[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


      EXAMINING THE CHALLENGES FACING FOREST MANAGEMENT, WILDFIRE
       SUPPRESSION, AND WILDLAND FIREFIGHTERS AHEAD OF THE 2023
                             WILDFIRE YEAR

=======================================================================

                           OVERSIGHT HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL LANDS

                                 OF THE

                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                         Tuesday, May 16, 2023
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-28
                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
       
       
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]       


        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
                                   or
          Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov
          
          
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
52-228  PDF               WASHINGTON : 2023             
      

                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

                     BRUCE WESTERMAN, AR, Chairman
                    DOUG LAMBORN, CO, Vice Chairman
                  RAUL M. GRIJALVA, AZ, Ranking Member

Doug Lamborn, CO		Grace F. Napolitano, CA
Robert J. Wittman, VA		Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, CNMI
Tom McClintock, CA		Jared Huffman, CA
Paul Gosar, AZ			Ruben Gallego, AZ
Garret Graves, LA		Joe Neguse, CO		
Aumua Amata C. Radewagen, AS	Mike Levin, CA
Doug LaMalfa, CA		Katie Porter, CA
Daniel Webster, FL		Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, PR	Melanie A. Stansbury, NM
Russ Fulcher, ID		Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
Pete Stauber, MN		Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY
John R. Curtis, UT		Kevin Mullin, CA
Tom Tiffany, WI			Val T. Hoyle, OR
Jerry Carl, AL			Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Matt Rosendale, MT		Seth Magaziner, RI
Lauren Boebert, CO		Nydia M. Velazquez, NY
Cliff Bentz, OR			Ed Case, HI
Jen Kiggans, VA			Debbie Dingell, MI
Jim Moylan, GU			Susie Lee, NV
Wesley P. Hunt, TX
Mike Collins, GA
Anna Paulina Luna, FL
John Duarte, CA
Harriet M. Hageman, WY
                                                                          
                    Vivian Moeglein, Staff Director
                      Tom Connally, Chief Counsel
                 Lora Snyder, Democratic Staff Director
                   http://naturalresources.house.gov
                                 ------                                

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL LANDS

                       TOM TIFFANY, WI, Chairman
                     JOHN R. CURTIS, UT, Vice Chair
                     JOE NEGUSE, CO, Ranking Member

Doug Lamborn, CO                     Katie Porter, CA
Tom McClintock, CA                   Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Russ Fulcher, ID                     Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 
Pete Stauber, MN                         CNMI
John R. Curtis, UT                   Mike Levin, CA
Cliff Bentz, OR                      Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Jen Kiggans, VA                      Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
Jim Moylan, GU                       Raul M. Grijalva, AZ, ex officio
Bruce Westerman, AR, ex officio

                                 ------                                
                                CONTENTS

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Hearing held on Tuesday, May 16, 2023............................     1

Statement of Members:

    Tiffany, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Wisconsin.........................................     1
    Neguse, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Colorado................................................    19
    Westerman, Hon. Bruce, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arkansas..........................................    21

Statement of Witnesses:

    Panel I:

    Hall-Rivera, Jaelith, Deputy Chief, State and Private 
      Forestry, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of 
      Agriculture, Washington, DC................................     3
        Prepared statement of....................................     5
        Questions submitted for the record.......................     8
    Rupert, Jeffery, Director, Office of Wildland Fire, U.S. 
      Department of the Interior, Washington, DC.................    11
        Prepared statement of....................................    13
        Questions submitted for the record.......................    18

    Panel II:

    .............................................................
    Dias, Matt, President, California Forestry Association, 
      Sacramento, California.....................................    43
        Prepared statement of....................................    44
    McNair, Ranotta, Board Member, National Association of Forest 
      Service Retirees, Bend, Oregon.............................    49
        Prepared statement of....................................    50
    Schultz, Courtney, Associate Professor of Forest and Natural 
      Resource Policy, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 
      Colorado...................................................    54
        Prepared statement of....................................    55

    Bolin, Hon. Greg, Mayor, Paradise, California................    60
        Prepared statement of....................................    63

Additional Materials Submitted for the Record:
    Submissions for the Record by Representative Bentz

        The National Wildfire Suppression Association, Letter 
          dated May 18, 2023.....................................    74
                                     


 
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON EXAMINING THE CHALLENGES FACING FOREST MANAGEMENT, 
   WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION, AND WILDLAND FIREFIGHTERS AHEAD OF THE 2023 
                             WILDFIRE YEAR

                              ----------                              


                         Tuesday, May 16, 2023

                     U.S. House of Representatives

                     Subcommittee on Federal Lands

                     Committee on Natural Resources

                             Washington, DC

                              ----------                              

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:20 p.m. in 
Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Tom Tiffany 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Tiffany, McClintock, Fulcher, 
Stauber, Curtis, Bentz, Westerman; Neguse, Porter, and 
Kamlager-Dove.
    Also present: Representatives Duarte and LaMalfa.

    Mr. Tiffany. The Subcommittee on Federal Lands will come to 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the Committee at any time.
    This Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the 
challenges facing forest management, wildfire suppression, and 
wildland firefighters ahead of the 2023 wildfire year.
    I ask unanimous consent that the gentlemen from California, 
Mr. LaMalfa and Mr. Duarte, be allowed to participate in 
today's hearing from the dais.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    Under Committee Rule 4(f), any oral opening statements at 
hearings are limited to the Chairman and Ranking Minority 
Member. I therefore ask unanimous consent that all other 
Members' opening statements be made part of the hearing record 
if they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 3(o).
    Without objection, so ordered.
    I will now recognize myself for an opening statement.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. TOM TIFFANY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                  FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

    Mr. Tiffany. The topic of today's hearing is the 2023 
wildfire year. What used to be called fire seasons has now 
morphed into fire years, as wildfires blaze year-round. In the 
last 5 years alone, we have lost over 38 million acres of land 
to wildfire, a total area that is nearly as large as my home 
state of Wisconsin.
    Until recently, our country had never lost more than 10 
million acres in a year. But we have now hit that ominous mark 
three times in less than a decade. Behind these statistics are 
lives tragically lost, homes and entire communities destroyed, 
wildlife habitat turned into moonscapes, and untold levels of 
air and water degradation.
    It is important that we recognize the immense suffering 
this crisis is inflicting upon Americans year after year. The 
people and communities on the front lines of these fires are 
not just statistics. Today, we will hear a personal account of 
that devastation from Mayor Greg Bolin, whose town of Paradise, 
California endured the deadliest and most destructive fire in 
California history in 2018. Eighty-five lives were tragically 
lost during the Camp Fire, and over 18,000 structures were 
destroyed.
    [Slide.]
    Mr. Tiffany. The posters behind me show the sobering 
devastation that this unprecedented crisis has caused, and will 
cause again unless we drastically change course.
    We must also recognize the human impact this crisis is 
having on our nation's wildland firefighters. We must stop 
putting our brave wildland firefighters into unwinnable 
situations year after year as they are asked to fight 
increasingly severe fires. The mental, physical, and emotional 
toll these longer and hotter fire assignments are having on 
wildland firefighters must be addressed. Too many of our 
firefighters are getting severely injured or dying as a result 
of dangerous conditions on the ground.
    We know that proper fuels treatments provide the conditions 
necessary to contain wildfires, and that is an important piece.
    It is also paramount that we provide the best tools and 
strategies needed to quickly and aggressively fight wildfires.
    Finally, we must ensure that the brave men and women 
serving in this important profession are equitably compensated 
and provided with resources and benefits they deserve.
    Encouragingly, we are no longer debating the cause of this 
crisis in this Committee. There is growing consensus that 
active forest management must be restored to the overgrown and 
unhealthy forests fueling our catastrophic wildfire crisis. And 
I am encouraged to see that all of the witnesses before us 
today appear to agree with that important premise.
    However, I must caution that much work needs to be done to 
address the systemic hurdles blocking the type of paradigm 
shift needed to truly confront this issue. My Democratic 
friends have consistently argued that increased funding for 
hazardous fuels treatments and wildfire suppression is all that 
is needed to confront the crisis. I would like to encourage my 
friends to recognize the reality that the influx of funds 
provided to our forest management agencies have thus far failed 
to deliver the increase in pace and scale of fuels treatment 
that is truly needed.
    Onerous environmental regulations and frivolous litigation 
from extreme environmental groups remain the primary obstacles 
blocking the type of forest management necessary to truly turn 
the tide against this crisis. The fact that it takes over 3 
years to begin a mechanical treatment and over 4 years to 
conduct a prescribed burn on Federal lands should demonstrate 
to all that our system is clearly broken, and funding alone 
will never overcome this. It is incumbent on us in Congress to 
provide the tools necessary to overcome the blockades that have 
unquestionably led us into this present predicament.
    I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here today. 
I look forward to this important discussion as we examine where 
we have been, what we can expect in the present, and where we 
need to go to truly confront this historic wildfire crisis.
    I will recognize the Ranking Member when he arrives. Now, I 
guess I would like to turn to the witnesses.
    Let me remind the witnesses that, under Committee Rules, 
you must limit your oral statement to 5 minutes, but your 
entire statement will appear in the hearing record.
    To begin your testimony, press the ``on'' button on the 
microphone.
    We use timing lights. When you begin, the light will turn 
green. At the end of 5 minutes, the light will turn red, and I 
will ask you to please complete your statement.
    I would now like to introduce Ms. Jaelith Hall-Rivera, who 
is the Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry for the U.S. 
Forest Service.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

   STATEMENT OF JAELITH HALL-RIVERA, DEPUTY CHIEF, STATE AND 
   PRIVATE FORESTRY, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 
                  AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, DC

    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Thank you. Chairman Tiffany, Ranking 
Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for 
this opportunity to testify on the upcoming 2023 fire year, the 
ongoing wildfire crisis, and how we are working to improve 
forest health and protect communities.
    I have seen firsthand the destruction that wildfires have 
on our communities, infrastructure, and our natural resources. 
Wildfire risk has reached crisis proportions and wildfires are 
having more and more impacts each year.
    I want to personally thank our partners who answer our call 
for assistance to bolster our capabilities. We are grateful for 
all of our partners around the country and around the world who 
continue to pitch in to help our nation through each difficult 
fire year.
    As the size and severity of fires has grown, so too has our 
need for fire personnel. As we approach the busiest part of the 
2023 fire year, the Forest Service aspires to hire 11,300 
wildland firefighters nationwide. As of May 6, we have hired 
9,319 firefighters, about 82 percent of our goal. While we are 
cautiously optimistic we will reach our hiring goals, we know 
that that is still not enough. That is why the President's 2024 
budget proposes to hire 970 additional firefighters in the 
Forest Service.
    In addition, for the 2023 fire year the Forest Service will 
have up to 24 next-generation air tankers, more than 200 
helicopters, and more than 900 engines available to manage 
wildfires.
    Wildland firefighters are the backbone of our ability to 
protect communities and vital infrastructure from wildfires. 
The only way we are going to attract people to this challenging 
and hazardous work is to pay them fairly. Federal wages for 
firefighters have not kept pace with wages offered by state, 
local, and private entities. The workforce reforms proposed in 
the President's 2024 budget request and supporting legislation 
will increase Federal and tribal firefighters' pay, invest more 
in their mental and physical health and well-being, improve 
their housing options, and expand the number of permanent 
wildland firefighters.
    These reforms build on the temporary pay increase that was 
provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. And 
thanks to that legislation, more than 12,000 Forest Service 
firefighters received a temporary pay increase. However, the 
funding for that pay supplement will be spent by the end of 
September 2023, unless Congress intervenes to avert a pay 
cliff.
    To ensure pay continuity in the 2024 budget, we are 
proposing a permanent pay increase for all firefighters. Our 
budget proposal includes a request for $180 million in support 
of a special base rate salary table for firefighters and 
incident standby pay for all responders that are mobilized to a 
fire assignment. This new pay table was calculated to increase 
the total annual compensation to a level commensurate with 
state and private-sector wildland firefighters. For example, an 
entry-level Forest Service firefighter would receive 
approximately a 34 percent increase in pay under the new pay 
table.
    And unlike the temporary increase in BIL, a permanent base 
pay increase is an investment in our firefighters' future, as 
an increase in basic pay leads to an increase in retirement 
benefits. We will need Congress to pass special legislation 
that authorizes the new pay table, and I look forward to 
working with this Subcommittee on that.
    We are working hard to make a difference and improve the 
lives of our firefighters. Together, we can make a difference 
in the quality of life for our firefighters that protect our 
own quality of life.
    In addition to paying firefighters fairly, we must support 
their mental and physical health. The 2024 budget proposal 
calls for an increase of $10 million to enhance support for 
firefighters' mental and physical health and well-being.
    The budget also proposes a $50 million investment in 
housing. We recognize that addressing the housing crisis must 
happen now, as it impacts our ability to recruit and retain our 
workforce.
    Together, these efforts would help address long-standing 
recruitment and retention challenges. These investments, 
totaling $569 million, will ensure the Forest Service can 
continue meeting evolving mission demands as both the frequency 
and intensity of catastrophic wildfires are expected to 
increase.
    Long term, we must address work on the ground to ultimately 
address the wildfire crisis. Over the last two decades, we have 
witnessed what has become a now familiar pattern: bigger and 
more destructive wildfires that are extremely costly and 
challenging to suppress. This growing wildfire crisis created 
the need for a new land management strategy. We, in the Forest 
Service, are in our second year of carrying out our wildfire 
crisis strategy, which increases science-based fuels treatments 
by up to four times previous treatment levels, calling for 
treating up to 20 million additional acres of national forest 
system lands and 30 million additional acres on other 
landownerships.
    The Forest Service is very grateful to Congress for 
providing the resources through the BIL and Inflation Reduction 
Act to seed our initial work in the wildfire crisis strategy.
    In closing, I want to reiterate the agency's commitment to 
keeping our communities and firefighters safe as fire seasons 
grow longer and more severe. The dedication, bravery, and 
professional integrity of our firefighters and support 
personnel is second to none. We greatly appreciate the 
significant resources Congress has provided to help us take 
initial steps to address the wildfire crisis, and we look 
forward to working with this Subcommittee to continue providing 
world-class suppression response and reducing the severity of 
wildfires in our country. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Ms. Hall-Rivera follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jaelith Hall-Rivera, Deputy Chief, United States 
               Department of Agriculture--Forest Service
    Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today 
to discuss wildfire management and the 2023 Fire Year. Wildfires 
threaten urban and rural communities, Tribal Nations and their 
interests, farm and ranchland, municipal water supplies, timber, 
recreation sites, and important wildlife habitat.
    The Forest Service has a continuing need and responsibility to 
partner with all communities to prepare for wildfires. The Forest 
Service does not work alone in managing wildfires across the nation--
wildfire requires an all-of-government response, including major 
contributions from our Federal Partners, the Departments of the 
Interior and Defense, and the States, Tribes, and local governments, 
contractors, and volunteer organizations. These partnerships have 
evolved over many years, creating a robust interagency capability to 
support wildfire suppression across the country.
    Over the past 20 years, wildfires have become larger, last longer, 
exhibit more extreme fire behavior, and are more challenging to contain 
than ever before as a result of accumulating fuels, a warming climate, 
and expanding development in the wildland-urban interface. Wildfire 
risk has reached crisis proportions. This increased frequency of fire 
in the wildland-urban interface continues to severely impact lives, 
communities, infrastructure, and cultural and natural resources. 
Although drought conditions continue for nearly half the country, it is 
too early to predict with any certainty the fire activity for the 2023 
fire year. Long-term relationships with our federal, state, Tribal, and 
local governments and our contracted partners ensure we have a strong 
workforce and the necessary resources to provide a safe and effective 
wildfire response.
    I want to personally thank our partners who answer our call for 
assistance to bolster our capabilities. States also provide significant 
assistance with their National Guard units. We are grateful for all of 
our partners around the country and around the world who continue to 
pitch in to help our nation through each difficult fire year.
2023 Fire Year

    There is always the potential for significant wildfire events and 
growth throughout the nation depending on local conditions. The 
National Interagency Fire Center's Predictive Services provides an 
updated four-month National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook 
on the first day of each month. The current May-August 2023 outlook 
indicates drought will continue on much of the southern and central 
High Plains. However, drought improvement is likely across the rest of 
the Plains, in the Mid-Atlantic, and on the Florida Peninsula. Above 
normal fire potential is forecasted across portions of the Upper 
Midwest and western Great Lakes in June, with above normal potential 
across portions of northern Nevada, southwest Idaho, eastern Oregon, 
and central Washington for July and August. Below normal fire potential 
is forecasted along the southern California coast and much of northern 
New Mexico and Arizona into the southern Great Basin. In June, below 
normal potential is expected to expand into most mountains in 
California, the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, and the New Mexico central 
mountain chain, but a small area of east-central Nevada and west-
central Utah will return to normal. For July, below normal potential 
will continue in the Sierra and northwest California mountains, but 
normal potential will return to the rest of California, Southwest, and 
southern Great Basin. Below normal significant fire potential will 
continue across the southern Sierra into August.
Taking Care of Firefighters

    Wildland firefighters are the backbone of our ability to protect 
communities and vital infrastructure from wildfires. As the size and 
severity of fires has grown, so too has our need for fire personnel.
    In 2022, we set a goal of hiring 11,300 firefighters and we were 
able to reach 97% of our target. As we approach the busiest part of the 
2023 fire year, the Forest Service again aspires to hire 11,300 
wildland firefighters nationwide. We do not yet have final numbers at 
this time, but the Agency is updating hiring numbers bi-weekly and by 
region on our public facing website. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 
President's budget requested funding for an additional 970 wildland 
firefighters. With the President's budget proposals, we are confident 
in our ability to increase Wildland Fire System capacity for a total of 
12,270 operational firefighters in 2024. In addition, for the 2023 fire 
year, the Forest Service will have up to 24 next generation airtankers, 
more than 200 helicopters, and more than 900 engines available to 
manage wildfires.
    Wildland fire forecasts are consistently predicting fire seasons 
that start sooner, end later, and are more severe throughout the 
nation. With this change in condition, it is imperative to ensure a 
robust year-round workforce available to respond at any time and also 
be available to undertake preventive actions like hazardous fuels 
management treatments during periods of low fire activity. These men 
and women need to be supported and equitably compensated, equipped with 
the latest technologies, and have a better work-life balance. As the 
complexity of the firefighting environment grows exponentially, our 
recruitment and retention of firefighters has been further complicated 
by our inability to offer a competitive wage for permanent and seasonal 
employees. Federal wages for firefighters have not kept pace with wages 
offered by state, local and private entities in some areas of the 
United States. Firefighters must be fairly paid for the grueling work 
they are willing to take on.
    The workforce reforms proposed in the President's FY 2024 budget 
request and supporting legislation will increase federal and tribal 
firefighters' pay, invest more in their mental and physical health and 
wellbeing, improve their housing options, and expand the number of 
permanent firefighters. These reforms build on the temporary pay 
increase provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also 
known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Thanks to BIL, more 
than 12,000 firefighters received a temporary pay increase of $20,000 
or 50% of base pay (whichever is less). Notably, the funding for that 
pay supplement will be nearly exhausted by the end of September 2023, 
unless Congress intervenes to avert a pay cliff. In the FY 2024 budget, 
we are proposing a permanent base pay increase for all firefighters. 
Unlike the temporary increase in BIL a permanent base pay increase is 
an investment in our firefighters' future, as an increase in basic pay 
leads to an increase in retirement benefits. Additionally, a permanent 
base pay increase offers a host of benefits to the U.S. Government, 
such as reduced turnover and lower hiring and training costs. The 
proposal includes a request for $180 million in support of a special 
base rate salary table and incident standby pay for all responders that 
are mobilized to a fire assignment. We will also need Congress to pass 
special legislation that authorizes the new pay table.
    The FY 2024 budget proposal also increases the size of the 
workforce at USDA and the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), 
supports additional mental and physical health services, and increases 
funding to house firefighters and support personnel. We recognize that 
addressing the housing crisis must happen now as it impacts our ability 
to recruit and retain our workforce. To this end, the budget proposes a 
$50 million investment in housing. The USDA has convened a national 
working group that has identified key recommendations and is exploring 
innovative solutions for providing safe, affordable and sustainable 
housing for employees. The proposed budget also calls for an increase 
of $10 million each for USDA and DOI to establish a Joint Wildland 
Firefighter Behavioral Health Program.
    We must take better care of the people serving on the frontlines to 
confront our nation's wildfire crisis. Together, these efforts would 
help address long-standing recruitment and retention challenges. These 
investments, totaling $569 million, would build on the historic reforms 
in the BIL and ensure the Forest Service receives the support it needs 
to continue meeting evolving mission demands, as both the frequency and 
intensity of catastrophic wildfires are expected to continue to 
increase.
    It is time for a significant change in our federal wildland fire 
system that invests in the women and men that we rely on to protect 
communities, critical infrastructure, and our natural resources. We 
look forward to working with Congress to support, retain, and modernize 
the federal wildland fire fighter workforce. For Congressional 
consideration, the USDA, DOI, and the Office of Personnel Management 
developed a comprehensive legislative proposal that would provide 
solutions to these challenges. We remain committed to working with 
congressional leaders on this crucial proposal.
The Risks to Forests

    Long-term, we must address work on the ground to ultimately address 
the wildfire crisis. Nearly a quarter of the contiguous U.S. is 
currently in a high to moderate wildfire condition. Over the last two 
decades, we have witnessed what has become a now familiar pattern: 
bigger and more destructive wildfires that are extremely challenging 
and costly to suppress. We have experienced catastrophic fire seasons 
devastating communities and destroying resources in their wake. They 
threaten human health, water quality, homes, jobs, local economies, 
communities, and infrastructure. They also threaten key ecological 
services, including carbon storage, species habitat, soil stability and 
watershed function: in some cases, even resulting in long-term 
deforestation.
    Vast areas of the West and across the country are at risk from huge 
wildfires that can quickly spread 10 to 30 miles or more, burning 
through multiple landownerships, forest types, and communities. 
Conditions are only expected to worsen as our climate continues to 
change, and development in the wildland urban interface continues 
unabated.
    This growing wildfire crisis created the need for a new land 
management strategy--one designed to support strategic management and 
restoration of millions of acres of land in high-risk areas to protect 
forest health, watershed function, and human infrastructure. The need 
for increased pace and scale of restoration necessitates a holistic 
response in partnership with multiple agencies, State and Tribal 
governments, communities, industries, organizations, and private 
landowners.
    This collaborative response needs to be a paradigm shift from 
small-scale, independently managed treatments to strategic, science-
based landscape scale treatments that cross boundaries and meet the 
scale of the problem, starting initially with those places critically 
at risk.
The Wildfire Crisis Strategy

    The Forest Service is entering our second year of carrying out our 
10-year strategy for confronting the wildfire crisis in the West. Our 
Wildfire Crisis Strategy aims to increase science-based fuels 
treatments by up to four times the previous treatment levels, 
especially in those areas most at risk. Fuels treatments by the Forest 
Service, together with partners, have made a difference over the years. 
However, the scale of treatments is outmatched by the rapid increase in 
the scale and severity of wildfires as climate change accelerates. This 
strategy calls for treating up to 20 million additional acres of 
National Forest System lands over the coming decade, and working with 
partners, including colleagues at Interior, to treat up to 30 million 
additional acres on adjoining lands of multiple ownerships, while 
building a long-term maintenance plan. The intent for these treatments 
is to reduce the wildfire risk to communities, critical infrastructure, 
municipal water sources, and natural resources, and to restore and 
maintain fire-adapted landscapes so they are more resilient.
    Within BIL, Congress provided a $1.6 billion down payment that 
greatly assists in putting our Wildfire Crisis Strategy into action 
with investments on ten landscapes in eight Western States (Arizona, 
California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, and 
Washington). Through work on these landscapes and others, we completed 
treatments on 3.2 million acres nationally in 2022. We also 
accomplished these treatments, both mechanical treatments and 
prescribed fire, in 118 of the 250 high-priority priority firesheds 
identified in the Wildfire Crisis Strategy. This work was accomplished 
despite numerous barriers including internal staffing capacity, lack of 
markets for small-diameter wood, and high post-fire workloads from 
previous seasons. The work on these acres directly reduced risk to 
communities, infrastructure, and critical watersheds.
    Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding provides the Forest Service 
an additional $1.8 billion for hazardous fuels funding in the wildland-
urban interface. With IRA funding, we recently selected 11 additional 
landscapes for treatment in seven Western States (Arizona, California, 
Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington). Combined with the initial 
investment landscapes in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, 
New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, our actions will span 134 of the 
250 high-risk fire sheds in the western U.S., with the investment we 
announced in January 2023 of $930 million on 21 landscapes. These 
investments will help reduce the risk of wildfire to at-risk 
communities, Tribal lands, critical infrastructure, utility corridors, 
and public water sources. We listened to our partners, the public we 
serve, Tribes and many others regarding what mattered most to them, 
where opportunity is, and where challenges remain. Their feedback and 
our experience on these landscapes helped us identify both challenges 
to implementation and enabling conditions for future success. This work 
will mitigate risks to approximately 200 communities within these 
landscapes.
    The Wildfire Crisis Strategy builds on current work and leverages 
congressional authorities such as those from the 2018 Farm Bill, 
including the Insect and Disease Categorical Exclusion, Good Neighbor 
Authority, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, 
Tribal Forestry Protection Act, and Cross Boundary Hazardous Fuels; 
congressional authorities from BIL, including, Community Wildfire 
Defense Grants, the fuel break categorical exclusion and emergency 
actions to protect public health and safety, critical infrastructure 
and natural resources on National Forest System lands; along with other 
programs and authorities such as stewardship contracting and the Joint 
Chiefs Landscape Restoration Program, all which have proven invaluable 
in our work. The Wildfire Crisis Strategy strengthens partnerships to 
support our work to mitigate wildfire risk and restore forest health 
and resiliency over the next decade.
    The Forest Service is very grateful to Congress for providing the 
resources through BIL and the IRA to seed our initial work and put the 
Wildfire Crisis Strategy in motion. It is important to note that fully 
executing the strategy to treat 50 million acres across jurisdictions 
will take continued federal investment, coupled with funding and 
capacity delivered from States and all of our partners in this work.
    The FY 2024 President's budget provides $323 million to complement 
$1.6 billion provided in the BIL and $1.8 billion provided in the IRA 
to support ongoing implementation of the 10-year Wildfire Crisis 
Strategy. These resources would increase the scale of hazardous fuel 
reduction and restoration treatments within high-risk firesheds as part 
of the Administration's comprehensive, nationwide response to the 
threat of catastrophic wildfire to natural resources, communities, and 
infrastructure.
Conclusion

    The USDA Forest Service is committed to keeping our communities and 
firefighters safe as fire seasons grow longer and more severe. The 
dedication, bravery, and professional integrity of our firefighters and 
support personnel is second to none. As we work 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 greatly appreciate the significant resources Congress has 
provided through the BIL and the IRA that will allow the Forest 
Service, with our many partners, to take the initial steps to address 
the wildfire crisis. This work will result in resilient landscapes that 
have ecologic integrity, provide essential ecosystem services including 
carbon storage and habitat for wildlife, and boundless opportunities 
for American citizens to recreate.
    The Forest Service looks forward to working with this Subcommittee 
to continue providing world class suppression response and reducing the 
severity of wildfires in our country.

                                 ______
                                 

   Questions Submitted for the Record to Jaelith Hall-Rivera, Deputy 
    Chief, State and Private Forestry, United States Forest Service
            Questions Submitted by Representative Westerman
    Question 1. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided 
$600 million to increase base firefighter pay. Those funds were 
supposed to last until Fiscal Year 2026, yet in your testimony you 
share that those funds will be nearly exhausted by the end of 
September. How do you explain the funds being exhausted after only 2 
years?

