendations are intended to be
quickly actionable by Federal and state land managers. It is possible
that, in some cases, a proposed administrative reform may ultimately
require state statutory authorization. None of these proposed reforms,
however, should require new Federal statutory authority. They do
require the commitment and resources of state and Federal managers for
implementation. Western Governors encourage their state agencies and
Federal partners to collaborate on how to most effectively implement
these recommendations.
Montana Governor Steve Bullock hosted the opening workshop of
the Initiative in Missoula. He urged attendees in a keynote to
``take a hard look at collaboration. What makes it succeed? Why
does it fail? It's a discussion that will set the stage and
tone for more hard work to follow.''
Priority 1: Invest in all-lands/cross-boundary management
opportunities (all partners):
A1A: Identify business practice barriers to cross-boundary
projects. Develop training on state and Federal contracting procedures
and administration for all partners to improve implementation of cross-
boundary projects. Utilize Service First authorities, which allow
multiple agencies to partner to share resources, procurement procedures
and other authorities, and streamline and consolidate agency processes
with partners. Establish multi-agency pilot projects, which can suggest
models for subsequent formal agreements.
A1B: Increase participation of Tribal governments in cross-boundary
management plans and projects.
A1C: Expand opportunities to use tools developed in the 2014 Farm
Bill, such as Good Neighbor Authority (GNA), Stewardship Contracting
Authority (SCA) and Insect and Disease (I&D) designation authority, in
forest and rangeland systems on both USFS and Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) lands.
A1D: Convene partners to explore the use of new technologies and
data for collaboration, monitoring and decision-making, including the
use of state data as outlined in WGA Policy Resolution, Species
Conservation and the Endangered Species Act. Integrate adaptive
management approaches, using monitoring data, assessment, and other
feedback to assess the efficacy of management practices and inform land
management adjustments.
A1E: Provide Federal funding to develop detailed state rangeland
action plans addressing invasive species, wildlife and fish habitat,
and water quality and quantity as a complement to State Forest Plans.
These rangeland plans should include resource analyses of soil health,
water, plants, animals and productive capacities to inform management
decision-making.
A1F: Identify opportunities to improve flexibility and integration
of grazing management and targeted grazing as tools to achieve
restoration and land management goals, including wildlife habitat
improvements, drought and wildfire mitigation and resilience, water
quality and watershed health, soil health management, promotion of
perennial plant health, and control of invasive species such as
cheatgrass.
A1G: Promote grazing allotment flexibility on Federal lands, within
FWS and BLM permitting systems and across ownership boundaries, to
respond to changing range conditions and environmental considerations.
A1H: Expand the use of GNA agreements and other 2014 Farm Bill
tools to achieve all-lands restoration objectives across Federal,
state, local government and privately-owned lands. Include the use of
GNA authority and program income to support additional stewardship
objectives such as invasive species management and rangeland conifer
encroachment. Where programmatic agreements are already in place, use
GNA agreements to address priority restoration needs.
Rangelands support a wide range of multiple uses, from
livestock production and recreation to wildlife habitat and
water quality values, across Federal, state and private
ownerships.
A1I: Target funding from USFS, BLM, Natural Resources Conservation
Service (NRCS) and state sources to address cross-boundary management
goals (and support monitoring and assessment frameworks) in priority
areas. Projects using this targeted funding should be consistent with
State Forest Action Plans, wildlife action plans, community-wildfire
protection plans and projects in other priority areas determined by
Federal, state, local and Tribal partners based on the best available
science.
A1J: Explore the expanded use of youth, veterans, inmate crews and
conservation corps to provide cost-effective capacity to support forest
and rangeland restoration work across various land ownerships.
Workshop: Missoula, Montana (Sept. 20-21, 2016)
Keynotes: Steve Bullock, Governor of Montana, and Thomas Tidwell,
Chief, U.S. Forest Service
Summary
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell expressed optimism
about the work of the Initiative in his remarks: ``I have high
expectations if we meet these difficult challenges together and
focus on the right challenges. The more we trust in that
system, the more we can get done.''
Montana Governor Steve Bullock led off the workshop series
for the launch year of the Western Governors' Association's
(WGA) National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative in
Missoula, Montana. The meeting started off with a look at the
challenges Montana faces in forest management, and focused on
the role of collaboratives in facilitating management on U.S.
Forest Service (USFS) lands.
The Governor, in his keynote address, urged attendees: ``Take
a hard look at collaboration. What makes it succeed? Why does
it fail? How do the Federal land managers embrace it? It's a
discussion that will set the stage and tone for more hard work
to follow.''
USFS Chief Tom Tidwell expressed optimism about the
collaborative work of the Initiative. ``I have high
expectations if we meet these difficult challenges together and
focus on the right challenges. The more we trust in that
system, the more we can get done.''
WGA Executive Director Jim Ogsbury summed up the wide-ranging
impact of the initiative in his opening remarks: ``Public lands
management . . . sounds kind of dry and academic and
bureaucratic. But what it connotes is rich and interesting and
wildly important. Because when we talk land management, we're
talking about nearly every activity taken on western lands.''
``The work we do on these issues and the successes we've had
are because people with very different ideologies have come
together, project by project, and dollar by dollar,'' said
Governor Bullock, emphasizing the importance of collaboration.
``Our natural resources are a foundation of our quality of
life, and how we manage them must transcend party politics.''
Priority 2: Provide state leadership to bolster collaboration on
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Department of the
Interior (DOI) planning and projects (Western Governors):
A2A: Working with their state legislatures, Governors could
encourage funding to support effective collaboratives, collaboration on
Federal projects, and all-lands initiatives. Financial assistance from
a variety of sources could be targeted to address key priorities and
capacity constraints, and contingent on the use of metrics that measure
performance and project deliverables. Possible opportunities include:
Provide small grants to support collaboration through hiring
facilitators, conducting needed planning, data collection and
analysis, and incentivizing collaborative efforts to retain
effective leadership and participation.
Deliver state funds to targeted Federal projects to augment
capacity, expedite project approvals and implementation, and
add key state project priorities (including socioeconomic
elements) to the Federal program of work.
Support cost-share grants to local governments and local and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to enable their
participation in Federal project planning and implementation
through collaborative processes.
A2B: Support regular meetings convened by collaboratives and
encourage the development of local principles and best management
practices for collaboration.
A2C: Invest in key state and Federal liaison positions with
decision-making authority to provide better engagement and
understanding between state forest, wildlife, and rangeland agencies
and their Federal counterparts (as well as with partners in industry,
NGOs and academia).
A2D: Facilitate the participation of local governments in Federal
decision-making by dedicating staff to develop and provide technical
assistance and enhance communications across local, Tribal, state and
Federal partners.
A2E: Champion and encourage the efforts of state and local
governments, municipalities, water utilities and corporate partners to
collaborate on, and co-invest in, forest and rangeland restoration--
including the support of collaborative groups--across ownership
boundaries in key water supply source watersheds.
Webinar: Managing Electricity Reliability Risks on Forests and
Rangeland
Vegetation management experts discussed best-practices for
maintaining electrical utility rights-of-way for the benefit of
multiple resources, including transmission, conservation,
grazing, timber, and wildfire mitigation. Moderated by Anne
Beard, Manager of Vegetation Management and T&D Asset
Management for Public Service Company of New Mexico, the
webinar included a robust discussion of vegetation management
challenges. Panelists recommended that transmission corridors
be viewed as areas of opportunity, and that planning decisions
include early engagement with relevant stakeholders. A sample
of panelists' comments:
``We need to stop looking at utility rights-of-way as
sacrifice areas, and
begin to look at them as areas of opportunity that can be
managed for other
plant communities to supply habitat for pollinators,
small mammals, small
lizards, and songbirds, etc. This is because meadow and
prairie plant comm-
unities are lacking and, in some cases, almost extinct in
some states.''
Randy Miller, Director, Vegetation Management,
PacifiCorp.
``There is a need for more early engagement with
utilities and Federal land
managers. Engaging early in the process helps to better
develop a coopera-
tive plan to evaluate the current conditions, identify
high risk areas, ad-
dress those risks, and develop a plan for maintenance of
the remainder of
the line. Integrated Vegetation Management and greater
education about
early and frequent communications with land managers is
needed.'' Reggie
Woodruff, Energy Program Manager, U.S. Forest Service.
``The Right-of-Way Stewardship Council is really all
about trying to promote
environmental stewardship, and taking advantage of this
area of oppor-
tunity, in terms of how these millions of acres across
the country can be
better managed to meet a broad array of societal
benefits, including env-
ironmental benefits.'' Tom Sullivan, Audit Committee
Chair, Right-of-
Way Stewardship Council.
Priority 3: Promote efforts to support fire-adapted communities,
reduce fuels and manage wildfire risks, and ensure a coordinated and
effective wildfire response, coordinating where appropriate with
parallel efforts such as the National Wildland Fire Cohesive Strategy
(all partners):
A3A: Prioritize restoration activities across all ownerships to
create resilient landscapes in areas facing high wildfire risk,
significant watershed health issues, wildlife and fish habitat
degradation, or wildfire-damaged landscapes, including insect and
disease priority areas designated through the 2014 Farm Bill and areas
identified in state wildfire risk assessments, state forest action
plans, and community wildfire protection plans.
A3B: Improve interagency communication, fire response capability,
and coordination, including the sharing of firefighting resources.
Ensure these activities support fire prevention, full suppression
strategies and management of wildfire for resource benefits. Continue
to seek opportunities, including revisions to forest plans, to enhance
safety and reduce costs in suppression decisions while protecting
communities.
Workshop: Boise, Idaho (Oct. 20-21, 2016)
Keynotes: C.L. ``Butch'' Otter, Governor of Idaho, and Jim Lyons,
U.S. Department of the Interior
Summary
Idaho Gov. C.L. ``Butch'' Otter emphasized finding projects
of value during his address at the Boise workshop: ``I want you
all to discuss all of your ideas for improving land management
and let's find those with the greatest value.''
The second initiative workshop was hosted by Governor C.L.
``Butch'' Otter in Boise, Idaho. The meeting opened with an
examination of the many forest and rangeland management issues
throughout the state. Idaho has been especially active in the
implementation of projects using Good Neighbor Authority, and
roundtable discussions examined the state's success in taking
advantage of this authority, which allows Federal agencies and
the state to enter into cooperative agreements to advance
management priorities.
The Idaho workshop also examined the success of Rangeland
Fire Protection Associations (RFPAs), which engage private
landowners with Bureau of Land Management wildland fire
monitoring and suppression efforts. These collaborative efforts
were a centerpiece of Governor Otter's message to attendees.
Before 2012, ranchers were not allowed to assist Federal land
managers on wildfire suppression activities. The Governor,
legislature, and Federal and state fire agencies subsequently
created the RFPAs, which have now grown to eight districts with
nearly 300 volunteers overseeing more than 7 million acres.
Governor Otter also emphasized finding projects of value.
``People talk to me all the time about the cost of doing things
and I understand cost. But when someone comes to me and
explains the value of something, that really gets my interest.
I want you all to discuss all of your ideas for improving land
management and let's find those with the greatest value.''
