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




                                


 
         EXAMINING OPPORTUNITIES TO PROMOTE AND ENHANCE TRIBAL


                           FOREST MANAGEMENT

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

                           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, December 5, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-82

                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
       
       
       
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        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
                                   or
          Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov
          
          
          
                        ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 54-285 PDF          WASHINGTON : 2024  
          
          
          
          

                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

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

Doug Lamborn, C                          OGrace F. Napolitano, CA
Robert J. Wittman, VA                    Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 
Tom McClintock, CA                          CNMI
Paul Gosar, AZ                           Jared Huffman, CA
Garret Graves, LA                        Ruben Gallego, AZ
Aumua Amata C. Radewagen, AS             Joe Neguse, CO
Doug LaMalfa, CA                         Mike Levin, CA
Daniel Webster,                          FLKatie Porter, CA
Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, PR             Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Russ Fulcher, ID                         Melanie A. Stansbury, NM
Pete Stauber, MN                         Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
John R. Curtis, UT                       Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY
Tom Tiffany, WI                          Kevin Mullin, CA
Jerry Carl, AL                           Val T. Hoyle, OR
Matt Rosendale, MT                       Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Lauren Boebert, CO                       Seth Magaziner, RI
Cliff Bentz, OR                          Nydia M. Velazquez, NY
Jen Kiggans, VA                          Ed Case, HI
Jim Moylan, GU                           Debbie Dingell, MI
Wesley P. Hunt, TX                       Susie Lee, NV
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, December 5, 2023........................     1

Statement of Members:

    Tiffany, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Wisconsin.........................................     1
    Westerman, Hon. Bruce, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arkansas..........................................     9
    Neguse, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Colorado................................................    15

Statement of Witnesses:

    Panel I:

    Crockett, John, Associate Deputy Chief, State, Private, and 
      Tribal Forestry, U.S. Forest Service, Washington, DC.......     3
        Prepared statement of....................................     4
        Questions submitted for the record.......................     9
    Shaw, Bodie, Deputy Regional Director, Trust Services, 
      Northwest Region, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Portland, 
      Oregon.....................................................    16
        Prepared statement of....................................    18
        Questions submitted for the record.......................    20

    Panel II:

    Rice, Hon. Robert, Council Member, Mescalero Apache Tribe, 
      Mescalero, New Mexico......................................    29
        Prepared statement of....................................    31
    Desautel, Cody, President, Intertribal Timber Council, 
      Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Nespelem, 
      Washington.................................................    36
        Prepared statement of....................................    37
    Skenadore, Michael, President, Menominee Tribal Enterprises, 
      Keshena, Wisconsin.........................................    40
        Prepared statement of....................................    41
    Blake, Dawn, Director, Yurok Tribal Forestry Department, 
      Klamath, California........................................    45
        Prepared statement of....................................    46
    Rigdon, Phil, Vice President, Intertribal Timber Council, 
      Yakama Nation, Toppenish, Washington.......................    49
        Prepared statement of....................................    51

Additional Materials Submitted for the Record:

    Submissions for the Record by Representative Westerman

        Bill Tripp, Director of Natural Resources and 
          Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe, Statement for 
          the Record.............................................    10
                                     



  OVERSIGHT HEARING ON EXAMINING OPPORTUNITIES TO PROMOTE AND ENHANCE



                        TRIBAL FOREST MANAGEMENT

                              ----------                              


                       Tuesday, December 5, 2023

                     U.S. House of Representatives

                     Subcommittee on Federal Lands

                     Committee on Natural Resources

                             Washington, DC

                              ----------                              

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:57 p.m. in 
Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Tom Tiffany 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

    Present: Representatives Tiffany, Bentz, Westerman; Neguse, 
and Leger Fernandez.
    Also present: Representative Huffman.

    Mr. Tiffany. The Subcommittee on Federal Lands will come to 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the Subcommittee at any time.
    The Subcommittee is meeting today for the purpose of 
examining opportunities to promote and enhance tribal forest 
management.
    I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California, 
Mr. Huffman, 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 the 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. As the Subcommittee wraps up 2023, I would 
like to briefly reflect on our accomplishments this year. This 
Subcommittee has held 17 hearings and considered more than 50 
pieces of bipartisan legislation. In fact, we have considered 
more bills this year than in any of the previous 8 years of 
this Subcommittee.
    Committee Republicans have held the Biden administration 
accountable through numerous budget hearings where we examined 
out-of-control spending; uncovered a secret $200 million payout 
to Nancy Pelosi's Presidio Park; we have taken steps to improve 
the lives of people in rural America by working to block the 
Bureau of Land Management's harmful Lands Rule; we have 
considered comprehensive recreation legislation that will 
improve access to our public lands; we have passed meaningful 
legislation on the House Floor by bipartisan margins, including 
my ACRES Act, the Treating Tribes and Counties as Good 
Neighbors Act, and just last week, Representative Malliotakis' 
Protecting our Communities from Failure to Secure the Border 
Act.
    As we approach 2024, I look forward to advancing more 
meaningful legislation that will rein in wasteful spending, 
address our wildfire and forest health crisis, improve access 
to public lands, and support jobs in rural communities.
    With that, I will turn to the topic of today's hearing, 
which is to examine opportunities to promote and enhance tribal 
forest management. Wildfires and other calamities impacting our 
forests do not respect man-made boundaries. Our approach to 
confronting the wildfire crisis must reflect this reality. 
Tribes, along with state and local governments, are critically 
important partners that must be better utilized in order to 
turn the tide against a crisis of this magnitude.
    The Federal Government has much to learn from tribes when 
it comes to forest management. For centuries, tribes actively 
managed these lands in a manner that provided subsistence, 
supported a healthy forest ecosystem and wildlife populations, 
and created numerous cultural and religious benefits for 
tribes. Today, Federal land managers often let these same 
forests go unmanaged, their resources underutilized, and 
providing no ecological or economic benefits.
    In contrast, the 19 million acres of forest lands managed 
by tribes today are consistently healthier and more resilient 
to wildfires, drought, insects, and disease. I am pleased to 
see one such tribe leading the nation in forest management 
being represented here today from my home state of Wisconsin.
    The Menominee Tribe provides a shining example of 
responsible forest management that yields results that are good 
for the forest and good for people. For nearly 170 years, the 
forests of the Menominee Reservation in northeastern Wisconsin 
have been responsibly managed with a focus on sustainable 
harvesting. Over 2.25 billion board feet of timber have been 
harvested in that time, yet there is more standing timber in 
the forest now than there was over a century and a half ago. 
That sustainable harvesting has consistently produced high-
quality wood products, and has even been used to create the 
hardwood basketball courts for the Final Four and our home 
state Milwaukee Bucks.
    I look forward to discussing ways, that is why Giannis can 
jump as high as he can.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Tiffany. I look forward to discussing ways we can take 
this model and expand it across the nation to support healthier 
forests and tribal economies.
    We have already made some good progress in this regard. The 
Tribal Forest Protection Act, passed in 2004, directed the 
Departments of Agriculture and the Interior to give greater 
consideration to stewardship projects proposed by tribes for 
managing adjacent forest lands.
    Relatedly, the 2018 Farm Bill made tribes eligible 
participants in Good Neighbor Authority agreements with Federal 
land managers, but there is still much room for improvement.
    In Fiscal Year 2023, the Forest Service had only 17 Good 
Neighbor Authority agreements with tribes across the country. 
Further, tribes frequently lack the infrastructure necessary to 
process hazardous fuels and excess biomass, or encountered 
difficulties accessing markets for these products. It is vital 
that we pursue innovative solutions that will improve 
coordination in co-stewardship opportunities, enhance existing 
tools and authorities, and create new markets for wood products 
for tribes.
    I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. I 
look forward to this important discussion.
    I will now recognize the Ranking Member.
    As soon as Representative Neguse gets here we will get his 
opening statement. First, we are going to move on to our first 
witness panel.
    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, please 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.
    First, I would like to introduce Mr. John Crockett, 
Associate Deputy Chief of State, Private, and Tribal Forestry 
for the U.S. Forest Service.
    Associate Deputy Chief Crockett, you are recognized for 5 
minutes, and welcome before the Subcommittee.

  STATEMENT OF JOHN CROCKETT, ASSOCIATE DEPUTY CHIEF, STATE, 
PRIVATE, AND TRIBAL FORESTRY, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, WASHINGTON, 
                               DC