    Answer. Section 40803(d)(4)(B) of the IIJA provides a supplemental 
salary increase of $20,000 per year, or 50% of base salary (whichever 
is less), for wildland firefighters employed by the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture Forest Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior 
(DOI). The supplemental salary increase is payable upon a determination 
by the Secretary of each Department, in coordination with the Office of 
Personnel Management (OPM), that the wildland firefighter is located in 
an area where it is difficult to recruit or retain wildland 
firefighters.
    A study on the recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters 
was carried out jointly by the DOI and Forest Service. The study 
analyzed the rate of employment, promotion, and resignation of 
firefighting positions from the agencies. This study demonstrated that 
recruitment and retention issues were universal to all geographic 
regions, which meant that a broad application of the pay supplement 
provided through IIJA should be applied. The DOI and Forest Service 
determined that the pay supplement should be paid to all firefighting 
positions covered under fire retirement in all geographic areas. For 
the Forest Service, more than 14,000 firefighters have or are receiving 
the pay supplement. The Forest Service and the DOI will exhaust 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for the firefighter pay 
supplement around the end of Fiscal Year 2023.

    Question 2. Last year, the House debated a Wildfire Response 
package on the floor that purported to boost wildland firefighter pay 
to $20 per hour but did not actually provide any funding to meet that 
pay standard. If we fail to properly fund any new pay tables, what 
would be the consequences? Would there be layoffs of wildland 
firefighters?

    Answer. If new pay requirements were to be established without 
funding to support those requirements, impacts would occur to the size 
of our wildland firefighter workforce. Efforts would be made to ensure 
the permanent federal workforce receives the new pay rates to the full 
extent possible, while hiring of temporary seasonal employees would 
likely need to decrease. Annual temporary seasonal hiring is a critical 
pipeline to building the current and future wildland firefighting 
workforce.

    Question 3. Can you provide the amount of standing sawtimber on 
unreserved National Forest System lands in the lower 48 states, as 
identified by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program databases?

    Answer. The numbers below are an estimate of standing sawtimber 
volume on unreserved National Forest System lands. Reserved lands are 
defined as National Forest System lands that are permanently prohibited 
from being managed to produce wood products through statute or agency 
mandate, such that the prohibition cannot be changed through a decision 
by the land manager. However, it is important to understand that 
standing sawtimber on unreserved land is not an indicator of the amount 
available or accessible for harvest. A variety of factors influence 
what is available and accessible, for example:

     Land Management Plans and the Management Areas, desired 
            conditions, goals, standards and guidelines defined within 
            them can restrict the availability of material through, for 
            example, designations of suitable/unsuitable areas for 
            timber harvest.

     Market factors determine what is economically accessible.

     Areas may be unsuitable due to site-specific conditions 
            such as steep slopes, erosive soils, being too wet, etc.

     Threatened and Endangered Species and Critical Habitat 
            designations can restrict miles of open or closed roads, 
            impacting accessibility of an area.

    Please be aware that these and other factors affect the 
availability of standing sawtimber volume for utilization.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Question 4. How much standing sawtimber is located on lands 
designated as ``insect and disease treatment areas'' under the Healthy 
Forests Restoration Act?

    Answer. Estimates of sawtimber volume within insect and disease 
areas designated under sections 602 and 603 of the Healthy Forests 
Restoration Act (HFRA) were generated using Forest Inventory and 
Analysis plots located within HFRA areas designated on a spatial layer 
from the Forest Service Enterprise Data Warehouse.
    Sawtimber volume on non-reserved National Forest System lands 
within areas designated under sections 602 and 603 of the HFRA 
(million) estimate: 108,335 cubic feet (1,300,072 board feet).

    Question 5. One of the things the Forest Service is required to do 
under the National Forest Management Act is to develop Forest Plans. 
Among other things, these plans must include the amount of timber that 
could be sustainably harvested from each National Forest System unit 
over the 10-year life of the Forest Plan. Can the Forest Service 
accurately tally the current Allowable Sale Quantity, or Permissible 
Timber Sale Quantity, found in current National Forest Plans, by 
National Forest, and aggregated both for each Forest Service Region and 
Nationally? Please ensure that these ASQ's/PTSQ's factor in site 
specific or forest specific plan amendments, whether required by court 
order or created by the agency.

    Answer. We do not corporately track Allowable Sale Quantity (ASQ) 
or Permissible Timber Sale Quantity (PTSQ). These are not considered 
land allocations or designations. Rather, they provide a ceiling of how 
much volume may be cut from a particular unit per its Land Management 
Plan. Plans promulgated under the old 1982 Planning Rule have an ASQ 
calculation and PTSQ is what is calculated under the 2012 Planning 
Rule. ASQ and PTSQ are located within the Land Management Plans for 
individual National Forests and to obtain those values for each forest 
is not feasible in the timeline required for this response.

    Question 6. Can you provide information about the number of total 
permits issued by the Forest Service on an annual basis? Can you also 
breakdown this information to include the category/type of permit these 
all fall under?

    Answer. The Forest Service issues and administers tens of thousands 
of permits every year for a wide range of uses using about 150 
different types of forms. For example, the agency issues about 33,000 
recreation special use permits each year. In addition, the agency 
issued 66,000 permits and small contracts for timber removal, and over 
21,000 permits for forest products other than timber. The agency also 
administers about 6,000 grazing permits associated with nearly 7,200 
allotments across 28 states. We would be happy to follow up with any 
questions you might have on permits of interest.

              Questions Submitted by Representative Bentz

    Question 1. What role does the Professional Private Wildland Fire 
industry play in helping the U.S. Forest Service address the lack of 
resources regarding catastrophic wildfires?

    Answer. The Forest Service is just one participant in the national 
wildland fire system that also includes our partners in the Department 
of the Interior, state and local governments, Tribes, and private 
industry. The capability brought to bear by private industry through 
contractual agreements with the Forest Service is essential for 
successful response operations across the country. The agency contracts 
for most of the aviation resources, many hand crews, engines, pieces of 
heavy equipment, and logistical services like fire camp caterers and 
shower services. Without these essential services and response 
resources, the ability to provide for a national response effort in a 
safe and effective manner would be significantly impacted.

    Question 2. It is my understanding that the Professional Private 
Wildland Fire industry provides over 25,000 pieces of equipment and 
potentially over 20,000 trained firefighters nationally that respond to 
wildfires. Is this assessment accurate?

    Answer. The Forest Service contracts a significant number of 
resources and services with private industry and is not the only entity 
within the wildland fire system doing so. The Department of the 
Interior, state, and local governments, as well as some private 
utilities companies and potentially other private entities, are also 
contracting for wildland fire support services.
    All wildland firefighters that operate within the interagency 
wildland fire system must be qualified for the role that they perform, 
and those qualifications are verified before an individual can be 
ordered for fire response operations. The Forest Service currently 
estimates approximately 11,000 private contract firefighters are active 
nationally and approximately 17,000 pieces of equipment are available 
through contracts for response operations.

    Question 3. The U.S. Forest Service indicated that they utilize the 
``closest forces'' method for responding to wildfires, however several 
of the contracts for private wildland fire response DO NOT utilize this 
method such as a Type 2 Crew Contract. Can USFS describe what process 
is used in dispatching private resources under contract to a fire for 
both initial attack and extended attack?

    Answer. Type 2 contract crews are not considered initial attack 
resources. All Type 2 contract crews are dispatched by the National 
Interagency Coordination Center using an established mathematical 
formula that considers hourly rate, mileage, and standard assignment 
duration. All Type 2 contract crew orders are filled with the lowest 
cost, available resource able to meet a reasonable date and time needed 
as determined by the National Interagency Coordination Center.
    Federal, state and local government work collaboratively to 
establish an agreed upon pre-planned dispatch protocol for ordering 
resources to ensure a quick response. This information is loaded into 
the Computer Aided Dispatch system or identified on ``run cards.'' 
During initial attack, the pre-identified agency Federal, state and 
local government, and Tribal resources are dispatched through the 
Computer Aided Dispatch system containing the ``pre-planned dispatch'' 
for a particular area. The ordering process is different for extended 
attack. Resource requests come into the local dispatch centers who will 
fill the order based on skills required and availability of resources 
needed. Agency resources are prioritized, but contracted resources are 
also considered.

    Question 4. Does USFS order the closest forces to the fires?

    Answer. As a rule, closest forces mobilization is the most 
effective and cost efficient and the Forest Service seeks to use that 
concept for mobilization. There are exceptions. Resource mobilization 
is situationally based and dependent on the type of fire such as 
initial attack, extended attack, large fire support, or long duration 
fire support. For large fire and long duration fire support, agency 
resources may be mobilized from geographic areas further away that have 
low risk of fire occurrence rather than closer geographic areas 
experiencing higher risk and higher resource needs. Using this method, 
resources are moved based on the highest need and keeps local resources 
available in areas with fire activity to help cover local initial and 
extended attack fire suppression needs.

    Question 5. Does USFS prioritize Service-operated resources from a 
greater distance over contracted resources closer to fires? What is the 
formula for determining least expensive versus fastest available 
private wildfire response units?

    Answer. As a rule, closest forces mobilization is the most 
effective and cost efficient and the Forest Service seeks to use that 
concept for mobilization. There are exceptions. Resource mobilization 
is situationally based and dependent on the type of fire such as 
initial attack, extended attack, large fire support, or long duration 
fire support. For large fire and long duration fire support, agency 
resources may be mobilized from geographic areas further away that have 
low risk of fire occurrence rather than closer geographic areas 
experiencing higher risk and higher resource needs. Using this method, 
resources are moved based on the highest need and keeps local resources 
available in areas with fire activity to help cover local initial and 
extended attack fire suppression needs.
    During an ongoing fire, the Incident Commander is responsible for 
developing the overall strategy and tactics for the fire, and for 
ordering resources accordingly. There are many factors that are 
considered in this process including the type, quantity, experience, 
and qualifications of resources necessary to achieve the identified 
management objectives. Current and anticipated fire behavior and the 
values at risk will also influence the type of resources ordered. The 
capability brought to bear by private industry through contractual 
agreements with the Forest Service is essential for successful response 
operations across the country.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Hall-Rivera.
    Next, we have Mr. Jeff Rupert, the Director of the Office 
of Wildland Fire for the Department of the Interior.
    Mr. Rupert, you have 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF JEFFERY RUPERT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF WILDLAND FIRE, 
        U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Rupert. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Tiffany, 
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank 
you for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon to 
provide testimony on the challenges that the Department of the 
Interior faces in wildland fire management ahead of the 2023 
wildfire year.
    The discussion today will convey Interior's most pressing 
wildland fire management issues and the steps we are taking to 
improve compensation and support for our wildland firefighting 
workforce, to reduce wildfire risk, and to effectively manage 
wildfire response now and into the future.
    Climate change continues to play an impactful role in the 
extreme weather that we are experiencing across the nation. A 
drier and hotter climate results in low fuel moisture that 
frequently leads to extreme conditions that produce larger and 
more intense wildfires. Significant precipitation over the past 
several months has reduced drought conditions across much of 
the western United States. However, drought still remains a 
concern in portions of Oregon and Washington, and it has 
expanded in much of Texas and the southern central plains.
    Again, as we have seen, drought can lead to increased and 
more intense wildfire activity. The areas of greatest 
uncertainty are in places like the northern Great Basin, where 
heavy rain has caused vegetation growth that could fuel intense 
wildfires with summer heat, lightning, and wind.
    We are tackling this climate crisis and working to improve 
the wildland fire resiliency of our nation's lands with the 
help of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Interior received 
nearly $1.5 billion in BIL funding over 5 years. That support 
is being used collaboratively with our partners to increase the 
pace and scale of fuels management treatments, to rehabilitate 
lands damaged by wildfires, and to increase wildland 
firefighter pay, as well as fund wildland fire research-related 
needs.
    To date, Interior has allocated more than $450 million in 
BIL funding, and will allocate additional BIL funds this year. 
Over the 5 years of BIL, we will have $878 million available in 
fuels management funding to address wildfire risk in high-
priority areas across the nation. Overall, coupled with annual 
appropriations, Interior accomplished a total of 1.9 million 
acres of priority wildland fire risk reduction treatment in 
2022, an increase of approximately 20 percent over the prior 
year.
    Interior's treatment goal for this year is 2 million acres. 
Longer, more intense fire years and the need to actively manage 
and reduce fuels across vast, increasingly flammable landscapes 
has increased the demand and pressure on our wildland fire 
workforce. Recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters 
very much continues to be an issue, and it is widely recognized 
that a new model is needed to provide employees with better 
pay, career stability, upward mobility, and a much better work-
life balance.
    In Fiscal Year 2021, the Administration increased pay to 
ensure that no wildland firefighter makes less than $15 per 
hour. With the passage of BIL in 2022, Interior and the Forest 
Service implemented temporary pay supplements for all Federal 
wildland firefighters. And to continue to advance permanent 
wildland firefighter pay reforms and improve recruitment and 
retention, the President's 2024 budget request includes an 
increase of $72 million to raise the base pay of Interior and 
tribal wildland firefighters.
    To implement this pay reform, the Administration also 
proposes legislation to Congress that establishes a new base 
rate salary table for all Federal wildland firefighters, 
creates a new premium pay category, and proposes a new annual 
pay cap.
    The budget also includes funding to hire an additional 370 
Interior and 55 tribal wildland firefighting personnel.
    Without the additional funding and pay reforms, we are 
facing a firefighter pay cliff as BIL funding runs out, 
currently estimated to occur at the end of this Fiscal Year. 
This could have a devastating effect on firefighter morale, and 
would certainly impact Interior's ability to recruit and retain 
wildland firefighters.
    Interior is also working jointly with the Forest Service to 
provide much-needed wildland firefighter mental health support. 
We are following the research that is showing that firefighters 
are at elevated risk. This past April, both Interior and Forest 
Service held a behavioral health and well-being summit in 
Boise, Idaho. The summit's results are informing the 
development of a joint program to provide year-round 
prevention, mental health support and training, provide post-
traumatic stress care, enhance capacity for acute response, and 
create a system of trauma support services with emphasis on 
early intervention.
    Finally, we know that the Wildland Fire Mitigation 
Management Commission is working hard to complete its report to 
Congress later this year. We look forward to seeing the 
Commission's recommendations, and working with partners to make 
overall improvements to wildland fire management.
    While we recognize no single entity can solve the nation's 
wildfire crisis alone, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council's 
recently updated National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management 
Strategy reinforces the need for collaboration to meet today's 
wildland fire management challenges. And we appreciate 
Congress' willingness to support these efforts and help 
Interior effectively address the wildfire crisis so that we can 
work in concert with our Federal, tribal, state, and local 
partners to effectively protect communities, people, and 
resources from increasing wildfire risks.
    Thank you. I am happy to answer any questions.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Rupert follows:]
  Prepared Statement of Jeffery Rupert, Director, Office of Wildland 
                 Fire, U.S. Department of the Interior
    Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on the 
challenges that the Department of the Interior (Interior) faces in 
wildland fire management, including wildfire suppression and the 
wildland firefighting workforce ahead of the 2023 wildfire year. 
Interior appreciates the opportunity to share with the Subcommittee its 
ongoing proactive steps to improve compensation and support for its 
wildland firefighting workforce, reduce wildfire risk, and effectively 
manage wildfire response. We appreciate the Subcommittee's interest in 
these areas, and we look forward to working with you in addressing 
priority wildland fire management issues.
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

    The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) provided a once-in-a-
generation investment in wildland fire management that is helping to 
combat the climate crisis and improve the wildfire resiliency of our 
nation's lands. Interior is receiving nearly $1.5 billion in BIL 
funding over five years for wildland fire management programs. BIL 
funding supports Interior's core Wildland Fire Management program. 
Interior's Five-Year Monitoring, Maintenance, and Treatment Plan, 
required by BIL, lays out a roadmap to address wildfire risk and 
prepare communities and ecosystems for wildfire threats.
    As you will see in our testimony, Interior bureaus--Bureau of 
Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey--are using 
BIL funding collaboratively with our partners to increase the pace and 
scale of fuels management treatments, rehabilitate lands damaged by 
wildfires, and fund research into priority wildland fire management 
issues, including the impacts of climate change on wildfire, fuels 
management, and firefighter mental health. . Through BIL, we are also 
increasing workforce capacity and wildland firefighter pay and 
supporting wildland firefighters' mental health and wellbeing. To date, 
Interior has allocated more than $450 million in BIL funding and will 
allocate additional funds this year. We appreciate Congress' 
willingness to support these efforts and help Interior effectively 
address the wildfire crisis so that we can work in concert with our 
Federal, Tribal, state, and local partners to effectively protect 
communities, people, and resources from the increasing risks of 
wildfire.
2022 Fire Year

    Climate change continues to play an oversized role in the extreme 
fire weather that we are experiencing across the nation. Drier and 
hotter weather results in low fuel moisture that frequently leads to 
extreme conditions that produce larger and more intense wildfires. In 
recent years, nearly every western state has experienced prolonged 
periods of high to extreme fire danger over substantial areas affecting 
hundreds of millions of acres of land. Many of these areas are in the 
wildland urban interface where communities in the West are increasingly 
exposed to wildfire.
    In 2022, 68,988 wildfires burned more than 7.5 million acres 
nationally. The reported number of wildfires nationwide was noticeably 
higher than the 10-year average of 61,285, and the number of acres 
burned was slightly more than the 10-year average of 7.4 million acres. 
A total of 2,717 structures were reported destroyed by wildfires in 
2022, and sadly, 25 members of the wildland firefighting community lost 
their lives in wildfire incidents or wildland fire management related 
activities across the country.
    What we observed in 2022 was a more gradual movement of wildfire 
that started in April in Alaska and the Southwest and progressed to the 
Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies in August and September, as is 
the more typical pattern. Additionally, significant wildfires in 
California occurred in succession rather than concurrently. This 
allowed the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group, tasked with 
national-level strategic coordination, to position and concentrate 
wildland firefighting resources throughout the year in those geographic 
areas that needed them the most.
2023 Fire Year Outlook

    While drought conditions across much of the western U.S. have 
greatly improved since last year, drought did intensify slightly in 
portions of central Oregon. Drought also expanded, intensified, or 
continues in much of Texas, central Florida, western Oklahoma, southern 
and western Kansas, and in portions of Nebraska. Drought can lead to 
increased and more intense fire activity if weather and fuels factors 
align with human and natural wildfire ignitions.
    Above normal wildfire potential is expected in far west Texas in 
May before returning to normal in June. Above normal potential is also 
forecast across portions of the Upper Midwest and western Great Lakes 
in June, with above normal potential across portions of northern 
Nevada, southwest Idaho, eastern Oregon, and central Washington in July 
and August. Normal or below normal significant fire potential is 
expected across the rest of the country, throughout May, June, July, 
and August. This does not mean that there will be no large wildfires, 
but rather that wildfire potential will be typical for each geographic 
region.
    The ``fire season'' has become extended in many parts of the 
country, and what was once limited to certain months of the year now 
encompasses an entire ``fire year.'' While each fire year is different 
due to varied weather and fuel moisture factors, currently, the outlook 
for 2023 points to less fire activity from April through July compared 
to the above normal activity encountered over the same months last 
year. Managing a year-long season is increasingly challenging to 
Interior and the entire wildland fire management community.
    The NMAC establishes Preparedness Levels throughout the calendar 
year to ensure suppression resource availability for emerging incidents 
across the country. The five Preparedness Levels range from the lowest 
(1) to the highest (5). Currently, the nation is at Preparedness Level 
(PL) 2, which is characterized by large wildfires occurring in several 
geographic areas--Eastern, Southern, Southwest, and Northern Rockies 
Areas--but no shortage in the availability of resources. At this time, 
we are supporting our firefighting partners in Canada as that nation is 
at PL5 with large wildfire activity occurring in British Columbia and 
Alberta. Through an existing bilateral arrangement, DOI has mobilized 
approximately 250 wildland fire personnel to Canada where they will 
support ongoing wildfire suppression efforts in the western half of the 
country.
Interior Wildland Firefighting Preparedness

    As always, the success of our wildland fire management program is 
predicated on the unparalleled coordination with our interagency, 
Tribal, and state partners. These partnerships are vital to the 
Interior's success in carrying out its stewardship responsibilities, 
particularly fuels management work and essential restoration efforts; 
they are also integral to the interoperable approach that is the 
hallmark of the nation's response to wildfires.
    Currently, Interior is in a ready-state and all preparations are in 
place for the fire year, though as is typical some wildland fire 
management hiring will continue into June, due to the seasonal nature 
of hiring, training, and preparedness. This year, Interior plans to 
have 5,800 federal and 500 Tribal wildland firefighting and support 
personnel available for response efforts. This includes 162 
smokejumpers, 20 interagency hotshot crews, and four Tribal hotshot 
crews. In combination with our partners in the Department of 
Agriculture Forest Service (USFS), approximately 17,000 Federal and 
Tribal wildland fire personnel will be ready for fire suppression 
activities in 2023. Additionally, we have a surge capacity of up to 
32,000 personnel, which includes Administratively Determined emergency 
hires and other non-wildland fire management DOI and USFS employees who 
maintain wildland fire qualifications.
    Interior will have over 870 pieces of specialized equipment 
available for wildfire suppression, including engines, water tenders, 
dozers, and other equipment. Aviation assets play a critical role in 
efforts to manage wildfires, including single engine air tankers, water 
scoopers, Type 1, 2, and 3 helicopters, and other contracted aviation 
resources. These assets complement other Federal, Tribal, state, and 
local resources, as well as those specifically made available by rural 
fire districts. Together, these assets form the foundation of an 
interoperable, collaborative approach to joint wildland firefighting.
Challenges Facing Wildland Fire Management

    Interior faces unique wildland fire management challenges. Most 
Interior-managed public lands are comprised of non-forested shrub and 
grass ecosystems. Over the past two decades, 54 percent of wildfire 
acres burned in the continental U.S. occurred on shrublands and 
grasslands. On Interior-managed lands, more than 70 percent of wildfire 
acres occurred on non-forested vegetation types. More than 7 million 
acres of land administered by Interior are identified as having a very 
high or high likelihood of exposure to wildfire, according to the USFS 
wildfire hazard potential data.
    Nevertheless, Interior manages large tracts of forest lands, 
particularly in western Oregon and some other western states. Many of 
these lands are of cultural importance to Tribes, so it is important 
that we address wildfire risk in these areas to benefit and support 
Tribal communities. Some of these forested lands include the iconic 
giant sequoias--which wildfires devastated in 2020 and 2021, killing 
more than 10 percent of giant sequoias larger than four feet in 
diameter on lands managed by the National Park Service and the Tule 
River Tribe.
    Invasive plants, which can make landscapes more flammable, are 
present in many of these ecosystems. Cycles of invasion are 
intensifying wildfire occurrence and result in increasing invasive 
plants that are impacting vast areas of the western U.S. Because of the 
fire and invasives cycle, many western ecosystems are experiencing too 
much wildfire compared to historical fire regimes. Suppressing 
wildfires in these ecosystems is costly, and these fast-moving fires 
put communities, people, and wildland firefighters at risk. Interior is 
working to conserve ecosystems that are currently not impacted by 
invasive plants while restoring ecological balance in ecosystems where 
invasive plants are changing the landscape and increasing wildfire 
risk.
Fuels Management & Post Wildfire Recovery

    BIL funding totaling $878 million over five years along with base 
Fuels Management program funding has supported Interior's efforts to 
address wildfire risk across the nation in high priority areas. 
Interior is focused on managing landscapes to reduce wildfire risk, 
improve wildfire resiliency, and promote fire-adapted communities. 
Overall, Interior achieved a total of 1.9 million acres of priority 
wildfire risk reduction treatments in 2022, an increase of 
approximately 20 percent from 2021. Our treatment goal for this year is 
a combined 2 million acres of treatments.
    By increasing fuels treatments, Interior is working to mitigate its 
wildfire management challenges and advance wildfire resiliency, improve 
firefighter and public safety, protect communities, and boost local 
economies. To address these challenges, Interior conducts a wide 
variety of fuels management projects, including mechanical, chemical, 
biological, and prescribed fire treatments. Fuels treatment options can 
often be limited in desert and rangeland landscapes where invasive 
plants are contributing to an increasing threat and more frequent 
wildfire.
    BIL funding is also supporting Interior's advancement of cross-
boundary collaboration with the USFS, Tribes, states, and private 
landowners. Interior is funding work that reduces wildfire risk on non-
Federal lands while also restoring habitats by providing $23.7 million 
to support fuels treatments through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 
Partners for Fish and Wildlife and Coastal programs. This funding will 
enable 24 fuels management projects in 13 states, including Arizona, 
California, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, 
Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Additionally, Interior is 
expanding support for Reserved Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) projects. By 
treaty, Tribes retain ancestral rights for religious and cultural 
hunting, fishing, and gathering activities on these lands although they 
are commonly managed by Federal agencies. Through the RTRL program, 
Interior is providing additional BIL funding to conduct fuels 
management on these lands in support of Tribal cultural activities.
    Interior is also using BIL investments to expand post-fire 
restoration activities in high priority areas working with partners 
across boundaries. This involves investing in critical infrastructure, 
post-fire monitoring and evaluation, and storing plant materials 
essential to restore native vegetation. Interior is also increasing 
post-fire debris flow emergency assessments. In 2022, Interior 
completed more than 360,000 acres of post-fire emergency stabilization 
and priority burned area rehabilitation actions using BIL funding, 
disaster relief funding, and regular appropriations. This includes more 
than 75,000 acres of emergency stabilization and 285,000 acres of 
burned area rehabilitation, including more than 169,000 acres to 
control invasive species and accelerate the recovery of forests and 
rangelands after a wildfire.
Wildland Firefighter Workforce Reforms

    Longer, more intense fire years, and the need to actively manage 
and reduce fuels across a vast, more flammable landscape, have 
increased pressure on the wildland fire workforce. In the past, 
Interior has relied more heavily on a temporary workforce. Currently, 
wildland fire suppression and fuels management work require 
significantly more permanent employees to address the year-round nature 
of wildfire and the on-going need to increase the pace and scale of 
fuels treatments. This increasingly complex wildland fire environment 
requires a professional workforce that is positioned to meet these 
needs year-round.
    The demands on the wildland fire workforce continue to grow as the 
complexity and need for more active management increases. Many wildland 
firefighters are currently challenged to take time off for family 
events and other life occurrences because the current workforce lacks 
enough qualified individuals to fill behind them. Concurrently, federal 
and Tribal wildland fire wages have not kept pace with some industry 
competitors, such as California Department of Forestry and Fire 
Protection or CAL FIRE. In many communities, entry to mid-level fire 
position wages at the federal, Tribal, and state levels are not 
competitive with private-sector opportunities. Housing costs have also 
risen rapidly across the West; in certain geographic areas many 
wildland fire personnel may find it difficult to afford rent or home 
purchases on their current wages. These issues are compounding wildland 
fire workforce challenges, including the ability to recruit new 
employees and retain qualified wildland fire personnel.
    It is widely recognized in the wildland fire community and 
elsewhere that a new model is needed to provide employees with career 
stability and upward mobility, support a better work-life balance, and 
promote long-term wildland fire or resource management careers.

    In FY 2021, the Administration implemented temporary pay 
supplements to ensure that no wildland firefighter makes less than $15 
per hour. With the passage of BIL in 2022, Interior and the USFS 
implemented temporary special pay supplements for federal wildland 
firefighters. These payments have had a significant positive impact on 
firefighters' morale and their abilities to achieve a reasonable wage 
for the arduous work that they perform. To continue to advance wildland 
firefighter pay reforms, and improve recruitment and retention rates, 
the President's FY 2024 Budget request includes an increase of $72 
million to raise the base pay of DOI and Tribal wildland firefighters. 
To implement the pay reform, the Administration transmitted legislation 
to Congress that:

     Establishes a special base rate salary table for all 
            Federal wildland firefighters that will permanently 
            increase their pay.