Jim Lyons, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior for
Land and Minerals Management at the Department of the Interior,
discussed collaboration's role in blunting the impact of
wildfires and invasive species, noting ``these are not public
land issues or private land issues; they are resource issues
that know no political or administrative boundaries.''
A3C: Facilitate the expanded use prescribed fire:
Convene state and Federal air quality specialists to
identify reforms that reduce barriers to prescribed fire and
reduce overall health impacts from smoke.
Encourage interagency use of smoke management best practices
and explore ways to build capacity of licensed burn managers.
Examine liability protection for licensed burn managers who
execute approved prescribed burns, and address compensation for
private property owners negatively affected by escaped
prescribed burns.
Identify new tools for evaluating and managing prescribed
fire risk in cooperation with Federal, Tribal and local
governments.
Engage with state and local prescribed burn associations,
established for the responsible use and application of
prescribed fire for rangeland management.
A3D: Incentivize local governments to take voluntary actions to
support the creation and expansion of fire-adapted communities and
resilience, including the promotion of education, fuels management
projects and improved integration of community wildfire protection
plans with land use decisions when compatible with local goals. Provide
additional analyses to help communities evaluate the full costs of
suppression associated with development in the wildland urban interface
(WUI).
The benefits of healthy forests and rangelands include the
protection of environmental values and the promotion of
sustainable economic opportunities.
Priority 4: Pursue opportunities to further enhance Federal agency
staff capacity and efficiency in the environmental analysis, review and
implementation of projects (Federal partners):
A4A: Further explore the use of strike teams, interagency
Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultation support, and other modular
capacity to accelerate restoration in priority areas, including the
expanded use of existing statutory authorities.
A4B: Modify employee relocation practices to optimize leadership
development and longevity. Assure retention of critical capacity for
restoration after leaders depart through transition planning, including
promotion of local employees where appropriate.
A4C: Leverage the use of state, Tribal, and local expertise and
science in Federal environmental review, consultation and permitting
requirements. Collaborate with environmental regulators to reduce
legislative and regulatory barriers to restoration activities.
A4D: Continue to implement National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
streamlining efforts that promote best practices or procedural
innovations, including the use of landscape-scale, programmatic,
adaptive and iterative analyses.
A4E: Support independent research and analysis from NGO, academic,
and other partners to inform NEPA and ESA compliance review process
improvements, including estimates of the time and cost involved for
different project types. Develop metrics for successful outcomes,
including cost and time performance indicators.
A4F: Consider standardized approaches to environmental analysis to
increase efficiency and reduce time to decision. Ensure agency NEPA
implementation policy includes comprehensive training and
accountability for field practitioners.
A4G: Use information technology to improve the efficiency of NEPA
and to provide greater transparency and reduce redundant data, analysis
and business practices. Provide analytical tools for improved analysis
of potential implications of no-action alternatives.
Webinar: The Future of Wild Horse and Burro Management: Challenges
and Opportunities
The conversation focused on the economic and environmental
impacts of wild horse and burro overpopulation on western
rangelands. During the webinar, moderated by U.S.
Representative Chris Stewart, panelists encouraged Federal land
managers to take quick, proactive actions to bring herds within
Appropriate Management Levels (AML), including the use of new
technologies and management practices. A sample of panelists'
comments:
``In Nevada, and across the West, wild horse management
is no longer an
emergency, it is a disaster. The program is at a breaking
point . . . We
must gather 100 percent of horses in an HMA (Herd
Management Area).
Those horses that are to be returned to the range, but be
treated with per-
manent or near permanent fertility control. We cannot
continue to round
up horses and not curb reproduction. We will be removing
1,000 to 1,100
horses from this HMA again in a few years if we don't
slow reproduction.''
J.J. Goicoechea, Eureka County Commission Chair, Eureka
County,
Nevada.
``If we had proper management and the horse populations
were within
AML, you would have good range, healthy horses, healthy
wildlife, healthy
livestock, and healthy local economies for these rural
communities. This is,
and will be, the worst case of inhumane treatment of
animals and man-
made ecological disasters in the history of the West.''
Tammy Pearson,
Commissioner, Beaver County, Utah.
``By 2030, we will have spent over $1 billion on the
wild horse problem. We
are reaching the point where something has to give: it is
becoming more
cost prohibitive. One of the problems is that the
economic impacts from wild
horses is not felt evenly across the country. Your
average citizen in an
urban setting, and even some other rural counties,
doesn't feel the impacts
of wild horses.'' Dr. Eric Thacker, Professor of Wildland
Resources,
Utah State University.
``The need for proactive management on these western
rangelands cannot
be stated strongly enough. The fact that we typically
have five to, at best,
15" of annual precipitation makes it critical that we do
proactive manage-
ment and not let rangelands get degraded, because once
they pass a thresh-
old, they cannot be reclaimed.'' Callie Hendrickson,
Executive Director,
White River & Douglas Creek Conservation Districts in Rio
Blanco
County, Colorado
``This is a call to action. Let's get the Congress
educated, and let's overcome
our fear of the politics of this and have a clear mandate
to the BLM (Bu-
reau of Land Management) to follow the law. They've got
the tools they
need right now to do what needs to be done, but they are
intimidated by
the politics of the national activists.'' Kathleen
Clarke, Director of Utah
Public Lands Coordinating Office.
Priority 5: Take coordinated state and Federal action to expand
markets for forest products and diversified rangeland goods and
services that can support forest and rangeland restoration objectives
(all partners):
A5A: Expand opportunities for existing USDA Rural Development, U.S.
Economic Development Administration (EDA) and Small Business
Administration (SBA) programs and financing to support wood product
business development and infrastructure.
A5B: Encourage collaboration between USFS Research and Development,
State and Private Forestry, and National Forest System capacities that
support existing and emerging wood products technologies, including the
work of the National Forest Products Laboratory, with the goal of
expanding markets to maximize restoration activity. Encourage
appropriate research, development and deployment focused on
commercially-ready technologies with high potential to contribute to
current and emerging restoration objectives. Better align these
capacities with the contributions of states and industry partners, and
actively pursue public-private partnerships to advance market growth,
with the goal of providing sustainable economic development
opportunities for rural communities.
A5C: Western Governors should identify initiatives to support
markets that can achieve restoration goals and foster near-term
opportunities for economic development in rural communities.
Opportunities include:
Advancing the use of mass timber (such as cross-laminated
timber) in construction of taller buildings and community
facilities through research, demonstration projects, and
revisions to national, state and local building codes.
Expanding utilization of low-value woody biomass for
thermal, electric and liquid-fuel energy. Engage rural electric
cooperatives, public utilities, community facility managers and
other partners in the research, testing and deployment of new
and modified heat and electric generation projects and liquid-
fuel facilities from hazardous fuels reduction, conifer removal
and other forest and rangeland restoration efforts.
Exploring opportunities to support new and diversified
rangeland products, markets and processing infrastructure, such
as mobile meat processing, renewable energy production (wind
and solar), local and regional food hubs, and recreation.
A5D: The Federal Government should negotiate a fair and equitable
U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement as an element of maintaining and
strengthening domestic markets for wood products.
Legislative Recommendations
Legislative action must address chronic capacity constraints and
develop and expand additional authorities that build on past progress.
One of the most significant steps Congress can take to increase the
scale and pace of restoration activities is to comprehensively address
Federal agency budgeting. The decline of Federal staff and resources
for land management, in large part due to the shifting of funds to pay
for the increasing cost of wildfire suppression, must be resolved in
order to meet the challenges facing Federal agencies. The 2014 Farm
Bill made real progress in elevating an implementation role for states
in Federal land management by providing new statutory tools, and
permanently authorizing and expanding other authorities with the goal
of accelerating forest and rangeland restoration. Further action and
improvements are needed in the 2018 Farm Bill or other Federal
legislation, with particular focus on actions to achieve landscape-
scale restoration objectives.
Priority 1: Reform Federal fire funding management procedures:
L1A: Provide a comprehensive fix for the two challenges posed by
the present wildland fire budget approach: (1) the cost of fire
suppression (10 year average) as a share of the agencies' budgets
continues to increase, as budgets remain relatively flat; and (2) the
need to transfer funds from non-fire to fire accounts mid-season when
budgeted funds are insufficient.
L1B: Address the associated impacts of wildfire funding on Federal
natural resource management capacity, planning and project
implementation. Ensure budget actions continue to support state
wildfire and forestry capacity, including the USFS State and Private
Forestry programs.
The cost of fire suppression continues to increase, as
budgets remain relatively flat, which results in the need to
transfer funds from non-fire to fire accounts when budgeted
funds are insufficient.
Priority 2: 2014 Farm Bill modifications:
L2A: Permanently authorize the Insect and Disease designation
provisions of section 602 of the 2014 Farm Bill and eliminate project
constraints from section 603 for condition class or fire regimes
outside of the WUI.
L2B: Increase flexibility in the GNA program on road construction/
reconstruction and create flexibility in allocations of program income
to support better prioritization of GNA projects across larger
geographies.
L2C: Authorize the use of stewardship and GNA funds for recreation
improvements and forest and rangeland restoration planning and
implementation activities.
L2D: Consider extending the length of stewardship or timber
contracts up to 20 years, or allowing for periodic review and extension
of contacts to provide economic certainty to restoration industry
partners and address related cancellation ceiling constraints. Allow
for a portion (up to five percent) of retained receipts from
stewardship contracting to be used for subsequent project planning and
analysis.
Workshop: Deadwood, South Dakota (Dec. 1-2, 2016)
Keynote: Dennis Daugaard, Governor of South Dakota
Summary
``We don't want to use this workshop to just clap each other
on the back,'' Gov. Dennis Daugaard said at the Deadwood
workshop. ``We want to use this to think about how to do things
better.''
South Dakota was the scene of the third National Forest and
Rangeland Management Initiative workshop, hosted by Governor
Dennis Daugaard in Deadwood. The Governor encouraged practical
solutions to land management challenges. ``I'm so glad to see
so much expertise here. But we don't want to use this workshop
to just clap each other on the back. We want to use this to
think about how to do things better.''
The Governor pointed out that the City of Deadwood earned its
name from a pine beetle infestation back in the 1800s, and
insect depredation is still a significant challenge. The worst
beetle outbreak in the state's history has taken place in
recent years, but collaborative efforts with the USFS have had
a successful effect in blunting the current invasion.
The Black Hills has been one of the most actively managed
areas in the U.S., and provides excellent examples of how
timber operations, the use of prescribed fire, and livestock
grazing can contribute to the health and resilience of forest
and rangeland systems.
``Proper land management is critical,'' said Governor
Daugaard. ``It helps control fire danger and supports economic
growth and tourism. The Black Hills have been a great success
story for active management. Despite vibrant timbering, it is
still a beautiful forest, attractive to recreationalists. And
this has worked because of the great relationships developed
over time between the state and USFS.''
L2E: Fully fund conservation title programs such as Environmental
Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Conservation Technical Assistance
(CTA), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Conservation Reserve
Program (CRP), Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), and
the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), that provide
technical and financial assistance for forest and rangeland management
in partnership with private landowners. Take steps to provide greater
flexibility in the deployment of these programs to achieve restoration
objectives.