    Mr. Crockett. Good afternoon, Chairman Tiffany, Ranking 
Member Neguse, members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the 
invitation to testify today regarding the examination of 
opportunities to promote and enhance tribal forest management. 
My name is John Crockett, and I serve as Associate Deputy Chief 
for State, Private, and Tribal Forestry.
    With over 26 years of experience as a career Forest Service 
employee, and the last 11 focused on national-level policy 
issues, I have gained a valuable experience in doing meaningful 
consultation with tribes and implementing authorities such as 
the Tribal Forest Protection Act, Good Neighbor Authority, 
stewardship contracting, and the recent 638 demonstration 
authority provided by the 2018 Farm Bill.
    The USDA is dedicated to fulfilling the trust 
responsibility and establishing nurturing, enduring government 
relationships with the federally recognized tribes. We 
acknowledge that many of the Federal lands managed by the USDA 
are home to sacred burial sites and sources of Indigenous foods 
and medicines. In many of these lands, tribes have reserved 
rights to hunt, fish, gather, and practice their traditional 
ceremonies.
    In alignment with our commitment to sovereign Tribal 
Nations, fostering government-to-government relationships, 
embracing environmental justice, and conserving natural 
resources, the Forest Service is actively implementing various 
Executive Orders, Presidential Memorandums, and Memorandums of 
Understanding. These include Executive Order 13007 on Indian 
Sacred sites; Executive Order 13175 on the consultation and 
coordination with Indian tribal governments; and Executive 
Order 13985 on advancing racial equity and support for 
underserved communities.
    Furthermore, the Forest Service is dedicated to promoting 
and enhancing the management of conservation of tribal forest 
and grassland through four major efforts.
    First, we aim to establish co-stewardship agreements as the 
model to engage tribal interest. These agreements involve 
forest and grassland management practices that restore fire-
adapted ecosystem; integrate Indigenous and traditional 
ecological knowledge and management decisions; and safeguard 
water resources, wildlife habitat, treaty, and sovereign and 
ceremonial activities.
    Second, leveraging USDA tribal authorities to increase our 
investments as funds allow. In Fiscal Year 2023, we executed 
more than 120 tribal-related agreements with an investment of 
over $68 million, tripling our investment from Fiscal Year 
2022.
    The third major effort involves drafting the first-ever 
tribal relation action plan, titled ``Strengthening Tribal 
Consultation and Nation-to-Nation Relationship.'' This plan 
serves as a new roadmap to deepen our commitment to regular and 
meaningful consultation with Tribal Nations. It will act as a 
guide for Forest Service employees to implement new ways of 
thinking that builds trust and innovative opportunities in 
Indian Country.
    And finally, the Forest Service is engaging with American 
Indian tribes, Alaska Native corporations, tribal colleges, 
inter-tribal organizations, and other Indigenous groups and 
research partnerships. These partnerships aim to co-produce 
products that include traditional knowledge and tribal 
research. The primary objective is to support tribal values and 
Indigenous ways of living, encourage shared learning and 
advance stewardship, both within tribally controlled lands and 
lands now owned and managed as national forests.
    Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the 
Subcommittee, this concludes my remarks, and I look forward to 
answering any questions you may have for me.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Crockett follows:]
  Prepared Statement of John Crockett, Associate Deputy Chief, State, 
       Private, and Tribal Forestry, 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 the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
    Federally recognized Indian Tribes are sovereign nations with long-
standing government-to-government relationships with the Federal 
Government. We acknowledge that some of the Federal lands and waters 
managed by the USDA and the Department of the Interior (DOI) are 
frequently the traditional territories of American Indians and Alaska 
Natives. These lands are sometimes home to sacred sites and burial 
sites, wildlife, and other sources of Indigenous foods and medicines. 
Many of these lands are in areas where Tribes have reserved rights to 
hunt, fish, gather, and practice their traditional ceremonies pursuant 
to statutes and ratified treaties and agreements with the Federal 
Government.
    Tribal co-stewardship agreements made in response to Joint 
Secretarial Order 3403 promote an approach to managing national forests 
and grasslands that seeks to protect the treaty, religious, subsistence 
and cultural interests of federally recognized Indian Tribes. The 
agreements reflect a wide array of Tribal interests and address 
priorities including caring for forest and watershed health, restoring 
fire-adapted ecosystems, integrating Indigenous Knowledge into land 
management decision-making, and protecting cultural resources, treaty 
rights, wildlife habitat, food sovereignty, and ceremonial and 
traditional activities.
    The Forest Service is also implementing numerous Executive Orders, 
Presidential Memorandums, and Memorandums of Understanding that seek to 
strengthen relationships; better honor the role of sovereign Tribal 
nations; and further the Biden Administration's ambitious environmental 
justice goals.

    These include:

     Executive Order 13007 on Indian Sacred Sites

     Executive Order 13175 on Consultation and Coordination 
            with Indian Tribal Governments

     Executive Order 13985 on Advancing Racial Equity and 
            Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal 
            Government

     Executive Order 14096 on Revitalizing Our Nation's 
            Commitment to Environmental Justice for All

     Presidential Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and 
            Strengthening Nation-to-Nation Relationships

     Presidential Memorandum on Uniform Standards for Tribal 
            Consultation

     White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and 
            Council on Environmental Quality Memorandum on 
            Implementation of Guidance for Federal Departments and 
            Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge

     Memorandum Of Understanding Regarding Interagency 
            Coordination and Collaboration for The Protection of 
            Indigenous Sacred Sites

     Memorandum Of Understanding Regarding Interagency 
            Coordination and Collaboration for The Protection of Tribal 
            Treaty Rights and Reserved Rights

    Forest Service policy and action towards promoting and enhancing 
Tribal forest management is based on a suite of treaties, Federal laws 
and regulations, court decisions, executive orders and memorandums, 
interagency agreements, and agency-specific direction.
Implementation of USDA Tribal Authorities

    In Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, the Forest Service and Tribes executed 
more than 120 agreements, representing a total investment of 
approximately $68 million, more than triple the $19.8 million invested 
in FY 2022.
    Several statutes and implementing regulations authorize the Forest 
Service to enter into agreements and contracts with and/or provide 
grants to Indian Tribes to protect Tribal land, communities, and 
resources. For example, the Tribal Forest Protection Act of 2004 (TFPA) 
provides the authority for the Forest Service to enter into an 
agreement or contract to carry out projects on the National Forest 
System (NFS) that protect bordering or adjacent Indian trust lands and 
resources from threats such as fire, insects, and disease while being 
informed by Tribal values and knowledge. Indian Tribes may submit 
requests to the Secretary of Agriculture to enter into agreements or 
contracts.
    The 2018 Farm Bill provided for a new Tribal forestry self-
determination demonstration authority for Tribes to propose projects on 
NFS lands that border or are adjacent to Tribal lands.
    The new Tribal forestry demonstration authority, or TFPA 638 
Demonstration Authority, allows the Forest Service and Tribes to use 
the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (Pub. L. 95-
638), as amended, to enter into contracts with Tribes under TFPA to 
``perform administrative, management, and other functions of 
programs.''
    As of October 2023, 21 agreements totaling $41.7 million were 
executed using the TFPA 638 Demonstration Authority. Most of this 
investment, approximately $37 million, occurred in fiscal year 2023, up 
from approximately $4.3M in fiscal year 2022.
    These agreements implement vegetation management projects to 
protect Tribal land and communities and reduce hazardous fuels in 
critical and cultural landscapes while strengthening our government-to-
government relationships with Tribal nations to achieve shared 
stewardship and co-stewardship objectives.
    The 2018 Farm Bill also expanded the Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) 
to Tribes. The GNA allows the Forest Service to enter into cooperative 
agreements and contracts with Indian tribes, states, and counties to 
perform forest, rangeland, and watershed restoration services on NFS 
lands, including hazardous fuels, fish and wildlife, and insect/disease 
activities.
    Since FY 2018, Tribes have entered 30 GNA agreements, totaling $7.3 
million, to accomplish a variety of restoration work, including 
addressing wildfires, pest control, climate change vulnerability 
assessments, and cultural resource protection. Enhanced collaboration 
between Tribal, Federal, state, and county governments, ultimately 
advances better forest stewardship on Federal lands.
    In FY 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) made 
additional funds available for Indian tribes and states to implement 
forest management and wildfire mitigation and risk reduction projects 
on Federal lands pursuant to the GNA or the TFPA.
    The IIJA provided the Forest Service with $5.5 billion to reduce 
wildfire risk and create healthy and resilient ecosystems across 
Tribal, Federal, state, and private lands. These included the first-
ever Tribal program appropriations for the Forest Service, increased 
eligibility for Tribes, and opportunity for priority allocations for 
Tribes.
    In addition to the above activities, the Inflation Reduction Act 
(IRA) of 2022 created landowner assistance programs that originate new 
markets and technology for wood products and to restore forest health 
and resiliency through partnerships and collaboration across 
landscapes.
    The IRA provided an additional $5 billion to reduce wildfire risk 
in the wildland urban interface, improve NFS lands health and 
resilience, provide competitive grants for non-Federal private forest 
landowners, including underserved landowners and those with less than 
2500 acres, as well as provide grants for Wood Innovation, Forest 
Legacy, and Urban and Community Forestry programs.
    With this increased funding, the Forest Service is working to 
restore health and resilience to America's forested landscapes and 
advancing Tribal self-determination principles. Woven throughout this 
work are the overarching themes of addressing the wildfire challenges 
we face as a Nation, delivering programs equitably including the 
Justice 40 initiative which are in two executive orders--Executive 
Order 13985, ``Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved 
Communities Through the Federal Government and Executive Order 14008, 
``Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad''--mitigating climate 
change and sharing stewardship of the lands that the Forest Service has 
been entrusted with caring for.

    Some key accomplishments in Tribal relations and Tribal forest 
management include:

     Wood Innovation Grants in support of the development of 
            new products, facilities and uses, including 4 projects 
            with specific connections to Tribes, totaling $1.1 million.

     The Wood Products Infrastructure Assistance program funded 
            10 Tribal Projects in FY 2023, totaling over $6 million.

     The Temporary Bridge Program funded 10 Tribal projects 
            totaling $2 million.

     The partnerships to expand access to affordable home 
            heating for Tribes and others through the Firewood banks 
            and the Wood for Life programs. In FY 2022, through our 
            partner, Alliance for Green Heat, funding was provided to 
            46 existing firewood banks in 18 states from Maine to 
            Alaska with Tribes representing 35 percent of the banks 
            funded. We have continued this program again in FY 2023 
            with similar funding and results as in FY 2022.

     Through our Office of General Counsel, we revised legal 
            guidance that interprets non-industrial private forest land 
            to include land held in trust. This greatly expanded 
            eligible land under the Landscape Scale Restoration (LSR) 
            program to be of relevance to Tribes. We initiated a $3 
            million Tribal set-aside and released a unique Request for 
            Proposals for federally recognized Tribes and Alaska 
            Natives and Native Corporations. As a result, in FY 2023, 
            the LSR program funded 11 projects for $3 million.