     Creates a new premium pay category that provides all 
            incident responders with additional compensation for all 
            hours they are mobilized on an incident.

     Proposes a new annual pay cap with additional authority 
            for a Secretarial waiver if specific criteria are met in 
            any given year.

     Allows periods of paid rest and recuperation leave 
            following the completion of service during certain wildland 
            fire activities.

    The budget also includes funding to hire an additional 370 federal 
and 55 Tribal wildland firefighting personnel, which builds on a $29 
million increase that Interior received in FY 2021 to support 
Interior's Workforce Transformation Initiative. Since then, Interior 
has added more than 250 permanent wildland fire positions and continues 
to increase its firefighting workforce. Without the additional funding 
for firefighter pay that is requested in FY 2024 and the accompanying 
legislative proposals, we are facing a firefighter pay cliff as the BIL 
supplemental pay funding is estimated to run out at the end of this FY. 
We look forward to working with Congress on these proposals.
    Additionally, the President's FY 2024 Budget requests an increase 
of $22 million in the Facilities program to provide housing for 
wildland fire personnel. This increase will go to repair, renovate, and 
construct new housing for wildland fire personnel as they continue to 
encounter limited or unaffordable housing options in certain geographic 
locations.
Wildland Firefighter Mental Health and Wellbeing

    Research indicates that firefighters are at an elevated risk for 
negative mental health impacts due to their work environment and the 
increased, year-round wildfire management and risk-reduction needs. 
Interior is committed to supporting our wildland firefighters, who work 
in arduous, stressful environments.
    Using BIL funding, Interior and the USFS have initiated work to 
establish a program to address mental health needs, including post-
traumatic stress disorder care, for permanent, temporary, seasonal, and 
year-round wildland firefighters. By streamlining and expanding 
existing mental health programs, Interior is working to better support 
firefighter resilience, improve mental preparedness, and address the 
effects from cumulative stress. This initiative will create a bridge 
between existing programs, consider additional prevention and training 
program needs, enhance Critical Incident Stress Management capacity, 
and further develop early intervention trauma support services.
    In April, Interior and the USFS held a wildland firefighter mental 
health and wellbeing summit in Boise, Idaho. Currently, both agencies 
are assessing the needs and recommendations that were discussed at the 
summit to develop a mental health and wellbeing program framework. Work 
will continue with stakeholders, mental health professionals, and a 
variety of partners to further expand our mental health program and 
build an environment that focuses on wildland fire professionals' 
wellbeing.
    The President's FY 2024 Budget request also includes an increase of 
$10 million each for Interior and the USFS to establish a Joint 
Wildland Firefighter Behavioral Health Program. The program will 
further support firefighters by establishing year-round prevention and 
mental health support training, providing post-traumatic stress care, 
enhancing capacity for acute response, and creating a system of trauma 
support services with an emphasis on early intervention.
Conclusion

    Thank you for this opportunity to share Interior's latest wildland 
fire management efforts with the Subcommittee. Wildland fire management 
is changing rapidly as a result of climate change, increased fire 
activity, and vast landscape transformations. Interior continues to 
adapt to this changing environment. We appreciate the Congress' 
continued support and look forward to working with you as we address 
these critical program and workforce issues.
    This concludes my statement. I welcome any questions you may have.

                                 ______
                                 
Questions Submitted for the Record to Jeff Rupert, Director, Office of 
               Wildland Fire, Department of the Interior

Mr. Rupert did not submit responses to the Committee by the appropriate 
deadline for inclusion in the printed record.

            Questions Submitted by Representative Westerman
    Question 1. Director Rupert, I think that one of the biggest 
components of addressing this wildfire crisis is transparency in the 
amount of fuels reduction treatments actually being accomplished. 
Despite the fact that DOI is statutorily obligated to report its annual 
hazardous fuels reduction treatments to Congress annually, your agency 
has failed to do so and has not publicly posted this information 
anywhere. Attempts to get this information have gone unanswered for 
months.

    1a) Why is DOI failing to properly report its hazardous fuels 
reduction treatments to Congress despite being statutorily obligated to 
do so?

    1b) When does the agency plan to come into compliance with the law?

    1c) How many acres of land did DOI treat last year to reduce 
hazardous fuels?

    Question 2. Does the Bureau of Land Management's ``Conservation and 
Landscape Health'' rule recognize that active forest management is 
conservation?

    Question 3. In briefings between Committee staff and BLM staff, it 
has been made clear that there is a difference in the way BLM is 
defining conservation broadly versus how it is defining conservation 
for the purposes of conservation leases. Can you please explain the 
discrepancy between these definitions?

    Question 4. The Committee has heard concerns that Tribal 
firefighters operating under ``638'' contracts have not been considered 
federal firefighters and have not received the same pay raises federal 
firefighters received under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. What is 
the Department of the Interior doing to address this pay parity issue?

    Question 5. Can you provide information about the number of total 
permits issued by DOI on an annual basis? Can you also breakdown this 
information to include the category/type of permit these all fall 
under?

    Question 6. What effects do prior fuels reduction treatments have 
on wildland firefighting strategy?

    Question 7. Are areas that received prior fuels reduction 
treatments considered more safe or less safe compared to untreated 
areas when evaluating where to send wildland firefighters battling a 
wildfire?

    Question 8. DOI's testimony states that the agency plans to employ 
5,800 federal and 500 Tribal wildland firefighting personnel this year.

    8a) Of this total, how many federal and Tribal firefighting 
personnel has the agency hired as of May 16, 2023?

    8b) What hiring events does the agency plan to conduct for the 
remainder of the year to hire additional firefighting personnel?

    8c) What effect, if any, is DOI seeing on the expiration of bonuses 
provided under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law on firefighter 
retention and recruitment?

    Question 9. What role does the use of aerial fire retardant play in 
DOI's fire suppression operations?

    Question 10. What would be the agency's projections on the upcoming 
fire year if the agency could no longer use aerial fire retardant?

    Question 11. In light of the new inventory of mature and old-growth 
forests, can you please provide information about how many acres of BLM 
land that meet your new mature and old-growth definition framework have 
burned in wildfires in the last 10 years?

    Question 12. Why was the inventory of mature and old-growth forests 
limited to Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service forests, and 
not to the other federal agencies that manage forests like the National 
Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service?

    Question 13. How much BLM and DOI staff time was used to develop 
the mature and old-growth inventory?

    Question 14. Why is it important to manage forests to have a 
diversity of age classes?

    Question 15. Can you please explain the importance of early 
successional forests?

    Question 16. Is the term ``mature forest'' a recognized term in the 
scientific practice of forestry?

    Question 17. In the BLM and Forest Service's report on old growth, 
the report states that ``narrative frameworks'' are going to inform the 
``policy and practice of forest management'' for old growth. The report 
also includes the following quote: ``The role of place attachment or 
identity, meaning ``the symbolic importance of a place as a repository 
for emotions and relationships that give meaning and purpose to life'' 
may also be particularly relevant in our understanding of how people 
relate to and value old-growth forests.''

    Is the BLM planning to manage old growth forests based on vague 
concepts like ``place identity'' instead of scientific forest 
management practices?

    Question 18. How much of the direct work at the BLM unit level is 
planning and assessment to include the preparation of environmental 
review documents under NEPA?

    Question 19. How much did DOI spend last year on planning or 
environmental review costs for meeting the requirements of applicable 
laws generally?

    Question 20. How many staff hours did DOI spend last year on 
planning or environmental review costs for meeting the requirements of 
applicable laws?

    Question 21. The Forest Service has provided regular, public 
updates regarding the implementation of its 10-year strategy and the 
investments made under such strategy. DOI has not made similar 
information available. When does DOI plan to publish a status update 
regarding its 5-year strategy?

    Question 22. How many communities are adjacent to DOI lands that 
are at risk of experiencing a wildfire that would destroy structures 
were it to spread from DOI lands to the nearby community?

    Question 23. How has DOI utilized direct hire authority for 
wildland firefighters? Has this been a helpful tool for the agency?

    Question 24. What is the average amount of time it takes DOI to 
hire a wildland firefighter without direct hire authority?

    Question 25. What is the average amount of time it takes DOI to 
hire a wildland firefighter with direct hire authority?

    Question 26. What is the process for federal wildland firefighters 
who wish to switch their employment from DOI to the Forest Service, or 
vice versa?

    Question 27. Has DOI conducted an inventory on any underutilized 
buildings on DOI lands that could be converted into housing for 
wildland firefighters if the necessary deferred maintenance is 
addressed?

    Question 28. Are there any restrictions on using Great American 
Outdoors Act funding to address deferred maintenance on underutilized 
buildings on DOI lands that could be converted into housing for 
wildland firefighters?

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Rupert.
    I will now recognize the Ranking Minority Member, Mr. 
Neguse.
    Mr. Neguse, you have 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE NEGUSE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                   FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

    Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate 
the courtesy, my apologies for the delay.
    I am glad to be here today to discuss an issue that is 
critically important to my district and to my state, the state 
of Colorado, and certainly to many of my colleagues' districts 
here on this Committee, and I appreciate the testimony from 
both of our witnesses.
    As many of you know, I represent the 2nd District in 
Colorado, and I am honored to represent a beautiful 
congressional district filled with public lands such as Rocky 
Mountain National Park, Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, 
and the Routt National Forest. My district also, unfortunately, 
has suffered three of the largest and most destructive 
wildfires in the history of Colorado just in the span of 2 
years.
    We know firsthand in Colorado the impacts of these 
devastating disasters on our communities, many that are still 
working to recover. Just by way of example, the Marshall Fire, 
which took place in Boulder County, was the most destructive 
fire in the history of Colorado. It happened in December 2021, 
New Year's Day, or New Year's Eve, I should say. Over 1,000 
structures burned, and we tragically lost the lives of two 
members of our communities.
    I know that we also have the Mayor of Paradise, California 
here with us today, who will be testifying on the second panel, 
I believe, and I want to thank the Mayor for joining us to 
share their experience and that of their community during and 
after the Camp Fire.
    Wildfire has become a major focus for many of us here in 
Congress, myself included, and certainly has been the focus of 
this Subcommittee in the prior Congress. I was proud to start 
and co-found the bipartisan Wildfire Caucus with my good 
colleague, Representative Curtis from Utah. I didn't recognize 
him today with his new goatee there, but nonetheless, I am 
grateful to co-chair the effort with him. I see he has left, 
but you will see him when he gets back.
    We made great strides in the 117th Congress in that caucus, 
as well as working with the U.S. Forest Service and the 
Department of the Interior with the funding and resources that 
they need to address the wildfire crisis. We held several 
Subcommittee hearings on wildfire suppression and mitigation, 
workforce capacity, and promoting community resilience. And I 
am grateful to the Chairman for hosting a hearing in that vein 
today.
    It is important for us to contextually remember some of the 
investments that were made. And, of course, both of our 
witnesses testified to some of these. For example, we provided 
$28 billion to the Department of the Interior and $5.5 billion 
to the Forest Service in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to 
address drought, wildland fire management, and preparing for 
extreme weather events. This included authorizing the Joint 
Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership Program, which I was 
proud to champion, a program that reduces wildfire risk and 
supports communities.
    As was mentioned, we also secured a pay raise, a long-
awaited and long-overdue pay raise for Federal wildland 
firefighters as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We 
built on these investments through the Inflation Reduction Act, 
which provided funding for wildfire management and workforce 
needs, ecosystem restoration, and invested in our nation's 
Conservation Corps workforce. These investments made by House 
Democrats in the 117th Congress are key to supporting the 
important work of Federal agencies and local communities to 
reduce wildfire risk and address the critical workforce and 
staff capacity that USFS and DOI have frequently identified as 
major barriers.
    Finally, on the legislative front, it bears mentioning that 
just last week, I introduced my bicameral bill, Tim's Act, 
which builds on the investments we secured in the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law. It would increase firefighter pay benefits 
to provide these public servants with the benefits they work so 
hard to earn on behalf of the American people, the many 
sacrifices they make, and address the firefighter pay cliff, 
that was referenced earlier during your testimony. That bill 
was bipartisan, I should say, in the last Congress. Liz Cheney, 
a Congresswoman and my neighbor to the north from the state of 
Wyoming, was our co-lead. I hope that I can convince one of my 
Republican colleagues here on the other side of the aisle to 
support us on this legislation again, which is common sense and 
would honor wildland firefighters across the country, and I 
look forward to talking more about that this afternoon.
    Finally, in closing, let me just say that wildfires 
continue to increase in severity and intensity throughout the 
United States. As has been repeated often in this Committee, we 
no longer have fire seasons, we have fire years in the Rocky 
Mountain West. The scale of the challenge of the crisis that 
faces the Rocky Mountain West and, more broadly, the western 
United States necessitates a whole-of-government approach, 
which is why I am looking forward to the conversation today to 
improve our wildfire preparedness and support the firefighting 
workforce.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you to the Ranking Member.
    I will now recognize the Full Committee Chairman, Mr. 
Westerman, for his opening statement.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRUCE WESTERMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, and thank you 
to the witnesses for being here today.
    This hearing covers a very important topic, and I hope 
everybody in the House and the Senate on both sides of the 
aisle can come together this Congress so we can enact real 
change, so that we can do something different than what we have 
done in the past.
    I think one of the biggest misconceptions about forestry, 
when we talk about management, is that there is not any 
management. And I have always said we have always been 
managing. Because when you are talking about a dynamic, living 
organism like a forest, no management is management. We can't 
run from it. The decisions we make affect the forest, whether 
we say it is going to be hands off or whether we say we are 
going to follow the science and do something proactive.
    And we also, I think, in Congress look at problems 
backwards sometimes. We should be looking at what is causing 
these fires, not just how do we spend more money to pay 
firefighters, to buy more equipment, to increase budgets. Why 
don't we look at what causes the fires on the front end, and 
maybe we will have more money to pay the firefighters that we 
need and spend our money wisely in prevention, instead of 
having to spend so much money putting fires out, saving lives, 
things that are very worthwhile and needed, but if we would do 
better planning on the front end, I think we could save a lot 
more money, and a lot more lives, and a lot more assets on the 
back end. So, that is why hearings like this are important.
    The Forest Service has identified thousands of communities 
across the West at being of risk of experiencing fires at the 
same level as the Camp Fire, which we all know leveled the town 
of Paradise. How many more of these Paradise, California-style 
fires must occur before we actually do the right thing and 
start taking preventative measures?
    I have a friend, Joe Fox, he is a state forester back in 
Arkansas, and he has this saying that trees are the answer; 
now, what is your question? And I really like the way Joe puts 
that, because this shouldn't be a partisan issue. If you care 
about clean air and clean water, you should care about forest 
management. If you care about the climate and carbon, you 
should support forest management. If you care about wildlife 
habitat or protecting endangered species, then you should care 
about forest management. If you care about affordable and 
environmentally-friendly housing and commercial construction, 
you should support forest management. If you support new 
technologies for carbon sink positive energy and innovative 
products that can greatly benefit everything from food 
production to advanced manufacturing, then you should care 
about forest management.
    In short, trees are the answer to many of the questions 
that we are asking ourselves today. And the reality is, if we 
just followed the science, our forests would be in much better 
condition than they are now. We have over-regulated our public 
forests so much to the point where Federal land managers can't 
follow the science anymore.
    There is a huge disconnect between what people on the 
ground tell us when we go out into the field and the 
conversations that we have back here in DC. Where land managers 
in the field tell us they need streamlined and simple 
authorities, folks who haven't spent much time in the forest 
say it is unnecessary.
    That is part of the reason why I am leading a bipartisan 
trip this week to the Yale Forest. This forest, which is 
probably the oldest managed forest in the country, the same 
forest where Gifford Pinchot started the forestry school there, 
it has been managed for over 120 years, and it has never had a 
NEPA analysis on it. But I hope we all get to go there and look 
at it, and people can look at the results on the ground and 
tell me why that can't work on our Federal lands.
    I am hoping that this hearing today, the trip to Yale, and 
other field trips and conversations can help us talk about the 
interconnected issues between forest management, wildland fire 
suppression, and ultimately, wildland firefighter well-being. 
We owe it to our forests, we owe it to our communities like 
Paradise, and the brave men and women serving as wildland 
firefighters to try to find solutions that will rise to the 
occasion of truly confronting our wildfire crisis.
    I believe this is a man-made crisis. You can talk about 
warming temperatures and a drier environment, but we still can 
manage for that.
    It is also important to carefully examine potential 
solutions through the regular order process, which is why I am 
grateful that we are having this hearing today. We can see the 
effects of not having bipartisan hearings, which has already 
been mentioned. We are facing the pay cliff that was set up by 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding that was 
supposed to pay for firefighters is set to expire after only 2 
years.
    That was the largest infrastructure bill in the history of 
the world, $1.2 trillion of infrastructure spending. It never 
went through a single Committee hearing in the House, not one. 
I am on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. We 
never had a hearing on that bill. That is why it is important 
to go through regular order to have true bipartisan 
conversations and to address these challenges.
    And with the testimony that we have to hear today and, 
hopefully, the work that we do going forward, we will make 
meaningful progress in these areas. Again, thank you, and I 
yield back.