Priority 3: Update the Federal legislative framework to bolster and
clarify the appropriate use of NEPA tools, support collaborative
efforts and provide additional flexibility in the development and
execution of restoration projects:
L3A: Create a new pilot program to prioritize landscape-scale,
streamlined environmental analysis for restoration projects envisioned
over geographies greater than 100,000 acres (using either environmental
assessments or environmental impact statements, depending on context
and size of the project) in landscapes with demonstrated ecological and
economic need and effective existing collaboration among diverse
stakeholders. The analysis should be sufficient to allow for project-
scale implementation and adaptive management, and should include the
following elements:
Site descriptions or land allocations that identify
locations within the landscape in which specific restoration or
maintenance treatments can be used appropriately;
Standards and guidelines consistent with the appropriate
forest plan and project-level design criteria for projects;
Identification of the cumulative impacts of the project; and
Provisions allowing for the implementation of project-level
actions barring the introduction of new information or
unforeseen circumstances.
Congress should consider creating a limited and short-term
categorical exclusion (CE) under NEPA available to expedite work in
these pilot landscapes while environmental analyses are being
developed, available for use at the agency's discretion provided the
analyses achieve defined progress milestones.
Webinar: Rangeland Management Strategies and Tools: Promoting
Resiliency and Addressing Invasive Species
A panel of rangeland ecologists and researchers discussed
emerging technologies that increase the resilience of western
rangeland plant communities to invasive weeds. Panelists
emphasized that, as new species appear and range use patterns
change, land managers must remain adaptable, experimental, and
innovative. The panel was moderated by Jeremy Maestas,
Sagebrush Ecosystem Specialist with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service. A sample
of panelists' comments:
``I think it's really important that we take to heart,
not just in words but
in actions, that it's not the year 1850 anymore. We have
a fundamentally
different disturbance ecology that's present within the
annual grass zone.
We are going to have to think outside the traditional box
and embrace that
new ecology if we are going to be able to maintain
resilient landscapes.''
Chad Boyd, Rangeland Ecologist, Research Leader, Burns,
Ore., Ag-
ricultural Research Service
``Our strategic approach to weed and rangeland
management in Wyoming
is to try to do the right thing, at the right place, at
the right time. It's not
as easy as going out and killing some weeds; it's about
understanding what
the situation is, and knowing about how the species that
you're dealing
with fits into that situation. It's important to find
leverage points that are
driven by ecological understanding, and to find where we
can put a small
amount of effort and have a large amount of result.''
Brian Mealor, Direc-
tor, University of Wyoming's Sheridan Research and
Extension Cen-
ter
``If our choice is to spend a lot of money and fail
repeatedly with native
seeds or be successful with exotic seeds and establish an
exotic
monoculture, that's a tough choice in terms of
conservation values in the
long run. I don't think we're going to get all the
societal outcomes [we're]
looking for if we don't find some other solutions and new
routes to establish
native plant communities.'' Jay Kerby, Southeast Oregon
Project Man-
ager, The Nature Conservancy
L3B: Congress should direct Federal agencies to build consistency
in environmental analysis and bring agency practice in conducting EAs
more in line with the administrative policy intent of streamlined,
summary documents. Agency guidance should clarify significance
thresholds and Extraordinary Circumstances language for NEPA based on
best practices and provide, where possible, consistent approaches to
interpreting these NEPA requirements when agencies and the courts have
had conflicting interpretations.
L3C: Develop a new NEPA restoration CE that is based on decisions
documented in a Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant Impact
over the past 5 years where no significant impacts to the environment
occurred. Project activities could include commercial and noncommercial
timber harvest, hazardous fuels removal projects, prescribed burning,
post-fire restoration and herbicide use. The CE should use the best
available science, rely on collaboration, and have environmental
safeguards for consistency with appropriate management plans and
existing law and policy. In designing the CE, Congress should rely on
agency analysis of past decisions.
L3D: Allow Federal agencies to analyze only the action and no-
action alternatives when a project is collaboratively developed, unless
a third alternative is proposed during the scoping and meets the
purpose and need of the project.
L3E: Reward successful implementation of collaborative projects
through increased funding, retained-receipt authority, or other
capacity to pursue subsequent projects.
L3F: Resolve outstanding issues with potential requirements to
reinitiate endangered species consultations following the adoption,
amendment or revision of an appropriate management plan.
Nearly 400 attendees from across a wide spectrum took part in
the regional workshops held in Montana, Idaho, South Dakota and
Oregon.
Priority 4: Strengthen and expand high impact programs:
L4A: Codify and fund the USFS State and Private Landscape Scale
Restoration Competitive Grant program to prioritize work consistent
with state forestry goals and action plans.
L4B: Allow for investment of a portion of hazardous fuels funding
on state and private lands commensurate with program funding increases
for National Forest System lands.
L4C: Pass legislation to promote forest and rangeland product
markets and technologies, and expand funding for the Community Wood
Energy Program. Use program funds to create and incentivize state,
Federal and Tribal partnerships in support of these objectives.
L4D: Pass legislation, such as the 21st Century Conservation
Service Corps Act, to make it easier for young people and veterans to
complete quality, cost-effective maintenance and improvement projects
on public and Tribal lands and waters across the country. These
programs could address the backlogged maintenance needs of land and
water management agencies; enhance outdoor recreation opportunities;
improve the accessibility of public lands; and respond to wildfires and
other natural disasters.
L4E: Codify and direct funding for the Joint Chiefs Landscape
Restoration Program to facilitate continued partnership and investment
between USFS and NRCS to support restoration projects where Federal and
private land ownership and management goals intersect.
Implementation and Next Steps
As the Initiative enters its second year, Western Governors will be
primarily focused on the implementation of these recommendations,
within their own states, collaboratively through WGA and in legislation
being considered by the U.S. Congress. Several matters were raised over
the past year that deserve additional attention, but time constraints
or subject complexity prevented a thorough consideration of these
issues. WGA intends to continue the conversation on these matters and
other emerging items with the goal of providing concrete
recommendations in these areas as well.
Litigation/Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
Although litigation over Federal forest management decisions has
declined considerably over the past 2 decades, lawsuits can still
frustrate forest collaborative efforts and have a ripple effect on
broader Federal practices and policy. The topic of litigation and its
potential alternatives is both complex and controversial. There are no
easy or simple answers, but it is necessary to explore whether better
procedures and outcomes can be achieved.
During the past year, Western Governors heard from workshop
participants about issues associated with litigation. This feedback led
to a WGA-sponsored webinar that explored the present and future role of
forest litigation, potential alternatives to traditional adjudication
in Federal courts, and other alternatives that might expedite review or
allow for a certain set of projects to proceed while claims are
considered. A broad spectrum of conservation and timber industry
representatives, public officials, and other interested parties
participated in the webinar.
The webinar panel explored Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as
a means of resolving forest management disagreements. The most
frequently cited alternative to litigation was arbitration. Engaging an
arbitrator--instead of a Federal judge--to adjudicate claims is
appealing to industry and conservation interests. As there are
different systems of arbitration (and widespread dissatisfaction with
the current system), a more thorough examination of arbitration as an
alternative to litigation is warranted.
Workshop: Bend, Oregon (Jan. 23-24, 2017)
Keynotes: Kate Brown, Governor of Oregon, and Leslie Weldon, Deputy
Chief, U.S. Forest Service
Summary
Governor Kate Brown noted during her opening remarks at the
Bend workshop that ``In Oregon, we continue to pursue
strategies to accelerate the pace, scale, and quality of
restoration of our Federal forests.''
Governor Kate Brown hosted the fourth workshop of the
National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative in Bend,
Oregon. The meeting highlighted collaboration's role in
creating economic opportunities, fostering robust rural
economies, and preserving natural resources.
``We know we accomplish more working together. We have
benefited tremendously from this collaboration in Oregon,''
Governor Brown observed in her opening remarks.
``I am focused on creating jobs in our timber and rural
communities,'' she continued. ``In Oregon, we continue to
pursue strategies to accelerate the pace, scale, and quality of
restoration of our Federal forests.''
Governor Brown noted, as an example, that in 2006, the timber
sale program on the Malheur National Forest was effectively
zero. Disagreements over forest management were grinding
restoration activities to a halt. The formation of the Blue
Mountain Forest Partners collaborative has resulted in the
reinstatement of active management. That has led to a 200
percent increase in home sales in the area, as well as school
enrollment increases and a decrease in unemployment.
USFS Deputy Chief Leslie Weldon commended the work of the
initiative, noting that the workshops ``are really helping us
chart a strong path for shared stewardship with the states,
with Federal land managers, and Tribes, and communities.''
Deputy Chief Weldon encouraged initiative participants to
``not be limited by conventional thinking'' in looking for
innovative solutions to the threats facing forests and
rangelands in the West. ``Our challenges are great,'' Governor
Brown observed, ``but I am confident our resolve is greater.''
Most current litigation on behalf of environmental organizations is
concentrated in the Northern Rockies region. Some participants
expressed concern that Congress could change the current system for
everyone to address the actions of a few. Others emphasized the
importance of retaining the ability to challenge government actions due
to substantive or procedural violations of law, and expressed
reservations that ADR could be implemented in a way that safeguards
these principles. It was also suggested that a limited-scale ADR pilot
program could provide valuable insights on the feasibility of different
ADR approaches.
Despite a variety of views on the merits and efficacy of ADR, many
agree that plaintiffs should have an appropriate venue in which to air
opposition to, or grievances over, forest and rangeland projects. At
the same time, litigation intended to stall or halt collaboratively
developed projects--without consideration of a project's merits,
quality, or the collaborative process used in project design and
decisionmaking--undermines the objectives of all parties and fosters
disincentives for achieving restoration and management objectives.
Western Governors see a need for further dialogue to determine
recommendations that can help resolve chronic litigation challenges,
while allowing for the appropriate adjudication of claims. Strategies
should explore the full range of ADR tools, potential variations in the
timing and scope of these tools in project development and decisions,
and other strategies that can be deployed administratively or
legislatively to significantly reduce litigation delays and risks
beyond the use of ADR. Western Governors look forward to pursuing
options and recommendations further in year 2 of the initiative in
consultation with Federal agencies and interested stakeholders.
Pacific Islands Management Challenges
The flora and fauna of the State of Hawaii and U.S. territories in
the Pacific Ocean differ markedly from in the continental U.S. Many of
the land management challenges faced by the Pacific Islands are
instantly familiar to any continental state forester or Federal land
manager. These include:
water quantity and quality;
invasive species;
insect and disease control;
changing climate;
wildfire and public safety; and
watershed function.
WGA will examine the challenges faced by the Pacific Islands and
develop a strategy for these areas that can be integrated into the
broader WGA National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative. WGA
plans to convene a Pacific Islands workshop or webinar (or combination)
to explore the land management challenges in the State of Hawaii and
the Pacific territories, including island challenges identified in
their forest action plans. WGA will also examine how individual islands
collaborate with Federal agencies to accomplish restoration and seek
information on the level of engagement of non-Federal entities in the
execution of restoration activities.
Finally, WGA will explore additional opportunities for partnerships
to advance collective priorities and needed restoration actions in
Hawaii and the U.S. territories.