     The State Forest Legacy Program supports permanent land 
            protection of forests threatened by conversion. The 
            resulting protected lands are typically managed as state 
            lands or as private working forests with a conservation 
            easement. Recognizing that threatened forests impact 
            traditional Tribal uses and Tribal lands, a new funding 
            category for FY 2024 in the IRA Forest Legacy Program is 
            being developed to encourage Tribal/State cooperative 
            projects that will conserve and protect forest resources of 
            priority or cultural relevance to Tribes (up to $250 
            million in FY 2024 for all projects, no set-aside).

     Seven Tribal nursery grants for $1.8 million were awarded 
            in FY 2022 and FY 2023 with IIJA funds to produce 
            culturally important tree seeds and seedlings for 
            reforestation.

     A grant opportunity was announced in August 2023 for up to 
            $150 million in FY 2023 IRA Forest Landowner Support to 
            underserved (including Tribal) and small acreage landowners 
            to help them access emerging climate-mitigation and forest-
            resilience markets. An additional, Tribal-specific Notice 
            of Funding Opportunity for this program is expected in 
            winter FY 2024.

     For Forest Health Protection, IIJA-funded Invasive species 
            projects, including 2 projects specifically with Tribes.

     FY 2023 IRA investments in Urban and Community Forestry, 
            including direct awards to 4 Tribes for $4.1 million.

     The IIJA Community Wildfire Defense Grant program provides 
            funding to reduce wildfire risks to communities, including 
            7 projects with Tribes from the first round of funding 
            totaling $4.8 million.

Forest Service's Tribal Relations Action Plan

    In FY2023 the Forest Service released its first ever Tribal 
Relations Action Plan, Strengthening Tribal Consultations and Nation-
to-Nation Relationships. This plan is a new roadmap to serve Tribal 
Nations with a deeper commitment to regular and meaningful 
consultation. National Forests and Grasslands often include ancestral 
homelands that Tribes have stewarded for centuries. Indigenous Nations 
are a key partner in how the Forest Service values, co-manages, and 
stewards our Nation's grasslands and forests. Understanding the 
perspective and knowledge of Indigenous people gives the Forest Service 
an opportunity to reflect on our policies, programs and practices, the 
real-life implications they have on Indigenous peoples and what role we 
can play in rectifying historical or ongoing issues. This plan will act 
as a guide for Forest Service employees to implement a new way of 
working that will build trust and create innovative opportunities with 
Tribal Nations. In it, there are three areas of focus, which include 
commitments to enhance, expand, improve, engage, and grow agency and 
Tribal capacity to get the work done. These focuses are to:

     Strengthen relationships between Tribes and the USDA 
            Forest Service.

     Enhance co-stewardship of the Nation's forests and 
            grasslands.

     Advance Tribal relations within the USDA Forest Service, 
            including engaging in legislative and policy monitoring, 
            expanding collaboration with working groups and coalitions, 
            engaging youth, growing the agency and Tribal capacity 
            through training and collaboration, implementing reporting, 
            accountability, and performance measures, improving Tribal 
            relations program configuration and staffing, and promoting 
            and implementing the Administration's direction.

    The plan also emphasizes the agency's unique, shared responsibility 
to ensure that decisions relating to Federal stewardship of lands, 
waters and wildlife include consideration of how to safeguard the 
reserved treaty rights and spiritual, subsistence and cultural 
interests of any federally recognized Tribe. As part of this work, in 
February 2023 the Forest Service renamed the State & Private Forestry 
deputy chief area to State, Private & Tribal Forestry to emphasize our 
commitment.

Forest Service Research and Development

    Forest Service scientists engage in research partnerships with 
Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, Tribal colleges, Intertribal 
organizations, and other Indigenous groups. The goal of these research 
partnerships is to support Tribal values and Indigenous ways of living, 
to encourage shared learning, and to advance stewardship within both 
tribally controlled lands and areas that are now managed as national 
forests and grasslands. These collaborative research efforts advance 
our shared interests in conserving and restoring our Nation's 
biological and cultural diversity and heritage.
    Examples of research that focus on Tribal interests and engagement 
include:

     General Technical Report (PSW-GTR-275) was published with 
            Tribes in the Western U.S. to determine best practices for 
            effective partnerships for Forest Service-Tribal 
            coordination. This report responds to and addresses the 
            White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and 
            Council on Environmental Quality's guidance for working 
            with Indigenous Knowledge and aligns with the agency's 
            Tribal Action Plan, Equity Action Plan, and core values.

     Providing new science around native seeds and 
            reforestation, and directly supporting the Reforestation, 
            Nurseries, and Genetic Resources Network to increase 
            capacity for Tribal nurseries. Research and Development 
            (R&D) staff serve as a Coauthor and Core Team leader for 
            the 4th National Indian Forest Management Assessment a 
            congressionally mandated, national, multi-year independent 
            assessment of the status of Tribal forestry and Tribal 
            forestry programs as part an USDA Intergovernmental 
            Personnel Act agreement with the Intertribal Timber Council 
            and the Forest Service.

     R&D expanded activities with Tribes in FY 2023, renewing 
            an Interagency Personnel Agreement that formalizes our 
            strong partnership with the Eastern Band of Cherokee 
            Indians. Scientists hosted the first in-person Rivercane 
            Gathering, and engaged 95 partners, Tribes and 
            stakeholders, including representatives of 12 Tribes and 
            multiple Forest Service personnel which resulted in 
            sustained co-stewardship efforts of culturally sensitive 
            plants on Federal lands.

     Forest Service research provided science-based guidance to 
            National Forests for land and resource management planning 
            on topics that are important to Tribes and Indigenous 
            communities, including areas of Tribal importance, 
            traditional Tribal knowledge or Traditional Ecological 
            Knowledge held by Indigenous communities, and environmental 
            justice issues.

     Forest Service R&D oversees research within a network of 
            long-term experimental areas. A recently established 
            experimental forest, Heen Latinee Experimental Forest 
            (meaning ``River Watcher'' in the Tlingit language), has a 
            goal of understanding climate change impacts and supporting 
            engagement of Tribal youth and elders in research.

     Indigenous stewardship practices, including cultural 
            burning, carried out by generations of Native Americans 
            helped maintain a balanced relationship with the critical 
            ecological process of fire. Forest Service research is 
            helping to shed light on the many benefits of those 
            stewardship practices and how to support and integrate 
            traditional knowledge and practices into broader land 
            management.

    Forest Service Tribal-research partners include:

     Intertribal Timber Council Research Subcommittee

     American Indian Higher Education Consortium

     National Congress of American Indians

     IUFRO Research Group on Forest History and Traditional 
            Knowledge

     College of Menominee National Sustainable Development 
            Institute

     University of Oregon Tribal Climate Change Project

     Native American Fish and Wildlife Society

    We express our sincere gratitude for your valuable time and commend 
the dedicated efforts undertaken by this Subcommittee and its 
counterparts in formulating, negotiating, and advancing legislation 
aimed at bolstering the Forest Service's capacity to foster and improve 
Tribal partnerships in forest management. Your commitment helps advance 
our goals of strengthening Tribal relationships, improving the health 
and resiliency of the nation's forests and grasslands. Thank you for 
your dedication to this critical mission.

                                 ______
                                 
  Questions Submitted for the Record to Mr. John Crockett, Associate 
  Deputy Chief, State, Private, and Tribal Forest, U.S. Forest Service

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

            Questions Submitted by Representative Westerman

    Question 1. Last year I introduced legislation, along with 
Congressman LaMalfa, that would create a Tribal Biochar Demonstration 
Project similar to the existing Tribal Biomass Demonstration Project. 
Can you please share what opportunities you see to support Tribal 
biochar production, and how that could help improve forest health and 
support Tribal jobs?

    Question 2. The testimony that I submitted for the record during my 
opening statement included a recommendation that: ``The Forest Service 
should consider how to partner with and enable Tribes to effectively 
prepare NEPA and other environmental documents when required for land 
management activities.'' Has the Forest Service evaluated this 
potential and how could allowing Tribes to prepare NEPA documents help 
speed up the process for approving forest management projects?

    Question 3. Do you believe that the federal government is currently 
coordinating with Tribes on forest management, and what additional 
tools are necessary to increase coordination between Tribes and the 
Forest Service?

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. I want to thank the gentleman for his 
comments.
    Next, I am going to turn to the Chairman of the Full 
Natural Resources Committee, 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. It is a very important 
subject that we are talking about, and I am very glad to be 
here to discuss tribal forest management, which is a crucial 
topic, given the various crises currently threatening the 
health and resiliency of our nation's forests.
    Tribes have a rich history in forest management dating back 
centuries. Tribes historically managed forests across the 
country for a variety of uses, including economic development, 
spiritual and cultural values, wildlife habitat diversity, 
improved air and water quality, and to protect sacred 
landscapes.
    In fact, Indigenous people used fire to great effect when 
managing the forest in my home state of Arkansas. Their 
frequent low-intensity fires helped maintain a healthy forest 
ecosystem that supported a vibrant mix of wildlife, including 
the red cockaded woodpecker, which thrives in open pine 
woodlands and savannas.
    I see my good friend, Phil Rigdon, in the audience today. 
Phil and I were classmates at the Yale School of Forestry, and 
I had to go to forestry school to learn something that was 
being done long before the Yale School of Forestry ever 
existed, and that is to manage land the way that our tribal 
ancestors managed land here in America. And I am glad to see 
Phil here, and the great work that he is doing.
    And I have often said that if our Federal land managers 
just managed our forests like some of the tribes that I have 
visited with throughout my tenure in Congress, that we wouldn't 
have the same level of catastrophic wildfires we are seeing 
today. When European settlers moved in, many of the cultural 
burning practices that had been going on for centuries were 
banned. Our Federal forests became overstocked with trees that 
were competing for those things they require to grow: 
nutrients, water, sunlight. And as a result, these forests 
became more susceptible to wildfires, insects, drought, and 
disease.
    The sad part is that, in many cases now, tribes are bearing 
the brunt of mismanagement on lands that were once pristinely 
maintained by their ancestors. In California, tribal members 
are three times more concentrated in areas at the highest risk 
of wildland fire. This has had devastating consequences.
    For years, the Karuk Tribe urged the Forest Service to use 
more cultural burning in the Klamath National Forest, as their 
Tribe had done for thousands of years. Nothing happened. And in 
2020, the Slater Fire burned 100,000 acres in less than 12 
hours, and two tribal members lost their lives along with 
roughly 200 homes.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask unanimous consent to 
submit the testimony of Bill Tripp, the Director of Natural 
Resources and Environment Policy for the Karuk Tribe into the 
record.
    Mr. Tiffany. So ordered.