    Mr. Tiffany. Yes, thank you, Chairman Westerman. And I 
suspect there is still space for the Yale trip at the end of 
the week, if anyone wants to join you. Is that accurate?
    Mr. Westerman. More than welcome.
    Mr. Tiffany. Next, we are going to turn to Members' 
questions, and we will start with the gentleman from 
California, Mr. McClintock.
    Mr. McClintock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, a few years ago I toured the footprint of 
the King Fire. You could literally tell the boundaries between 
the private and public lands just by looking at the condition 
of the forests on each side of the boundary line. The private 
lands had been completely salvaged 5 years later, completely 
replanted, and a young, green, growing young forest was 
thriving. Right next to it, on the public lands, there had been 
no salvage. The landscape was littered with fire-killed timber, 
much of it falling on 8 feet of brush that had grown up, making 
a perfect fire stack for a second-generation fire. And, in 
fact, when the Caldor Fire hit a portion of the public 
footprint last year, it completely exploded out of control, 
according to the firefighters that were battling it. Why is 
that?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Thank you, Congressman, for that question, 
and you are absolutely right that in many areas we haven't been 
able to get to that post-fire work or get to the fuels 
treatments that we need to be doing.
    Mr. McClintock. You haven't been able to, but SPI, the 
private landowner, did. Why is that?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, sir, I would say that in the past it 
was primarily a result of capacity challenges that we have and 
funding challenges.
    Mr. McClintock. SPI is one of the biggest land, in fact, it 
is the biggest landholder in the United States next to the 
Federal Government. So, why is it they can do simple tasks of 
replanting and restoring a forest that seems to be beyond the 
capacity of the Federal Government?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, we are certainly looking to scale up 
those kinds of fuel treatments and post-fire work with the 
investments that we are making.
    Mr. McClintock. But why is it? Why the difference? We used 
to be able to, we used to salvage the lands and replant them 
after a fire. We used to do exactly what the private landowners 
do. Why aren't we doing that anymore?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, sir, we do salvage sales in some 
places, but we do have different challenges than private 
landowners.
    Mr. McClintock. Only on hazard trees. And you know 
perfectly well it now takes 2 years under NEPA and the other 
environmental laws on a fast track to approve timber salvage. 
And by then, the fire-killed trees have lost all their 
commercial value. That is why you can't auction them. And it is 
not because of some act of God, it is because of acts of 
government. It is specifically because of these laws that we 
passed and refuse to modify.
    So, tell me, why is it, again, that these forest owners can 
maintain their tracks in a healthy condition and they make 
money, a lot of money, doing that, and yet the Federal 
Government loses money managing the very same lands.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, that is accurate, sir. Many times 
that is the case. And like I said, that is why we are making 
the investments in fuels treatments in our wildfire crisis 
strategy, using all the funding and all the tools that we have 
received from Congress. And we are happy to work with you on 
any more of those tools.
    Mr. McClintock. Yes, I know you are putting a lot more 
money into fighting fires, because you have allowed the Federal 
forests to become morbidly, catastrophically overgrown, and now 
they are doing what a forest does when it chokes itself to 
death. They are succumbing to disease, pestilence, drought, and 
ultimately to catastrophic wildfire. Am I missing anything?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, like I said, sir, we are focused on 
taking the funding that we do have and the tools that we do 
have, and using that to focus and accelerate fuels treatments 
wherever we can and cooperate with our partners in doing that.
    Mr. McClintock. But you are missing the point, I think. I 
am trying to drive this home to you. Private landowners not 
only manage their lands properly, salvage their lands after a 
fire, and make a great deal of money doing it, while the 
Federal Government abandons its lands after a fire and loses 
money on any timber-thinning project that it undertakes today. 
We used to make money doing that, didn't we?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, we did.
    Mr. McClintock. Didn't we used to send foresters out into 
the forest, mark off excess timber, then auction it to logging 
companies that would remove that excess timber and pay us for 
it?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. We still do that, sir.
    Mr. McClintock. But it now costs us money.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. In some places, yes.
    Mr. McClintock. That is the difference. It now costs us 
money because the cost of these studies exceeds the value of 
the timber. And in those days, when we were efficiently 
managing the forests, before we put these idiotic laws in 
place, a quarter of the revenues from the timber auctions went 
to the communities that were directly impacted, and the other 
75 percent went back to the Forest Service to reinvest in our 
lands.
    Wouldn't it be a good idea to go back to the policies that 
worked, instead of continuing to defend the policies that 
don't?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, we absolutely agree with you that 
active management is a critical part of our work to do to 
reduce the wildfire crisis strategy.
    Mr. McClintock. Well, my suggestion is maybe you ought to 
start doing it.
    I will yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I recognize the 
gentlewoman from California, Ms. Porter.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you very much.
    In recent years, California has seen some of the biggest 
wildfires in state history. Fortunately, we have some of the 
best wildland firefighters in the world at CAL FIRE, the U.S. 
Forest Service, and the Department of the Interior. We owe our 
wildland firefighters a debt of gratitude. They put their lives 
on the line to keep our communities safe. But the lack of 
support that they are given has left agencies scrambling to 
find and retain workers, all without the benefits and financial 
support that they need.
    I have continuously sounded this alarm in hearings, in 
interviews, in press conferences, through the support of 
legislation including my co-leadership of Tim's Act, that 
Congress needs to do its part to give our firefighters what 
they need.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, can you name a few barriers to the 
recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. Thank you for that, Congresswoman, 
and thank you for your work on behalf of our wildland 
firefighters.
    I would say our biggest barriers to recruiting and 
retaining firefighters has been a lack of pay parity or, 
essentially, the low pay that they receive for doing this 
grueling and hazardous work. The BIL supplement has been 
helpful. It is a bridge. But what we need is to permanently 
enact a pay increase so that we can give certainty not only to 
our current wildland firefighters, but those that we are trying 
to attract into this profession, that they can make a living 
wage and support their families doing this work.
    Ms. Porter. I really appreciate that strong answer. You 
would agree that the pay bump that you mentioned under the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has been helpful in retaining our 
firefighters?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, Congresswoman, I would agree, and I 
have heard that directly from firefighters, that it has been 
helpful. But once again, we need a permanent solution.
    Ms. Porter. When is that funding expected to expire?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. For the Forest Service, we are expected to 
spend all of that money by the end of this Fiscal Year, 
September 2023.
    Ms. Porter. So, September 2023. And, of course, we don't 
have a wildfire season, we have year-round wildfires. We heard 
about firefighters and fires, terrible fires, Marshal Fire and 
others that are in the fall and into the winter. We are inching 
closer to a pay cliff, so we need to permanently raise wildland 
firefighter base pay if we are going to maintain this 
consistent workforce.
    You mentioned in your testimony, Ms. Hall-Rivera, that 
Congress will need to pass special legislation that supports a 
special base rate salary table and incident standby pay for all 
responders. If Congress fails to do that and address this 
inadequate pay situation, what is going to happen at the end of 
Fiscal Year 2023 in September?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, Congresswoman, what I am very 
concerned about is that we will lose our firefighters. They 
will leave for other higher-paying jobs. We are hearing from 
our union even now that 30 to 50 percent of our firefighters in 
the Forest Service could leave if we go over that pay cliff, 
and that would certainly be of great concern to all of us and 
all of you, I know, who depend on these firefighters to help 
protect communities in your state and do the critical forest 
management work that we need, as well.
    Ms. Porter. And as we have seen in the last several budget 
years, if we have a continuing resolution, Federal employees 
cannot receive a raise in base pay across the board during a 
continuing resolution. So, it is urgent that we address this.
    As you know, we are about to default if we don't pass 
legislation to address our current debt limit. And we are only 
now beginning to mark up appropriations packages that 
Republicans have said will cut domestic funding. Can you please 
tell this Committee why Congress should not let politics get in 
the way of stabilizing the wildland firefighter workforce?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, Congresswoman, I think we can all 
agree that it is critical that we continue to pay our 
firefighters and pay them what they are worth, and that is not 
a partisan issue.
    Ms. Porter. And how many Forest Service firefighters are 
currently hired for this year?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. We have a little over 9,000 firefighters 
on board right now.
    Ms. Porter. And how many do you need?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. We aspire to have 11,300 firefighters. 
That is not what we need. We need more than that, and that is 
why the 2024 budget requests funding for an additional 970 
firefighters.
    Ms. Porter. How long is it going to take you to get from 
the 9,000 you have as of today to the 11,300 which is the 
maximum that you can support under the funding that you have?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. If we meet that goal, which we are, I 
would say, cautiously optimistic we will get to, that time of 
year is usually late June or early July when we have all of our 
firefighters on board.
    Ms. Porter. Can we count on there not being a fire until 
late June or early July?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Absolutely not, Congresswoman. That is why 
we have the 9,000 that we have on board now. We also depend on 
other employees in the Forest Service who are red-carded, or 
who have fire qualifications.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you. The last thing I want to flag in my 
remaining time is you mentioned these numbers are available on 
your website.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes.
    Ms. Porter. And I was able to eventually find them. But the 
link, www.fs.fed.us/wildlandfire, doesn't work.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. OK, we will get that fixed, Congresswoman.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentlewoman yields. I now recognize the 
gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Stauber, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Stauber. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, thank you for joining us today. Tomorrow, 
on this Committee we are going to mark up my good friend Mr. 
Rosendale's Forest Information Reform Act, which fixes the 
Cottonwood decision. When Deputy Director French was before 
this Subcommittee not too long ago, he discussed how the 
expiration of the temporary fix to the misguided Cottonwood 
decision could lead to lengthy ESA reconsultation on numerous 
forest plans. As you know, Mr. Rosendale's H.R. 200 would fix 
this issue.
    But before the President signs that bill into law, as we 
enter this horrible wildfire season, can you discuss how this 
onerous process could impact needed forestry projects that 
mitigate fuel on our forest floors?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, thank you for that question, 
Congressman. And we want to work with you on the solution to 
Cottonwood. I know our Chief and Deputy Chiefs have testified 
on that many times. As I understand it, we have 87 land 
management plans that could be impacted if the fix is not 
enacted.
    Mr. Stauber. And then can we expect any other further 
delays?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. I am sorry, sir. Delays in what?
    Mr. Stauber. In the forest plans being implemented.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. This is not my area of expertise in the 
agency, but I would expect that if we had to re-consult on 
plans, there would be a delay. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Stauber. Yes. Can you give us an idea of how long of a 
delay?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, I believe I have heard our Deputy 
Chief for the National Forest System say 1 to 2 years, in some 
cases, could be the delay.
    Mr. Stauber. OK, 1 to 2 years, thank you. And I have asked 
similar questions to Chief Moore, as well. But we need to 
update the Good Neighbor Authority so counties can retain 
receipts for completing contracts on Federal lands, whether it 
be in the farm bill or a stand-alone. I think the Good Neighbor 
Authority is important, and I think the counties need to be 
reimbursed for their efforts.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, I appreciate your reference to Good 
Neighbor Authority briefly in your written testimony. Can you 
share how allowing counties to retain revenues would benefit 
forest health and help to mitigate wildfires?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, sir. Allowing counties and tribes to 
share their revenues, we believe, would increase their 
participation and make this a tool that has been very 
successful even more effective.
    Mr. Stauber. Thank you very much. And with my remaining 
time, I will yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin for the last 
2 minutes and 30 seconds.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. Next, I will recognize 
the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Kamlager-Dove.
    Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you both 
for attending this hearing today.
    Director Rupert, the most recent national climate 
assessment predicts increased incidences of wildfires in the 
West as temperatures soar and droughts lengthen. You mentioned 
the oversized role that climate change continues to play in the 
extreme weather we have been experiencing across the country, 
including my state of California. As the fire season continues 
to extend year round, how is the Office of Wildland Fire 
accounting for climate change and ensuring the utilization of 
science when developing fire prevention policies?
    Mr. Rupert. Thank you for the question. As you stated, the 
impact and the role of climate in the occurrence and increasing 
intensity frequently of wildfire is pretty well established in 
science at this point. How that interacts with land use and 
land management and prior fire management, as well as an 
expanding interface, people living in that wildland urban 
interface, really is, foundationally, the really unacceptable 
impact that we are seeing nationally to people and resources.
    So, in Interior, with additional support through the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as well as we have also been on 
a trajectory of receiving fuels management and risk reduction 
support through the annual appropriation, we have been steadily 
increasing our accomplishment of fuels reduction on the ground. 
Increasingly, we, along with our partners like Forest Service, 
states, tribes, many, many local communities across the West, 
although we really need to be able to say all communities 
across the West, increasingly are developing multi-
jurisdictional, cross-programmatic, at-scale, so think 
watershed scale, landscape-scale risk reduction strategies so 
that the fuels management work that we do on Interior-
administered land aligns and is coordinated with the fuels 
management work that our partners on adjacent jurisdictions are 
implementing with again, that shared vision of at scale, and 
the scale piece is really important here, that at scale we have 
these shared risk reduction strategies that will make a 
difference in future years for those communities' 
infrastructure, resource values, the complete sort of 
resiliency and sustainability of landscapes and watersheds.
    Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you.
    Deputy Chief Hall-Rivera, you mentioned that over the past 
20 years wildfires have become larger, lasted longer, and 
proved more challenging to contain. We know that healthy 
forests help regulate the climate by absorbing greenhouse 
gases, facilitating water flows, and supporting diverse 
ecosystems. Is it your opinion that older and larger trees are 
more resistant to wildfire and the effects of climate change 
than smaller, younger ones?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. Thank you for that question, 
Congresswoman. I would say it depends on the species, of 
course. But many trees that are older and larger are more 
resistant to fire, especially low severity fire, if that is 
what they are naturally adapted to, yes.
    Ms. Kamlager-Dove. And how is your office prioritizing 
protecting either those kinds of trees or those species?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. I would say we have lots of different ways 
that we are doing that, one of the most important being working 
with local communities, working with tribes, and working with 
others who really have that on-the-ground knowledge, as well as 
our own Forest Service personnel, to identify those places on 
the forest where those trees or those groves of trees may be, 
and designing management strategies around them, again, in 
collaboration, in partnership with those folks who know the 
area best.
    Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you for that. I did a couple of 
forest tours in Northern California looking at private lands 
and also Federal lands, and there is a difference in how they 
are managed. I think part of it is because private companies 
only have to answer to their shareholders and not to the 
public. They are not using taxpayer dollars.
    I will also say, and I know this might sound strange, that 
in my discussions with tribal leaders, the importance of doing 
exactly what you said, in making sure that there is a healthy 
co-existence of the trees and how we are actually communicating 
to them, because they certainly are communicating with one 
another about which ones are going to stay and which ones might 
succumb if not to human touch or mismanagement, but to fires. I 
know that went a little spiritual.
    So, with that, I will yield back my time.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady yields. I recognize the 
gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Fulcher.
    Mr. Fulcher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, my home state of Idaho, about two-thirds 
of our land mass, really close to that, is federally 
controlled, some 33 million acres. Most of that is Forest 
Service. But between Forest Service and BLM, quite frankly, 
overwhelmed, don't have the resources to manage.
    There has been a lot of mismanagement. And, frankly, when 
they do, they get sued into oblivion for every step of the way 
by some somebody who calls themselves an environmentalist. And 
as a result of that, somewhere between half a million and a 
million acres a year gets burned up. And that is just because 
of bad management, lack of ability to manage.
    In our state, it is the state and the private land that is 
our lifeline, because we have some degree of control. We have 
some degree of ability to manage that ground.
    And I have to admit until today I didn't even know we had a 
Federal Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry. And please 
don't mistake my comments to be disparaging to you, but I 
simply don't know. What is the purpose of your role? What do 
you do over state and private?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, thank you for that question, 
Congressman. I am happy to talk about our programs that serve 
state, private, and tribal landowners.
    In addition to the National Forest System, which, 
obviously, you are well familiar with, we have a suite of 
programs where we work really closely with state foresters in 
every state and territory to help deliver technical assistance 
and financial assistance to private landowners through our 
forest stewardship program. We help private landowners combat 
diseases and insects through our forest health program. And 
then we also provide training and the ability to do hazardous 
fuels treatments on state, private, and other county lands 
through our state and volunteer fire assistance programs.
    So, we have a really long-standing relationship with our 
state forestry agencies, and we work in very close partnership 
with them to manage our nation's forests, we have 193 million 
acres of national forests, and we have almost 500 million acres 
of state, private, tribal, and urban forests.
    Mr. Fulcher. Well, if I could just encourage you, that is 
not where we need the help. It is the Federal lands where we 
need the help. And, again, this is nothing against you 
personally, but we are doing OK with the state and the private. 
And speaking for the majority of the people in my state, that 
is not where we want the help.
    But I will segue, because I don't want to make this all 
negative about that. What criteria do you use when you are 
prioritizing fires, one fire versus another? How do you 
prioritize where to put your assets and how to attack?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, that is a great question, and there 
is a lot of complexity there depending on what is going on in 
the fire season.
    But for what we call initial attack, that is really done 
locally with our personnel, but usually also with state, maybe 
local, county dispatchers, personnel. And essentially, when a 
fire starts, it is usually closest forces. If we are closest, 
we go. If Interior is closest, they go. If states or counties 
are closest, they go.
    As we get more fire activity and there is more complexity, 
we do have to do more prioritizing, and that is primarily done 
at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. And what we 
are going to look at, first and foremost, is protecting 
communities, life, and property that is at risk. That is where 
we are going to prioritize all of the assets that we have any 
sort of control or influence over.
    Mr. Fulcher. OK. Thank you, Ms. Hall-Rivera, and Mr. 
Rupert, as well.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to 
recognize the Ranking Member for his questions, Mr. Neguse.
    Mr. Neguse. I thank the Chairman. And I see Mr. Curtis is 
back, so hopefully he can defend the propriety of that goatee I 
was challenging earlier.
    It is good to see you.
    Sorry, so much discussion about Mr. Curtis. I wanted to 
raise a couple of different issues.
    First, to the Deputy Chief, I am certainly familiar with 
your work, and with your role, and grateful for the work that 
you do in partnering with a variety of private forest owners in 
my district, as well as, of course, with the state of Colorado 
and the State Forestry Department.
    We had an opportunity to question Chief Moore a few weeks 
ago in this Committee, an extended colloquy around some of the 
prioritization decisions with respect to the tranches of 
funding that have been allocated and announced by the Forest 
Service. I couldn't be more, again, grateful that we were able 
to get these investments enacted into law, and that the Forest 
Service is now well on its way to working on implementing those 
funds in a variety of different national forests across the 
country, including in my community, the Arapaho and Roosevelt 
National Forests, as I am sure you are familiar with, or 
rather, USDA and your department, the Forest Service, recently 
announced a tranche of funding going to the Routt National 
Forest up in northwestern Colorado up to the Wyoming border. 
So, I am grateful that we are able to make those investments. 
It is going to make a real difference in terms of the hazardous 
fuels reduction that will happen in those parts of my district, 
and I suspect many of my colleagues that have projects in their 
states, as well.
    I wonder if you might talk a bit about how you see 
subsequent tranches of funding being allocated. There are many 
forests that, of course, were not included, and one in 
particular in my state, the White River National Forest, which 
happens to be the most highly-visited national forest in the 
entire system managed by the USFS, and part of this goes to the 
different criteria that are being used to determine which 
landscapes merit the investment. So, I just wonder if you might 
opine a bit on that.
    Obviously, I have my interest in particular on behalf of 
Coloradans in making sure that the White River National Forest 
is reflected in the next tranche.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that 
question. Again, we are extremely grateful for all of the 
resources that have been invested in this work through BIL and 
IRA.
    There is a lot of work to do out there, I think, 
Congressman, and you all know that. It can be a challenging 
task to prioritize, right? What we have learned, and Mr. Rupert 
spoke to this earlier, is you need to invest at a landscape-
scale to make a difference. You have to do work at the scale of 
the problem. We have lots of great work going on all over the 
country, but a lot of it is not large enough. The treatments 
are not large enough to make a difference when a fire impacts 
them.
    So, what we look at is fire potential, communities. We look 
at some aspects around things like wildlife corridors, 
infrastructure, tribal lands, tribal interests, and socially 
disadvantaged communities. So, it is a complex network of 
different factors that we look at.
    We will continue to use, I believe, that same type of 
prioritization for additional funding that we are going to be 
putting out, as well as continuing to invest in those 
landscapes that we are currently investing in.
    Mr. Neguse. I appreciate that answer and I would encourage 
the agency, I think, to be nimble and explore alternative 
criterion that can be applied as you determine the best way to 
allocate these resources.
    In the case of the White River National Forest, a good 
example, you mentioned populations. Obviously, most of the 
landscapes identified in that first tranche of funding, 
including the Arapaho and Roosevelt, happened to be adjacent to 
large population centers--a very direct threat, of course, to 
citizens and to our communities.
    But the White River National Forest, as we know, has been 
the site of multiple fires that have created disastrous 
economic impacts: the closure of I-70 in the Glenwood Canyon, 
just by way of example, 2 years ago that had ramifications 
across the country, just because it is such a central artery, 
as my colleagues in Utah, Nevada, and other states well 
understand in terms of that highway.
    Anyway, I would just encourage you to take that approach, 
and as you get to this, I believe it is the third tranche of 
funding, or perhaps spending or allocating the remaining 
funding that isn't spent from the first two tranches, that you 
explore some different criteria.
    With that, again, I thank you for the work that you are 
doing, both of you, and you will certainly have a partner in 
our office, in my office, and I suspect many of us in the work 
that you are doing.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I recognize the 
gentleman from Utah, the Vice Chairman, Mr. Curtis.
    Mr. Curtis. Thank you. Let me just start by saying what a 
delight it is to work with Congressman Neguse as Co-Chair of 
the Wildfire Caucus, and I appreciate your support and 
leadership.
    I have listened with interest as he has described his 
district and my colleague from Idaho has described his 
district. It sounds a little bit like one-upmanship about who 
has the most trees. I am pretty sure I do.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Curtis. And since I am speaking last, I will take that.
    But Congressman Neguse, my last comment would be just to 
invite you to join the goatee caucus with me. We could perhaps 
Co-Chair that with a little work on your side.
    Mr. Neguse. I will rise to that challenge.
    Mr. Curtis. Good. Listen, I really am grateful for the 
Wildfire Caucus. It does give us an opportunity and a platform 
to talk about some of these issues on a really bipartisan 
level. It is no secret how much the two of us share in our 
districts in importance of forest fires.
    Let me talk a little bit about--you talked about 
prioritization. Let me talk about just the prioritization of 
preventative work over firefighting and treatment. It seems 
obvious, but could both of you just address quickly the cost 
difference of preventing a fire versus putting one out and 
treating a fire?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, I will start, Congressman. That old 
adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, is very 
true. We find that the investments that we make in fuels 
treatments, even though some of them can be quite costly, they 
don't compare to what we spend in suppression, and certainly 
don't compare to what communities and people suffer in terms of 
financial and other hardships as a result of fires.
    Mr. Curtis. Yes.
    Mr. Rupert?
    Mr. Rupert. Yes, I would just real briefly add to that. The 
work that I have seen done on that, treating, preventing, a 
fraction of the cost of suppression. Part of the challenge of 
really nailing that number down is the true cost of wildfire. 
And there are reports, and reports, and reports written about 
the true cost, and there is still uncertainty that we have not 
accurately been able to determine the true cost of wildfire.
    So, that efficiency, as we understand and develop that 
science, is just going to continue to----
    Mr. Curtis. Yes, and add onto that the environmental 
impact, the carbon release, the damage to the environmental 
ecosystem.
    The next obvious question to both of you then is, why 
aren't we spending more time on prevention, and how can we make 
that a bigger focus?
    Mr. Rupert. Well, I am pleased with the trajectory that we 
have been on the front side of fire. There has been a dramatic 
increase in focus on that. I agree that there is a long way to 
go.
    For me, I think about that fire response framework, very 
robust, very mature framework. We talk about Boise, we talk 
about the National Interagency Fire Center, and that 
partnership and that community. It is all coordinated, 
standard-driven. We don't yet have that in the pre-fire space. 
And it is not a cut-and-paste sort of need that we have for a 
pre-fire framework, because there are some different interested 
parties, more of a land management engagement, for sure.
    But to have a coordinated framework that is standard-
driven, science-driven, data-driven, I think, is what we 
continue to need to expand and build.
    Mr. Curtis. Is it possible that it is a little political, 
some of these treatments? And how do we address that? How do we 
hit that head on?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, go ahead.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sure. I will take that one, sir.
    Yes, certainly we see disagreements about treatments and 
what the American public wants from their forest lands. But I 
am really heartened to see in the past few years the strength 
of the collaborations that we see, just the awareness of fire, 
and the need to do treatments in the forest to help prevent 
that, I think, has gone up significantly as a result of this 
crisis that we are suffering.
    So, we have a lot more partners at the table that are 
helping us come together and do these treatments and get the 
prescribed fire on the landscape, too, which is a significant 
need that we have in the West, and we need partners and 
traditional ecological knowledge from tribes to help us do that 
well.
    Mr. Curtis. I can tell you in my district, we are often 
criticized after a fire of not having prepared or done enough 
to prevent it, and I would love to join my colleague, Mr. 
Neguse, in a bipartisan manner to deal with these preventative 
issues, and would love any ideas that you could bring forward 
that we could work on in the caucus to see if we could advance 
some bipartisan solutions.
    Mr. Chairman, I am out of time. I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to 
recognize the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Bentz, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Bentz. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for this 
hearing.
    I am, obviously, from Oregon, and I will challenge the tree 
numbers that were mentioned by Utah. But the issue of wildfire 
is hugely challenging in Oregon and, of course, northern 
California. And one of the obvious ways of taking care of this 
is treating land. That is why I was so happy to see your 10-
year plan and 20 million acres, and then perhaps 30 million on 
top of that or in addition to that from adjacent landowners.
    It seemed to me, in the work I have been doing with various 
large timber landowners, that there is a concern when it comes 
to fighting these fires that private land is not respected, 
private land rights are not respected. And we even saw an 
example of this in a small, little prescribed burn adjacent to, 
actually, one of the grazing permits that my family has in the 
Malheur National Forest, and what happened was reflective of 
the folks working for the Forest Service not really caring 
about private property. And what that does is it makes the 
private property owners mad, and angry, and upset, and nothing 
good comes from it.
    The question I have for both of you, really, is how do we 
address this issue of arrogance that we see when backfires are 
started? How do we address this issue of we don't care about 
fences, we don't care about cattle, we don't care about 
neighboring property burning up. How do we address this? 
Because we have to work together on this. And that 10-year plan 
really does reflect the fact that you are looking at private 
landowners for that 30 million acres.
    So, can both of you take a shot at explaining how we might 
move away from the obvious ``We are the Federal Government, we 
can burn anything down we want, we have absolute immunity,'' 
and all kinds of justifications to more of a ``How can we work 
together with you, and the last thing we want to do is burn you 
up while we are trying to save our national forests''?
    So, take it away.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sure, thank you for that question, 
Congressman. Yes, we need to be in partnership, no doubt about 
it. Fire is an all-hands issue, and wildland fires don't 
respect boundaries, right?
    I think it is absolutely our Chief's expectation that our 
leaders out in the field are working together with their 
partners, their communities, private property owners. We are 
doing that work before the fire comes. That is really, really 
critical, sitting down together when smoke is not in the air, 
having those discussions about where do we engage a fire, what 
is the right ridge, learning from our folks like ranchers and 
producers that have been out there on the land and know those 
features, and can help our folks learn that----
    Mr. Bentz. If I may interrupt, what is the accountability 
method so that, when someone working for the Forest Service 
does make a mistake, and burns way more than should have been 
burned? There are all kinds of excuses, but what is the 
accountability methodology in place so that, when something 
does go wrong and there is no doubt about someone overstepping 
their bounds as an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, how do 
you address this? Because that is not what happened in this 
little prescribed burn. Can you share with us what we look 
toward to make sure accountability occurs?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sure. Yes, we are always going to be 
accountable for our actions. I know that myself and the Chief 
definitely will be accountable.
    We are asking our employees to do challenging things. We 
are asking our employees to take risks when we put fire on the 
ground, and we are going to support them, as well. And we do 
try to make right with the private landowners wherever we can.
    Mr. Bentz. Here is what I need. I need the rules that 
reflect the procedure for imposing accountability. I just don't 
want a statement that, yes, we will be--no, that is not good 
enough. In the situation that occurred back in the Malheur 
National Forest, there were people who did things that were 
incorrect, burned up private property, reflected zero care for 
that purpose, cut fences, destroyed I don't know how many board 
feet of private timber for no good reason, and contrary to the 
measurement of the amount of humidity in the air. In fact, it 
was phonied up.
    Where is the written procedure for holding those people and 
the Forest Service accountable? I need a copy of it, if such a 
thing exists.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. We can get that to you, Congressman.
    Mr. Bentz. Thank you so much. I yield back.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. The gentleman yields. I would like to 
recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Duarte, next.
    Mr. Duarte. Hello, thank you. Thank you for being here. I 
have been through a lot of forestry discussions, several today 
even, one over in Doug LaMalfa's Subcommittee on Agriculture 
with the Chief, and here with you. And they all start off with 
a lot of discussion of climate change. And, yes, the climate is 
changing. It has been changing for a while. We don't need to go 
into that.
    What is really different though, and I hope we can dialogue 
honestly about it, is our forest management strategies changed 
30 to 40 years ago. They didn't change for the better. In 
retrospect, for whatever the motivations or intents were then, 
they didn't change for the better. Whether they were old growth 
forests or new forests, we quit thinning them, we drove the 
loggers out of them in Oregon, in California, in many areas. 
Logging communities are on their heels, economically. It is 
tough to find a logger in California these days.
    And really, it is going to take, I mean, there are 48 
million acres of forest land in California alone, Federal 
forest land in California alone. So, $1,000 an acre would be 
$48 billion. It is not going to happen, right? It is not going 
to happen. So, we need those loggers back. We need the sawmills 
back. We need the wood products companies researching new 
products and finding economic use of our forest products.
    We are not going to do this if we leave it to government to 
get through the 100 million acres, or 193 million acres of 
forest land, it is going to burn. It is going to burn hot, it 
is going to burn catastrophically, and it is going to burn and 
then regenerate into something that is very different than a 
sustainable conifer forest that we hope to get to.
    So, please, be honest with us, because right now what is 
happening is when one party gets control of the administration 
power, we get some forest laws we can live with. When another 
party gets in there, we talk climate change and the loggers are 
on their heels again, and we don't get the investment and the 
long-term business strategies that allow for the rural 
communities to actually develop the economy that sustains the 
forests.
    So, please, if you guys can be honest with us, we can at 
least begin the dialogue and the assurance that we are heading 
toward a commercially viable--for a sustainability program that 
allows logging, grazing, wood products, industries to re-
establish and convince the bank that it is a worthwhile 
investment.
    So, please, talk about a vision for sustainable forestry 
going forward that removes it from the political football it 
has been, admits to mistakes which were admitted to when we 
went to some more of what we thought were sustainable methods. 
Please give us something to hold on to here, because we keep 
hearing the same stuff.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, Congressman, I would say our 10-year 
wildfire crisis strategy lays out that blueprint and that plan. 
We absolutely need to do active forest management on millions 
of acres in this country, and we need an industry, a healthy 
industry, to help us be partners in that, not only our 
traditional sawmill industry, but, as you pointed out, new 
forest products as well, new markets, especially for the 
smaller diameter trees that put many of our forests most at 
risk.
    Mr. Rupert. I might just add, from an Interior perspective, 
I thank you. I very much appreciate your comments and feedback.
    I think, particularly with a bureau like the Bureau of Land 
Management, a bureau like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and 
really, across the entire Department, there is a recognition 
that for some of the lands that we manage, and again, Interior, 
we don't want to just talk about forest management, because 
actually in Interior we don't manage all that much forest. We 
do manage forests, especially in Oregon, but we manage hundreds 
of millions of non-forested land, as well. And they are dealing 
with fire risk in those areas.
    Grazing is a very important tool. The BIA, in particular, 
working with tribes with forest programs and active forage 
management, there is a very sort of proud, proud legacy and 
history there. So, I think much of, at least from my 
perspective, in addition to recognizing the impact of climate 
and then all of these activities in terms of, OK, so how are we 
going to adapt to that for future years that we do need to 
have, if we want to use those tools, that we have to have sort 
of the foundation. And for many of these uses, that includes 
the economic foundation for them to exist.
    Mr. Duarte. Thank you.
    Mr. Rupert. I appreciate your comments.
    Mr. Duarte. You mentioned grazing, so let's talk about 
southwestern deserts and grazing. Salt cedar removals are very 
necessary. BLM land leases are very, very much a part of, 
families' grazing rights are a big deal.
    Just recently, the Department of the Interior challenged 
grazing rights, and basically offered grazing rights that 
families have held adjacent to their deeded acreage for 
generations up for public auction to conservation groups, or 
whoever will pay the highest price.
    These families that need to develop water, they need to 
manage habitat, they need to control game on their property, 
they need to do salt cedar removal to protect groundwater 
resources and habitat value, the same issue, we just inserted a 
whole ton of uncertainty into the business model of these 
ranching families with a policy that came out of the Bureau of 
Land Management, Department of the Interior that hadn't even 
been through public comment, hadn't even worked constructively 
with the ranchers to talk about what would happen if we put 
your grazing rights adjacent to your deeded acreage up for 
auction.
    So, that is another one of the economically destabilizing--
how does a bank loan against those ranches when public policy 
is making ominous, large moves against the most economic 
interests?
    Thank you, Chairman. I will yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you. The gentleman yields, and I would 
like to recognize Mr. Westerman.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany. And again, 
thank you to the witnesses for being here.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, do you get out much and see the Forest 
Service lands across the country?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, Congressman, I don't get to go out 
as much as I would like. But yes, I try to get out and see our 
forest lands as much as possible.
    Mr. Westerman. How does it make you feel when you see these 
devastated landscapes? I call them moonscapes.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, it is heart wrenching.
    Mr. Westerman. I can just think of a few of them off the 
cuff here.
    I was out in New Mexico, the Lincoln National Forest, a 
fire burned many years ago, and it is still just a moonscape 
out there. But you go down the road to the Mescalero Apache 
tribal land, it is a beautiful Ponderosa pine forest, lots of 
wildlife there. And it is the same climate, same elevation, 
same environment, same tree species. It is just different 
management tactics.
    And the really sad thing is these forests aren't coming 
back. So, it seems like, if Forest Service employees went out 
and saw that, you would be just like hammering the table 
saying, ``We have to do something different. We can't have more 
Lincoln National Forest storage of these thousands and 
thousands of acres of land that has been decimated.''
    Out in California, Mr. McClintock has done some work where 
you go look at the restoration out around South Lake Tahoe, 
where fires have come through and you still have a vibrant, 
healthy forest there, yet you go down the road, and I can't 
remember the name of this particular fire, but the Forest 
Service said they had tried to replant it, like, 6 times in 12 
years, and the trees just wouldn't grow because the organic 
matter burned out of the ground.
    Should we be more adamant about doing management preventing 
these moonscapes, doing things like Mr. McClintock has proposed 
that show it works on the ground? What is keeping us from 
making these forests healthy like we would all like them to be?
    You are representing the U.S. Forest Service. What does the 
Forest Service need to make that happen?
    If you had an unlimited firefighter budget, that tells me 
all we are doing is paying more people to put out the fires we 
should be preventing.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, well, it is a multi-faceted 
challenge, for sure. And I know our employees want to get out 
on the ground and do that work together with our partners.
    We need additional capacity. We are building that capacity 
through many of the investments that you all have made in the 
Forest Service in the last couple of years. We are also working 
with partners to build their capacity.
    We need industry. We just were talking about that earlier. 
We need a healthy forest products industry, and we need new 
markets, again, especially for those trees that right now don't 
have all that much value. And we are doing that work in our 
research and wood innovations programs, and we are partnering.
    We need to learn from our partners. We need to learn from 
our tribal partners who have been managing these forests for 
millennia.
    Mr. Westerman. Yes, I think learning from state and tribal 
partners could be a tremendous help. But when I look at it from 
an industry perspective, they were basically run out of the 
areas because of the lack of management. And it is kind of like 
Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. Why would they ever 
want to go invest a lot of money trusting that there is going 
to be long-term management down the road?
    And we tried to give the Forest Service tools like that. We 
gave you a 20-year stewardship contract provision. How many 20-
year stewardship contracts has the Forest Service signed since 
we gave you that provision in 2018?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. I don't have that number, sir, but it is 
small.
    Mr. Westerman. I have the number, it is zero. And if we are 
not doing the management, if you are not showing industry that 
there is reason to come back to a place, there is no incentive 
for them to go spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build 
infrastructure that simply can't exist without the management.
    We have the Save our Sequoias Act, and we have large white 
fir and pine trees that need to be taken out of the sequoia 
groves, and there is absolutely no market anywhere close for 
that material. So, it is kind of the chicken and the egg 
scenario.
    I think the Forest Service has to create some credibility, 
and it has to be long-term commitments like the 20-year 
stewardship contract if you ever want to get that industry 
back.
    And we are facing housing shortages, high construction 
prices. And instead of burning all this timber and sending 
carbon up in the atmosphere, we could be building houses, we 
could be building businesses. But it is really hard to come in 
here and talk about increased money for firefighting, when that 
is just putting a Band-Aid on the wound instead of going to the 
symptom of what is causing the problem.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I recognize another 
gentleman from California, Mr. LaMalfa.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for letting me 
be in today with your Subcommittee.
    Ms. Hall-Rivera, we have noted your goal of working 20 
million acres of public land over a 10-year period, as well as 
doing things to partner on the state, tribal, and private lands 
for another 30 million. My question is, we have seen a history 
with Forest Service of over-reporting or even misrepresenting 
actual treated acreage, such as counting the same piece of land 
maybe up to four times if it has had different treatments in a 
short period of time, or maybe it is fire, and then they come 
back with thinning, or salvage, et cetera, things like that.
    Would you agree that that is an issue with how land is 
reported, and for us to make decisions on? What does that look 
like to you?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. Well, thank you for that question, 
Congressman.
    We do count every treatment that we do. Many acres need 
multiple treatments to get them back to a healthy state. They 
need to be mechanically thinned, they might need to have a 
timber sale, and they probably need prescribed fire. That is 
going to occur over, likely, multiple seasons and multiple 
years. So, we account for each one of those entries, because we 
need our folks out there doing that work, we need to be paying 
them a salary to do that, or we need to be contracting with 
folks. So, yes, we account for each one of those.
    But to your point, I think the point maybe that you are 
making is are we also accounting for the outcomes that we are 
having, and I would acknowledge that we can always do a better 
job talking about outcomes, in particular when it comes to how 
we articulate whether we are reducing risk, risk to 
communities, and whether or not those landscapes are healthier 
and in a more resilient state when we complete all of those 
treatments. So, we need to do that, as well.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, I guess at the same time we need to be 
reporting, if it is multi-treatments on the same land, how much 
untreated land do we still have.
    Let me ask more specifically on what you consider treated. 
If a forest has been burned via wildfire, not prescribed, is 
that considered treated land?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. In some instances, we do count those acres 
as a fuels treatment if they meet a number of criteria, and if 
it is an area that, in the forest plan, is designated for that. 
It is, I would tell you, a pretty small number of acres each 
year.
    Mr. LaMalfa. So, you would have an area where an accidental 
wildfire caused by nature or what have you, that those lands 
could be counted not as being harvested or prescribed, or 
thinned, or whatever, you would count them as treated. Like, I 
had a million-acre fire in my district 2 years ago. How much 
would that be considered treatment by Forest Service when it 
was not intended?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Let me characterize that, the numbers 
there. We normally treat, overall, around 3 to 3.5 million 
acres a year. Acres that are treated by a wildfire that we 
count toward that might be 300,000 acres, total. It is a 
relatively small number.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Because the big problem on the back end of 
that is that, and you can fly right over it and look at the 
comparison, when you see private land post-fire versus Federal 
land post-fire, private land is going right back to work 
removing that material and planting trees back. You fly over, 
say, 7 years later, you can see green there, and you can see 
the land that was that was Federal. It is a checkerboard 
pattern, you can tell that it has largely been left the same. 
You have snags out there, you have brush growing, all that. So, 
we have the same tinderbox situation.
    How is the Forest Service doing, since I think it is about 
a 2-year-old plan now, on the 20 million acres that it set out 
to do? How much progress has been made on that 10-year goal so 
far?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. I don't have the figures right at my 
fingertips, but I believe we have treated a couple hundred 
thousand acres total in our 21 landscapes. Obviously, we have 
more to go. A lot of our first year we were getting activated, 
getting those projects that were already kind of on the shelf 
out in place. And now we have this significant investment here 
in the second year, and I expect us to continue to ramp up our 
activity in our priority landscapes.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Well, it is going to be very difficult to meet 
a 10-year mark of 20 million at that rate, and that is the 
thing I always am concerned about, is pace and scale of getting 
this work done, especially since Forest Service oversees 193 
million acres. Twenty million is right at 10 percent of that, 
so 2 million per year is 1 percent of the year of its holdings. 
That will take forever.
    And I understand not all 193 million is such that they 
would be treating, but still, we have a significant--and Chief 
Moore in a previous hearing says the wood outstrips the work 
every year by a lot.
    I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields from California. I will 
take 5 minutes for questioning at this point.
    The Chairman of the Full Committee asked a question in 
regards to the 20-year stewardship contract. He said there are 
none out there. Are there any being considered?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, I do believe we have one 20-year 
stewardship contract under development now. And what I can say 
writ large is that we do use stewardship contracting.
    The other authority that we have quite frequently, as well 
as all of the other tools that we have available to us--Good 
Neighbor Authority, Wyden Authority, joint chiefs, many of the 
things that we have talked about today.
    So, we do use stewardship contracting a lot, just the 20-
year authority we have not used as much.
    Mr. Tiffany. Do you not want to use the 20-year stewardship 
contract? As the Chairman said, it gives people certainty then, 
especially for private industry, which has been run out of the 
West. Wouldn't it encourage some of them to come back?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, we do want to use that, Congressman. 
This is not my area of expertise, so we can get you some more 
details on ones that are being developed, or even some of the 
challenges that we have experienced.
    Mr. Tiffany. You commented about being accountable under 
the questioning of Mr. Bentz from Oregon. How were you 
accountable? How was the agency accountable with the Hermits 
Peak Fire?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, thank you for that question, 
Congressman. And I just want to acknowledge and say again that 
we are very sorry for what happened with Hermits Peak. We know 
that it had tragic impacts on that community, and the people's 
lives and livelihoods there, as well as some of our employees 
who live there.
    We had to put a lot of funding, post-fire and disaster 
funding, into that area. We are working together with the 
community and landowners to help them get access to other USDA 
programs as well.
    Mr. Tiffany. Are state and local entities or private 
landowners allowed to sue the Federal Government in a situation 
like that?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sir, I am not an attorney. I don't know 
all the details around that. But, yes, I believe there is a lot 
of active litigation going on right now.
    Mr. Tiffany. Who manages our forests better, local, state, 
or Federal?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, I would say that working in 
partnership is really critical. We all have our own authorities 
and our own missions that we work in. And for us, bringing 
those partners to the table, learning from them, being 
collaborative, and trying to get to a point where we have a lot 
of social license to do the work that we need to do is 
critically important for us.
    Mr. Tiffany. You used the term, the phrase ``social 
license.'' What role do lawsuits play in stymieing the Federal 
landowners from getting projects done?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. We do have litigation challenges, sir, in 
particular in specific regions of the Forest Service. We have 
that. It can delay projects, and it can delay us from getting 
work done on the ground.
    Mr. Tiffany. Would it help to have a loser pays system here 
in the United States?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. I am sorry, a what, sir?
    Mr. Tiffany. Would it help to have a loser pays system, 
where those that are filing the lawsuits, which you oftentimes 
win, but then there are no repercussions for those that file 
those lawsuits that are oftentimes frivolous?
    Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, I couldn't say one way or the other. 
I haven't really looked into that. That is part of our 
democracy. People are going to litigate the decisions that we 
make, and what we do is try to build deeper partnerships and 
more collaborations so we can help build trust and social 
license to do our work.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Rupert, you mentioned about climate change 
causing this. What has had a greater impact, climate change or 
improper management?
    I always use the watershed year of 1988, where forest 
management became much less active on our Federal lands, and 
you see the decline in forest production, and you see the 
incline of fires over the last, what would that be, 40 years. 
Which one has had a greater impact?
    Mr. Rupert. I don't know that I have seen definitive sort 
of reporting comparing the two and assigning weight. The most 
comprehensive study that I have seen, and analysis really hits 
on all three that have been talked about today: (1) climate, 
(2) past fire management practices, in particular with very 
aggressive suppression over the last century-and-a-half, and 
then (3) changes in population, so people moving into that 
wildland-urban interface, those three issues combined.
    Mr. Tiffany. Do you believe global warming is man-caused?
    Mr. Rupert. I am not a global warming expert in terms of 
climate change. Everything that I have read and all the 
reference to climate and the atmosphere and a variety of 
complex factors, including wildfire smoke that interact in it, 
and the impact that it has, and I think that clearly sort of 
creates that foundation for why we spend so much time talking 
about how are we going to adapt to this.
    Mr. Tiffany. You may be correct that these wildfires, with 
all the smoke that is coming up as a result of improper 
management, that may be befouling the environment and helping 
cause it.
    I am going to ask one real quick final question. We saw the 
impact of illegal aliens causing fire on Federal lands down in 
southern Arizona. Are you concerned at all with the incredible 
crush of people coming across our border as a result of the 
actions of the Biden administration, that we may see wildfires 
as a result of illegal aliens going through our Federal forest 
lands, as has happened previously?
    Mr. Rupert. Maybe, I will respond to fire along, in this 
case, the southern border.
    Certainly, Interior, we administer hundreds of thousands of 
acres along the southern border: refuges, parks, BLM land, 
tribal trust lands. We have a real focus on risk reduction 
fuels management along the southern border, and that has been 
the case for many years. And then we also have a real focus on 
our sort of preparedness and response resources along the 
southern border, as well.
    And regardless of how wildfires ignite, I mean, we are 
doing everything we can to be prepared to interact with that 
and reduce risk from those fires.
    Mr. Tiffany. I thank the witnesses for their testimony 
today and the Members for their questions. The witnesses on the 
first panel are dismissed.
    Thank you for your testimony. We will now move on to our 
second panel.
    While the Clerk resets our witness table, I will remind the 
witnesses that, under Committee Rules, they must limit their 
oral statements to 5 minutes, but their entire statement will 
appear in the hearing record.
    I would also like to remind our witnesses of the timing 
lights, which will turn red at the end of your 5-minute 
statement, and to please remember to turn on your microphone.
    As with the first panel, I will allow all witnesses to 
testify before Member questioning.
    [Pause.]
    Mr. Tiffany. I want to thank the witnesses so much for 
their patience, what is nearly 2 hours and a little bit of a 
delay because of votes that happened at the start of this 
Committee hearing. But we greatly appreciate you being here.