Tribal Practices and Additional Collaboration Opportunities
Tribal lands and Tribal traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) are
an important component of forest and rangeland management in the West.
In the U.S., more than 55 million acres of land are held in trust by
the Federal Government for various Native American Tribes and
individuals. The vast majority of these lands are located in western
states and are owned and managed by the 567 federally recognized
American Indian Tribes and Alaska Natives. The Federal Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA) is responsible for the administration and management of
the surface land and 57 million acres of subsurface minerals estates
held in trust for Native American and Alaska Natives.
Tribes possess nationhood status and retain inherent powers of
self-government, and states have no authority over Tribal governments
unless expressly authorized by Congress. The relationship between
Tribes and states is that of one sovereign government to another.
States and Tribes frequently collaborate and cooperate through compacts
or other agreements on matters of mutual concern (such as environmental
protection and law enforcement).
The Tribal Forest Protection Act (P.L. 108-278) does allow the
Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to give special consideration
to tribally-proposed SCA or other projects on Federal lands to protect
the Indian trust resources from fire, disease, or other threats. It is
clear, however, that there are additional opportunities for
collaboration with Tribes. For example, the integration of Tribal lands
into cross-boundary land management discussions has proven to be of
great benefit in many instances. While some aspects of Tribal
involvement were discussed at the initiative workshops, opportunities
to include Tribes in the planning and execution of restoration
activities should be examined further. In the coming year, WGA plans to
convene a western Tribal forest and rangeland restoration workshop or
webinar to explore increased collaboration opportunities to achieve
mutual Tribal and state land management objectives.
U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief Leslie Weldon commended the
work of the Initiative at the Bend workshop, noting that
participants ``are really helping us chart a strong path for
shared stewardship with the states, with Federal land managers,
and Tribes, and communities.''
Webinar: Land Management Conflict: Current Litigation and the Future
of Alternative Dispute Resolution
Citizen-suits, collaboration, and alternative dispute
resolution (ADR) was the focus of the conversation. Moderated
by David Dreier, President of Foresight LLC, a diverse panel
discussed how collaboratives can be structured to avoid
lawsuits, when ADR is appropriate, and how an equitable outcome
can be reached when litigation does occur. A sample of
panelists' comments:
``If you were to ask anybody, `Has litigation been a
benefit to the whole
process?' I think an objective answer would be, `No.'
Today, we are re-liti-
gating the same issues under fundamental laws that we
have litigated for
several decades. The courts are not a good place to
resolve what are the
fundamental questions here, and we have to seek
alternative venues.'' Jim
Riley, Principal, Riley and Associates.
``20 years ago, or 30 years ago, litigation over forest
planning and sales was
really hammering out big questions about what was the
Forest Service's
duty to implement forest plans that manage for multiple
purposes. Many
of those big overarching questions have been worked out
through that envi-
ronmental litigation. Trout Unlimited believes that a
sort of sale-by-sale
litigation strategy looks in the rearview mirror, as
opposed to a strategy
that really moves forward National Forest management in a
way that's
helpful for both wildlife species and rural
communities.'' Laura Ziemer,
Senior Counsel and Water Policy Advisor, Trout Unlimited.
``The Forest Service is very open to any idea that
fosters a mechanism that
allows us to collaborate and engage with people more
effectively than the
set of tools we have right now. Any process that we can
use to help us focus
more on working closer with people, getting the project
right, getting wider
support for the actions we are going to do, as opposed to
the more process-
oriented pieces that focus on preparing for what may
occur during litiga-
tion, is very helpful to the agency.'' Chris French,
Director, Ecosystem
Management Coordination, U.S. Forest Service.
``People want to be part of success. They want to be
part of solving problems
locally, of having their own local flair be part of how
local lands are man-
aged. You want to incentivize working together and coming
up with projects
that are durable and can get implemented. That is really
where the future
of land management lies, but I don't think that it is a
silver bullet. You
can't force people to collaborate, so there has to be a
way for them to con-
tinue to engage. These are public lands. If they feel
that laws have been
violated, substantive and procedural, they should have
their day in court.''
Susan Jane Brown, Wildlands Program Director and Staff
Attorney,
Western Environmental Law Center.
Enhanced Tracking and Performance Metrics
WGA plans to pursue emerging ideas to better track and measure
impacts of forest and rangeland restoration in collaboration with
Federal agencies, academic partners and Congress. Improved tracking and
metrics are needed to chart progress, better understand the
ramifications of inaction, and assist in prioritizing future work.
Preliminary recommendations include:
Examine the creation of a Federal Forest and Rangeland
Planning and Project Dashboard to enable periodic and real-time
monitoring of Federal project planning and implementation,
including improved measures of restoration outcomes. As a part
of this, explore the opportunity for a pilot project to develop
a collaborative online geographic information system (GIS).
Research and establish common interagency metrics to better
assess the economic, social and ecological value of forest and
rangeland restoration activities, including avoided costs of
catastrophic wildfire, and economic impacts to other linked
sectors (such as the livestock, timber, water supply and
outdoor recreation industries). Develop recommendations on how
these metrics of the economic value of restoration can be
better incorporated into decision-making. Research and
establish common interagency metrics of large-scale community
wildfire resilience to track progress across multiple projects
and resilience strategies.
Integrate rangeland assessment metrics (soil, water, plants,
animals, productive capacity) to create a rangeland
sustainability report that addresses ecological, economic and
social impacts of restoration activities. Use these metrics to
identify and prioritize restoration activities on rangelands.
Case Studies
Montana
The Custer Gallatin National Forest, Montana.
Montana has initiated a multi-faceted strategy called Forests in
Focus to accelerate forest and rangeland restoration across all land
ownerships and reinforce the positive benefits of state engagement in
Federal land management. Through the strategy, the state has built
capacity and advanced priority projects through a variety of
strategies, such as:
Chessman Reservoir Stewardship Project: Designed to help
protect the Helena water supply, this 490 acre project on the
Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest was administered by the
Montana Department of Natural Resources (DNRC). Completed in
late 2016, this project reduced hazardous fuels on
approximately 500 acres of dead and dying forests adjacent to
the reservoir. The project involved difficult hand thinning and
fuel removal along the length of the water conveyance flume.
About 4 million board feet of wood products were also generated
by the project, helping to underwrite the cost of the fuel
reduction treatments.
Investing in Coordination and Implementation of Federal
Forest Restoration: Montana created a Federal Forest Liaison
position in 2014. Doing so has proven instrumental in providing
clear communication and coordination to support state
investments in priority Federal projects, advance new tools
under the 2014 Farm Bill, and ensure state equities are
reflected in forest plan revisions.
Montana has also invested over $2 million of state funds in 27 USFS
forest restoration projects, which will help bring them online more
quickly. All told, the investments are expected to treat approximately
285,000 acres and produce 165 million board feet of timber. The
efficacy of DNRC investment is being analyzed to form the basis for
future investments of state funds in Federal forest projects.
Direct Investment in State, Tribal and Private Forest
Projects: Since 2014, Montana has invested $5.5 million in more
than 34 projects on state, Tribal, and private forest lands.
The majority of these projects have been implemented,
completing forest restoration and fuel reduction on
approximately 10,000 acres, and producing 22 million board feet
and 71,000 tons of pulp logs.
Assistance to Local Governments: Through the DNRC Local
Government Forest Advisor, Montana has helped bring county
commissioners and USFS leadership together to improve dialogue
and coordination on Federal forest planning and management.
Montana has provided financial assistance to counties to help
pay for travel, analysis, and facilitate their efforts to
engage with their Federal counterparts. In the fall of 2016,
DNRC helped plan and host the first annual ``County Forest
Summit,'' which facilitated dialogue between Federal and state
officials around forest management issues. DNRC is also
planning to provide financial and technical assistance to four
Montana counties as they intervene in court on priority USFS
projects that are under litigation.
Good Neighbor Authority (GNA): GNA allows states to enter into
cooperative agreements with certain Federal agencies and permits them
to perform various land management activities on Federal lands. Montana
signed a Master Good Neighbor Agreement in July 2016, and completed the
pilot Jumping Creek Campground GNA project soon after. Analysis has
started for the Pintlar-Prison GNA Project on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge
National Forest and adjacent lands owned by the Montana Department of
Corrections and private landowners. Two other GNA projects on the Lolo
and Kootenai National Forests are in the planning stages as well. A
master GNA Agreement with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been
finalized and is awaiting signature; several GNA projects are
anticipated to be initiated between DNRC and the BLM in 2017.
Collaboration: The DNRC Federal Forest Liaison and Local Government
Forest Advisor have been active in several forest collaborative groups
around the state, and helped form the Montana Forest Collaboration
Network in late 2016.
Idaho
Sawtooth Valley, Idaho.
Idaho has been recognized as a state leader in the use of GNA and
is using the authority to achieve a number of different restoration
objectives.
GNA Statewide Master Agreement: The state has already established a
GNA Statewide Master Agreement between the Idaho Department of Lands
(IDL) and Regions 1 and 4 of the USFS. It has also entered into a 5
year agreement with three forest products industry cooperators, who
have committed to providing up to $1 million over 5 years to cover
partial startup costs for GNA projects. Additionally, IDL has entered
into a 3 year contract with five environmental firms to support NEPA
through the state's GNA agreements. This contract allows the
environmental firms to supplement the individual forests' NEPA teams as
needed, or complete the full analysis from start to finish on any
National Forest that the state has a GNA agreement with.
Supplemental Project Agreements: Supplemental Project Agreements
(SPAs) have been developed and signed on the Nez Perce-Clearwater,
Payette, and Idaho Panhandle National Forests. The SPAs authorize and
describe how IDL will implement GNA forest restoration projects on
those National Forests. Successes include:
The first GNA timber sale (Wapiti timber sale) on the Nez
Perce-Clearwater National Forests, which is expected to
generate approximately 4.5 million board feet and $1.2 million
in net program income for Idaho GNA.
Field work for the Lost Creek Boulder Creek and Brundage
Vegetation Management Projects. On Lost Creek Boulder Creek,
approximately 150 acres have been designated for harvest, and
on Brundage, 180 acres with 14 treatment units have been
identified for treatment.
Reconnaissance work on the 3,000 acre Hanna Flats project, a
thinning and fuel reduction project, has started near Priest
Lake on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. The field
reconnaissance work provided the basis to begin the
collaborative conversation with the public for a proposed
action within the NEPA process.
South Dakota
Black Hills Forest, South Dakota.
South Dakota's effort to address Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB)
infestation is an excellent example of successful cross-boundary
management:
Black Hills Forest Initiative: Governor Dennis Daugaard led a Black
Hills Forest Initiative focused on state and private lands as a part of
the overall MPB effort, and later expanded to Federal lands. The state
legislature supplied almost $11 million over several years to complete
work on priority landscapes across private, state and Federal lands. In
addition, two Landscape Scale Restoration grants provided by USFS State
and Private Forestry over 3 years added another $600,000 to the MPB
suppression effort.
Since 2011, this initiative has resulted in the survey of 278,149
acres of state and private land and the completion of 4,807 acres in
Black Hills National Forest timber sales, identifying 672,000 infested
trees and the treatment of 557,000 trees.