    [The information follows:]
      Prepared Statement of Bill Tripp, Intertribal Timber Council
    My name is Bill Tripp I am the Director of Natural Resources and 
Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural 
Resources. I am delivering testimony here today on behalf of the 
Intertribal Timber Council, which is a nonprofit nation-wide consortium 
of Tribes dedicated to improving the management of natural resources of 
importance to Native American communities.
    It is a great pleasure to have the honor of addressing the House 
Natural Resources Committee on this important topic.
    Today, I wish to convey some impacts of the Slater Fire that 
occurred in 2020, and begin to lead the conversation toward long term 
solutions for the wildfire crises we now face. Events like the Slater 
Fire tend to perpetuate fear-driven motives in how we approach fire 
management. We cannot allow this fear to perpetuate a negative 
relationship with fire.
    Instead, in focusing on the beneficial aspects of fire, we can set 
the stage for averting future catastrophes. We can restore conditions 
conducive of increasing community-based and collaborative fire use 
across large landscapes. Such efforts are already underway, such as the 
Indigenous Peoples Burning Network and Western Klamath Restoration 
Partnership; those programs led by Tribes like the Karuk and San Carlos 
Apache; and those efforts being coordinated by non-governmental 
organizations like the Nature Conservancy's family of fire networks and 
the Forest Stewards Guild's all hands all lands burning program. These 
efforts are supported by a plethora of agency and institutional 
partners. However, we also need the help of Congress if we are going to 
create the positive and lasting change, we will need to maintain the 
resiliency we create together moving forward.
    The Slater Fire happened above the community of Happy Camp, 
California. It burned over 100,000 acres in less than 12 hours. It 
started by electrical infrastructure. It reset the entire Indian Creek 
watershed to a landscape filled with snags and brush, with very few 
pockets of large live trees remaining. Two lives were lost, and half 
the homes in Happy Camp burned down, rendering many homeless. Pets, 
livestock and wildlife had little chance of survival, many of which 
died. A third person died during the post fire recovery efforts. It 
will take multiple generations of people to restore this watershed to 
any semblance of what it once was.
    This year, many eastern states experienced smoke impacts like those 
we face in the west nearly every year. The Slater Fire produced 
readings on the Air Quality Index that exceed 850 for long durations. 
This is more than double the threshold considered Hazardous to human 
health.
    On June 29, 2023, CBS News reported Washington DC as having some of 
the worst air quality of the world. According to AirNow.Gov, Washington 
DC's Air Quality Index (AQI) was at 163 as of 7 a.m., which is 
considered unhealthy. However, this was less than 20% of the impact we 
experienced in a given day of the Slater Fire.
    The primary Karuk village in the Happy Camp area is called 
athivthuuvvuunupma, or place where hazel creek flows through. This 
Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge indicates that there was 
once a lot of healthy hazel to make baskets out of and to provide nuts 
for food. The best hazel comes from black oak stands, which grow on 
slopes where the sun shines most intensely, some of the driest, most 
fire prone places. Excluding fire from this kind of environment sets 
the stage for disastrous consequences. Every year, I witness fire being 
excluded from areas that need to burn for our homelands to remain 
survivable. Through most of my career I have watched the existing 
management paradigm put Native American Cultural Identity at risk. The 
occurrence of the Slater Fire had the worst consequence I have seen 
yet, but in the same vein signals an inflection point that serves to 
remind us that we must look to our past, be mindful of the changes 
coming in our future, resolve our differences, and rely on cultural 
foundations to lead us into a viable future. It is currently against 
state and federal law, regulation and policy to burn in the time of 
year we are supposed to burn black oak woodlands according to our 
Indigenous laws of the land; we need to bring alignment between these 
systems.
    California has a 1 Million acre treatment goal, with nearly half of 
the acres slated for beneficial fire use. A fraction of this is likely 
to get done given the recent trajectory. However, most people don't 
realize that burning 20 acres a day over a 14-day period 3 times a year 
in 120 different places would accomplish over 100,000 acres. This would 
amount to about 10% of the statewide goal on less than 1% of the target 
landscape. We need to pool our resources to restore conditions 
conducive of carrying out these historic fire regimes, with peoples of 
place, while enabling a growing cultural fire practitioner base to lead 
the charge in maintaining the resiliency we all create together. As 
Indigenous peoples, we did not ask for fire to be taken from us, it was 
taken without consent. It is our responsibility in the modern era to 
give it back to the people, or we will continue to have the negative 
consequences that come with fire events like the Slater Fire. None of 
us, not even with the most advanced fire management systems in the 
world that currently exist here in the United States, can do it alone.
    Congress has an important role in this effort, both by providing 
equitable funding to Tribes and by creating a legal framework that 
enables Tribal stewardship not just on Tribal lands, but across the 
landscape. Some specific recommendations can be found in the attached 
letter, from the Karuk Tribe to the U.S. Forest Service.
    I would like to thank the esteemed chair Bruce Westerman and rest 
of this committee for affording me this opportunity to speak. I am 
happy to field any questions you may have during this session or in 
following up as requested.

                                 *****

                               ATTACHMENT

                              Karuk Tribe

                             Happy Camp, CA

                                                  June 20, 2023    

Christopher Swanston
Director, Office of Sustainability and Climate
201 14th Street SW, Mailstop 1108
Washington, DC 20250-1124
Submitted via: www.regulations.gov

Re: Comments of the Karuk Tribe on Advanced Notice of Proposed 
        Rulemaking re Forest Service Organization, Functions, and 
        Procedures (Docket ID FS-2023-0006)

    Ayukii (Greetings) Mr. Swanston,

    Since time immemorial, the Karuk People have lived in the Klamath-
Siskiyou Mountains in the mid-Klamath River region of northern 
California. With an Aboriginal Territory that includes an estimated 
1.38 million acres, Karuk people historically resided in more than one 
hundred villages along the Klamath and Salmon Rivers and tributaries, 
and we continue to live here and practice our culture today. Thriving 
with an economy supported by rich natural endowments and a strong 
culture-based commitment to land stewardship, Karuk eco-cultural 
management has shaped the region's ecological conditions for millennia 
and continues to do so.

    The Klamath River and its tributaries, forests, grasslands, and 
high country are essential for the cultural, spiritual, economic, and 
physical health of Karuk people. Because the changing climate poses 
serious threats for Karuk culture, sovereignty, and all life on earth, 
it is essential that Karuk people be involved in management and co-
management of our lands of territorial affiliation. While a serious 
threat, the needs to address climate change is perhaps most 
productively viewed as an opportunity to assert and expand Karuk 
traditional practices, tribal management authority, and culture in 
recognition of Karuk tribal sovereignty.

    Karuk tribal knowledge and management principles can be used to 
mitigate, prepare for, and adapt to the growing impacts of climate 
change. However, we need our Forest Service partners to create the 
enabling conditions that support the Tribe to effectively engage on 
federally administered lands. Thus, the Karuk Tribe recommends the 
following reforms to the USDA Forest Service's policies and practices 
in order to promote climate resilience:
1. Cultural Burning: Separate and Distinct from Prescribed Fire

    The fire suppression and exclusion paradigm has adversely affected 
ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them, including the 
Karuk. This has contributed to the increasing scale and severity of 
wildfire and has made our landscapes and communities more vulnerable to 
the many effects of climate change (see more within the Karuk Climate 
Vulnerability Assessment and Karuk Climate Adaptation Plan--available 
here: https://karuktribeclimatechangeprojects.com/).

    One important step in the right direction would be for the US 
Forest Service to recognize cultural burning as separate and distinct 
from prescribed fire. Cultural burning is governed under the sovereign 
authority of tribes, and Indigenous cultural burning practices are 
distinguished from other types of fire management (e.g., local, state 
and federal agency) as they are applied within the context of 
traditional law, rights, objectives, and outcomes. The Karuk Tribe 
seeks to retain this practice and have our federal partners recognize 
our traditional forest management practice.

    Enabling and supporting Indigenous cultural fire practitioners to 
reinstate cultural fire regimes is critical to restore and maintain 
balanced ecosystem processes and functions and make them more resilient 
to climate change. It is also one step towards accounting for past 
social and ecological injustices. In addition to recognizing cultural 
burning as separate and distinct from prescribed fire, the USFS should 
enable and accommodate cultural burning by Tribes on all lands 
administered by the Forest Service that fall within the each Tribe's 
lands of territorial affiliation. Coordination and communication 
between the USFS and the interested Tribe(s) should be encouraged, but 
federal agency approval should not be required. This will be an 
important way to demonstrate co-management between the USFS and Tribes 
by creating spaces and structures for mutually-beneficial coordinated 
decision-making.
2. Agency-specific NEPA Regulatory Changes

    For millennia, Indigenous people have applied fire to landscapes 
across the United States in deliberate, frequent, and highly 
knowledgeable ways. As such, the intentional use of fire by Tribes 
should be considered a component of baseline environmental conditions, 
and not as a major federal action requiring National Environmental 
Policy Act (NEPA) review and assessment.