    First, I am going to recognize Matt Dias.
    Am I saying your name correctly?

    Mr. Dias. That is correct.

    Mr. Tiffany. He is the President of the California Forestry 
Association.
    I recognize you for your testimony for 5 minutes.

    STATEMENT OF MATT DIAS, PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA FORESTRY 
              ASSOCIATION, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Dias. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, 
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee for the 
opportunity to testify today regarding the challenges we are 
facing as we approach the 2023 wildfire season. As said, I am 
the President and CEO of the California Forestry Association, 
otherwise known as Calforests.
    Calforests membership includes private industrial forest 
owners and managers. Our members are committed to the 
sustainable management of our private forest resources, and 
cumulatively represent about 3.5 million acres in California.
    In addition, I think it is important to note that our 
members also share about 6,000 miles of property line with 
federally managed lands throughout California.
    Despite record precipitation and the largest snowpack in 
recent history, forest conditions that have led to severe 
wildfire seasons, particularly in our national forests, still 
largely exist. The question is how long will it take for 
overstock fuel condition and brush-laden fire scars to dry out 
and become susceptible to large fires once again?
    Certainly, the fine fuels and shrubs in the lower 
elevations to mid-elevations of the Sierra Nevada are curing, 
essentially drying out, and will likely be the forefront of the 
2023 wildfire season.
    As temperatures rise and snow melts, it will likely reveal 
issues of blocked roads due to fallen trees, poorly maintained 
road surfaces, and watercourse crossings that need significant 
maintenance to re-establish access. And this issue of access is 
so imperative as we wade deeper into the 2023 wildfire season, 
because without access, suppression activities are just simply 
ineffective.
    As such, it is really important that the Forest Service 
retain all tools necessary for suppression, including the 
ability to deploy fire retardant, fight fires aggressively on a 
24/7 schedule, tailor the use of backfires, and work closely 
with state firefighting agency partners. In our instance, that 
would be CAL FIRE.
    In 2020, the United States, the U.S. Forest Service, 
entered into an agreement with the state of California noted as 
the Agreement for Shared Stewardship of California Forest and 
Range Lands. This agreement commits to restoring healthy 
forests and rangelands in California through vegetation 
treatments, and has a shared responsibility with state and 
private partners and Federal partners of commitments of 
treating 500,000 acres each annually.
    It was reported by the California Wildfire and Forest 
Resilient Task Force about a month ago that, over the course of 
the last 2 years, on average, in California, the Forest Service 
has treated 137,000 acres. And that is a far cry from the 
committed 500,000 acres that we are seeking. And I would 
suggest that that indicates that pace and scale has to increase 
dramatically.
    In addition, we have 1.5 million acres that are identified 
at high risk of conversion from forest to non-forest vegetation 
types as a result from wildfires in 2019 through 2021. During 
that same period of time, we have about 8,000 acres that are 
being planted annually. There is a very short window of 
opportunity after high-severity fire to re-establish forests 
when costs are lowest and probability of success is highest, 
and we just aren't meeting that mark right now, and this delay 
is also setting aside the benefits of carbon sequestration that 
healthy and young forests provide.
    I want to provide three thoughts as it relates to issues 
that we could embrace to deal with this situation at hand.
    Maintain and build upon aggressive initial attack. We have 
heard a lot of testimony today about the overstocked conditions 
of the forested resources in the National Forest System as a 
whole. And I would suggest that we need to take a very strong 
stance on initial attack because the tried-and-true test of 
ameliorating wildfire impacts is putting them out early.
    No. 2, reliance upon existing tools and authorities. We 
have this Congress, or last Congress, through the 
Infrastructure Act, allowed for emergency action and new 
categorical exemptions supporting fuel breaks. In addition, we 
have alternative opportunities for the Forest Service. And in 
California, those have been narrowly relied upon. In fact, I 
can only identify 11 projects that have been relied upon for 
these efficiency in permitting and process.
    The last point I want to make is develop cooperative 
partnerships with private entities, and this falls in the space 
of not only suppression, but prevention and post-fire recovery, 
as well. The private sector in California holds the expertise, 
the networks, and the capacity to assist the Forest Service, 
and that is what we really want to do, assist the Forest 
Service to get to the goals that we all jointly want to see 
achieved in the short term here, as it relates to forest health 
and resilience.
    And lastly, I want to talk about supply agreements. And we 
have heard some questions today as it relates to 
infrastructure, and the building out of infrastructure for 
forest products industries. That would be commercial, that 
would be standard sawmills, if you will, innovative wood 
products, or low-value wood waste. And to date, that is just 
not happening. And I honestly believe that the 20-year 
stewardship agreement could be helpful. But obligatory supply 
agreements are what is going to unlock the investment to make 
that happen.
    I appreciate the time, and I am ready for questions being 
offered.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Dias follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Matt Dias, President/CEO, California Forestry 
            Association (Calforests), Sacramento, California
Introduction

    Thank you, Chairman Tiffany and Ranking Member Neguse and members 
of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify regarding 
challenges facing forest management, wildfire suppression, and wildland 
firefighters ahead of the 2023 wildfire season.
    I serve as President/CEO for the California Forestry Association 
(Calforests).
Calforests Background

    Calforests membership includes private industrial forest owners and 
managers, and forest products companies ranging from sawmills, veneer 
mills, and several biomass powerplants. Our members are committed to 
the sustainable management of our private forest resources and 
supporting active forest management of National Forests within 
California. Cumulatively our members own and manage more than 3.5 
million acres of timberland in California and share thousands of miles 
of ownerships boundaries with United States Forest Service (USFS) and 
other federal lands.
California Winter and the coming 2023 Fire Season

    Just like the many recent wildfire seasons, the winter of 2022-2023 
in California has also made national headlines. Despite record 
precipitation and the largest snowpack in recent memory, the forest 
conditions that have led to severe wildfire seasons, particularly on 
our National Forests, still exist. The question, as we look to the 
looming fire season for 2023, is how long it will take for overstocked 
fuel conditions and brush laden fire scars to dry out and become 
susceptible to large fires once again. Certainly, the fine fuels at low 
to mid elevation of the Sierra are beginning to cure, and these fuels 
will likely become the forefront of the 2023 fire season.
    Additionally, with such extraordinary snow loads, there is 
significant concern over issues of access. As temperatures rise the 
snow melt will likely reveal issue of blocked roads due to fallen trees 
and roads surfaces that need significant maintenance to reestablish 
access that is critical to engaging in rapid and effective firefighting 
when ignitions occur. It is unlikely that the USFS will have the 
manpower or contracting efficiency necessary to reestablish the 
necessary access prior to the peak of fire season.
    This issue of access for firefighting, along with unknowns as it 
relates to extended periods of extreme heat or lightening, make it 
important that fire protection forces be fully staffed as soon as 
possible and that all suppression tools, including the use of aerial 
deployed fire retardant, be made available throughout the 2023 fire 
season. It is critically important for US Forest Service to fight fires 
aggressively during wildfire season--immediate response to suppress, 
fighting fire 24-7, tailor the use of backfires, and work closely with 
their state firefighting agency partners like CAL FIRE.
    In spite of the heavy snow and rain this winter, wildfire will 
continue to impact water resources, air quality, recreation, forest 
carbon and--for Calforests' members--the timberlands they own and 
manage to generate renewable forests products that society depends on.
Wildfire Prevention Activities

    On August 12, 2020, the USFS, Pacific Southwest Region, and the 
State of California entered into an ``Agreement for Shared Stewardship 
of California's Forest and Rangelands.'' \1\
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    \1\ https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/8.12.20-CA-
Shared-Stewardship-MOU.pdf (Accessed October 15, 2021).
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    The agreement commits to restoring healthy forests and rangelands 
in California through actions including vegetation treatments on one 
million acres per year by 2025 (500,000 acres USFS and 500,000 acres 
state and private lands). Calforests strongly supports this cooperative 
effort. The joint targets for treatments are likely the minimum 
necessary to meaningfully reduce the devastating impacts from wildfires 
across California.

    In March of this year, the first reports of tracking were provided, 
with the following metric provided:

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    As you can see, USFS Region 5, which is responsible for 
management of the greatest proportion of forestlands in California 
(15.3 million acres), successfully treated an average of just over 
137,000 acres in the last two fiscal years. While this is a laudable 
effort, it appears unlikely that the goals of the ``Million Acre 
Strategy'' will be met by the established timelines. Meeting this goal 
of prevention is a key metric in addressing the wildfire crisis that we 
face in California.
    The pace and scale of the treatments accomplished must increase 
dramatically to not only meet desired targets, but also actively 
protect critical habitat, water resources, timber resources, adjacent 
communities, and private timberlands.
    In contrast to the slow pace of fuels treatment, the acres impacted 
by wildfire in California continue to climb drastically, setting new 
records for burned acres on an annual basis. Over 10 million acres 
(Refer to Appendix 1) of the USFS Region 5 National Forests have 
experienced wildfire over the past 20 years.
Post Fire Recovery and Reforestation

    From 2019-2021, more than 4.9 million acres of forested land burned 
in wildfires across the state. While the greatest proportion of those 
acres will likely require some level of recovery-based management, at 
least 1.5 million acres are identified as at risk of conversion from 
forest to non-forest vegetation types. This forest loss results from 
extraordinarily high intensity wildfire over large footprints and the 
reburning of previously burned areas that were not subsequently 
restored or reforested.
    During the same three-year period, a conservative estimate of 
50,000 acres were reforested each year in California by Calforests 
members, whereas USFS Region 5 reforested approximately 8,000 acres 
annually, which represents less than 1% of the public lands that 
require post fire recovery and reforestation. There is a short window 
of opportunity (about 1-3 years) after high-severity fire to 
reestablish forests when costs are lowest and probability of success is 
highest. Delays in taking timely action will result in higher costs for 
reforestation with a lower probability of success, and will result in a 
significant reduction in carbon sequestration, at least in the near 
term.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Figure 1: (a) Number of acres planted during the period 2010-
2020 on National Forest System lands. Source: USDA Forest Service FACTS 
database. (b) Acres reforested and replanted compared to acres burned 
at high severity across two five-year periods on USFS Region 5

    Things must change and I am prepared to discuss some of the 
necessary steps that must be taken.
Focus Points for this Testimony

  1.  Maintain and build upon aggressive initial attack to keep fires 
            small; and

  2.  Support increased USFS use of the tools and authorities provided 
            by the Congress;

  3.  Develop a Cooperative Partnerships with Private Entities to Drive 
            Suppression, Prevention, and Recovery Efforts.

Maintain and Build Upon Aggressive Initial Attack

    Conditions across the forested landscape of California are simply 
dangerous during wildfire season. In recent research published by the 
USFS, Dr. Malcolm North, indicates that tree density on our Federal 
Forests is 6 to 7 times greater than they were a century ago. Dr. North 
also indicates that tree size has diminished, and these forested 
conditions are not as resilient to the wildfires we are consistently 
experiencing today.
    There is also a large population of people which have moved into 
the Wildland Urban Interface over the last many decades, along with 
other resources at risk across all forested lands in California and 
beyond. The only tried and true way to manage fires burning in these 
conditions during the peak fire season is to extinguish them 
immediately. Allowing fires to burn ``for resource benefit'' is a 
luxury that California (and much of the rest of the West) cannot 
currently afford. With fuel loads this high and the potential to return 
to drought always present, any fire can go from ``beneficial'' to 
dangerous in a matter of hours--or even minutes.
    During peak wildfire season, burning for resource benefit takes 
resources that just simply cannot be spared in time of need. Rapidly 
changing weather patterns, unpredictability of human caused ignitions, 
outrageous fuel loads, and firefighter and civilian safety simply 
introduce too many variables into the equation to allow fire to burn 
during the height of fire season as a means of vegetation management.
    To be clear, Calforests supports all tools in the wildfire 
prevention toolbox, including prescribed fire at the right times and 
places. We simply are no longer in a situation where we can allow 
uncontrolled burns as a substitute for active fire management.
Reliance upon Existing Tools and Authorities

    The wildfire crisis in an emergency in California, and across much 
of the west. As such, Calforests respectfully urges all forest 
management actions, including fire prevention, be treated as an 
emergency. The Infrastructure Act created a new Emergency Action 
authority for the USFS. To date, the USFS has approved the use of this 
Emergency Action authority for one project in California. In times of 
crisis, this authorization should be relied upon much more heavily.
    The USFS has the authority to execute projects under Alternative 
Arrangements (36 CFR 220.4), which the agency has used twice in 
California--one for road clearance following the Caldor Fire and one 
for protection of sequoia groves in the central Sierra Nevada. This 
authority does not bypass the need to conduct environmental review, but 
rather allows for simultaneous NEPA analysis while the project is being 
executed to achieve resilient forest conditions in times of emergency. 
The dire need for increased treatments necessitates greater reliance 
upon all these emergency authorities.
    Additionally, the Infrastructure Act created a new Categorial 
Exclusion for fuel break construction on USFS lands. Again, the option 
is narrowly relied upon in California, and the USFS has only approved 9 
fuel breaks in California using the Categorical Exclusion provided in 
the Infrastructure Act. With an elevated use of the Categorial 
Exclusion and Emergency Authority, projects on federal land could be 
better coordinated private lands as well to design a system of treated 
landscapes that would maximize the benefits of these management 
actions.
    While the USFS Region 5 has more aggressively used emergency 
authorities and Categorical Exclusions than some other regions, we 
certainly believe there are far more opportunities to rely upon these 
expedited environmental reviews. With a truncated field season due to 
winter conditions, it's imperative that the agency use every tool to 
expedite required analysis wherever possible.
    It is critical to remember that none of these authorities open new 
lands to forest management activities. All projects conducted using 
Alternative Arrangements, Emergency Actions, or any Categorical 
Exclusion must confirm to existing forest plan standards and guides, 
and the agency takes steps to ensure that these authorities are not 
used where they could potentially impact sensitive resources. None of 
them can be use in designated Wilderness areas and their use in 
inventoried roadless areas is extremely limited.
    With wider use of CE and Emergency Actions Authority, projects on 
federal land could be better coordinated with private lands as well to 
design a system of treated landscapes that would maximize the benefits 
of these management actions.
Develop a Cooperative Partnerships with Private Entities to Drive 
        Suppression, Prevention and Recovery Efforts

    In California, private landowners and forest management timber 
operators provide forest management capacity to achieve the forest 
health, community protection, and forest management goals discussed 
here today. In the case of fire suppression, it is not uncommon to have 
fire suppression assets and personal overwhelmed. As an example, in 
2020, a weather pattern resulted in over 11,000 lightning strikes 
across California in a single day, setting the stage for a disastrous 
summer of well over 1 million acres burned, thousands of structures 
lost, and multiple civilian and firefighter deaths and injuries. 
Conditions were ripe for wildfire, weather conditions were extreme, but 
resource drawdown was also rampant. The ability for the fire protection 
system to respond to multiple fires burning simultaneously was 
overwhelmed. In trying times like this, private resources could be 
expeditiously deployed to assist in meeting suppression shortfalls.
    The same holds true in both fire prevention and post fire recovery. 
The private sector maintains the technical expertise and networks to 
engage in management activities focused on both prevention and post 
fire recovery and is eager to assist federal partners in achieving 
goals of prevention and post fire recovery and reforestation.
    This is of particular concern given that the USFS shares thousands 
of miles of property lines with other landowners, and in excess of 
6,000 miles of shared ownership boundaries with Calforests members. In 
addition, many communities are adjacent to federally managed lands. 
This issue of adjacency is critical in our era of wildfire crisis, and 
expansion, connection, completion and maintenance of fuel breaks and 
post fire recovery efforts conducted on private lands near communities, 
utilities and water infrastructure and roads onto federally managed 
land represents the steps necessary to achieve established fire 
protection goals and expectations. The federal partners cannot do this 
alone, and it is clear that assistance is required. Again, the private 
sector is available to partner, but better pathways to allow these 
partnerships to be developed and drive meaningful outcomes must be 
developed.
    Lastly, the forest products sector is a recognized partner in the 
wildfire crisis. While expertise in forest management within the sector 
is critical, facility infrastructure is as important. Without market 
driven support, the work that desperately needs to be conducted on all 
lands will suffer. The required level of public investment will 
continue to be extraordinary without outlets that utilize the material 
being generated from forest health and postfire recovery projects.
    Infrastructure retention and development, in terms of traditional 
sawmills, co-generation facilities, low value wood fiber utilization 
are all goals in California, but the challenges are real and present. 
Of these challenges, one of the prevalent mitigating circumstances is 
supply agreements. Federal partners, who again managed the greatest 
proportion of all forestlands in California, are able to engage in the 
development of obligatory supply agreements for green material. This 
would incentivize investment in costly facilities that would provide 
additional and meaningful capacity to assist all partners--federal, 
state, private, non-industrial, tribal and NGO partners--in meeting our 
shared goals.
    Thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on this 
critical issue.

                                 *****

                               Appendix 1

         Acres Burned on USFS Region 5 lands within California

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                                 
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Dias.
    I will now recognize Ms. Ranotta McNair, who is a Board 
Member for the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.
    You have 5 minutes, ma'am.