County Mountain Pine Beetle Initiative: Supported by state and
county funds, the County Mountain Pine Beetle Initiative identified
over 121,000 infested and dead trees in four key counties, and by the
end of 2015 had treated more than 84,000 of those trees. The result of
these concentrated efforts, coupled with 1.4 million infested trees
harvested by the local forest products industry, has achieved a
dramatic reduction in the amount of MPB-caused pine mortality in the
Black Hills.
Oregon
The Federal Forest Restoration Program has been instrumental in
accelerating the pace, scale and quality of restoration projects in
Oregon. About ten percent of program funds have been awarded as grants
to local collaborative groups to procure facilitation services and
technical assistance to reach agreements for landscape scale projects.
One example of success is the Blue Mountain Forest Partners,
which switched from a project-by-project approach to an issues-
based approach to collaboration. This has allowed the group to
expand their agreements to keep up with the accelerated pace of
restoration. Since 2013, the Malheur National Forest has
tripled its timber output and expanded the boundary of the
Southern Blues CFLR project area by 300,000 acres. The state
has used its own funds to assist the USFS with data collection
to reduce NEPA timeframes. The state has also used firefighting
staff on the shoulder seasons to assist with pre-sale layout on
54 timber sales statewide to increase the pace of treatment
implementation. On the Willamette National Forest, the state is
estimated to have completed 55 percent of all pre-sale layout
in the fiscal year and helped the forest exceed its timber
target.
Another notable success is the Blue Mountains Cohesive
Strategy Pilot Project, which is located on 7.5 million acres
of mixed land ownership in northeastern Oregon, southeastern
Washington and western Idaho. Federal Records of Decision were
signed on 137,487 acres of collaborative projects within the
Blue Mountains region from 2012-2014, with planning work
proceeding on an additional 465,356 acres. In addition to
treatments on both Federal and private lands, the Oregon
Department of Forestry and Department of Fish and Wildlife
(ODFW) partnered to implement a timber sale on a property owned
and managed by ODFW.
Wyoming
Wyoming Governor Matt Mead established a Task Force on Forests in
2013. The group was charged with examining all forests in the state,
regardless of jurisdiction, and providing recommendations to assess and
address the challenges affecting forest conditions and management. The
final report includes 12 major recommendations and 53
subrecommendations for the Governor's consideration. The task force's
efforts have served as a blueprint for improving forest management
practices throughout the state.
New Mexico
The Watershed Restoration Initiative, started by New Mexico
Governor Susana Martinez in 2014, has enabled implementation of forest
restoration projects designed to improve and protect water quality.
Approximately $12.2 million in state funds and an additional $9.475
million of matching Federal funds have been committed to carry out
initiative work. The state and its partners have undertaken 50 separate
projects covering 27,263 acres in 14 watersheds identified as high
priority in the New Mexico Forest Action Plan.
One notable success has been the Mescalero Apache Tribe Watershed
Restoration Project. The project targeted three watersheds listed as
high priority by New Mexico State Forestry, as part of a statewide
assessment that looked at watershed areas that are considered at-risk.
The project was completed ahead of schedule due, in large part, to the
collaboration of the state and the Tribe. The restoration work reduced
tree density throughout the watersheds, promoting forest resiliency,
benefiting overall forest health and lowering the threat of
uncharacteristic wildfire. This will not only improve the watersheds on
Mescalero Tribal land, but extend protection to water resources and
communities downstream within the Tularosa Basin.
Colorado
Firefighters on the 2002 Hayman Fire, whose long-term impacts
dramatically affected water quality and supply for the Front
Range of Colorado.
Soil health impacts from uncharacteristic catastrophic wildfires
along Colorado's Front Range, including the 1996 Buffalo Creek and 2002
Hayman wildfires, have led to severe erosion and sediment accumulation
in reservoirs supplying drinking water for the greater Denver area.
From Forests to Faucets is a partnership between the Colorado State
Forest Service, USFS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and
the Denver Water Department. The partnership began in 2010 with the
goal of restoring forests affected by wildfire and mitigating wildfire
risk in critical watersheds to reduce future water quality impacts. To
date, more than 40,000 acres of National Forest System (NFS) lands have
been treated for fire mitigation and restoration.
In February 2017, the partnership was renewed until 2021 and $33
million pledged to complete projects across NFS and private lands in
support of watershed protection for Denver's water supply.
California
Governor Jerry Brown established the Tree Mortality Task Force
(TMTF) to address the effects of bark beetle infestation and prolonged
drought. The TMTF includes state and Federal agencies, local
governments, utilities and various stakeholders working cooperatively
to coordinate emergency protective actions and monitor on-the-ground
conditions.
The state estimates that since 2010, more than 100 million trees
have succumbed to the stress of beetle infestation or drought. Of
California's 32 million acres of forestland, over 6 million acres have
been classified as either Tier I or Tier II High Hazard Zones. The TMTF
coordinates Federal, state and local governments to ensure that
restoration activities are organized effectively, ensuring that these
high-hazard areas receive priority treatment. It also serves as an
important focal point of communication between different layers of
government, nongovernmental organizations, Tribes, and private
landowners, providing regular updates on tree mortality and the status
of restoration activities.
On the Web
A central objective of this initiative is to enable participants to
engage in discussions designed to deliver insights on current land
management practices and identify improvements that will put western
states on a path to developing healthy, resilient landscapes and
communities. To ensure the conversation reaches the widest possible
audience, WGA launched an online resource that includes videos of all
Workshops, our Webinar series, and a variety of other resources. We've
also created the Initiative Appendix, a document that delivers expanded
detail on the conversations at each workshop, as well as responses to
participant questionnaires.
Workshops
Nearly 400 attendees took part in the four regional Initiative
Workshops. The workshops were ``live-streamed'' on the web and
subsequently posted to YouTube. Workshops were hosted by Gov. Steve
Bullock in Montana, Gov. C.L. ``Butch'' Otter in Idaho, Gov. Dennis
Daugaard in South Dakota and Gov. Kate Brown in Oregon.
Webinars
The Initiative webinar series featured the leading thinkers on
topics such as ``The Future of Wild Horse and Burro Management,''
``Rangeland Management Strategies and Tools,'' and ``Land Management
Conflict,'' which explored litigation and Alternative Dispute
Resolution.
Find the Initiative online resource and join the conversation at:
westgov.org
Acknowledgments
WGA appreciates the time and effort that workshop panelists
provided to the initiative. We would also like to thank the following
for their assistance throughout the past year:
Bob Harrington, Montana State Keith Lannom, USFS Payette
Forester Forest Supervisor
Tim Baker, Member, Northwest Charles Lyons, RFPA Member,
Power and Conservation Council Percy Ranch
Jeremy Maestas, Natural
Resources Conservation Service
Christine Dawe, Director of Joe Merrick, Owyhee County
Renewable Resources Management, Commissioner
U.S. Forest Service Mikal Moore, National Wild
Turkey Federation
Kelsey Delaney, Policy Peg Polichio, IDL GNA
Director, Council of Western State Contractor
Foresters Cheryl Probert, USFS Nez Perce-
Patrick Holmes, Natural Clearwater Forest Supervisor
Resources Advisor, Montana Brenda Richards, Owyhee County
Governor's Office Rancher
John Robison, Idaho Forest
Restoration Partnership
Panelists and Speakers Allen Rowley, USFS Rangeland
Management Director
Missoula, Montana Workshop Tom Schultz, Director, Idaho
Department of Lands
September 20-21, 2016 Julia Sullens, IDL
Rick Tholen, Payette Forest
Coalition
Honorable Steve Bullock, Troy Timmons, WGA
Governor of Montana
Tom Tidwell, Chief, U.S. Forest Will Whelan, The Nature
Service Conservancy
James D. Ogsbury, WGA Executive
Director
Matt Arno, Local Government Deadwood, South Dakota Workshop
Forest Advisor, Montana DNRC December 1-2, 2016
Tim Baker, Montana Governor's
Office
Rebecca Barnard, National Honorable Dennis Daugaard,
Forestry Programs Manager, Governor of South Dakota
National Wild Turkey Federation Troy Timmons, WGA
Mo Bookwalter, DNRC-USFS Craig Bobzien, USFS, Black
Liaison Hills National Forest Supervisor--
Caroline Byrd, Executive Retired
Director, Greater Yellowstone Ryan Brunner, Commissioner of
Coalition South Dakota School and Public
Cecilia Clavet, Senior Policy Lands
Advisor, The Nature Conservancy Chance Davis, Heart Tail Ranch,
LLP
Tony Colter, Plant Manager, Sun Christine Dawe, USFS
Mountain Lumber Company Kelsey Delaney, Council of
Western State Foresters
Christine Dawe, Acting Director Jay Esperance, SDDA Wildland
of Forest Management, USFS Fire Director
Kelsey Delaney, Council of Mike Jaspers, Secretary, South
Western State Foresters Dakota Department of Agriculture
(SDDA)
Ryan Domsalla, West Fork Eric Jennings, Hollow Valley
District Ranger, Bitterroot Ranch
National Forest, USFS Karl Jensen, South Dakota
Carol Ekarius, Executive Association of Conservation
Director, Coalition for the Upper Districts
South Platte Greg Josten, State Forester,
Jonas Feinstein, State South Dakota Department of
Conservation Forester, Natural Agriculture (SDDA)
Resources Conservation Service Lori ``Chip'' Kimball, BLM
Tom France, Senior Director, Steve Kozel, USFS, District
Western Wildlife Conservation, Ranger, Black Hills National
National Wildlife Federation Forest
Tom Fry, Western Conservation Jim Neiman, Neiman Enterprises
Director, American Forest Inc.
Foundation Dave Ollila, Sheep Field
Ron Gray, Wood Fuel Manager, Specialist, South Dakota State
Avista Utilities University Extension
Buddy Green, Wyoming Deputy Jeff Parrett, Wheeler Lumber,
State Director, U.S. Bureau of LLC
Land Management Bob Paulson, The Nature
Conservancy
Joseph Hansen, Conservation Hunter Roberts, South Dakota
Forester, Jefferson Conservation Governor's Office
District Allen Rowley, USFS
Bob Harrington, Montana State Bill Smith, South Dakota
Forester Department of Agriculture
Wayne Hedman, Bitterroot David Steffen, Mid Missouri
Restoration Committee River Prescribed Burn Association
Jennifer Hensiek, Missoula Dan Svingen, USFS
District Ranger, Lolo National
Forest, USFS
Bill Imbergamo, Executive Dave Thom, Custer Conservation
Director, Federal Forest Resource District & Coordinator of the MPB
Coalition Working Group
Denny Iverson, Blackfoot Nancy Trautman, Pennington
Challenge County Commissioner
Dyrk Krueger, Enhanced Forest Mark Van Every, USFS, Black
Management, Inc. Hills National Forest Supervisor
Rich Lane, Willis Enterprises
Tera Little, Farm Bill ID Team Mike Wood, High Ridge
Leader, USFS Leadership
Tim Love, Montana Forest Ben Wudtke, Black Hills Forest
Collaboratives' Network Resource Association
Sarah Lundstrum, National Parks Mary Zimmerman, Black Hills
Conservation Association National Forest Advisory Board
Leanne Marten, Regional
Forester, USFS Northern Region
Mary Mitsos, National Forest
Foundation
Cassandra Moseley, Director, Bend, Oregon Workshop
Institute for a Sustainable January 23-24, 2017
Environment, University of Oregon
Mark Peck, Lincoln County
Commissioner, MT
Mike Petersen, Lands Council Honorable Kate Brown, Governor
of Oregon
Ralph Rau, Regional Fire and Leslie Weldon, Deputy Chief,
Aviation Director, USFS--Region 1 U.S. Forest Service
James D. Ogsbury, WGA Executive
Director
Chuck Roady, General Manager, Ron Alvarado, State
F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Conservationist, NRCS
Bill Aney, Former Eastside
Restoration Coordinator, USFS
Gordy Sanders, Resource Steve Beverlin, Malheur
Manager, Pyramid Mountain Lumber National Forest Supervisor, U.S.