    Moreover, the Forest Service should consider how to partner with 
and enable Tribes to effectively prepare NEPA and other environmental 
documents when required for land management activities that can help us 
both adapt to and mitigate the climate crisis. Often the environmental 
compliance portion of a project can take years, and we are watching our 
landscapes (and communities like Happy Camp, CA) both accumulate fuels 
and then burn in high severity wildfire while we wait. Empowering 
Tribes to prepare cultural resource sections as well as entire NEPA 
documents, and to engage in planning activities in ancestral 
territories and across jurisdictions using tools such as Integrated 
Resource Management Plans, will help the Forest Service and other 
federal agencies better address the climate crisis.

    In order to do so, it will be critical that the USFS actively fill 
leadership positions with people willing to engage with Tribes and 
willing to lead the agency into a new era of co-management, co-
stewardship, and coordinated decision-making. Criteria for hiring and 
promoting Forest Supervisors, District Rangers, Regional leads, and 
other key leadership positions should reflect this as a priority.
3. Co-Management Agreement Templates

    The Administration has repeatedly highlighted the importance of 
Tribal co-stewardship and co-management, and has directed the Secretary 
of Agriculture to strengthen partnerships between Tribes and federal 
agencies. However, meaningful co-management has been hindered by 
federal law and unclear guidance. Agreements outside of the TFPA 
context have not been designed for work with Tribes. Thus, the Forest 
Service should examine the agreement structures they are currently 
using to work with tribes, and should then collaborate with tribes to 
develop co-management agreement templates that recognize tribal 
decision-making authority, tribal sovereignty, self governance, and 
self determination.

    Additionally, the USFS should assess hiring and promotions criteria 
and invest in the training and resources required to develop a 
workforce that is sufficiently knowledgeable, cooperative, and creative 
in order to meaningfully partner with Tribes on co-management 
agreements. The USFS should provide funding to tribal programs included 
in co-management agreements to allow tribes to carry out activities of 
mutual benefit to Tribes, the federal government, and the public. In 
short, it is essential for USFS to invest in the future of the Tribes 
and their workforces, while promoting co-management.
4. Planning Authority (IRMP)

    Effective collaboration and integration of Indigenous Knowledge 
into management practices on USFS lands depends not only on landscape-
scale project implementation but landscape-scale planning efforts and 
engagement with Tribes. This requires cross-boundary planning, burning, 
and land management. Currently, Integrated Resource Management Plans 
(IRMP) are a tool that allow for comprehensive management of natural 
resources on Tribal lands, and, in limited circumstances, federal lands 
adjacent to Tribal lands.

    Expansion of the use of IRMPs across boundaries and jurisdictions, 
including on USFS lands throughout Tribes' ancestral territories could 
promote cohesive, sustainable ecological restoration and climate 
resilience through effective planning and coordination across 
jurisdictions and in ways that honor and respect tribal sovereignty and 
Indigenous knowledge, practice, and belief systems. The Forest Service 
should explore how to better engage with this tool within its existing 
authority, and we would be happy to collaborate as a pilot example.
5. Reserved and Retained Treaty Rights

    Reserved, retained, and other tribal rights are often misunderstood 
and ignored in the context of Tribal sovereignty and land stewardship. 
Treaties generally outline the rights that Tribes give up in exchange 
for other benefits, actions, or commitments from the United States. Any 
rights not explicitly described in treaties are therefore retained, and 
must be respected by the U.S. Government. These rights may be applied 
both on land retained and land ceded throughout Tribes' lands of 
territorial affiliation, including land administered by the USFS.

    While some rights have been recognized and respected as retained by 
the USFS, there are a number of other rights that are also retained by 
Tribes, but not always recognized by the Forest Service. These include 
rights such as cultural burning, as well as the right to access and 
utilize traditional foods, fibers, and medicines.

    The USFS should, whenever appropriate, proactively seek out Tribal 
consultation to ensure that retained rights are upheld on land 
administered by the USFS that falls within Tribal lands of territorial 
affiliation, including those of cultural and customary use. The USFS 
should also identify potential barriers to the exercise of reserved, 
retained and other rights by Tribal members, including the right to 
cultural burning and access and resource utilization, and make clear to 
employees and representatives of the USFS that the exercising of these 
rights is welcome and encouraged.
6. Regenerative Economic Systems

    Current funding mechanisms for collaboration between Tribes and the 
USFS are incompatible with the concept of Tribal sovereignty, as 
implementation of tribal policies and priorities is heavily dependent 
on funder priorities, review, and approval. As the USFS seeks to 
integrate Indigenous Knowledge into its management practices, fiscal 
limitations on these activities and on Tribal authority to manage funds 
impacts the potential for sustainable co-management between Tribes and 
the USFS. Reliance on project-based grant funding, in particular, makes 
it difficult for Tribes to build stability and reclaim self-
sufficiency.

    Developing a stable, skilled land management workforce, for 
example, is challenging based on a system of project-based funding, 
given that positions cannot be guaranteed beyond the timeline of a 
given project. Members of the local Tribal community may be unable to 
accept the instability of project-based grant-funded positions as a way 
to build their careers, making it difficult to attract and retain a 
skilled Tribal workforce, while also creating challenges for Tribes 
seeking to build institutional knowledge. The accumulation of 
institutional knowledge, local workforce capacity, and financial 
resources over time is difficult to impossible within this funding 
paradigm.

    This is happening at a time when there is immense need for tribal 
leadership and tribal workforce to implement landscape-scale 
restoration of the ecological systems and fire regimes needed to ensure 
greater resilience in the face of climate change.

    In contrast, regenerative economic systems are built on the concept 
that tribal programs can and should eventually become self-sustaining 
or otherwise perpetuated. Instead of a linear system in which Tribes 
must receive and exhaust funding repeatedly, a regenerative system 
could follow various models, such as an endowment model, where income 
under Tribal management could be invested in order to provide cash-flow 
over time. Transitioning to regenerative economic systems will require 
transformative change. However, specific policy changes can promote 
Tribal sovereignty as well as collaboration for the purpose of 
landscape-scale stewardship. When creating or implementing funding 
programs and agreements, the Forest Service should keep these 
principles in mind, and consider innovative ways that tribes can be 
supported to re-invest in themselves and in tribal programs to create 
long-term sustainability, resilient tribal programs, and a stable 
tribal workforce.
7. Consultation Funding

    To effectively and meaningfully engage in Tribal consultation 
requests put forth by the Forest Service, Tribes must often dedicate 
significant time and resource capacity, which they often do not have to 
give. If the Forest Service wishes to equitably seek and integrate 
tribal consultation into agency functions, policies, and procedures 
moving forward, the USFS should consider providing funding to Tribes to 
enable meaningful participation.

    Tribal knowledge and management principles mitigate climate impacts 
for the benefit of Native and non-Native communities alike--so 
increased investment to develop reciprocal relationships between 
governments is critical to preserving social, economic, cultural, and 
ecological resilience to climate change.

    Yootva (thank you) for taking these recommendations into 
consideration. The Karuk people are a ``fix the world'' people, and we 
look forward to meaningful engagement with you all on these 
recommendations as the climate and wildfire realities we are facing 
require coordinated and effective action.

            Yootva (Thank you),

                                          Russell Attebery,
                                              Karuk Tribal Chairman

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Westerman. We heard from Mr. Tripp earlier this year 
during a field hearing we held out in Yosemite. And his 
testimony outlines the experience of the Karuk Tribe and why 
environmental regulations stemming from NEPA were the root 
cause of inaction. This is unacceptable.
    Instead of bearing the brunt of Federal mismanagement, 
tribes should be looked at as models of ways we can improve the 
health and resiliency of our Federal forests. I had the 
opportunity to see one such model firsthand in New Mexico when 
I visited the Mescalero Apache Reservation.
    [Slide.]
    Mr. Westerman. As you can see behind me, the Lincoln 
National Forest, which borders the Mescalero Reservation and is 
largely overgrown, experienced devastating wildfires that 
turned it into a moonscape. On the right hand side of that 
picture, you will see the forest managed by the Mescalero 
Apache which is in pristine condition, wonderful elk habitat. 
It is what you would hope to see in a textbook if you opened up 
a textbook on forest management.
    [Slide.]
    Mr. Westerman. I believe another such model is the Tule 
River Tribe in California, which successfully managed the giant 
sequoias for thousands of years. On the picture behind me, you 
can see tribal members standing in a burned out sequoia grove 
on Federal lands. If tribes had been allowed to manage that 
grove, I can almost guarantee you that picture would look a lot 
different.
    When 20 percent of our giant sequoias died in just 2 years, 
the Tule River Tribe led the charge in forming the bipartisan 
Save Our Sequoias Act. I believe this legislation is a great 
example for how we can use traditional ecological knowledge to 
inform better practices for both Federal and tribal forest 
management. It also shows that tribal forest management 
shouldn't be an area of partisan division, but rather, 
bipartisan compromise.
    I look forward to hearing more ideas about bipartisan 
compromises today and from our expert panel of witnesses. I 
would like to again thank you all for traveling here to be with 
us.
    With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields, and I would like to 
recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Neguse, for his opening 
statement.