STATEMENT OF RANOTTA McNAIR, BOARD MEMBER, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
            OF FOREST SERVICE RETIREES, BEND, OREGON

    Ms. McNair. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member 
Neguse, and the other members of the Committee also. I am happy 
to be here today.
    My name is Ranotta McNair, and I am a 33-year retiree with 
the Forest Service. I spent much of my working career in our 
local field offices. I retired as the Supervisor of the Idaho 
Panhandle National Forest. I managed and was responsible for 
managing 2.5 million acres of public lands. My forest also 
managed and had oversight on an air tanker base and a hotshot 
crew.
    The South Canyon Fire in 1994, we saw 14 firefighters 
perish. That fire continues to haunt me today. As a young 
acting deputy forest supervisor, I stood on the tarmac that day 
and greeted our firefighters home, and returned them to their 
families. Since that time, I have often asked myself, and 
continue to ask, why are the firefighters where they are? What 
difference will their efforts really make? Could it be worth 
their lives? These are a critical set of questions that I think 
we all need to be asking ourselves today.
    What we are facing is really unprecedented. We are seeing 
year-round fire behaviors and a workforce that is struggling to 
keep up with the pace. Our forests are just too dense to handle 
these wildfires. It is putting people, it is putting 
communities, it is putting critical infrastructure, and it is 
putting resources at risk.
    We are living with fire. We will continue to live with 
fire. But there are things we can do. I want to talk to you 
today specifically about four areas where I think you can help.
    The first, we need to pass H.R. 1585 to allow the fire 
retardant, aerial retardant, to continue to be used to protect 
infrastructure. We need to protect our water systems, our 
roads, our power lines in our homes. But most of all, we need 
to protect our firefighters.
    Second, we need a permanent fire suppression and prescribed 
fire workforce. This requires supporting the current 2024 
Administration's budget workforce reforms--it addresses pay, it 
addresses housing, and it addresses their care. We need this to 
have trained, skilled professionals year-round if we are going 
to meet the needs today. This will require legislation.
    Third, we do need to sustain funding to treat larger-scale, 
larger, more effective fuel treatments across the landscape. 
This includes thinning large-scale areas so that we can reduce 
stand density, and we can follow it with prescribed fire. We 
know that scientists and experts are saying that these are 
working, they are helping reduce devastating fire effects on 
our landscapes. We also know that we will have to go back and 
retreat them because there is long-term maintenance that we 
have to do with the fuel treatments today. And we also know 
that it will allow us to begin to play a natural fire role back 
in our forests.
    Fuel treatments are not a one-and-done kind of thing. We 
need to move on and think about them time and time again. So, 
we will need sustained funding. We will need also a prescribed 
fire exemption for EPA's new proposed PM2.5 air quality rule. 
The fire standard, as it is written, will negatively affect our 
ability to do prescribed fire. It needs a legislative solution. 
We need to sustain funding for our agencies, tribes, and states 
who are responsible for actions against the wildfire crisis. 
And this is not a Federal lands problem only.
    And fourth, we need to look at sustaining and building an 
infrastructure for our industry. It will require us to look at 
the Federal renewable fuel standards to allow fuels that are 
coming off of Federal lands to be included in the industry 
supply chain as biofuels. We need transportation subsidies. We 
need more wood innovation grants from the Forest Service.
    And I just want to close by saying that I have a grandson. 
I want my grandson to be able to play in the forest that I am 
in today. I want him to be able to hike, ski, and mountain bike 
with me, and long after I am gone in the forests that I love so 
dearly. We need to take actions today, not tomorrow, to make 
sure that we can address the wildfire crisis. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Ms. McNair follows:]
     Prepared Statement of Ranotta McNair, Board Member, National 
                 Association of Forest Service Retirees
    Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the 
Committee, I appreciate the chance to testify today on the challenges 
facing us around forest management and our wildfire crisis. I'm Ranotta 
McNair, retired after 33 years of federal service working for the 
Forest Service. Much of my career was spent in leadership working on 
National Forests in the Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies and 
Southern regions. During my 12-year tenure as Forest Supervisor on the 
Idaho Panhandle National Forest (IPNF), I was fortunate to have had a 
talented and experienced fire organization and a solid bench of 
district rangers who had experience in dealing with prescribed and 
wildland fire. The IPNF hosted and was responsible for the supervision 
and operations of the regional air tanker base and a type 1 Hot Shot 
Crew. On the personal side, I also understand after being married for 
over 40 years to someone working on the front lines of fire the 
personal sacrifices that are made to do that job. I am on the Board of 
Directors for the National Association of Forest Service Retirees 
(NAFSR). We are an organization dedicated to sustaining the Forest 
Service mission and adapting to today's and tomorrow's challenges. Our 
principal beliefs and values include protecting and managing diverse 
lands and valued resources while providing a wide array of uses and 
services to the public. This includes providing for clean water and 
quality aquatic and terrestrial habitat. Our values also include 
responding professionally and responsibly in support of the Agency's 
efforts to protect public interest and ensure public safety.
    The challenges we face today have not arisen overnight, and solving 
them will require time and bold action. The current situation is a 
result of the overall loss of workforce capacity, particularly the 
skilled workforce within the Agency, compounded by a century of fire 
exclusion, expanding development in the wildland-urban interface, a 
changing climate, and accumulating fuels across our landscapes.
    Year-round wildfires have become more severe and frequent, posing 
grave risks to homes, communities, infrastructure, and natural 
resources, particularly in dry-site forests and Western communities. 
The level of death and destruction on these landscapes is difficult to 
comprehend, with irreplaceable natural resources lost, vital soil 
washed away, and untold floods causing further damage to communities 
and their water systems. The emotional and psychological trauma to 
citizens and firefighters from the loss of loved ones, homes, and 
communities is unimaginable.
    To address the growing threat to the nation's natural resources and 
communities posed by extreme wildfires, we need to take bold and 
transformative action to change the trajectory of how we manage, staff 
and prepare for wildfire impacts. We must prioritize a paradigm shift 
in land management approaches across jurisdictional boundaries to 
reduce risk and restore fire-adapted landscapes.
    The scale of fuel treatments needs to match the scale of the 
problem; for example, an area prone to high-risk large-scale fire 
demands large-scale strategically placed fuel treatments. What are 
these known effective treatments?--thinning of dense stands followed by 
prescribed burning, both on regular repeated treatment intervals. Past 
treatments on National Forests rarely matched the scale needed today to 
reduce our wildland fire risks. In part this was due to litigation, 
uncertain funding, and workforce capacity. Today's wildfire crisis 
requires National Forests to increase both the pace and size of its 
landscape treatments. With the support of the passage of the 
Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, funding and 
resources have been committed to a 10-year wildfire crisis strategy. 
These historic bills are essentially a down payment on the resources 
needed to do fuels work, forest restoration, community preparedness, 
and post-fire recovery and reforestation. It mandates that 50 million 
acres of at-risk forests be treated over the next 10 years, including 
20 million acres of additional fuel treatment on Federal lands and 30 
million acres of fuel treatment on state, private, and tribal lands.
    Landscape scale treatment of fuels is not solely a federal lands 
issue. States, counties, communities, tribes and federal governments 
share both the responsibilities and risk for accomplishing this work. 
Treating priority landscapes at the necessary scale and pace requires 
building a multi-jurisdictional coalition to work across land 
management jurisdictions and build broad public and community support 
for the work.
    The catastrophic wildfire events of 2020 and 2021 exhausted 
resources at the height of wildfire season, while climate change 
exacerbated their behavior. Unfortunately, this was not an anomaly, but 
rather a far more troubling and long-standing trend. Wildfires have 
become larger, longer-lasting, more frequent, and more destructive in 
terms of lives lost and economic costs over the past two decades. A 
2017 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology 
(NIST) found that the annual economic burden of wildfires was between 
$71 and $348 billion, including local, state, and federal suppression 
costs, and that the prevalence of wildfire smoke has increased 
substantially since the mid-2000s, accounting for approximately 25 
percent of Americans' total exposure to harmful fine particulate 
matter.
    The science and on-the-ground experience indicate that we need to 
increase the pace and strategically pivot to larger scale fuel 
treatments. Random placement of fuel treatments along the wildland-
urban interface boundary simply isn't enough. We know that when a fire 
moves into a treated area it alters fire behavior and reduces the risks 
to firefighters. A recent scientific study by Dr. Jain, Research 
Forester at Rocky Mountain Research Station, in collaboration with 
other scientists synthesized over 127 existing studies on landscape-
scale fuel treatment effectiveness. The key findings were that 
landscape-scale fuel treatments reduce negative outcomes of wildfires 
and, in some cases, promote beneficial wildfire outcomes. Treating 
multiple fuel layers (canopy, ladder, and surface) reduces fire spread 
and severity, and the degree of effectiveness is influenced by the 
extent, size, placement, timing, and prescription of fuel treatments. 
The case study indicates that the length of time needed before 
retreatment depends on site productivity, plant species traits, and 
initial fuel removal, which contribute to how a site might reburn in 
subsequent wildfires after treatment. Several case studies showed that 
as fire moved into treated areas, even if they were burning at high 
intensity, fire intensity lowered enough that spot fires were not 
common or far reaching from the main fire.
    Fire researchers and experienced professionals agree that treating 
fuels is highly effective in mitigating the dangers of wildfires. In 
fact, scientific evidence shows that treating surface, ladder, and 
crown fuels can improve protection capabilities, reduce potential fire 
behavior, and increase the likelihood of successful fire suppression 
efforts. In a Sacramento Bee interview, fire researcher Scott Stephens 
confirmed that at least 99% of fire scientists believe that treated 
areas do moderate fire behavior. Furthermore, a 2018 USDA Forest 
Service Pacific Northwest Report found that of the 253 treatments 
sampled in which a wildfire met a fuel treatment, 153 altered fire 
behavior, and 127 assisted with fire control operations.
    In his field observations, Joe Stutler, Area Commander of the Area 
Command Team--with over 1000 fire assignments--stated that it is urgent 
to increase the number and size of forest thinning, mechanical 
treatments, and prescribed burning across all landscapes, and in a 
geographically explicit and systematic way. He noted that modified fuel 
treatments simply work, especially when combined with prescribed fire. 
Stutler went on to say ``Of course, there are exceptions that lead to 
the myth that fuels treatments don't make any difference, like wind/
wildfire events in Oregon in 2020 is an example that's being used 
currently, and the numbers are staggering. Of the 1.2 million acres 
burned, 455,000 occurred on some of the most intensively managed 
forests in the Northwest. I would offer this personal observation: when 
we experience 80 mph winds for 72 hours, the Walmart parking lot may 
not be a safe place.'' There is a growing recognition that the impacts 
of wildfires on communities have far outpaced the scale at which fuels 
have been treated.
    To support this effort, it is important to rebuild the 
infrastructure necessary to process wood products coming from fuel 
reduction projects. The recent administration investment of $34 million 
from the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill is a step in the right 
direction, but more is needed. The federal government and Congress can 
begin by incentivizing use of woody biomass from federal lands in new 
markets, as well as removing regulatory barriers, and encouraging 
market innovation. In doing so we can support a healthy forest products 
industry, create local jobs, reduce cost of treatments, along with 
restoring high-risk landscapes in the long run.
    All of this is dependent on having skilled, trained wildland 
firefighters. The demands and expectations on our fire professionals 
and first responders are rapidly increasing while firefighter risks and 
suppression costs are reaching unprecedented levels. Many firefighters 
are struggling with pay, housing, work/life balance, and mental health 
issues. In 2020, for example, some Hot Shot Crews in CA were working 
over 1000 hours of overtime just to make a living wage. Other 
firefighters could be found living out of their vehicles because they 
could not find affordable housing. Others are struggling with mental 
health such as PTSD due to prolonged fire assignments and critical 
incidents that occurred on fire assignments. To take better care of 
these firefighters, we need to provide them with better pay and 
benefits, housing, mental and physical health resources, and work-life 
balance. Two years ago, legislation was enacted that temporarily raised 
firefighter pay for 2 years and added support for mental and psychical 
health. That legislation is set to expire; a permanent solution needs 
to be enacted.
    The fire season, which was once thought to be 4 to 6 months, has 
now become year-round. A temporary, seasonal workforce is no longer 
sufficient, and we are seeing a shift toward a more permanent workforce 
that can increase workforce capacities to conduct year-round wildland 
fire management. We need to train this permanent collective workforce 
in suppression and prescribed fire management and move from a 
``firefighter'' to a fire manager mindset.
    The Forest Service once had the ability to stop gap shortages in 
fire personnel by using personnel working outside of fire to perform 
fire duties. Starting in 2000, after an intense and costly fire season, 
that reliance and support from non-fire personnel began to change. By 
2019, the number of fire personnel had risen 132 percent since 1992, 
while specialists who supported restoring landscape resiliency and fuel 
reduction projects decreased by 54 percent. The most dramatic 
reductions in personnel occurred in the disciplines of forestry and 
engineering. NAFSR in a July 2019 conducted its own workforce study 
titled ``Sustaining the Forest Service--Increasing Workforce Capacity 
to increase the pace and scale of restoration on national forest system 
lands.'' We reached similar findings. This shift in the composition of 
a skilled labor force has affected the agency's capacity to fully 
support wildland fire and restore landscapes to be more fire resilient.
    While the present surge in funding for hazardous fuels treatments 
through the IIJA and IRA has been supportive of additional staffing and 
progress is being made collectively on increasing workforce capacities, 
recruitment and retention of a skilled workforce continues to be an 
issue.

    But there is some good news:

     A comprehensive National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management 
            Strategy is in place that all firefighting agencies have 
            agreed to.

     Keystone agreements with major partners are in place.

     21 High-risk Firesheds have been identified to prioritize 
            landscape treatments

     The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program 
            (CFLRP), the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership 
            (Joint Chiefs), the Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) and 
            initiatives like Shared Stewardship are in place.

    And there are problems you can help solve:

     Support the proposed workforce reforms in the FY 2024 
            budget request. These reforms include a permanent pay 
            increase for federal and tribal firefighters, investment in 
            their mental and physical health and well-being, improving 
            their housing options, and expanding the number of 
            permanent firefighters.

     Support the proposed budget increases funding for wildfire 
            preparedness, hiring additional personnel, and hazardous 
            fuels reduction treatments.

     Authorize legislation to establish a special base rate 
            salary table for all federal wildland firefighters, create 
            a new premium pay category, and establish a pay cap with 
            secretarial waiver authority.

    Additional Support:

     Support passage of H.R. 1586, Forest Protection and 
            Wildland Firefighter Safety Act of 2023--allowing for the 
            continued use of aerial retardant drops in support of 
            wildland fire suppression efforts.

     Future legislation that would create an exception to U.S. 
            Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements--should 
            the proposed rule be finalized for national ambient air 
            quality standards (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution, also 
            known as fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. This proposal 
            as written will reduce the Nation's ability to implement 
            strategies intended to reduce unwanted wildfire effects on 
            communities and wildlands, including barriers to increasing 
            the pace and scale of prescribed burning. Preliminary 
            research suggests that some areas could see a reduction in 
            available burn days of 70-80 percent.

     Encourage changes to the federal renewable fuel standard 
            RFS that would allow fuel removals from federal lands to be 
            considered renewable by wood innovation businesses in their 
            supply chains.

     Recommend that Congress request the Forest Service to 
            provide technical drafting assistance to amend problematic 
            provisions within the Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation 
            Reduction Act. These provisions currently contain language 
            that significantly hinder the Forest Service's ability to 
            successfully implement these programs, resulting in 
            inadequate conservation outcomes as Congress intended.

    In summary, the challenges posed by wildland fires are extensive 
and complex, but we have the knowledge and experience to address them. 
We have already taken meaningful steps toward building fire-resilient 
landscapes, but it will require a sustained effort across jurisdictions 
and a long-term commitment to see these changes through. Congress has a 
critical role to play in providing the necessary resources, funding, 
and policy to mitigate the severity of wildfires, enhance community 
resilience, and protect our natural resources. We must work together to 
address this crisis and ensure a safer and more resilient future for 
our communities, firefighters, and forests & grasslands. Let us rise to 
this challenge and commit to a future where our landscapes are better 
equipped to withstand the threat of wildfire.
    Thank you for the opportunity to be part of this hearing today. I 
welcome any questions that subcommittee members might have.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Ms. McNair.
    I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Neguse for 30 
seconds to introduce our next witness.
    Mr. Neguse. I thank the Chairman for his courtesy. I wanted 
to introduce Dr. Courtney Schultz, Associate Professor of 
Forest and Natural Resource Policy at Colorado State University 
in Fort Collins.
    We are glad to welcome Dr. Schultz to this Committee. She 
is a distinguished Professor of Forest and Natural Resource 
Policy at CSU, specializing in forest and fire policy, and 
directs the university's Public Lands Policy Group, which is 
focused on natural resource management and informing policy 
decision-making. Dr. Schultz, along with many of her colleagues 
at CSU, have produced invaluable research in the wake of a 
number of wildfires that we have experienced in Colorado.
    We thank you for joining this important hearing, and 
certainly look forward to hearing your testimony.
    And with that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady is recognized for 5 minutes.

 STATEMENT OF COURTNEY SCHULTZ, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FOREST 
 AND NATURAL RESOURCE POLICY, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY, FORT 
                       COLLINS, COLORADO