Forest Service
Dave Schulz, Madison County Pete Caligiuri, The Nature
Commissioner, MT Conservancy
John Tubbs, Director, Montana Nils Christofferson, Wallowa
DNRC Resources
Russ Vaagen, Vice President, Peter Daugherty, Oregon State
Vaagen Bros Lumber Co. Forester
Chas Vincent, Kootenai Forest Chad Davis, Partnership and
Stakeholders Coalition Planning Program Director, Oregon
Department of Forestry
Boise, Idaho Workshop Steve Grasty, Judge (Retired),
Harney County, Oregon
October 20-21, 2016 Karen Hardigg, Rural Voices for
Conservation Coalition
Paul Henson, Oregon State
Honorable C.L. ``Butch'' Otter, Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Governor of Idaho Service
Jim Lyons, U.S. Department of Paul Hessburg, U.S. Forest
the Interior Service
James D. Ogsbury, WGA Executive Tom Insko, Eastern Oregon
Director University
Steve Acarregui, BLM Fire and Travis Joseph, American Forest
Aviation Directorate Resource Council
David Anderson, Natural Jason Miner, Governor Kate
Resource Results Brown's Natural Resource Policy
Zoanne Anderson, Maggie Creek Manager
Area Manager, IDL
Dennis Becker, University of Cassandra Moseley, University
Idaho of Oregon
Bob Boeh, Idaho Forest Group John O'Keeffe, Oregon
Cattlemen's Association
Mike Courtney, Twin Falls Jim Pena, Regional Forester,
District Manager, U.S. Bureau of U.S. Forest Service
Land Management Sally Russell, Mayor Pro Tem of
Bend, Oregon
Gordon Cruickshank, Valley Mark Stern, The Nature
County Commissioner Conservancy
Christine Dawe, USFS Acting Sean Stevens, Oregon Wild
Director of Forest Management John Stromberg, Mayor of
Ashland, Oregon
Kelsey Delaney, Council of Troy Timmons, WGA
Western State Foresters
Don Ebert, Clearwater County Mark Webb, Blue Mountains
Commissioner Forest Partners
Mary Farnsworth, USFS Acting
Deputy Regional Forester
Craig Foss, IDL
David Groeschl, Idaho
Department of Lands (IDL)
Toni Hardesty, The Nature
Conservancy
Darcy Helmick, RFPA Member
Alex Irby, Clearwater Basin
Collaborative
Liz Johnson-Gebhardt, Priest
Community Forest Connection
Don Kemner, Idaho Department of
Fish and Game
Shawn Keough, Associated
Logging Contractors--Idaho
Gina Knudson, USFS Salmon-
Challis National Forest
Terry Kramer, Twin Falls County
Commissioner
WGA Thanks Our . . .
Initiative Sponsors
Workshop Sponsor
Idaho Forest Group
Workshop Supporters
National Wild Turkey Foundation Neiman Enterprises, Inc.
Initiative Affiliates
American Sheep Industry Theodore Roosevelt Public Lands Council
Association Conservation
Partnership
National Cattlemen's Beef Association
Initiative Funding Also Provided By
United States Department of United States Department of
Agriculture, Forest Service Agriculture, Natural Resources
Conservation Service
______
Submitted Questions
Response from John Phipps, Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry,
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Questions Submitted by Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a Representative
in Congress from Virginia
Question 1. Deputy Chief Phipps, 2020 has been an unprecedented
fire year. Over 7 million acres have burned nationwide, a figure that
exceeds the 10 year-to-date average by a million acres. In addition to
this, the COVID-19 health crisis presents new challenges to the
wildland fire system. Can you take a moment to discuss the unique
factors at play this wildfire year? Does the Forest Service have the
necessary resources--including agency personnel, physical assets, and
personal protective equipment to meet current challenges?
Answer. This fire year was challenging due to many factors, not the
least of which was modifying our response efforts to incorporate
employee and community protections against COVID-19. In addition to
challenges in preparing for a fire year during a global pandemic,
toward the end of the fire season, we had extreme fire activity
occurring simultaneously across multiple geographic areas in the Rocky
Mountains and the West Coast.
In a typical fire year, fire activity transitions from the
southwestern part of the country, to the western states and then into
southern California, allowing for resources to move around the country,
surging to the areas of greatest need. In latter part of the 2020 fire
year, we saw a simultaneous and persistent need for resources
throughout the western United States, stretching resources to their
limit for several weeks. The wildland fire system was able to respond
effectively despite these significant challenges. The agency
anticipates similar challenges in the future and will be evaluating and
implementing many lessons learned to better position ourselves for
future fire years. The supplemental funding received from the
Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act provided the agency
with much needed resources to ensure that adequate personal protective
equipment was available to all agency wildland fire responders.
This year, despite these challenging circumstances, the agency was
able to deliver an effective interagency wildland fire response, at
certain times deploying over 32,000 firefighters, the largest
mobilization since record keeping began. The agency is focused on
providing a strategy to modernize our preparedness and response efforts
and adopting best practices learned from this year's deployments. We
are moving to a virtual posture whenever possible to provide support
across many areas simultaneously rather than utilizing large fire camps
for firefighter support. These changes were a vast improvement over
historical practices and will continue.
Question 2. Deputy Chief Phipps, in a budget hearing earlier this
year, Chief Christiansen testified to the need of shifting the wildland
firefighting workforce towards full-time to account for the changes we
are experiencing across landscapes, including longer and more intense
fire seasons as a result of climate change. Please take some time to
discuss the need for a full-time firefighting workforce--both in terms
of reducing fire risk and improving forest health overall?
Answer. A full-time firefighting workforce would allow the agency
to more effectively address the entirety of the wildland fire cycle,
and the agency continues to work towards a more effective balance of
full-time and seasonal firefighters. Year-round wildland fire resources
could increase--the agency's capacity to treat hazardous fuels and
large landscapes prior to the most active months of the fire year and
still provide a robust response capability during months of peak
activity. Additionally, a year-round work force reduces the
administrative burden of on-boarding thousands of temporary and
seasonal firefighters each year.
Question 3. Across much of the United States, fire seasons have
lengthened by as many as 20 days per decade over the last forty years.
As climate change continues to intensify fire seasons, what steps is
the Forest Service taking to proactively manage fire risk?
Answer. It is true that annual fire seasons are weeks longer than
they were a few decades ago as forest management activities have seen a
decrease since the 1990's. Agencies often now refer to the ``fire
year'' instead of the ``fire season.'' The Forest Service is an active
partner in the National Cohesive Wildfire Management Strategy (Cohesive
Strategy). The Cohesive Strategy has three goals, and the Forest
Service is making meaningful progress on all three.
1. Resilient Landscapes--The agency is involved in many initiatives
to foster resilient landscapes across all land ownerships
(e.g., Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration, Shared
Stewardship, and Quantitative Wildfire Risk Assessments).
Agency researchers are leading the world on diverse topics
such as small-diameter wood utilization needed to cost-
effectively thin forests for improved health; developing
models to better predict fire behavior under future weather
conditions; and pioneering physics-based approaches to
modeling wildfire and smoke to forecast airhazards to
communities.
2. Fire Adapted Communities--the most tragic wildfire consequences
often occur in communities and in the wildland-urban
interface. The agency is a supportive partner in many
projects to help communities become more fire resilient and
learn to live with fire. These projects include: Community
Mitigation Assistance Teams, https://www.fs.usda.gov/
managing-land/fire/cmat; Community Planning Assistance for
Wildfire, https://cpaw.headwaterseconomics.org/; Federal
Excess Personal Property program, https://www.fs.usda.gov/
managing-land/fire/fepp; Fire Adapted Communities Learning
Network, https://fireadaptednetwork.org/; Firewise USA,
https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-
risks/Wildfire/Firewise-USA; Ready, Set, Go!, https://
www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/ready-set-go/
; EPA's Smoke-Ready Toolbox, https://www.epa.gov/smoke-
ready-toolbox-wildfires; and the Wildland Fire Assessment
Program, https://www.nvfc.org/programs/wildland-fire-
assessment-program/. The agency also provides tools and
data for communities such as the Wildfire Risk to
Communities website, https://wildfirerisk.org/. The
dividends paid by these programs will be even more
important to meet the climate demands of the future.
3. Safe and Effective Wildfire Response--The Forest Service is
taking steps and working with partners to ensure that our
response to wildfires will be safe and effective. For
example:
The Forest Service is adjusting staffing levels to have
additional year-round
personnel available for response throughout the year.
All fire response agencies are fine-tuning guidance
about when and where
to deploy human resources to reduce risks to firefighters
and invest in ac-
tions with the greatest likelihood of success.
Communication equipment and protocols are being updated.
Question 4. Can you speak to the role of technology in wildland
fire management? Are you aware of any innovative uses of technology in
the field or currently being tested today? Where do you see technology
being most useful in the future?
Answer. Technology is a critical component in all aspects of
wildland fire management. Technology and associated data are critical
in decision support processes, risk management evaluations, and the
monitoring and evaluation of both aircraft use and ground crews.
Technology is the backbone of fire modeling and associated weather
inputs that allow fire managers to understand current and predicted
fire behaviors. These outputs, fused with resource availability and
use, allow fire managers to view a landscape at a tactical and
strategic level to ensure effective and efficient use of fire resources
is occurring. The use of technology during this most recent fire year
allowed incident management organizations to operate more safely
despite the COVID-19 pandemic by providing a cloud-based collaboration
suite of tools that could be managed in remote locations, significantly
reducing the need for continuous face-to-face interactions.
Innovation is occurring at all levels and business areas of fire
management. Unmanned aerial systems and High Altitude Long Endurance
resources are currently being tested to enhance unmanned aerial systems
use and improve situational awareness. The installation and use of
ground-based camera systems has mostly phased out the need for staffing
lookout towers, as well as providing better coverage of the landscape
for wildland fire detection and monitoring. The testing and integration
of fire resource tracking systems is currently being evaluated across
the fire community with several different tracking devices and back-end
systems to view and analyze the data.
Technology will continue to enhance situational awareness in
wildland fire and landscape impacts caused by fire. Technology will
allow firefighters to analyze situations using current and historical
data processed with artificial intelligence giving probabilities of
success based on a given tactic.
Question 5. How has the COVID-19 crisis impacted the number of
firefighters and other support personnel? How does the number of
personnel deployed to respond to wildfire this year compare to past
seasons? Do you have an adequate number of firefighters?