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

    Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany. It is another busy 
week for the Federal Lands Subcommittee, and today's overview 
of tribal forestry is an important and welcome focus.
    Before I get into my remarks, I want to first say thank you 
to all of the witnesses for taking the time to discuss this 
critical issue with us today. I know it is not always easy to 
get to Washington, DC, and we certainly appreciate the effort 
that you each made to be here today, particularly as we are 
welcoming many guests from the western United States, where I 
am lucky to call home.
    Tribes are stewards of millions of acres of trust and 
federally recognized lands that provide habitat for more than 
500 endangered species. They contain over 13,000 miles of 
rivers and nearly 1 million lakes. Importantly for today's 
discussion, this includes 19.2 million acres of tribal forests.
    Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have managed 
forests for cultural and ecological benefit, and to this day 
forestry remains a vital cultural practice as well as a vital 
source of income. It is critical that Congress and this 
Subcommittee hear directly from tribal voices.
    Today's hearing is an important part of our work to uphold 
and to maintain the critical trust responsibility toward Indian 
forest lands, examining the significance of tribal sovereignty 
and self-determination, identifying opportunities to strengthen 
tribal consultation to work closely with tribes to identify and 
protect sacred sites and, perhaps most importantly, to support 
tribal control of their own land and resources.
    While there is still work to do, Congress has made 
significant progress in many of these areas. Most recently, as 
outlined in the written testimony from our Administrative 
witnesses, both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 
Inflation Reduction Act, which I was proud to support, invested 
millions of dollars in the restoration of public lands and 
national forests.
    These investments included targeted programs for tribes, 
and aimed to increase eligibility for tribes in a wide range of 
activities. This was significant progress that has enabled the 
Biden administration to advance critical restoration work with 
states and with tribes through authorities such as the Tribal 
Forest Protection Act and Good Neighbor Authority.
    However, I do think it is important that I reiterate a 
message that my colleagues have heard me say often, going back 
to the beginning of this year, which is the investments that 
were secured by House Democrats and President Biden in the last 
Congress were a downpayment, a downpayment. We cannot stop 
there. We can't leave land management agencies hollowed out by 
failing to fund their agencies at the level required, and 
failing to provide tribal communities with the support and the 
resources that they need to truly scale up forestry and 
restoration efforts. That is a reoccurring theme that I have 
noticed in the testimony that has been submitted for the record 
in today's hearing.
    In the context of tribal forestry, there is a stark 
inequity and the need, in my view, for sustained investment to 
ultimately achieve that parity. This Subcommittee does not 
always have the opportunity to engage on issues related to the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs, so I appreciate that they are with us 
here today. I look forward to working with my colleagues and, 
of course, Chairman Tiffany on finding ways to address that 
disparity and to many of the other priority issues that have 
been identified.
    Again, I want to say thank you to the witnesses for your 
time for joining us. I certainly look forward to learning more 
from all of you during today's discussion.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Ranking Member Neguse. Now I would 
like to introduce Mr. Bodie Shaw, our other panelist on this 
panel, Deputy Regional Director for Trust Services at the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs.
    Mr. Shaw, you have 5 minutes.

   STATEMENT OF BODIE SHAW, DEPUTY REGIONAL DIRECTOR, TRUST 
SERVICES, NORTHWEST REGION, BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, PORTLAND, 
                             OREGON

    Mr. Shaw. Good afternoon, and thank you, Chairman Tiffany, 
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank 
you for this opportunity to provide testimony on opportunities 
to promote and enhance tribal forest management.
    I am Bodie Shaw, Deputy Regional Director from Bureau of 
Indian Affairs, Portland, Oregon. I am also a confederated 
tribal member from Warm Springs. I am glad to see Congressman 
Bentz, our reservation resides within his district. Good to see 
you again.
    At the Bureau of Indian Affairs, our forest mission is to 
provide for the efficient, effective management and protection 
of forest resources held in trust for the benefit of American 
Indians and Alaska Natives. We do this through recognition and 
support of tribal resource management goals to further self-
determination, consistent with the Secretary of the Interior's 
trust responsibilities. This responsibility applies to the 
management of tribal forests, which cover, as we have heard 
already, just over 19 million acres through 33 different 
states, and a commercial timber volume of approximately 66 
billion board feet.
    Management of tribal forests, in fact, do not go without 
challenges, as documented by the recent Indian Forest 
Management Assessment Team, a congressionally-mandated non-
governmental team that reports back to Congress every 10 years, 
highlighting the disparity--roughly a third--of the cost we 
receive for our BIA tribal forests with our other Federal 
partners, as well as showing the under-staffed nature that many 
of us have, some of our needs within our infrastructure through 
the IFMAT report. A link to that report is in my full written 
testimony.
    Beyond the work at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the 
Department recognizes that forest and ecosystem health does not 
stop at the border of tribal lands. The Department is committed 
to strengthening the role of tribal communities and Federal 
land management. I will draw attention to a couple different 
items that we have been working on here of recent time.
    Secretarial Order 3403 affirms the trust relationship 
between the United States and tribes, and acknowledges that the 
United States can benefit from the land management, expertise, 
and practices Tribal Nations have developed over centuries. The 
Secretarial Order is a commitment and, to quote, ``to ensure 
the tribal governments play an integral role in decision-making 
related to the management of Federal lands and waters through 
consultation, capacity building, and other means consistent 
with applicable authority.'' We have made notable progress 
implementing Secretarial Order 3403, including agreements that 
encompass forest lands.
    In 2018, Congress expanded the Good Neighbor Authority to 
authorize tribes to enter into agreements with DOI's Bureau of 
Land Management and the Forest Service to perform forest 
restoration work on Federal lands managed by those agencies. 
However, at present the Good Neighbor Authority lacks 
authorization for tribes to retain timber sale revenues. This 
has been a considerable obstacle preventing greater tribal 
participation. Other participation challenges for tribes 
include limited staffing, funding, and other resources to enter 
into these agreements.
    The Tribal Forest Protection Act from 2004 authorizes the 
Secretary of the Interior and Agriculture to enter into 
agreements or contracts with tribes to carry out projects to 
protect Indian forest land. Ongoing Federal efforts aimed at 
creating healthy, resilient forests, preventing large-scale 
resource loss due to wildfire, and fully implementing climate-
based strategies are expected to better facilitate tribal work 
with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
    Lastly, I would like to highlight the importance of the 
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which 
allows tribes to assume responsibility for natural resources 
management. While most tribes still receive forestry program 
services directly from the BIA, about 30 percent of the tribes 
with trust resources operate their forestry programs directly 
under this Act.
    Finally, in conclusion, thank you for this opportunity to 
discuss the Department's work to fulfill the trust 
responsibility to tribes in the area of forestry, and that our 
work to ensure the effective management of Federal and tribal 
forests continues. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Shaw follows:]
  Prepared Statement of Bodie K. Shaw, Deputy Regional Director-Trust 
 Services, Northwest Region, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 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 
opportunities to promote and enhance Tribal forest management. I am 
Bodie K. Shaw, Deputy Regional Director-Trust Services, Northwest 
Region, Bureau of Indian Affairs at in the Department of the Interior 
(Department).
    Tribal forestry has a unique standing among federal land management 
programs in that Congress has declared that ``the United States that 
has a trust responsibility toward Indian forest lands'' in the National 
Indian Forest Resources Management Act of 1990 (NIFRMA) (Pub. L. 101-
630, Title III, 104 Stat. 4532). This responsibility applies to the 
management of Tribal forests, which cover approximately 19.2 million 
acres across 33 States, with a commercial timber volume of 
approximately 66 billion board feet with an allowable annual harvest of 
732 million board feet. These forests provide critical economic and 
employment opportunities to Tribes and tribal communities and hold 
important historical, spiritual, and cultural significance.
    The Department recognizes that forest and ecosystem health does not 
stop at the border of Tribal lands. The Department is committed to 
improving the stewardship of our Nation's federal forest lands by 
strengthening the role of Tribal communities in federal land 
management, honoring Tribal sovereignty, and supporting the priorities 
of Tribal Nations. Our testimony will also share our ongoing work in 
the areas of Tribal co-stewardship to create resilient, productive 
forest lands within and adjacent to Tribal lands.
Bureau of Indian Affairs

    BIA Forestry's mission is to provide for the efficient, effective 
management and protection of forest resources held in trust for the 
benefit of American Indians and Alaska Natives. We do this through 
recognition and support of Tribal resource management goals, to further 
self-determination consistent with the Secretary of the Interior's 
trust responsibilities.
Funding of Tribal Forestry Programs and Activities
    BIA and Tribal forestry programs are funded through annual 
appropriations. BIA Forestry funds are primarily used to support staff 
that conduct forest land management activities. The emphasis for this 
program is the preparation and administration of forest product sales, 
and the management and technical oversight of those activities. In FY 
2022, the BIA and Tribes harvested 312,673,000 board feet of forest 
products generating $79,084,044 in revenue to the Tribes.
    The sale of forest products is a vital source of Tribal revenue and 
employment. Forest product sales support BIA efforts to promote self-
sustaining communities and healthy and resilient Indian forest 
resources. Forestry staff perform program oversight and administrative 
functions that support management priorities identified in Tribal 
Forest Management Plans and ensure compliance with applicable laws and 
regulations.
    The Forestry Projects funds support a labor-intensive program 
employing full-time and seasonal positions that perform on-the-ground 
activities designed to meet forest management objectives through direct 
service or contracts. Forestry Projects includes programs critical to 
sustainable Indian forest management, such as Forest Development; 
Forest Management Inventory and Planning; Woodland Management; and the 
Timber Harvest Initiative.
Forest Management Plans
    Forest management plans provide for the regulation of the multiple-
use operation of Indian forest land. Plans set forth methods to ensure 
that forest lands remain in a continuously productive state while 
meeting a Tribe's objectives. An approved forest management plan is 
required to conduct forest land management activities, and at present, 
all Tribal forest lands held in trust are covered by approved plans. 
Each plan includes information on funding and staffing requirements 
necessary to carry out the plan, and quantitative criteria to evaluate 
performance of the plan's objectives.
Indian Forest Management Assessment Team (IFMAT) Report
    The NIFRMA requires the Secretary to conduct an assessment of the 
management of Indian forest lands every 10 years. This assessment is 
conducted by an independent team of non-government forestry specialists 
who issue a report of their findings and recommendations. IFMAT IV, 
published in 2023, identified a number of challenges the BIA faces in 
the management of Indian forest lands. As with IFMATs I, II, and III, 
IFMAT IV found that ``Indian trust forest lands are funded at about a 
third per acre of comparable federal forests.'' IFMAT IV also found 
that Tribal forestry departments are understaffed and high stand 
density, combined with limited processing infrastructure, has created 
complex forest health conditions. Even so, Tribal forestry serves as a 
positive example of promoting environmental stewardship. The full 
IFMAT-IV Report can be found at https://www.bia.gov/service/indian-
forest-management-assessment.
Indian Trust Asset Reform Act (ITARA)
    The Indian Trust Asset Reform Act was passed into law on June 22, 
2016. Title II of the act authorizes the Secretary of the Department of 
the Interior to establish and carry out an Indian Trust Asset 
Management Demonstration Project (project), which was established on 
October 1, 2018. The purpose of ITARA is to go a step further and 
provide Tribes greater sovereignty in the management of their trust 
forest lands.
    Under the project, Tribes engaged in forest land management and/or 
surface leasing activities on trust lands may apply to participate in 
the project. If selected, Tribes must submit an Indian Trust Asset 
Management Plan (ITAMP), for the management of any Tribal trust assets. 
An approved plan could allow Tribes to develop Tribal forestry and/or 
surface leasing regulations and assume certain approval authorities 
currently held by the Secretary. At present, four Tribes have been 
approved to participate in the project, and two of the Tribes are 
operating their forestry programs under their approved ITAMPs and 
Tribal forestry regulations.
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEAA)