    Dr. Schultz. Thank you, good afternoon, Chairman Tiffany, 
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank 
you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
    I am a professor at Colorado State University, and for 
almost 20 years, I have led research on NEPA, the National 
Forest Management Act, and major forest restoration and fire 
policies in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service across 
administrations and with funding from the Joint Fire Science 
Program and the USDA. Prior to coming to CSU, I worked for the 
U.S. Forest Service. My research involves surveying and 
interviewing people about how policy is working for them on the 
ground.
    The most significant finding I can share from my research 
is that there are no silver bullets, no simple policy solutions 
that define whether we can overcome the tremendous challenges 
ahead. Instead, collaboration, leadership, and sufficient 
capacity, both internal and external to the agencies, are 
necessary preconditions for successful forest management.
    If we want to get to the scale needed to make a difference 
in fire behavior and forest conditions, we must work across 
jurisdictional boundaries, build partnerships to do the work 
and communicate with the public, and engage industry at scale 
to remove and process the primarily low-to-no-value wood 
products that result from restoration and fuel removal.
    Today, about 85 percent of projects are done through 
categorical exclusions, and this is good for smaller projects 
and jump-starting larger efforts. But to really work at the 
landscape scale, we need collaboration through the NEPA process 
to do the hard work of building partnerships and developing 
effective cross-boundary management plans.
    Almost everyone agrees we need active management of our 
forests, including thinning and using beneficial fire to reduce 
future fire risk. A helpful resource to me is the Wildland Fire 
Cohesive Strategy, written by a group of leading Federal, 
tribal, state, and NGO land managers, and its first tenet is 
that we must manage for resilient forests by reducing 
unnaturally high fuel loads that have resulted from past 
management and now lead to severe fires, particularly with 
climate change.
    Its second tenet is to promote fire-adapted communities, 
where human populations and infrastructure are prepared to 
receive, respond to, and recover from wildland fire. 
Importantly, the cohesive strategy focuses not on community 
protection, but on community resilience through home hardening 
and fuel reduction in the home ignition zone.
    The final tenant of the cohesive strategy is to promote 
safe and effective fire response. Major challenges include 
recruiting and retaining the fire response workforce, using 
principles of risk management and defining and measuring 
effectiveness, given the vast amount of public dollars spent 
and the people who risk their lives responding to wildfire. It 
is untenable to continue suppressing almost all fires when 
conditions are favorable. Fire must be allowed to play its 
natural role to reduce future fire risk.
    I would like to share a bit more about my research, which 
has found that collaborative approaches support larger scale 
planning and implementation, innovation, leveraging of non-
Federal capacity, and reduced conflict. According to the Forest 
Service, collaborative approaches like the Collaborative Forest 
Landscape Restoration Program, commonly known as CFLRP, have 
economic benefits keeping mills open, supporting jobs and local 
labor income, and contributing to a relatively greater 
proportion of accomplishments in timber volume sold and acres 
treated.
    My work has found that the biggest barriers to success are 
inadequate agency capacity for planning, contracting, and 
implementation, insufficient industry capacity, and limited 
markets for wood products.
    In addition, my work has found that we need to do more to 
support beneficial fire. We need a year-round, dedicated, 
prescribed fire workforce, and it cannot all be Federal. This 
will require addressing the liability issues that limit 
building this workforce.
    To conclude, these are my primary recommendations.
    First, work to facilitate community protection on Federal 
lands must occur in places where communities are also working 
on their resilience to fire.
    We must continue to address workforce limitations, and we 
need to do more to build external industry capacity and 
markets.
    Now, especially, we also need effective measurement and 
transparency. A recent report by Taxpayers for Common Sense 
noted that it is difficult to know what is being planned and 
prioritized under the 10-year crisis strategy, how much money 
is going to specific programs, or what is being accomplished. 
The same is true for wildfire suppression expenditures.
    Finally, we need to have honest and transparent 
conversations about the future of fire, which is predicted to 
only get more frequent and intense. Work on Federal lands can 
make a difference for forest conditions, but work within 
communities on and around homes is the most important factor 
for community resilience. Now that major Federal investments 
are in place, we collectively need strategies to create the 
enabling conditions, oversight, and transparency to facilitate 
effective partnerships and work on the ground.
    I look forward to continued work with the Forest Service, 
its many partners, and the dedicated members of this Committee 
and the Congress to addressing these challenges. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Dr. Schultz follows:]
   Prepared Statement of Dr. Courtney Schultz, Associate Professor, 
                       Colorado State University
    Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the 
current challenges facing forest management, wildfire suppression, and 
firefighters as we move into the most active period of the fire year. I 
am a professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at 
Colorado State University, specializing in forest and fire policy. I 
direct the Public Lands Policy Group, which researches the policy 
impacts, challenges, and opportunities on federal public lands.
    Over the last 18 years, I have led national policy analyses of many 
of the primary forest restoration policies, including the Collaborative 
Forest Landscape Restoration Program, the Joint Chiefs Landscape 
Restoration Partnership, Implementation of the Shared Stewardship 
Strategy, and now post-fire policies, in partnership with the US Forest 
Service across administrations and with funding from the Joint Fire 
Science Program, National Science Foundation, and USDA. I have also led 
research on barriers to prescribed fire, land management planning, 
National Environmental Policy Act processes, climate change 
vulnerability assessment, and risk-management approaches for improving 
fire response. Prior to coming to Colorado State University, I worked 
for the U.S. Forest Service on the Four Forests Restoration Initiative 
in Arizona. I work closely with the Colorado Forest Restoration 
Institute, networks of scientists, and thought leaders working on 
forest management issues from rural and community-based forestry 
organizations. My research involves listening to people from around the 
country about how policies are working for them on the ground. I have 
surveyed and interviewed thousands of federal and state agency staff 
members, partners, NGO and industry representatives, and individuals 
working for Native American Tribes.
    The most significant finding I can share with you from my research 
is that there are no silver bullets--no simple policy solutions that 
will define whether we can overcome the tremendous challenges we face 
ahead. Instead, collaboration, leadership, and sufficient capacity, 
both internal and external to the agency, are what undergird successful 
national forest management. Policies that facilitate communication 
among stakeholders and collaboration across jurisdictions, and 
strategies that increase capacity to do the necessary work, lead to 
success.\1\ If we want to get to the scale needed to make a difference 
in fire behavior and forest conditions, we have to work across 
jurisdictional boundaries, engage in partnerships to do the work and 
communicate its value with the public, and engage industry to remove 
and process the low-to-no-value wood products that often result today 
from restoration and fuel removal. Today, about 85% of projects are 
done through categorical exclusions, and this is good for smaller 
projects and jumpstarting larger efforts. But to really work at the 
landscape level, we need collaboration, and that means we must do the 
hard work of strategizing, planning, and building partnerships, and do 
this through the NEPA process and through collaboration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Schultz CA, Moseley C. 2019. Collaborations and capacities to 
transform fire management. Science, USA 366(6461):38-40.
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    The challenges we face are complex, centuries in the making, and 
involve major biophysical processes and natural hazards. Scientists 
predict longer and more intense fire seasons because of the warming and 
drought associated with climate change.\2\ The wildland-urban interface 
is the fastest growing land-use type in the nation and across the 
West.\3\ Forest management can both reduce and exacerbate fire hazard, 
depending on how, where, and when it is done.\4\,\5\ Lands 
managed for timber production, including industrially managed lands, 
can often be subject to and propagate higher-severity fire than other 
lands, requiring cross-boundary cooperation and science-based 
assessment of fire hazard and management options.\6\
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    \2\ Abatzoglou JT, Williams AP. 2016. Impact of anthropogenic 
climate change on wildfire across western US forests. Proceedings of 
the National Academy of Sciences, USA 113:11770-11775.
    \3\ Radeloff VC, et al. 2018. Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban 
interface raises wildfire risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences, USA 114:2946-2951.
    \4\ Zald HSJ, Dunn CJ. 2018. Severe fire weather and intensive 
forest management increase fire severity in a multi-ownership 
landscape. Ecological Applications 28: 1068-80.
    \5\ Kalies EL, Kent LL. 2016. Tamm Review: Are fuel treatments 
effective at achieving ecological and social objectives? A systematic 
review. Forest Ecology and Management 375:84-95.
    \6\ Levine JI, et al. 2022. Higher incidence of high-severity fire 
in and near industrially managed forests. Frontiers in Ecology and the 
Environment. Doi:10.1002/fee.2499
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    In our frequent-fire forests, past forest management, including 
both fire suppression and past approaches to timber harvest, has led to 
an accumulation of small trees and fine fuels that contribute to 
increased fire hazard. Almost everyone in the scientific and management 
community agrees we need active management of our national forests, 
including fuel removal through thinning and the increased use of 
beneficial fire as a strategy to reduce future fire 
risk.\7\,\8\ Restoring fire to our fire-prone ecosystems 
through controlled burning, cultural burning by tribes based on their 
traditional ecological knowledge, and during wildfire ignitions when 
conditions are favorable for good fire all can reduce the risk of more 
extreme fire in the future. Timber harvest and tree thinning can be 
part of the solution. In some areas, merchantable timber can offset 
some of the cost of this work, but in many areas, especially those with 
high fire hazard, the small-diameter wood on our forests is of low-to-
no value. We will have to pay to get it out of the woods and create new 
markets, for example for biomass, to derive some value from restoration 
by-products.
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    \7\ Stephens S, et al. 2020. Fire and climate change: Conserving 
seasonally dry forests is still possible. Frontiers in Ecology and the 
Environment 18(6), 354-360.
    \8\ Prichard, SJ, et al. 2021. Adapting western North American 
forests to climate change and wildfires: 10 common questions. 
Ecological Applications 31(8), e02433.
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    Considering the recent updates made by the Wildland Fire Leadership 
Council, comprised of leading state, federal, tribal, and NGO forest 
and land managers, I want to reference back today to the Wildland Fire 
Cohesive Strategy and its primary tenets. First, the Cohesive Strategy 
says we must manage for resilient forests by reducing unnaturally high 
fuel loads that have resulted from past management and now lead to 
uncharacteristically severe fires, particularly under conditions driven 
by climate change. Work in our national forests is primarily about 
restoring ecological integrity so that forests are resilient in the 
face of climate change and climate-driven disturbances. We must reduce 
fuels especially in our low-to-mid-elevation forests and restore fire 
as a critical ecological process in all fire-prone forests. Doing this 
can improve forest ecosystem conditions by reducing extreme fire 
behavior and can create conditions that support safe and effective fire 
response. This work requires mechanical thinning and the use of 
beneficial fire. Desired conditions, achieved through hard work or 
wildfire events, must be maintained with maintenance burning.
    We now have the benefit of unprecedented federal investment in our 
forests, with billions of dollars allocated to fuel reduction near and 
in the wildland-urban interface and in high-priority municipal 
watersheds under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 
Inflation Reduction Act. Now we must put in place the capacity 
throughout the system to make the best use of these funds. In my 
research, the primary barriers to accomplishing work in the woods are 
lack of both internal agency capacity to plan and administer projects 
and contracts, and lack of external capacity, including industry 
partners who can cut, remove, and process wood products, and access to 
viable markets for those products. Other research has found, like mine, 
that the primary barriers are not due to litigation and NEPA.\9\ The 
problems are more nuanced, related to hiring, recruitment, and 
retention of a workforce to do this work, both inside and outside of 
the federal agencies, expediting hiring and grants and agreements 
capacity to facilitate that work, engagement of state, tribal, industry 
and NGO partners who can add capacity, and undertaking fire management 
planning. I have seen numerous creative approaches to large-scale 
planning, NEPA analysis, and monitoring the implementation and effects 
of treatments under programs like the Collaborative Forest Landscape 
Restoration Program, and to working with private landowners through the 
Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership. I have seen forests use 
their NEPA processes as key opportunities to build partnerships with 
other fire agencies, homeowners, and air quality regulators to 
implement fuel reduction and prescribed fire projects at a meaningful 
scale. Many projects have benefited from improved partnerships with 
states to accomplish work, sometimes through the Good Neighbor 
Authority and Shared Stewardship, and an increased recognition of the 
need for tribal co-stewardship and integration of traditional 
ecological knowledge into land management. These factors create the 
potential for promoting the first Cohesive Strategy tenet of managing 
for resilience forests.
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    \9\ Ruple JC, Pleune J, Heiny E. 2022. Evidence-based 
recommendations for improving National Environmental Policy Act 
implementation. Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 46: 273-350.
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    Another tenet of the Cohesive Strategy is to promote fire-adapted 
communities, where ``human populations and infrastructure are as 
prepared as possible to receive, respond to, and recover from wildland 
fire.'' I want to emphasize that the Cohesive Strategy focuses on 
community resilience to fire, not community protection. What we do on 
public lands will not stop fires, nor will it be the primarily factor 
in protecting communities. The most destructive fire for homeowners in 
my home state was an urban fire where grasses, shrubs, and homes 
propagated the flames of the Marshall Fire in December 2021, leading to 
the loss of over a thousand homes. Home loss is most related to the 
presence of fuels within 150 feet of the home, and other factors that 
make home more or less likely to ignite. Most fire starts are not on 
public lands and are human-caused.\10\ Under extreme weather 
conditions, fires can burn through treated, industrial, and even clear-
cut stands. Communities around the West must take on fuel reduction in 
the home ignition zone, communication and evacuation planning, 
community-based fire response, and equitably including all community 
members in fire-adapted communities. Home hardening and fuel reduction 
in the home ignition and community protection zones are imperative.\11\ 
Work on national forests therefore must be coupled with community-based 
fuel reduction and preparedness if the goal is to contribute to 
community resilience. Because most land in the wildland-urban interface 
is not federal land, this will mean more work on private, municipal, 
and state lands to reduce fire hazard. This means getting federal 
funding to state and local resources to do this work and making sure 
that where the federal government is investing in work to reduce fire 
hazard near communities, the nearby communities are doing their part to 
promote resilience for the fires that will inevitably come.
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    \10\ Balch JK, et al. 2017. Human-started wildfires expand the fire 
niche across the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences, USA 114:2946-2951.
    \11\ Schoennagel T, et al. 2017. Implementation of National Fire 
Plan treatments near the wildland-urban interface in the western United 
States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106:1076-
10711.
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    The final tenant of the Cohesive Strategy is to promote safe and 
effective fire response grounded in risk management principles. The 
Wildland Fire Leadership Council recognizes that it is untenable to 
continue suppressing almost all fires. When conditions are favorable 
fire should be allowed to play its key role as the primary ecological 
process that shapes healthy forests in the West and reduces future fire 
risk. And in some cases, indirect attack of fires, where firefighters 
utilize natural features and fire breaks to stop fires, is the best and 
safest strategy for incident response. Here too there is a major 
challenge of recruiting and retaining the workforce for safe and 
effective response.\12\ And, defining and measuring effectiveness is a 
challenge that is as-of-yet unmet and deserves greater attention given 
the vast amount of public dollars spent, and the people who risk their 
lives, responding to wildfire. I also want to draw attention to the 
growing use of PODs, or potential operational delineations, which are a 
pre-fire season strategy to promote coordinated action and planning for 
wildfires in order to delineate response strategies and priorities and 
potential locations for holding fire, and by extension for fuels 
treatment to support safe and effective fire response.\13\ Shaded fuel 
breaks at key boundaries, for instance, have value for reducing and 
managing extreme fires.\14\ Many BLM and national forest units will be 
implementing PODs in the next few years. In our research, people said 
these activities hold promise for getting more ``good'' fire on the 
ground but also to build agreement about fire management approaches in 
partnership with state and local fire responders outside of the 
emergency management context.\15\ Here, again, collaboration has great 
value, this time in the context of planning for fire response.
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    \12\ U.S. Government Accountability Office. Wildland Fire: Barrier 
to Recruitment and Retention of Federal Wildland Firefighters. GAO-23-
105517, Nov. 17, 2022.
    \13\ Thompson MP, et al. 2018. Rethinking the wildland fire 
management system. Journal of Forestry 116:382-390.
    \14\ Low KE, et al. 2023. Shaded fuel breaks create wildfire-
resilient forest stands: lessons from a long-term study in the Sierra 
Nevada. Fire Ecology 19: 29.
    \15\ Greiner SM, et al. 2021. Pre-season fire management planning: 
the use of Potential Operational Delineations to prepare for wildland 
fire events. International Journal of Wildland Fire 30:170-178.
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    The recent update to the Cohesive Strategy identifies four factors 
that need increased attention: climate change; workforce capacity, 
health, and well-being; community resilience; and diversity, equity, 
inclusion, and environmental justice (DEISJ). Related to climate 
change, scientific research and innovative, forward-thinking planning 
grounded in science and traditional ecological knowledge will be needed 
to respond effectively in the face of climate change. More work will be 
needed to prepare for the cascading effects of multiple disturbance 
events, like reburns or post-fire floods, and improving policy to 
attend to the multi-jurisdictional effects of fire. For the fire 
workforce, more attention is needed to the mental and physical health 
of firefighters, interagency and multi-partner training opportunities 
to augment the fire workforce, and making sure the pay and benefits of 
firefighters are adequate. We also need innovative strategies to 
recruit and train a next-generation forest and fire workforce. Sharing 
equipment and resources among agencies and partners, and moving money 
through agreements needs to be easier. For community resilience, 
community readiness can be improved and requires changing building 
codes, reducing human-caused ignitions, creating incentives and support 
for removing fuels in the home ignition zone, inclusive planning for 
during- and post-fire response, and smoke readiness, done in 
partnership with public health agencies. Finally, DEISJ can be promoted 
through inclusive planning, budgeting, contracting, and training, with 
intentional engagement of local communities and incorporating equity 
considerations into fuels reduction strategies. These are all new 
emphasis areas within the Cohesive Strategy where state and federal 
fire managers say we need to pay increased attention.
    Before I close, I want to elaborate on some of my key research 
findings--primarily the important role of partnerships in fire 
management and evidence-based assessment of the barriers to improving 
forest and fire management. I have researched the Collaborative Forest 
Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) and the Joint Chiefs Landscape 
Restoration Partnership, interviewing and surveying hundreds of 
partners and agency staff members across all CFLRP projects and most 
Joint Chiefs projects.\16\ These approaches support: larger-scale 
planning and implementation; monitoring and planning innovations; 
leveraging of non-federal capacity; and agreement-building. According 
to Forest Service reporting, the CFLRP had economic benefits that 
included keeping mills open, supporting jobs, local labor income, and a 
greater proportion of accomplishments in timber volume sold and acres 
treated compared to the proportion of agency spending.\17\ The biggest 
barrier to success inside the agencies were inadequate agency capacity 
for planning and implementation. The biggest challenge external to the 
agencies for the CFLRP was insufficient forest products industry 
capacity and limited markets for wood products that could offset high 
treatment costs. These factors persist and need to be addressed to 
promote success.
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    \16\ Schultz, CA, et al.. 2018. Policy design to support forest 
restoration: the value of focused investment and collaboration. Forests 
9(9):512. All reports and publications for this project are available 
at: https://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/courtneyschultz/forest-
restoration-governance/
    \17\ U.S. Forest Service. 2020. Collaborative Forest Landscape 
Restoration Program: 10-year report to Congress. Available at: https://
www.fs.fed.us/restoration/documents/cflrp/REF_Report-
CollaborativeForestLandscapeRestoration-508.pdf
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    With colleagues, I also conducted a multi-year study across the 
West, interviewing federal and state land managers and air quality 
regulators to understand barriers to and facilitators of prescribed 
fire.\18\ Aside from weather conditions constraining burn windows, we 
found that the biggest barriers to progress are lack of funding and 
capacity, particularly because qualified fire personnel are 
increasingly pulled onto wildfires, but also due to seasonal employment 
and a general decrease in staff capacity. We need a year-round 
dedicated prescribed fire workforce. It cannot all be federal, and it 
will require addressing the liability issues that are attendant to 
building this workforce. Resource sharing to leverage capacity across 
agencies and partners is essential for success. People also said 
incentives to plan and implement prescribed fire are weak. Where 
prescribed fire occurs, it is because individual leaders are committed 
to making it happen and find creative strategies to overcome these 
hurdles. Congress can play an essential role in promoting the value of 
beneficial fire and overseeing how prescribed fire is being utilized 
with plans and incentives to increase the application of good fire on 
priority landscapes.
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    \18\ Schultz CA, et al. 2018. Prescribed fire policy barriers and 
opportunities: A diversity of challenges and strategies across the 
west. Public Lands Policy Group Practitioner Paper #2/Ecosystem 
Workforce Program Working Paper #86; Schultz CA, et al. 2019. Available 
at: https://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/courtneyschultz/prescribed-
fire/
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    On this last note, I want to emphasize that the current EPA 
proposals to tighten regulatory standards for PM 2.5 would impede 
efforts to reintroduce beneficial fire, which is our most powerful tool 
for mitigating against the intense particulate matter exposure that 
occurs during wildfires. While efforts to protect human health and air 
quality are critical, the EPA must do this in a way that allows the 
continued use of beneficial fire. Comment letters on this topic offer 
potential paths forward, like easing exceptional events requirements 
and considering smoke from beneficial fire as part of background 
conditions. I also suggest greater attention to the needs for access to 
insurance and indemnification for burners, large-scale fire management 
planning to support the effective application of good fire on our 
forests, building a workforce with access to training and 
qualifications for a variety of partners, and supporting cultural 
burning by tribes.
    Effective use of IIJA and IRA funds will require addressing these 
challenges, and working in places where communities are also working on 
their own resilience to fire if community protection is a goal. The 
last time I testified before this committee was before the historic 
investments of 2022. I noted that augmenting investments could be 
beneficial but would require a transparent and science-based process 
for identifying priority work at the national level. Investments would 
need to be targeted toward places with effective partnerships and 
social agreement and attention should be paid to the effects of budget 
structures and performance measures to incentivize and account for 
priority work. For instance, timber targets drive work to places where 
there is valuable product and existing processing infrastructure, which 
often do not overlap with fire hazard reduction priorities, and acreage 
targets can incentivize staff to pursue so-called ``cheap acres'' and 
fail to convey whether fire hazard has been reduced or whether 
treatments yield positive benefits when fires burn. I also noted that 
leveraging external capacity would require more efficient resource 
sharing and a strong external workforce to support restoration and 
fuels reduction work. Regarding the forest products industry, the lack 
of businesses able to work on restoration projects and with low-value 
products, limited markets, and problems with workforce availability all 
are barriers to progress. More work is needed to investigate specific 
challenges and policy options that would support forest products 
industry and other restoration businesses so that the creation of 
forest restoration by-products can continue to be a co-benefit of 
restoration work where possible. To develop the science on the changing 
nature of fire management, I also suggested supporting full funding for 
the Joint Fire Science Program.
    At this important time, I reiterate these recommendations. 
Addressing workforce limitations and supporting increased capacity both 
internal to the agencies and through partnerships will be critical to 
success. And, now especially, we need effective measurement and 
transparency. A recent report by Taxpayer's for Common Sense noted that 
it is difficult to know what is being planned and prioritized under the 
10-Year Wildfire Crisis Strategy, how much money is going to specific 
programs, or what is being accomplished. The same is true for wildfire 
expenditures. I would recommend the development of a robust system for 
tracking investments, which are supposed to be going to work in the 
WUI, priority watersheds, and in part specifically to prescribed fire. 
A plan for increasing the use of beneficial fire is needed, along with 
new metrics to track acres where fire hazard is mitigated and forest 
conditions are restored. The current metrics of acres treated will not 
effectively convey the amount or efficacy of work done on the ground 
with these funds. I would recommend a transparent process involving 
partners in tracking investments over time, with details on spending, 
accomplishments, and prioritization and implementation strategies. 
Improving measurement of safe and effective fire response is also 
needed. Finally, we need to have honest and transparent conversations 
about the future of fire, which will only become more intense. Work on 
national forests can make a difference for forest conditions, and 
likely provide some benefits for communities. However, for community 
resilience in the face of the fires that are certainly coming, work 
within communities on and around homes is the most important factor. 
Now that major federal investments are in place, we collectively need 
to put into place strategies to create the enabling conditions, 
oversight, and transparency to facilitate effective partnerships and 
work on the ground.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Dr. Schultz.
    I will now recognize Mr. LaMalfa to introduce our next 
witness.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that.
    We are honored to have from Paradise, California, my 
district, I can see the ridge from my front door at home there, 
Mr. Greg Bolin, our Mayor.
    Thank you for joining us. Thank you for providing these 
handouts here, showing the reality of the Camp Fire that need 
not be forgotten from November 2018 by any of us as we deal 
with these serious issues and overcome the impediments to doing 
better forest management.
    So, Mr. Bolin, a pleasure to have you here today. Thank 
you.
    Mr. Tiffany. Sir. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