Answer. COVID-19 did decrease personnel on incident management
teams due to individuals at high risk choosing not to participate this
year. However, the interagency firefighting community was able to
deploy over 32,000 firefighters at certain times during the 2020 fire
year despite this challenge. This was the largest deployment of
resources since record keeping began.
Question 6. What measures and training protocols is the Forest
Service implementing to mitigate COVID-19 virus exposure to wildland
firefighters and the communities they serve? How is the Forest Service
working to ensure COVID-19 related precautions are being implemented
across all the geographic regions?
Answer. The National Wildfire Coordination Group Fire Management
Board has developed a hazard assessment toolkit to provide information
and templates for the wildland fire community to assess current
infection control, testing, and workplace procedures relating to COVID-
19 in the wildland fire environment. https://www.nwcg.gov/partners/fmb/
hazard-assessment-prevention-toolkit.
Firefighters have received information on appropriate mask use,
what to do when they are symptomatic and how to follow CDC guidelines
and work with their local health officials. Agencies are emphasizing
greater use of traditional and social media, as well as internet-based
technologies to provide consistent communication with the public on
wildfire issues where social distancing and ``Stay at Home'' orders
limit in-person communication. When large fires require firefighters to
travel from outside the local area, crews are being mobilized and
supported in a manner that ensures social distancing and protection for
local communities from the spread of COVID-19. Agencies are working
with community leaders and local law enforcement, ensuring that
community needs are being met and wildfire threats and capacity are
clearly understood when planning firefighting strategy and evacuations.
Large fire camps are not the norm. Most firefighting efforts are being
accomplished in small groups and dispersed into isolated camps to
provide firefighters and the public better social distancing and safety
from the spread of COVID-19. Wildland fire agencies have adapted
support functions to be accomplished virtually to maintain social
distancing. We continue to work with interagency partners to determine
when and how to bring in resources from outside the local area when a
fire escapes initial attack.
Mitigation measures also include crews maintaining a module-of-one
philosophy at fire camps to keep crews isolated from one another; masks
are required while on a fire or at the home unit when around anyone not
on their module; physical distancing of at least 6 is required unless
physically not possible, i.e., vehicles; vehicles are to maximize air
flow/exchange with windows partially open and no use of recirculation
of interior air; non-fire personnel are to wear masks and maximize
physical distance from fire personnel when interaction is needed; and
crews are expected to be self-sufficient, including a three-day supply
of food and water for every crew member when they arrive on their fire
assignment. Many crews procured coolers as well as another vehicle to
carry food and water to limit their interaction with community members
while traveling and ensure minimal support would be required on their
assignments. Crews also designated individuals that dispensed fuel and
went into convenience stores to get supplies to limit both exposure to
community members and the crew. The Forest Service has a representative
on the Medical Public Health Advisory Team that developed and
disseminated guidance to fire personnel across the nation to follow.
Question 7. The Forest Service recently unveiled a new website
designed to help community leaders assess the wildfire risk in their
community, region, and state. Have you received any feedback from
community leaders on the website? Have you found it to be helpful
during this fire season?
Answer. Yes. Since the Wildfire Risk to Communities website was
launched in April 2020, 22,000 people have visited with 73,000 page-
views. The bulk of these visits have been from western states, but we
have had visits from every state. The website offers geospatial data
downloads to create custom analysis. The geospatial data has been
downloaded over 1,000 times. The California data alone has been
downloaded 150 times.
The project development team conducted a series of live webinars
(e.g., National Association of State Foresters and American Planning
Association), gave interviews for articles, and received comments from
the website. The feedback has been extremely positive. Most are
thankful for the new data and resources. There have been compliments
about the organization and design of the website.
Some comments have suggested improvements for future versions. Many
commenters would like the data periodically updated and maintained. The
Forest Service is collaborating with the University of Colorado to
conduct a social survey of users to gain additional insight this winter
and spring.
Much of the wildland fire emphasis during the summer of 2020 was on
suppression of active wildfires. The Wildfire Risk to Communities
website focuses on identification and reduction of future risks. Also,
due to fire activity in 2020, awareness of the website and its
resources has grown slowly.
In mid-September, the project team reached out to and provided
geospatial data about housing unit density (from our website) to the
WiFire Project (University of California San Diego). WiFire
incorporated the data that same day to help round out their provision
of real-time data for monitoring, modeling, research, and operational
uses. The data helped advise operations for the rest of the 2020
wildfire season.
Additionally, the team has presented webinars this fall that
included a retrospective look at some of the 2020 wildfires. We
demonstrated to the webinar viewers that some areas of severe wildfires
were only ranked in the mid-range for wildfire risk. This underscores
the somewhat random nature of wildfire. We emphasized that wildfire
risk awareness and mitigation actions to reduce wildfire risk should
not be limited to the top-tier communities. Catastrophes can and do
occur in communities with moderate risk. There is no way to predict
which specific communities will be next.
Question 8. The National Multiagency Coordinating Group released
geographic-specific plans to help guide wildland fire response during
the COVID pandemic. As I understand it, the plans are working
documents. They will be updated as new information becomes available.
Drawing on these working plans, can you discuss how COVID-19 has
impacted particular aspects of the wildland fire system. What lesson
have been learned so far?
Answer. The geographic area plans served their purpose by gathering
and compiling key information nationally early in the pandemic. Each
geographic area took a tailored approach to utilizing these plans and
modifying as information became available. Measures developed to reduce
concentrations of personnel and exposure to COVID-19 were successfully
implemented.
The wildland fire system embraced the concept of remote response,
particularly in large fire management. We successfully used a remote
Situation Unit and expanded into other incident management team
functions such as the planning section, public information, and
finance. Collaborative calls were held from the beginning of the
western fire season with Incident Commanders, as well as other
functional area representatives, in order to compare notes and best
practices in dealing with mitigations for the pandemic. We learned that
many functions can effectively work remotely and have plans to continue
to fine tune these practices this winter in order to implement some
into the future.
Questions Submitted by Hon. Chellie Pingree, a Representative in
Congress from Maine
Question 1. The situation out West is highlighting the effects that
a changing climate bring to bear on wildfire. Your testimony noted that
this is an ``unprecedented year.'' California just had its warmest
August on record. Even in Maine, we are experiencing an extended
drought and the worst fire season in over a decade. As we face even
higher temperatures, warmer winters, and decreased snowpack further
worsening wildfires, what proactive steps is the Forest Service taking
to respond to the challenge of climate change?
Answer. The Forest Service has undertaken work in several areas to
respond to the climate demands of the future and developed the
Sustainability Scorecard to track the agency's progress toward
sustainable management outcomes and to improve its ability to respond
quickly to new challenges. The Scorecard provides evidence of the
agency's progress toward addressing future risks, and helps us
integrate change into our programs, plans, and projects.
The Forest Service supports decision making grounded in best
available science by developing datasets, tools, and methods to
forecast the impacts of a changing climate on national forests and
grasslands. For example, Forest Service Research and Development
provides baseline data and research on climate driven interactions with
wildfire, insect and disease outbreaks, and invasive species. This
research is used to develop and enhance practices to improve climate
resilience, including implementing fuel reduction treatments in forests
throughout the West and South.
The Forest Service is also addressing changing climate through our
operations, decreasing emissions of greenhouse gases by 23% through
FY19 compared to FY08, including emissions directly generated and from
purchased electricity. Several Forest Service regions offer a
microgrant program to encourage innovative methods of reducing the
agency's environmental footprint.
Consideration of climate is required under the 2012 Planning Rule,
and the agency incorporates this into Land Management Plans as they are
revised. To support this work, the Forest Service conducts regional and
forest-level climate vulnerability assessments using the best available
science on a variety of managed resources (e.g., trees, wildlife,
recreation). The agency is updating its complete assessment of carbon
stocks for every Region and Unit in the National Forest System, as well
as developing a national comprehensive approach for including these
assessments in land management planning and NEPA disclosures.
The Forest Service is also addressing a changing climate by
providing support and data for the World Economic Forum's One Trillion
Trees initiative that President Trump announced the United Stated would
join in January. The President followed this announcement by signing an
Executive Order to establish the One Trillion Trees Interagency
Council, which will be co-chaired by USDA. The initiative aims to
increase carbon sequestration by managing, conserving, and regenerating
our Nation's forests.
The Forest Service is also supporting carbon uptake on private
lands; for example, developing a silvics guide and economic models to
support farmer uptake of agroforestry. In addition, the agency supports
development of economical biofuels as well as wood innovations that can
store carbon outside of forests; for example, furthering the use of
wood in tall building construction.
Question 2. The Forest Service's contribution to USDA's Climate
Hubs has been essentially cut in half from 2016 levels. In response to
a previous question for the record on this matter, the Forest Service
wrote: ``The funding drop is reflective of prioritization of urgent
forest restoration program and project work. However, the agency
continues to support many important initiatives through our multiple
Research and Development programs.''
Can you provide more information about how these USFS Research and
Development programs are working to address climate change?
Answer. Forest Service Research and Development programs are
working to address the climate demands of the future in several ways.
First, the agency produces protocols, data, and map products of
baseline carbon and greenhouse gas inventory estimates recognized and
used by many as authoritative for all forests and ownerships in the
United States. This research includes producing the official U.S.
National Greenhouse Gas Inventory estimates for land use change and
forestry, including carbon in harvested wood products. This research
supports carbon accounting and markets which finance activities to
reduce atmospheric CO2.
Second, Forest Service Research and Development has recently
developed a Library of Silvicultural Prescriptions and a Scenario
Investment Planning Tool to identify climate resilient practices that
support rural economies. We are developing science-based menus of
adaptation approaches for forest managers and have played a key role in
developing climate vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans. Our
scientists are working with National Forests and partners to ensure
restoration and afforestation projects use climate-resilient species
that will succeed over time.
Third, working directly with states, Research and Development is
identifying potential land-based carbon sequestration strategies and
opportunities for implementation to enhance climate mitigation. We are
providing states and the National Forest System with information on
carbon storage and flux to better understand carbon implications of
policy, management, and planning activities. Our Forest Products Lab is
developing and testing products to enhance long-term carbon
sequestration in wood products and replace energy-intensive materials.
In addition, Research and Development continues to work with
stakeholders and the National Forest System to understand actual and
potential social and economic impacts of a changing climate. Our
scientists also study mechanisms to enhance and incentivize uptake of
climate-smart practices.
Finally, Research and Development monitors baseline impacts of a
changing climate on forests and rangelands and studies interactions
with wildfire, insect and disease outbreaks, and invasive species. This
research is used to develop and enhance practices to improve climate
resilience, including implementing fuel reduction treatments in forests
throughout the West and South in order to reduce fuel loads which are
largely responsible for increased fire severity.
Question 2a. While I understand the Forest Service working with
limited resources, it seems problematic to shortchange the Climate Hubs
given the impact of climate change on every aspect of the Forest
Service's work. How can we work with you to make sure longer-term
climate solutions and resilience efforts aren't left behind?