    Title I of ISDEAA allows federally recognized Tribes to contract 
with the BIA to plan and administer some forestry program functions 
with federal funding through 638 contracts or self-determination 
contracts. In 1994, the Tribal Self-Governance Act (TSGA) amended 
ISDEAA and added a new Title V authorizing federally recognized Tribes 
to enter into compacts with DOI to assume full funding and control over 
forestry programs.
    While ISDEAA allows Tribes to assume responsibility for natural 
resources management, most Tribes still receive forestry program 
services directly from the BIA. About 30% of the Tribes with trust 
forest resources operate their forestry programs under ISDEAA contracts 
or self-governance compacts. The Department stands ready to use ISDEAA 
as an avenue to support more Tribes who seek to steward federal forest 
lands.
Tribal Co-Stewardship and Management of Federal Lands
Secretarial Order 3403

    On November 15, 2021, Secretary Haaland and Secretary of 
Agriculture Vilsack issued Secretary's Order 3403: Joint Secretarial 
Order on Fulfilling the Trust Responsibility to Indian Tribes in the 
Stewardship of Federal Lands and Waters. At last year's Tribal Nations 
Summit, on November 22, 2022, Secretary of Commerce Raimondo joined 
Secretarial Order 3403.
    Secretarial Order 3403 affirms the trust relationship between the 
United States and Tribes, and acknowledges that the United States can 
benefit from the land management expertise and practices Tribal nations 
have developed over centuries. The Order is also a commitment, ``to 
ensure that Tribal governments play an integral role in decision making 
related to the management of federal lands and waters through 
consultation, capacity building, and other means consistent with 
applicable authority.''
    We have made notable progress implementing Secretarial Order 3403, 
including announcing a number of agreements that effect Tribal 
stewardship of the Department's lands and waters and represent the 
Government's commitment to Tribal co-stewardship. Several of those 
agreements encompass forest lands. Equally important, we are building 
the infrastructure within the Department to strengthen this critical 
work by carrying out and making available legal analyses on many of the 
authorities that may underpin co-stewardship, implementing guidance 
from land management agencies and Indian Affairs, and creating better 
pathways for public-private partnerships that support co-stewardship.
Good Neighbor Authority (GNA)
    In 2018, Congress expanded The Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) to 
allow the Department of Agriculture's United States Forest Service 
(USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to collaborate with 
federally recognized Tribes to plan and execute restoration projects on 
federal lands. The GNA authorizes Tribes to enter into a Good Neighbor 
Agreement with the USFS or BLM to perform forest restoration work on 
federal lands managed by those agencies. Projects could include insect 
and disease treatments, hazardous fuels reduction, timber harvesting, 
tree planting or seeding, and other restoration activities.
    At present, the GNA lacks authorization for Tribes to retain timber 
sales revenues. This has been a considerable obstacle preventing 
greater Tribal participation. Other participation challenges for Tribes 
include limited staffing, funding, and other resources to enter into 
Good Neighbor Agreements.
Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA)
    The Tribal Forest Protection Act of 2004 (TFPA), Public Law 108-
278, 116 Stat. 868, is intended to protect Tribal forest assets by 
authorizing the Secretary and the Secretary of Agriculture to enter 
into agreements or contracts with Indian Tribes to carry out projects 
to protect Indian forest land. Ongoing federal efforts aimed at 
creating healthy, resilient forests, preventing large-scale resource 
loss due to wildfire, and fully implementing climate-related strategies 
are expected to better facilitate Tribal work with the USFS and the 
BLM. These ongoing efforts are informing development and implementation 
of larger cross-jurisdictional land management treatments.
    The Department recognizes that forest management treatments and 
restoration projects benefit from unique collaborative partnership and 
Tribal co-stewardship opportunities. In June 2023, the BLM and the Cow 
Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians entered into a Memorandum of 
Understanding (MOU) to develop a collaborative stewardship framework to 
guide resource management decisions on federal lands administered by 
BLM in a manner that seeks to protect the Tribe's treaty, religious, 
subsistence, and cultural interests, support ecosystem resilience, and 
protect forestlands from the threats of uncontrolled wildfire, 
diseases, and invasive and noxious species. The MOU is a critical first 
step towards collaboratively undertaking vital work under the TFPA.
Conclusion

    Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Department's work to 
fulfill the trust responsibility to Tribes in the area of forestry and 
our work to ensure the effective management of federal and Tribal 
forests.

                                 ______
                                 

 Questions Submitted for the Record to Mr. Bodie Shaw, Deputy Regional
   Director (Northwest Region), Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department
                            of the Interior

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

            Questions Submitted by Representative Westerman

    Question 1. Earlier this fall, the Intertribal Timber Council 
released the fourth ever assessment of tribal forest management 
practices and trends, along with recommendations to Congress. Among the 
primary concerns flagged by that report, the overall health of tribal 
forests remains a major concern with ``excessive stand density, high 
fuel accumulations, and insect and disease'' threatening the long-term 
sustainability of these forests. What in your view needs to be done to 
increase the forest management activities necessary to address this 
serious concern?

    Question 2. Tribal and federal forest managers, particularly out 
West, have continued to struggle to figure out what to do with low-
value excess fuels that need to be removed. One of the suggestions 
contained in the IFMAT IV (IF-MATT-4) assessment is the need to explore 
other revenue options including biofuels and biomass use, which both 
offer great potential as a solution to this excess fuel problem. What 
is the BIA currently doing to encourage more innovative uses of excess 
forest material? Do you believe more can be done to encourage biomass 
and biofuels opportunities?

    Question 3. The Committee has heard concerns about the BLM's 
efforts to finalize the Utility Master Operation and Maintenance and 
Consolidation (MOMAC) Plan they have been working on with Pacific Gas 
and Electric (PG&E).

    3a)  Can you provide an explanation for why it is taking the BLM so 
long to establish an Operations and Management (O&M) plan with Pacific 
Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE) to adhere 
to the requirements of FLPMA 512 taking so long?

    3b)  When is this plan expected to be completed?

    3c)  What has delayed completion?

    3d)  Can you please explain the BLM's decision to establish a pilot 
team to work with PG&E, rather than assigning California State Office 
Staff?

    3e)  Is the Bakersfield Pilot Team staffed appropriately with 
individuals with the necessary expertise?

    3f)  Is the State Office involved with accountability of timelines 
and deliverables?

    3g)  Can the BLM direct the SCE to adopt an IM-approach as opposed 
to developing a new O&M Plan?

    3h)  Is it possible for the O&M Plan to be a standalone guidance 
document rather than a term and condition of a ROW grant so that it can 
govern all of the utilities' operation and maintenance work regardless 
of the type of Rights-of-Way (easement, ROW Grant)?

    3i)  As required by FLPMA 512 and the recently published NOPR, will 
the utilities easements be addressed in the O&M Plan?

    3j)  How will claims of prescriptions be addressed in the O&M Plan?

    3k)  How will BLM maintain consistency throughout the state when 
the O&M Plan is shared with other Field Offices?

    3l)  Will the Field Office Special Consideration Areas (FOSCAs) 
reduce consistency and predictability of implementation of the O&M 
Plan?

    3m)  What will not be covered under this O&M Plan that is a 
requirement of FLPMA 512?

    3n)  Is the process outlined in O&M Plan a predictable process that 
adheres to the requirements of FLPMA 512?

    3o)  Does BLM feel that the draft O&M Plan with PG&E and SCE 
establishes a process that prevents wildfire starts to the best of its 
ability and allows them to address critical O&M activity with limited 
delay?