 STATEMENT OF THE HON. GREG BOLIN, MAYOR, PARADISE, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Bolin. Thank you, Congressman LaMalfa, Chair Tiffany, 
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank 
you for the opportunity to share the Town of Paradise's 
experience during, before, and after the Camp Fire of 2018.
    The Town of Paradise is located in northern California, 
approximately 90 miles north of Sacramento. Prior to the Camp 
Fire, our population was 26,500, making Paradise the second-
largest community in Butte County, behind the City of Chico, 
our neighbor to the southwest. Considered a bedroom community, 
most Paradise residents worked in neighboring cities, and chose 
to live in Paradise for its forested beauty, cooler 
temperatures, as well as affordable housing.
    Paradise is seated in the foothills on the ridge between 
two canyons, Butte Creek Canyon to the west and Feather River 
Canyon to the east. Paradise's location, along with the dense 
national forest that surrounds Paradise, and prior to the Camp 
Fire dense vegetation that existed within the town limits made 
Paradise vulnerable to wildfires.
    I moved to Paradise in 1967 at the age of 9 from Los 
Angeles. My dad built houses, so we moved frequently. He built, 
sold, built again, and so on. I was able to graduate from 
Paradise High School, and did the same and followed my father's 
footsteps. Out of 24 homes I lived in over that period of time, 
only 2 survived the Camp Fire.
    In 2012, I was elected to the town council with a goal of 
making Paradise more business and builder-friendly. I served as 
the mayor three times, and most recently this last December was 
elected as mayor. In more than 50 years in Paradise, I have 
seen and experienced fires of all types, severity, and 
duration.
    Fire is nothing new to Paradise, or the hundreds of 
foothill communities just like it. There are a number of 
factors that have changed to make wildfires more intense and 
damaging, which include environmental, situational, policy-
driven factors. In our case, a combination of a historically 
long dry period, drought conditions, high wind, overgrown 
properties with too little defensible space, dense neighboring 
forests, and electrical equipment failure came together on that 
fateful day in November 2018 to cause the Camp Fire.
    The 2018 Camp Fire ignited on November 8, and became the 
most deadly and devastating fire in California history, burning 
for 17 days, destroying 154,000 acres of public and private 
property, over 14,000 homes, 5,000 businesses, and other 
structures. The fire forced evacuations of more than 52,000 
residents, injured 17 people including 5 firefighters, and 
claimed the lives of 85 people.
    November 8, 2018 started like a normal fall day, except the 
wind was blowing strong. I loaded up my pup in the back of my 
truck, and as I was getting ready to leave, my wife walked out 
and said she just heard on the radio there was a fire on 
Highway 70 in a place called Pulga. I looked up in the sky in 
that direction and saw a plume of smoke. I told her I would get 
back to her if I heard anything, and give her the updates.
    My typical morning included running my dog in a grass field 
behind our church, which is right next to a middle school, and 
then visiting my job sites before I went to the office. I am a 
general contractor who builds custom homes. I was on the grassy 
field about 15 minutes when I saw the plume from a distance 
become a dark cloud over our town. I noticed that parents were 
lined up to drop off their kids at the charter school, and not 
aware of the events that were developing. It was about 7:30 
a.m.
    I started listening to the scanner on my phone, and then 
noticed large ash floating down from the sky. I walked over to 
Chris, the principal of the school, and asked if he thought the 
kids should be dropped off. Chris was on the phone with the 
district office and said there were no plans of canceling 
school. About then I heard on the scanner that the fire was in 
Concow, one ridge over from Paradise. I communicated this to 
Chris and was off to my job sites.
    My task was to tell everyone to grab their equipment and go 
home if they lived in town, or get out of town if they didn't. 
After communicating with my subs, I heard on the scanner that 
we had a house on fire in the upper part of Paradise on the 
east side. I called my wife to tell her to pack the car, which 
she had already started. I called my mom, and it was about 8:30 
a.m. I got home without much trouble and started packing the 
vehicles.
    I walked around the exterior of my house, removing 
flammable items and debris. In the fall season, when the wind 
is blowing, leaves go everywhere. I went up to my mom's, loaded 
her and her belongings in my truck. She lived only a few houses 
up from me. I brought her back to my house, and finalized 
loading and leave. It was about 9:30 a.m. Both my wife and my 
mom asked, ``Why are you leaving? You never leave.'' I had 
experienced fires and evacuations over the years. My answer to 
them was, ``Something is different. Something tells me we 
cannot stay here for this one.''
    We drove through the neighborhood and hit various points of 
traffic as others were leaving. We saw ash and debris falling. 
We heard explosions in the background that turned out to be 
propane tanks. About 2 miles into our 13-mile journey to Chico, 
we finally arrived on Skyway. Skyway is a main road on the west 
side of town, and all north and southbound lanes were heading 
south. It was about noon.
    By that time, the sunlight was completely gone. The sky was 
dark. This was a darkness I had never experienced in my life, 
along with the heat. I felt the heat of the flames on my truck 
as we drove by them. I had the AC on recirculating, just so I 
could keep the smoke out and cool the truck down. As we made 
our way south, we saw houses on fire, apartments on fire, 
standing power poles in flames. One power pole fell across 
Skyway, forcing all traffic to merge south on the northbound 
lane.
    We saw our son's neighborhood in flames, and the fire 
dancing on the road ahead of us. We made it to Chico around 
1:30 p.m., and had arranged in advance to meet up with our son. 
At this point, we had no plans for housing, except our son did 
have a friend he was staying with. We called a friend from our 
church and asked if myself, my wife, and my mom could stay 
there. They said, ``Absolutely.'' We didn't know at the time 
they had already accepted three other couples.
    My story is a story of tens of thousands of people who 
evacuated that day. In all, over 50,000 people were displaced, 
26,500 from Paradise and the rest from areas surrounding 
Paradise. Our residents watched their community burn as they 
drove through the flames, believing they might perish that way.
    Some of our residents did die in the car trying to escape. 
There were mothers with newborn babies evacuating the hospital, 
forced to escape burning ambulances and walk on foot, still in 
their hospital gowns. The events of that day will never leave 
the memories of our residents, and it is incumbent upon me as 
their mayor to tell their story and help prevent this disaster 
like ours from happening again.
    Leading up to the Camp Fire, Northern California had 
experienced very long periods without rainfall. More than 200 
days had elapsed without significant rainfall by November 2018. 
This led to extreme, dry, brittle, fuel conditions throughout 
the region. The national forest lands that surrounded Paradise, 
the Plumas, and Lassen National Forest were extremely dry as 
well, and were overgrown.
    Inside Paradise limits, private properties contained dense 
brush. As a small town with one code enforcement officer, 
defensible space was encouraged but difficult to enforce.
    Mr. Tiffany. Sir, I have to ask you to wrap up your 
testimony.
    Mr. Bolin. OK. I will just leave with it was 17 days that 
firefighters worked hard and finally got the fire out. And a 
lot of it was because of the rain that came and helped them 
out.
    So, I will leave it with that.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Bolin follows:]
 Prepared Statement of Greg Bolin, Mayor, Town of Paradise, California
    Thank you for the opportunity to share the Town of Paradise's 
experiences before during and after the 2018 Camp Fire. The Town of 
Paradise is located in northern California approximately 90 miles north 
of Sacramento. Prior to the Camp Fire, our population was 26,500, 
making Paradise the second largest community in Butte County, behind 
the City of Chico our neighbor to the southwest. Considered a bedroom 
community, most Paradise residents worked in neighboring cities, and 
chose to live in Paradise for its forested beauty and cooler 
temperatures, as well as more affordable housing. Paradise is situated 
in the foothills on a ridge between two canyons, Butte Creek Canyon to 
the West and Feather River Canyon to the East. Paradise's location, 
along with the dense national forests that surround Paradise, and prior 
to the Camp Fire, dense vegetation that existed within Town limits, 
made Paradise vulnerable to wildfire.
    I moved to Paradise in 1967 at the age of 9 from Los Angeles. My 
dad built houses, so we moved frequently as he built, sold, built again 
and so on. I graduated from Paradise High School and did the same as I 
followed in his footsteps. Out of 24 homes I've lived in, only 2 
survived the Camp Fire. In 2012 I was elected to Town Council with the 
goal of making Paradise more business and builder friendly. I have 
served as Mayor 3 times, the most recent term as Mayor beginning in 
December 2022. In more than 50 years in the Town of Paradise, I have 
seen and experienced fires of all types, severity, and duration. Fire 
is nothing new to Paradise, or the hundreds of foothill communities 
just like it. There are a number of factors that have changed to make 
wildfires more intense and damaging, which include environmental, 
situational, and policy-driven factors. In our case, a combination of a 
historically long dry period, drought conditions, high winds, overgrown 
properties with too little defensible space, dense neighboring forests, 
and electrical equipment failure came together on one fateful day in 
November 2018 to cause the Camp Fire.
    The 2018 Camp Fire ignited on November 8, 2018, and became the most 
deadly and devastating fire in California history, burning for 17 days, 
destroying 154,000 acres of public and private property, over 14,000 
homes, and 5,000 businesses and other structures. The fire forced the 
evacuation of more than 52,000 residents, injured 17 people including 5 
firefighters, and claimed 85 lives.
    November 8th 2018 started like a normal Fall day, except the wind 
was blowing stronger. I was loading up and putting my pup in his kennel 
in the back of my truck when Kathleen, my wife came outside and said 
that she had just heard on the radio there was fire on Hwy 70 in Pulga. 
I looked in the sky in that direction and could see a plume of smoke. I 
told her I would let her know if I received any updates and was off to 
start my day.
    My typical morning includes running my dog at a grass field behind 
our church which is next to a middle school charter and then visiting 
my jobsites before heading into the office. I am a general contractor 
who builds custom homes. I was on the grass field for about 15 minutes 
when I could see that plume off in the distance was now a dark cloud 
falling over half our town. I noticed that parents were lined up to 
drop there kids off at the charter school and not aware of the events 
that were developing. It was about 7:30 am. I started listening to the 
scanner on my phone and then noticed large ash was floating down from 
the sky. I walked over to Chris, the principal at the school and asked 
if he thought the kids should be dropped off? Chris was on the phone 
with the district office and being told they had no plans to cancel 
school. About then, I heard on the scanner that the fire is in Concow, 
one ridge over from Paradise. I communicated that to Chris, and I was 
off to my jobsites. My task was to tell everyone to grab their 
equipment and go home if they live in town or get out of town if they 
didn't.
    After communicating with my subcontractors, I heard on the scanner 
that we had a house on fire in the upper part of Paradise on the east 
side of town. I called my wife to tell her to pack the car, which she 
had already started. I called my mom. It was now about 8:30 am. I got 
home without too much trouble and started packing the vehicles. I 
walked around the exterior of my home removing flammable items and 
debris. It was the Fall season and leaves drop quick in high winds. I 
went up to help my mom load her and her belongings in my truck. She 
lived a few houses from ours. I brought her back to my house to 
finalize loading and leave. It was about 9:30 am. Both my wife and mom 
asked me ``Why are we leaving, you never want to leave''. I have 
experienced other fires and evacuations over the years. My answer to 
them both was that ``this is different. Something is telling me that we 
can't stay here this time.''
    We drove through our neighborhood and hit various points of traffic 
as others were leaving. We saw ash and debris falling. We heard 
explosions in the background which turned out to be propane tanks. 
About 2 miles into our 13-mile journey to Chico we finally arrived on 
Skyway. Skyway is the main road on the west side of town and all north 
and southbound lanes were heading south. It was about noon. By that 
time the sunlight was completely gone, the sky was dark. A darkness 
that I had never experienced before along with heat. I felt the heat of 
the flames through the truck we drove. I had the AC on recirculating 
since the smoke was thick and it was warm in the truck.
    As we made our way south, we saw houses on fire, apartments on fire 
and standing power poles in flames. One power pole fell across Skyway 
forcing all traffic to merge and go south on a north bound lane. We saw 
our youngest son's neighborhood in flames and the fire dancing on the 
road ahead of us.
    We made it to Chico around 1:30 pm and had arranged in advance to 
meet up with our son. At this point we had no plan for housing except 
my son had friends to stay with. We called a friend from church and 
asked if he had room for myself, my wife and my mother. They said 
``absolutely''! We didn't know that they already had taken in three 
other couples.
    My story is the story of tens of thousands of people who evacuated 
that day, in all over 50,000 people were displaced--26,500 from 
Paradise, and the rest from the areas surrounding Paradise. Our 
residents watched their community burn as they drove through flames 
believing they might perish that way. Some of our residents did die in 
cars trying to escape. There were mothers with newborn babies evacuated 
from the hospital, forced to escape burning ambulances, and walk on 
foot, still in hospital gowns. The events of that day will never leave 
the memories of our residents, and it is incumbent upon me as their 
Mayor to tell their story and help prevent a disaster like ours from 
happening again.
    Leading up to the Camp Fire, northern California had experienced a 
very long period without rainfall--more than 200 days had elapsed 
without significant rainfall by November 2018. This led to extremely 
dry, and brittle fuel conditions throughout the region. The national 
forest lands that surround Paradise, the Plumas and Lassen National 
forests were extremely dry as well and were overgrown. Inside Paradise 
Town limits, private property contained dense brush, and as a small 
Town with a single Code Enforcement Officer, defensible space was 
encouraged but difficult to enforce. November typically sees high winds 
in our region, however the winds on November 8th were particularly 
strong. With these conditions in place, the slightest spark could prove 
catastrophic, which is exactly what happened when a poorly maintained 
and faulty Pacific Gas & Electric transmission line 8 miles away from 
Paradise in a community called Pulga failed. This failure caused enough 
of a spark to ignite the dry fuel nearby, which was carried at stunning 
speed across the 8 miles of dry, dense forest and small mountain 
communities to the Town of Paradise within an hour and a half.
    The fire burned for 17 days before it was finally put out by our 
hard-working firefighters, with help from rains that finally arrived in 
the region. While fire retardant was not used in Paradise, winds and 
smoke were too much for aircraft to fly safely, it was utilized in the 
subsequent weeks once the fire had burned through Paradise. This action 
kept the fire from spreading to our neighbors Chico and Oroville.
    From my perspective, more needs to be done when it comes to 
managing the forests that lie outside the Paradise Town limits. As the 
Mayor, I can work with my staff and with the residents of our community 
to put into action the steps that protect our community within our 
borders. But what I can't do is take any action to protect us from the 
wildfires that start in our neighboring forests. Prior to 2016 the 
federal government had a ``hands off'' approach to forest management. 
Federal forestry officials have said the agency's budget has been tied 
up reacting to fires, rather than trying to prevent them. From 1995 to 
2015, the Forest Service went from spending 16% to 52% of its budget 
fighting fires, according to the Ecological Society of America, a non-
profit.
    Since 2017, the federal government has had a renewed focus on 
forest management. In the year that ended October 1st, 2018 the federal 
government thinned, cut, burned and mulched about 235,000 acres in 
California according to Barnie Gyant, the U.S. Forest Service's deputy 
regional forester for California and the Pacific. The trend toward 
thinning forests needs to continue.
    While there were many factors that led to the Camp Fire, addressing 
any one of them will help lessen the severity of future fires in my 
community and those like it.
    Once the fire was out, 17 days after it ignited, our community 
began the long recovery process. It took 9 months for fire debris to be 
removed from private property, which is much faster than we expected, 
to the credit of FEMA and the California Office of Emergency Services 
(Cal OES). We also had to address restoring power, water, 
communications (phone and internet), as well as removing the thousands 
of trees that had fallen into roadways, or across access ways that were 
needed for immediate response activities. We issued our first building 
permit in February 2019, and since then rebuilding has not slowed down. 
We have rebuilt 2,300 housing units, including single family homes and 
multi-family units, and at any given time we have about 700 homes under 
construction.
    It is important to note that as we rebuild, our community 
recognizes the importance of rebuilding stronger and better than we 
were before so we may be resilient to future fires or other disasters. 
Paradise has the unique opportunity to rebuild from the ground up and 
be at the forefront of resilient building to be a model for other 
communities who hopefully will not need to experience the devastation 
we did to learn what we learned. Paradise has sought out experts in 
resilient methods and technology to make sure we are doing all we can 
do. We have incorporated the Institute for Business and Home Safety 
(IBHS) Wildfire Prepared Home Standard into our local building codes, 
going a step further than the California Building Codes and the 
Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) codes. With requirements like Class-A 
rated roofs, enclosed eaves, and a 5 foot non-combustible zone around 
the home, Paradise's building standards follow science to be as 
resilient as we can. We also require strict defensible space standards 
on individual properties, keeping weeds and brush low near homes. We 
not only encourage this, we require it, and inspect every property 
every year to ensure compliance. In addition to individual property 
efforts, the Town is working with our Parks District to create buffer 
zones in areas along the perimeter of our community to help slow fires 
that enter from neighboring forests. The efforts described here have 
been studied by Milliman and Core Logic through a Bay Area Council 
Report and have been found to reduce wildfire risk by 70%.
    Wildfire is a reality for Paradise and thousands of communities 
just like it. What has worked in the past, just isn't working anymore 
to keep our communities safe. That said, as Paradise has discovered, 
there are ways to make living in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and 
high fire severity zones possible with some effort on the part of 
residents, communities, local and state governments, and federal 
policy.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mayor Bolin, for your testimony.
    I would like to recognize Members now for 5 minutes, and we 
will start with Representative LaMalfa.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you for that, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate 
the special consideration on that.
    Mayor Bolin, indeed, a very emotional and moving experience 
that you have brought to us here today. We stood beside you in 
living it, but there is nothing like what we see here, with the 
photos and, indeed, the movies that were made by Ron Howard and 
others to depict what it was really, really like. And the only 
thing I guess that would be comparable or worse would be an 
actual war zone or something, but it felt like that to 
everybody. And this was the immediate result.
    Now, optimistically, it is great to see how well things are 
bouncing back. Your town has done an amazing job of keeping a 
positive spirit and cleaning up the debris and hauling off 
those burned-out vehicles. And indeed, you have many new home 
permits in place. I have been up there for ribbon-cutting on 
some of those and the businesses that were able to re-open 
again, the restaurants and all that. So, there is indeed a very 
fierce spirit of building back there, and we are proud of that 
effort and all that your council has done.
    We had great help from FEMA on that, California Office of 
Emergency Services, all the different agencies, Federal, state, 
county, and town. And our neighboring towns, Oroville, Chico, 
they have really stepped up to find places for people and 
helping with the debris, hauling the concrete and the steel and 
the other stuff that had to be hauled off from clearing up 
those lots. It took a lot of effort to get all these agencies 
aligned, but everybody had a really great spirit of aligning. 
FEMA hadn't really handled wildfire. A lot of hurricane and 
tornado and such things, but there hadn't been something like 
this scale. So, hats off to a lot of people pulling together.
    So, I am sure they are completely pinned down, but what did 
the firefighting response look like in the immediate time while 
you were there, trying to escape down the Skyway and such? Was 
it just overwhelming? Were there aircraft? Could you see that 
some important avenues were saved? How did that look to you at 
the time?
    Mr. Bolin. Thank you for the question. The fire was so 
quick, all efforts were just to evacuate. There was very little 
firefighting that happened those first couple of days. As the 
houses burned, the water system was completely depleted, so we 
had no water pressure in Paradise, and all water had to come up 
from down the valley on trucks. At that point the smoke was so 
dense and so bad they couldn't fly and do any good from the 
aerial.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, indeed. I heard about the fire early that 
morning too. You have dodged several big ones over the years. 
You had that one south of town by the airport, which got pretty 
close and they always make you nervous, but the wind was 
different that day, and the amount of fuel.
    Can you speak to the significance, and maybe touch on the 
piece up by Magalia there, where Sierra Pacific and your Fire 
Safe Council had done a lot of work. Magalia is the next town 
up the ridge from Paradise. And we don't want to forget, too, 
the towns of Concow and Yankee Hill nearby. Those folks the 
next ridge over that suffered so much.
    But the thinning projects that had been happening, talk to 
us about how those ended up looking for that effort.
    Mr. Bolin. Up by our reservoir there was an area in which 
they did a significant amount of thinning of that little forest 
up in there. And many are convinced that that kept that fire 
from going into that upper part of Magalia. It skirted down to 
the lower part of Magalia and took out that part. But because 
of that thinning, it actually gave it a barrier to stop that 
fire from going in the upper part.
    And, subsequently, fire retardant was used on the Camp 
Fire, it was just afterwards to keep the fire from going. It 
was heading to Chico and to Oroville, and they laid down some 
lines and saved several housing developments in those cities.
    Mr. LaMalfa. And indeed, right now we are contemplating 
whether we can keep fire retardant in time for this upcoming 
fire season.
    The lady from Bend, thank you for your thumbs up on H.R. 
1585, and the rest of your testimony. I would give you a 
virtual congressional hug, but maybe that is not allowed, on 
your great comments there.
    But other towns, Mayor Bolin--and I will cut off here--but 
Paradise is always worried about the route up the hill out of 
Paradise in case of a fire, and you were able to get road work 
done after a lot of years. Supervisor Yamaguchi and Supervisor 
Teeter, a lot of conversation. Have you had a chance to talk to 
other communities around the western states on their evacuation 
routes and how they can help if they are in that situation?
    Mr. Bolin. I have. I was able to talk to a few different 
communities, and they had questions. How did you know how to 
evacuate so quickly? We had practiced that, and I encourage 
them, practice evacuations. Each of these communities were in a 
severity zone where they were eventually going to have some 
issues. And I said, ``Come up with a plan, practice it, and try 
it. You have to.'' We were prepared, we had tried it, and we 
knew what to do. So, hopefully, communities start doing that.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, thank you. My time is up.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields, and I would like to 
recognize Ranking Member Neguse for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Neguse. I thank the Chairman. Thanks again to all of 
the witnesses for their testimony and a very informative and 
meaningful panel.
    And Mayor, thank you for sharing your story, which is 
harrowing and, obviously, underscores the deep, lasting damage 
that was done in your community. And hearts and thoughts go out 
to you and to Mr. LaMalfa's community as they continue to 
recover years later. And we know that well in Colorado, as I 
mentioned in my opening statement.
    Questions for Dr. Schultz, and then I wanted to ask a 
question of the gentleman, Mr. Dias, from the Forestry 
Association.
    Dr. Schultz, I want to talk a little bit about 
collaboration. And again, thank you for joining us today. But 
as you referenced in your testimony, much of your research is 
focused on the benefits of building collaboration and 
consensus. And this is especially true in wildland-urban 
interface communities like many of our communities in Colorado, 
as you know, where some of the most at-risk acres occur across 
a patchwork of ownership and jurisdiction boundaries.
    One of the bills that I have introduced this year with 
Senator Bennett is a bill to reauthorize the collaborative 
Forest Landscape Restoration Program, which I think kind of 
models the type of collaboration that you spoke of. I wonder if 
you might be able to expound in a little greater detail about 
the benefits of collaboration and the challenges as far as the 
obstacles that might be getting in the way.
    Dr. Schultz. Yes. Thank you for the question, Mr. Neguse.
    I think the benefits of collaboration are that it asks 
people to get together to work across boundaries and figure out 
how they are going to treat fuels across boundaries, and also 
to work together to build a workforce, and also potentially to 
work together to explain to the public what they are doing. So, 
for example, under the CFRP, you will see people sort of forced 
into a forest restoration marriage for 10 years, and they 
essentially have to commit to working together to make a 
difference on that landscape.
    And what we see is that sometimes this happens through 
large-scale, innovative NEPA processes. They figure out how are 
they going to combine capacity from state, local, and Federal 
fire agencies to put fire under the ground, to respond 
collectively? They engage with industry in a consistent way, 
and they are able to explain to the public why they might see a 
lot more truck trips in their communities, why they might be 
seeing thinning outside their back door. And I think those 
collaborative efforts have led to tremendous success.
    My research on CFLRP has indicated that it is probably the 
best thing that has happened to Forest Service policy in a long 
time, and I appreciate your efforts to support it.
    Mr. Neguse. Well, thank you, Dr. Schultz. And I couldn't 
agree with you more, and a lot more for us to do, so excited to 
get the CFLRP reauthorization across the finish line and 
continue to build on that work.
    Mr. Dias, I have limited time left, so I am going to try to 
go through this quickly. I reviewed your written testimony. I 
appreciate your oral testimony today. My sense, if I could 
condense your testimony, is that you would like to see more of 
this landscape work done by the Forest Service, and I certainly 
agree with you on that front. But I assume you would concede 
that the investments that we made over the course of the last 
several years are significantly higher than any investments at 
least in the modern era, let's say the last 40 to 50 years of 
the Forest Service's work. Is that fair?
    Mr. Dias. Yes, I would say that is accurate.
    Mr. Neguse. And as I said, I think the challenge now is, of 
course, as you said in your written testimony, and I think many 
of us agree, is to scale that up, and to have the Forest 
Service do more of that.
    And I think Dr. Schultz raises a really important salient 
point in terms of the reporting that the Forest Service should 
do, moving forward, so that we can carefully calibrate how many 
acres are actually being treated. I think that is an important 
metric, something I suspect we could work on a bipartisan basis 
on.
    What I wanted to ask you about is there is a lot of 
conversation these days, at least here on the dais anyway, 
about NEPA, and I am sure you have heard that from many of my 
colleagues. You detail pretty extensively in your written 
testimony the various authorities that exist within the Forest 
Service to do this work. It doesn't seem like the regulatory 
obstacles are, let's say, as large as some of my colleagues 
would have us believe.
    And just to go to your testimony, I mean, you talk about, 
for example, the Infrastructure Act creating a new emergency 
action authority for the Forest Service. Is that correct?
    Mr. Dias. That is correct.
    Mr. Neguse. And also the Infrastructure Act creating 
rather, or I don't know if this is the Infrastructure Act or if 
this is existing law, the ability under alternative 
arrangements under Federal regulations to execute projects, 
which, obviously, could be very important, particularly as it 
relates to fuel breaks. Is that correct?
    Mr. Dias. Yes, pre-existing infrastructure, but that is 
correct.
    Mr. Neguse. So, I think I am out of time here and I am not 
going to go through the full list, but I offer that to suggest 
that I think the Forest Service has the ability today to do 
this work, which is precisely why they have launched their 10-
year landscape project plan. So, we are best positioned, I 
think, to encourage the Forest Service to continue on the path 
that they are on. That is certainly the approach I am going to 
take.
    And I appreciate the testimony of all the witnesses here 
today.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields, and that is certainly 
something we are going to watch very closely, is how many acres 
are being treated, and are the agencies going to take those 
authorities and actually turn them into acres treated.
    I would like to recognize the gentleman from Oregon for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Bentz. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank all of you for 
your thoughtful testimony and your written testimony. I would 
like to start with Ms. McNair.
    I am looking at, I think, the last page of your written 
testimony. And I really appreciate and I was speaking with 
Congressman LaMalfa about your suggestions contained on that 
last page. And we would like to work with you in bringing the 
type of legislation you suggest about the ambient air quality 
standards. That is really an excellent observation on your 
part, and I certainly was not aware of it. So, we may be 
reaching out to you, if that is acceptable, and finding out 
what we can do to move legislation forward in that space.
    But because you have been with the Forest Service for so 
long, it gives me an opportunity to ask you something that has 
been asserted over the years that I have observed the Forest 
Service, and it appears that over time the firefighting space 
has turned into, because of the huge addition of heavy volumes 
of fuel, to more of a fire watching and try to stay out of the 
way space. And I don't blame anybody for that. I have been 
around those kinds of fires, and they are horribly frightening 
and horribly dangerous.
    My question to you is this. Do you think that the type of 
approach that is being used by the Forest Service now in how it 
approaches these fires is the proper approach?
    And I will just say this. I have a lot of ranching clients 
that I used to have in my law practice who, in the summers now, 
they spend their time fighting fire. That is what they do. It 
was not the case before. And they come in, and they tell me 
about how firefighting works. And the way it works is you get 
up in the morning, and you wander into a tent around 10, 11, 
and you talk about how everybody is going to stay safe, and 
then you decide on a plan, and you coordinate with a bunch of 
other folks, and eventually everybody goes out and does 
something for a while, and then everybody stops working at the 
end and you start out the next day. Is that a correct 
reflection of what you have seen in the firefighting space at 
least once or twice? I am sure it doesn't happen all the time 
that way, at least I hope.
    Ms. McNair. That is a good question, Congressman. I will 
say this, that our fires are getting more complex, they are 
getting larger and more difficult to fight. And let me give you 
an example of that.
    In 1987, we had the Silver Fire in southern Oregon. It was 
100,000 acres, and we thought that was a big fire, an anomaly. 
In 2013, we had the Rim Fire in California. It was 2.5 million 
acres, or 250,000 acres. We thought, oh my, that is really big. 
In 2021, we had the Bootleg Fire in Oregon and we hit a half-a-
million acres.
    What we are seeing is every fire is either a controlled, a 
controlled and maintained, or a monitored. I don't think we 
have ever seen people walk away from a fire. It is really one 
of three strategies. It is either direct or indirect attacked. 
But I think that, as we see our firefighters approach these 
fires, it is always their safety we have in mind and 
communities.
    Mr. Bentz. And forgive me for interrupting, but I have to 
ask Dr. Schultz a question; I am going to be out of time.
    Ms. McNair. OK.
    Mr. Bentz. But I appreciate what you were going to say, and 
the last thing I want to do is put people at risk. But I think 
it leads directly into how in the world are we going to reduce 
the amount of fuel that is in these spaces? Because once these 
things get rolling, you better get out of the road. So, that 
brings me to Dr. Schultz.
    Dr. Schultz, I really appreciate your written testimony. I 
was reviewing it here. And you talk about collaboratives, and 
you also say on the first page of your testimony in the last 
paragraph, center line, ``If we want to get to the scale needed 
to make a difference.'' I have used that phrase a lot, and I 
know what scale is. My district is bigger than the state of 
Washington, so I get scale. Is that what you meant?
    Were you saying, hey, we have, what, 90 million acres of 
forest in the western United States? Is that what you talk 
about? Is that what you mean when you say scale?
    Dr. Schultz. Thanks for the question. I am talking about 
planning at a large-enough scale to have an impact on fire 
behavior and also on forest conditions.
    We often talk about a history of putting in smaller 
projects in a less strategic way sometimes really doesn't make 
a difference. So, if we really want to go big across the 
landscape to reduce fuels enough to affect fire behavior and 
have some impact on communities, then we need to be planning 
large projects. And that is when collaboration and good 
planning come into play. We need to do those things in order to 
really scale up and be working at the landscape level.
    Mr. Bentz. Right, and we don't have enough time for me to 
share my frustrations with collaboration, but I view it also as 
perhaps the only device that has any real chance of getting 
anything done, short of all-out litigation.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to ask a 
couple of questions here, then I want to yield to Mr. LaMalfa.
    You talked about obligatory supply agreements, Mr. Dias. 
Tell me about obligatory supply agreements.
    Mr. Dias. When I use the term ``obligatory,'' I am 
suggesting that the shared stewardship, 20-year agreements or 
any shared stewardship, doesn't have an obligation or a 
triggering mechanism to guarantee delivery of any kind of 
material that is going to unlock investment in any kind of 
innovative infrastructure or conventional infrastructure.
    So, from my perspective, the state of California also has 
this on its dashboard: trying to drive investment in new 
facilities, if you will, to have capital be a driver in getting 
treatment done, but we don't have any obligations, so folks are 
just not seemingly ready to invest.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, are you saying the state of California 
uses obligatory supply agreements?
    Mr. Dias. No, I am not saying that. I messed up. That is 
not what I am saying. What I am saying is California is very 
interested in having drivers to get investment settled in the 
state.
    The Forest Service, by far and away, is the largest 
landowner in the state. So, without supply agreements coming 
from the largest landowner in the state, it is very difficult 
to have new infrastructure established because existing 
infrastructure is already set up based on the landscapes which 
it serves.
    Mr. Tiffany. Dr. Schultz, will we get to scale? We just had 
that conversation about will we get to scale. Will we be able 
to do that if the lawsuits continue, if there is not lawsuit 
reform?
    Dr. Schultz. Thanks for the question, Representative 
Tiffany.
    I think there is actually quite a lot of NEPA considered 
shelf stock. So, on the shelf, millions of acres that are 
through the NEPA process and could be treated. Our biggest 
problems, and I agree with Mr. Dias, tend to have to do more 
with industry and markets to actually bid on those projects 
when they are done. We see a lot of projects that go unbid, or 
even projects that are bid on and then never get worked on.
    I think industry and markets for the low-to-no-value wood 
products are our biggest challenge, and I would ask this 
Committee to focus on that as a major area where we need 
solutions.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, how do we get them back? They were there 
30, 40 years ago. How do we get them back, Dr. Schultz?
    Dr. Schultz. Yes, they are quite a bit different. There is 
a long history of the Forest Service doing a lot of intensive, 
high grading and timber harvest during the height of the 
timber-producing era that took a lot of the large sawlogs. And 
those industries that used to treat those sawlogs in some 
places no longer are there. There are also the impacts of 
globalization on the timber economy.
    What we are looking at now is low-to-no-value product. We 
have to get a lot cleared through NEPA, and then we need to 
incentivize small businesses that can work on biomass and take 
that small product to create something of value with it. We 
also just have to pay to get it out of the woods, which is part 
of what the investments from the Congress are going to be 
paying for.
    Now we need to make sure that the Forest Service has the 
contracting capacity to do that work, to get the contractors on 
the ground where they have the NEPA shelf stock in place to 
actually get the work done.
    And then we have to follow it with prescribed fire, because 
if we don't remove those small fuels, we won't actually see the 
fire risk reduction.
    Mr. Tiffany. I yield to the gentleman from California.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thanks so much again, Mr. Chairman, I 
appreciate the time and being in your Subcommittee today. This 
is an excellent panel, one of the best panels I have seen in a 
long time, with a diversity of experience and thought. So, I 
appreciate you all.
    I wanted to, quickly with Mayor Bolin, you did not really 
have an evacuation system in place at the time, but now you 
have sirens and, of course, the practice and such. Is this 
something we can use to emphasize to other mountain and 
forested communities?
    Mr. Bolin. Right after the fire we had a large community 
outreach to come up with what are things that would encourage 
you to come back, and what are things that would help you feel 
comfortable----
    Mr. LaMalfa. Right, because we want people to come back----
    Mr. Bolin. We want them to come back to town, yes.
    Mr. LaMalfa. I was reminded that had this happened in the 
middle of the night, after the tinder dried, November in 
California is still dry. And the whole summer and the fall of 
that, everything was super dry. Had that wind and that fire 
started late at night, I imagine the loss of life would have 
been just tremendous above what we already saw.
    Mr. Bolin. If this would have been 2 or 3 hours earlier 
that this happened, we would have lost thousands of people in 
our town, because they would have still been in bed.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you. Ms. McNair, you really perked my 
ears up with this PM2.5 business here, because as Dr. Schultz 
mentioned, too, prescribed fire is going to have to be a big 
part of what we do, and it is even more difficult these days. 
And we saw one got away, a big one, in New Mexico. Yet, we have 
to work even harder to find ways. If this PM2.5 thing is 
allowed to stand, what do you see happening there with that?
    How far is that a threat, or whatever, from using this 
tool?
    Ms. McNair. Well, as it is proposed, some of the research 
that I have been reading, in some of our communities it will 
limit prescribed fire by 80 to 90 percent.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Wow.
    Ms. McNair. So, we can choose the way we have fire. We will 
have fire. We will either have wildfire smoke or we will have 
prescribed smoke on our communities. And the effects of 
wildfire smoke right now are showing a 25 percent increase 
since the mid-2000s that represent hazardous air that our folks 
are virtually breathing in our communities. And every time you 
hit a wildfire, you are probably having propane tanks, you are 
having roofs burned, you are putting toxic things in your air 
system. So, it is either you have wood burning, prescribed 
fires, for the most part, or you have wildfires. And it is a 
choice we can make.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Certainly, we can carry the logs out on a 
truck or we can burn them out is one of the other common 
sayings. And what Mayor Bolin has experienced in Paradise, the 
toxics, just on a footprint of a home or a building that have 
to be hauled away, as well as Greenville, my other town that 
got burned, and Canyon Dam, my other town that got burned, same 
thing. The toxics are on the ground.
    And you also mentioned the renewable fuels that we should 
be putting to work for us in making energy, as well. I just 
wish we had so much more time. It has been a great Committee 
today.
    And Matt, I didn't even get to touch on your good work here 
in California from my questions and such. But real fast if you 
don't mind, Mr. Chairman, when I see our previous Committee 
today, in Ag, I am just so built up with frustration at the 
speed with which Forest Service is not doing things. The pace 
and scale keeps coming up. I mean, I don't want to go out of 
here feeling hopeless, but I just do not see how we are going 
to do this without a great sea change in attitude and getting 
after having the private sector help us in a much more 
aggressive approach. Do you have any comment on that, on 
acreage, and on thinning and everything?
    Mr. Dias. I will be very quick. I think the Forest Service 
is experiencing some symptoms of capacity and technical 
expertise to a certain extent, and I think that partnerships 
are very, very, very important in today's world. And when we 
look at the NEPA process, or we look at the permitting process, 
we have partners out there that can do that work on behalf of 
the forest, or work with them: Great Basin Institute, Wild 
Turkey Federation, so on and so forth.
    As we look at other portions of the work that needs to be 
done, the practical on-the-ground work, we can turn to other 
entities out there that have capacity. And I stand before you 
representing the forestry sector in California and say that we 
are interested and stand before you wanting to help the Forest 
Service get that work done around communities and around shared 
property lines so that we are building a more resilient 
environment.
    And it is that cooperative that is going to have to be 
done, but it is not a very fast process, and better tools for 
cooperation through contracting and such is something I would 
encourage you to look at.
    Mr. LaMalfa. Chairman Tiffany, you have been very kind. 
Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields, and I would like to echo 
his comments. This is one of the finest panels that we have had 
before Federal Lands and the Natural Resources Committee in the 
short time that I have been here. We want to thank you so much 
for taking the time to come from the western states to join us 
here. It is greatly appreciated. I will be talking about your 
testimony with other Members. It is greatly appreciated.
    Members of the Committee may have some additional questions 
for our witnesses today, and we will ask that they respond to 
those in writing. Under Committee Rule 3, members of the 
Committee must submit questions to the Committee Clerk by 5 
p.m. on Friday, May 19, 2023. The hearing record will be held 
open for 10 business days for these responses.
    If there is no further business, without objection, the 
Subcommittee on Federal Lands stands adjourned.

    [Whereupon, at 4:45 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

            [ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD]

Submission for the Record by Rep. Bentz

             The National Wildfire Suppression Association

                             Mill City, OR

                                                   May 18, 2023    

Hon. Tom Tiffany, Chairman
House Natural Resources Committee
Subcommittee on Federal Lands
Washington, DC 20515

Re: ``Examining the Challenges Facing Forest Management, Wildfire 
        Suppression and Wildland Firefighters Ahead of the 2023 
        Wildfire Year''

    Dear Chairman Tiffany, Vice Chair John Curtis, and members of the 
Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands:

    Thank you for the opportunity to provide written testimony 
regarding the May 16 hearing ``Examining the Challenges Facing Forest 
Management, Wildfire Suppression and Wildland Firefighters Ahead of the 
2023 Wildfire Year''.
    The National Wildfire Suppression Association represents over 348 
member companies across twenty-nine states that provide resources to 
the agencies under a variety of contracts and agreements for wildfire 
suppression response. Our resources are the ``boots on the ground'' and 
the scope of resources available from our industry is substantial. We 
make up over forty-five percent (45%) of all resources on the ground on 
fires, and up to ninety percent (90%) of all ``iron (heavy 
equipment)''. Our agreements are of excellent value to the agency and 
the taxpayer as we ``call when needed'' resources to supplement the 
agency contingency when there is need. We have been providing resources 
to the agencies for over 30 years, and many times we still see no 
recognition of what we bring to the table in their efforts against 
these catastrophic wildfires.
    Currently the agency uses a variety of agreements Incident Blanket 
Procurement Agreements (IBPA), Emergency Equipment Rental Agreements 
and Request for Proposal (RFP) to hire these types of resources. As of 
2022 there are over 419 Type 2 Hand Crews, 37 Types 2 Initial Attack 
Hand Crews and over 14,000 pieces of equipment including water 
handling, heavy equipment, camp support as well many other types of 
specialized resources.
Sustain the Workforce:

    In all areas of industry, we are struggling to sustain our 
workforce, and in an industry such as emergency response with no 
guarantee of work that is a challenge we face. They involve long days, 
periods of time away from family, and few creature comforts on the job.
    We have seen the agency in some rural locations having to stand 
down equipment due to lack of staffing, and even in areas where large 
signing bonuses are offered (sometimes up to $25,000 signing bonuses 
for an engine boss) they are still unable to fill those positions. Due 
to the limitation of bid ranges and the nature of ``call when needed'' 
work we cannot offer those kinds of incentives in private industry.
Fuels Mitigation/Prescribed Burning

    We believe in the philosophy of all hands, all lands and the 
Professional Private industry and we are proud to be a partner with the 
agencies in these efforts. We also have a long history of expertise in 
wildland fire, fire rehab, prescribed burning, and fuels mitigation.
    We have worked with Chief Moore and Ms. Hall-Rivera about the 
opportunity to increase the capacity of the public/private partnership 
utilizing the current contract vehicles in place for these fire 
resources.
    They have the equipment, qualifications, and expertise to 
immediately help address the substantial backlog of work which urgently 
needs to be addressed, and we look forward to continuing that 
collaboration.
    Our industry also has some newer technology that currently the 
agency does not contract for that could boost productivity if it were 
utilized for fuels treatment. Things such as whole tree chippers, track 
mulchers, and more that our companies have invested in for work they do 
with the states and with private landowners but currently there are 
avenues to provide those to the federal agencies.
    We are concerned about whether the Emergency Declaration being 
utilized fully; in some cases, we have seen a slow response in making 
the funding available, which is causing missed opportunities to get 
work done.
In Summary:

    Private industry has, will and can continue to play a significant 
role in providing much needed resources including heavy equipment, 
water handling, hand crews and other specialized equipment. We also 
have the qualifications and expertise to assist with large landscape 
fuel projects to help address those backlogs and reduce wildfire risk 
on the landscape. The agency would need to look at some changes to the 
current contract vehicles to allow us to have a wider scope of work in 
some cases, but the workforce is there and the equipment also. These 
companies have invested substantial amounts of dollars in the companies 
to be able to provide these resources, and we just want to be sure that 
the companies with the ``best value'' to the agency and taxpayer get 
the opportunity to provide those resources.

    We are happy to answer any questions or provide more information to 
the committee upon request.

            Thank you for the opportunity.

                                             Deborah Miley,
                                                 Executive Director

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