Answer. Critical work to improve climate resilience is ongoing in
the Forest Service, and the Climate Hubs are an important part of this
body of work. Long-term climate solutions and resilience efforts in
forests and rangelands are bolstered by cross-agency efforts. The Five-
Year Review of the Climate Hubs indicated the demand for Climate Hub
programs and products and services exceeds current capacity. We are
evaluating the needs and our resources to ensure we are efficiently
delivering our programs to maximize impact. We would be happy to work
with you to address our capabilities in carrying out climate resilience
efforts.
Question 3. One obstacle to wildfire risk reduction is the lack of
markets for small diameter wood, which means it is generally not cost-
effective to remove it. Mass timber like cross-laminated timber has the
potential to drive demand for this material, reduce wildfire hazards,
and even reduce the carbon footprint of new construction. The 2018 Farm
Bill included some support for these types of innovative materials, but
there is more that could be done.
Would you agree that there is a need for a government-wide effort
to develop markets for small diameter wood? How can we create a viable,
at-scale market for this material?
Answer. There is a need for increased market opportunities for
small diameter wood across the United States to support healthy forests
and reduced wildfire risk. Small dimension timber of both widely used
species and underutilized species lacks markets. In the West, millions
of acres of forests need intense management to thin our forests,
improve forest health and reduce wildland fire risk. Northern states
and areas along the Appalachian Range with hardwood forests have seen
reduced markets due to off-shoring of the furniture manufacturing
industry and the significant decline of printing and publishing paper.
The Forest Service Wood Innovations Program expands and creates
markets for wood products and renewable wood energy that support long-
term, sustainable management of the National Forest System and other
forest lands. Markets for small diameter wood with substantial growth
potential include, but are not limited to, mass timber, cellulosic
nanomaterials in concrete and renewable wood energy. Continuing to
invest in the Wood Innovations Program supports growing markets such as
these through grant programs and infrastructure investment.
Question 4. Along those lines, are there other areas where Congress
can support Forest Service efforts that both reduce the immediate risk
of wildfire and contribute to emissions reduction or carbon
sequestration to reduce climate risks in the long run?
Answer. As part of its FY 2021 budget request, the USDA submitted
to Congress a package of legislative reforms to improve forest
management and reduce wildfire risk. The proposals are intended to
support healthy forests and rangelands and aid in efforts to protect
homes, watersheds and critical infrastructure from catastrophic
wildfires. The USDA would like to work with the committee to identify
solutions that match the threat of the wildfire problem and scale of
forest management needed.
Questions Submitted by Hon. Collin C. Peterson, a Representative in
Congress from Minnesota
Question 1. Director Phipps, the Forest Service employs multiple
types of aircraft to suppress fire on Federal lands. Can you tell us
how single engine aircraft tankers and scoopers are utilized in the
field as part of the agency's fire suppression efforts? Can you
describe the mission profile of single engine aircraft tankers and
scoopers? What drop objectives are met by these aircraft?
Answer. Single engine airtankers are contracted by the Department
of the Interior but are often ordered by incident commanders for use on
Forest Service-protected lands. Single engine airtankers are utilized
very similarly to large airtankers but only hold 800 gallons of
retardant compared to 3,000 gallons or more for a large airtanker.
There are many more single engine airtankers than large airtankers so
they can be dispersed widely in the field. They often operate in
flights of two aircraft to increase their retardant drop capability.
The Forest Service contracts multi-engine water scoopers and uses
them throughout the United States. Water scoopers can scoop and carry
1,600 gallons of water from lakes and larger rivers and operate much
like large helicopters. They complete rapid turnarounds to and from a
water source to the fire, dropping tens of thousands of gallons of
water in a few hours.
Both single engine airtankers and water scoopers fly at lower
altitudes throughout most of their flights. Single engine airtankers
can operate from mobile retardant plants and are often based much
closer to the fire than large airtankers which require support from
larger airfields.
Single engine airtanker retardant drops are used as part of an
indirect attack to slow fire growth, allowing ground resources to
contain the fire. Water scooper water drops are used in direct attack
of the flaming front of a wildfire, slowing or stopping fire growth.
This also allows ground resources to contain the fire.
Question 2. Successful restoration of the sagebrush ecosystem after
fire is critical for ranching communities and wildlife that depend on
vegetative structure. In order to maximize an ecosystem's forage and
wildlife value, it is also critical that restoration efforts take place
in the same year as the fire. Without restoration efforts, the long-
term economic impacts of reduced forage, loss of infrastructure
(fencing), and cost of future weed control are immense, and communities
and some wildlife may not be able to recover. Deputy Chief Phipps, how
is the Forest Service currently coordinating with NRCS to treat public
and private lands after wildfire?
Answer. Post-fire response and restoration is a shared challenge
for public and private lands. The Forest Service Burned Area Emergency
Response program works closely with the National Resource Conservation
Service and local landowners and agencies to determine post-fire
response actions necessary for the protection of human life and safety,
infrastructure, and critical cultural and natural resources, including
native plant communities. While Burned Area Emergency Response funding
can only be used to accomplish mitigation actions on National Forest
Systems lands, working with other local, state and Federal agencies
like the National Resource Conservation Service provides additional
mechanisms to work with an all-lands approach to post-fire actions. In
order to coordinate across land ownerships, post-fire datasets are
shared between the agencies to develop and implement actions. Key
programs for private lands actions include the National Resource
Conservation Service Emergency Watershed Protection program and the
Environmental Quality Incentives Programs.
Questions Submitted by Hon. Kim Schrier, a Representative in Congress
from Washington
Question 1. This has been an exceptionally difficult wildfire year,
with the public health emergency adding another layer of complication
to historic levels of fire. How is the Forest Service working with
state and local health workers to coordinate and gain access to COVID-
19 testing, and how does the Forest Service make that information
available internally? What is the process when a crew is moved to a
different region or state?
Answer. The availability of state/local health department workers
and COVID-19 testing varied from town/state to town/state. Many health
departments had no capacity to do contact tracing and had no capacity
to deal with fire personnel on a fire, including testing. Other areas
had more robust capacity and were able to work with fire personnel on
testing and assist as needed and available. Standard procedure was that
the local health department was contacted by the Incident Management
Team Medical Unit Leader once a team arrived on a fire to better
understand local resource capacity. Some Regions began to create COVID-
19 Coordinators to assist with this communication as well.
Some states required COVID-19 testing when the crews returned to
their home unit from a fire out of area/state. Alaska was the only
state requiring a test before coming into the state.
Question 2. How does the Forest Service leverage other USDA
resources to help communities recover after wildfires? Does the Under
Secretary coordinate with other Under Secretaries across USDA to
organize wildfire recovery response?
Answer. The Forest Service has leveraged other USDA resources to
help communities recover after wildfires. We are helping our field
units and personnel access resources available from USDA Rural
Development financial assistance programs and connecting communities
with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in order to carry
out post-fire treatments to protect natural resources and water
infrastructure.
Question 3. How does the agency ensure that its wildland
firefighters and everyone they work with in fire camps--including their
state and local partners--have adequate PPE for COVID-19? I understand
that there is both a national and a regional component to this.
Answer. The National Interagency Support Cache system, comprised
primarily of the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior's
Bureau of Land Management warehouses, provides equipment and supplies
to Federal, state and local agencies in support of wildfire suppression
activities. Pandemic support items (to include PPE) are supplied to
fire camps from these warehouses.
We have robust supply chains in place that support our national
cache system, including our partnerships with the Defense Logistics
Agency and other distributors of wildland firefighting equipment, PPE
and other pandemic-specific items. We leveraged these existing supply
chains early in 2020 so supplies continue to be available when needed
to support our fire response from these warehouses.
Questions Submitted by Hon. Salud O. Carbajal, a Representative in
Congress from California
Question 1. What additional resources does the USDA need in order
to utilize their existing authorities to actively manage our forests,
rangelands, and other Federal lands to improve conditions and reduce
wildfire risk?
Answer. As part of its FY 2021 budget request, the USDA submitted
to Congress a package of legislative reforms to improve forest
management and reduce wildfire risk. The proposals are intended to
support healthy forests and rangelands and aid in efforts to protect
homes, watersheds and critical infrastructure from catastrophic
wildfires. The USDA would like to work with the committee to identify
solutions that match the threat of the wildfire problem and the scope
and scale of forest management needed.
Question 2. How does the national wildfire potential outlook appear
as we head into the fall months? When do you expect we will start to
see a decrease in wildfire activity?
Answer. La Nina and current fuel conditions remain the principle
drivers of significant fire potential into spring. Drought conditions
are expected to continue for much of California, the Great Basin, and
the Southwest into the winter with drying expected to increase across
portions of the Southern Plains and Southeast. Offshore wind events
will continue to be a concern across southern California in December
given the dry fuels and lack of forecast precipitation through early
December.
Over the winter, the expected warming and drying trend across the
southern tier of the United States due to La Nina and other large-scale
climate forces will likely result in above normal significant fire
potential for portions of the Southern Plains. Drought intensification
and expansion from the Southern Plains into southern California is
likely. Strong wind and low relative humidity events could occasionally
increase fire activity in portions of the Great Basin and Southwest
this fall into winter as well. Outside of the Southern Plains,
significant fire potential will likely remain near normal for the rest
of the United States.
Question 3. What measures and training protocols is the Forest
Service implementing to mitigate COVID-19 virus exposure to wildland
firefighters and the communities they serve? How is the Forest Service
working to ensure COVID-19 related precautions are being implemented
across all the geographic regions? Can you please explain how the
Forest Service has worked with other Federal Agencies and the White
House Coronavirus Task Force to develop and implement strategies to
prevent the spread of COVID-19 and ensure the safety of both
firefighters and civilians effected during fire season?
Answer. Mitigations for COVID-19 exposure include: the module-of-
one crew concept used at fire camps to keep crews isolated from one
another; masks are required when around anyone not in your module on
the fire or when at the home unit; physical distancing of at least 6
required unless physically not possible, i.e., vehicles; vehicles are
to maximize air flow/exchange with windows partially open, no use of
recirculation of interior air; non-fire personnel are to wear masks and
maximize physical distance from fire personnel when interaction is
needed. A crew, when mobilized to a fire, is expected to be self-
sufficient including food and water for three days once on the fire.
This limited their interaction with community members while traveling.
The crews also had designated individuals that dispensed fuel and went
into convenience stores to get snacks/drinks to limit both exposure to
community members and the crew.
The Forest Service has a representative on the National Wildfire
Coordinating Group, Medical and Public Health Advisory Team, an
interagency group compiled of physicians and public health officers
from the Department of [the] Interior, Forest Service, and the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health/Centers for Disease
Control. This group has created guidance for fire personnel across the
nation to follow, which includes the above.
Question 4. The CARES Act provided $7 million to the Forest Service
to prevent, prepare, and respond to coronavirus--including to purchase
Personal Protect Equipment (PPE) and baseline health testing. How much
of these funds have already been spent, and what were they used for? Do
you anticipate there will be a need for more funding?
Answer. At the end of Fiscal Year 2020, $5 million of the CARES Act
funds were spent. National purchases of PPE like masks, hand sanitizer,
and digital thermometers were distributed throughout the wildland fire
organization and made available at every fire camp. The need for
additional funding will be dependent on the COVID-19 situation
nationally in the early spring months when significant fire activity
usually begins each year.