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Shaw. I will now recognize 
Members for their questions for up to 5 minutes. First, we will 
turn to Mr. Bentz from Oregon.
    You have 5 minutes for questioning.
    Mr. Bentz. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to welcome both 
panelists, of course, with particular emphasis upon Mr. Shaw. 
So, very, very happy to see you here.
    I reached out this morning to the Klamath Tribe. Dr. 
Clayton Dumont is Chairman of the Klamath Tribe and a friend. 
And I asked him what his experience has been in this space of 
intersection between tribes on the one hand, and forest and BLM 
agencies on the other. I am going to read you his response.
    Klamath Tribal Chairman Clayton Dumont reports that they 
really do need help with the U.S. Forest Service. On August 14, 
2023, the Klamath Tribe submitted a Tribal Forest Protection 
Act project application, which would enable prescribed burning 
on treaty-protected lands in the Fremont-Winema National 
Forest. This would reduce fire danger and improve the health of 
the forest while creating local jobs between Saddleback 
Mountain and Chiloquin.
    Let me pause there and ask unanimous consent that that 
application be included in the record.
    Mr. Tiffany. Without objection.
    Mr. Bentz. The Tribe has asked both the U.S. Forest Service 
regional and national offices for an update, but they haven't 
heard anything. For background, the Klamath Tribe also 
submitted a similar project to the BLM, and approval was 
granted within weeks.
    So, Mr. Crockett, a question, and here it is. In August of 
this year, the tribes based in my district submitted all 
documents required for a Tribal Forest Protection Act project. 
This project would reduce the fire danger on treaty-protected 
lands and improve the overall health of the forest in southern 
Oregon. Could you please provide me with your knowledge of any 
of that project?
    And is it normal to have 4 months go by without responding 
to those who file applications?
    Mr. Crockett. Thank you for the question, and to answer 
your question directly is it normal to take 4 months to respond 
to Tribal Forests Protection Act, the answer is no.
    I am not familiar with the details of this specific 
request. I am familiar with the work that the Karuk is doing on 
the Klamath side, but not on the Oregon side. I will commit to 
following up to make sure that that TFPA application is 
reviewed and given full consideration.
    Mr. Bentz. I appreciate that very much. And I, for years, 
have thought that this opportunity that the tribes enjoy to 
utilize their historical care for the land, in today's 
environment of incredibly onerous regulatory burdens on just 
about everybody, including tribes. But still, I have thought 
that the tribes had a step up, and we should be giving them 
every deference that we possibly can because we are in 
desperate straits when it comes to our forests. Everyone knows 
that that is here. So, to the extent that your agency could 
help out, we would deeply appreciate it. And I know you are 
trying, so I appreciate your looking into this.
    Unfortunately, well, or fortunately, I have to go meet with 
the Speaker now, so I won't be able to stay for the rest of the 
hearing. But I very much appreciate all of you being here, and 
I look forward to working with all of you in the future. Thank 
you.
    With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would now like to 
recognize Mr. Neguse for his questioning.
    Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Shaw, thank you again for joining us today. As I 
mentioned in my opening statement, we are certainly glad to 
have you join us here in the Federal Lands Subcommittee today 
from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
    I want to kind of drill down, I guess, on an issue that 
certainly we have heard from tribal communities and wonder if 
you might be able to expound on it a bit, and that is, really, 
the way in which the lack of adequate funding for tribal 
forestry impacts public safety, because that is a component of 
this that in some ways can sometimes be forgotten or neglected. 
Whether that extends to the increased risk of wildfires, 
degradation of wildlife habitat, cultural resources, climate 
change impacts, but clearly, very significant public safety 
challenges that, in my view, the lack of funding contributes 
towards creating. And I wonder if you agree with that 
assessment. And if you do, if you might be able to expound a 
bit on your view.
    Mr. Shaw. Thank you, Ranking Member Neguse, I appreciate 
that, and that is a great question. I think many in the room, 
those behind me, would like to hear a further discussion about 
that.
    And you are right, from a public safety standpoint, we talk 
and we hear a lot about wildfire risk, the impacts, the 
inability, whether it be from a tribal standpoint, I will talk 
about labor with our tribes and our labor pool, the inability 
many times when we are under-funded to be able to carry out 
much of the wildfire mitigation. Whether that be through timber 
harvest, whether that be through fuels reductions, it does pose 
many challenges when it comes to the inability from a funding 
standpoint.
    I think some of the other challenges that we see from a 
public safety standpoint, many are fully aware of the current 
atmospheric river hitting the Pacific Northwest. And you look 
at some of the landslide implications, some of the exceeded 
riverbanks and the flooding occurring. Proper forest 
management, and it is not news to anybody in the room, really 
assists with that ability.
    And once again, to your point, when we are under-funded we 
can't carry out as much as we would like to. But we still, I 
think, from a BIA and a tribal forestry standpoint, I think 
that we have been very effective, very efficient in terms of 
the money we do receive and getting that to the ground.
    I hope that answers your question.
    Mr. Neguse. It does, and I think it underscores the 
necessity for BIA to continue the work that you are doing top 
down and across agency to find ways in which to utilize 
resources that might be available to you.
    And, of course, from an advocacy perspective I think making 
clear to the Congress, this Subcommittee, the Full Committee, 
and the other Committees of jurisdiction the unique funding 
needs and challenges so that we can do our part and meet our 
obligations as far as addressing some of those funding needs.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back the balance of 
my time.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I am going to ask a 
couple of questions here with time allotted to me.
    Mr. Shaw, the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management 
Commission recently released its report on the ongoing wildfire 
concerns, and a key recommendation is that the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs acknowledged that federally recognized tribes may be 
allowed to develop fire programs on tribal trust lands. What is 
your agency's position on that proposal by the Wildland Fire 
Mitigation and Management Commission?
    Mr. Shaw. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And we are very 
happy the next panel will have the Intertribal Timber Council 
President, who is also on that Committee, as well, and I am 
sure that will probably be part of some of his remarks, as 
well, Cody Desautel.
    From our standpoint, and we will talk a little bit about 
the Indian Trust Asset Reform Act, and those remarks are in my 
full testimony about the authority and the ability for tribes 
to take on much more of the forestry programmatic pieces, which 
we call the Indian Trust Asset Management Plan, ITAMP, and we 
are willing to push the boundary when it comes to offering that 
ability for tribes not only from a forestry standpoint, but 
forestry and wildland fire go hand-in-hand in terms of how we 
address it, how we mitigate it. We have to address both, there 
is just no two ways about it.
    Forest health, obviously, is primary, but we also know the 
implications when we don't fully address forest health 
concerns. So, that is something, Chairman, we are actively 
pursuing opportunities that ensure that we still have a place 
at the table with the tribe, Bureau of Indian Affairs, as we 
continuously do.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Crockett, if tribes have only a small 
fraction of the financial resources of the Forest Service, why 
are they able to manage their forests so much better?
    Mr. Crockett. Thank you for the question, Chair. I don't 
like to speak on behalf of tribes when they are in the room. 
Obviously, I think that would be a good opportunity for the 
next panel to answer that question.
    Mr. Tiffany. I think you should speak on behalf of the 
Forest Service, from the Forest Service perspective, because it 
must be a concern for the Forest Service that we see tribes, 
counties, and states most of the time do manage their forests 
better. Why is that, from the Forest Service perspective?
    Mr. Crockett. There could be a multitude of reasons for 
that. Let me share with you some areas where we are having 
success with management of the national forests.
    I will admit there is a problem nationally with overall 
management of the 193 million acres that we steward as a 
Federal entity.
    The areas of success, we have been anchoring to science and 
delivery of our work, and the science tells us that if we focus 
in on 20 percent of the treatments, we can get 80 percent of 
return on our investment in high-risk landscape, high-risk 
watersheds. So, what we have done is we have focused on over 
250 fire sheds, and there is a subset of 21 landscapes that we 
have prioritized our actions on. So, within those 21 
landscapes, that is where we are seeing 85 percent of reducing 
the fire risk to communities. And as of this year, we exceeded 
our accomplishments within those 21 landscapes.
    Now, that is a small subset of the work that we are doing 
nationally. But for me to speak as to why tribes can do it 
better, I am sure there are a lot of considerations at play. 
But I know the areas that we have been able to focus in on this 
year, we have had a lot of successes.
    Mr. Tiffany. Is it possible, Mr. Crockett, you look at the 
historical record, and before European settlement, like in 
California, each acre held about 64 trees per acre; we are up 
to 300 trees per acre now. Is it a matter of a lack of 
management, not being aggressive enough in removing some of 
those trees to make it a healthier landscape?
    Mr. Crockett. Yes, overstocked forests are definitely a 
valid concern, and going in and doing treatments to reduce the 
fuel loading has been a focus of ours in those over-stocked 
areas.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, should we be cutting more wood on Federal 
lands?
    Mr. Crockett. There is no one silver bullet solution. Using 
the suite of tools from harvesting and collecting wood products 
off of it, treating the landscape to reduce the risk of 
wildfire impacts by getting the small-diameter material, which 
is generally a low value product, taking that out and finding 
markets for it is another opportunity to be able to do that.
    But overall, doing some type of treatment that ultimately 
leads to a reduction in the stocking of the forest is a primary 
objective.
    Mr. Tiffany. I really appreciate your answers here today. I 
would say it goes up on the other end also, because I have seen 
up in my neck of the woods in northern Wisconsin where we are 
seeing some large-diameter trees that really should be taken 
out. There has been a certain aggressiveness with some of the 
smaller diameter, but some of those larger diameter trees 
should be removed also to end up with a forest that is not too 
mature that ends up, in many cases, being a dead zone, 
especially for game species.
    But anyhow, thank you. My time is up here, and I would like 
to turn to Representative Leger Fernandez if she has questions 
that she would like to ask our panelists.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and 
thank you, panelists, for coming, and all those who are 
attending with us today and listening.
    Tribes have been managing our forest lands for millennia. 
It was wonderful earlier today, that ``time immemorial,'' we 
had a wonderful description of what that meant, and it was as 
the glaciers receded, before the valleys were created. Time 
immemorial is a long time. And tribes have done amazing work in 
managing those forests, and we are getting to the point now 
where I think that the recognition of tribal Indigenous 
knowledge of how do we incorporate that into our Federal 
agencies, we are starting to get there, which is pretty 
exciting. I am pleased that the Biden administration has 
adopted this approach and is moving towards that.
    Last Friday, we had a historic co-stewardship agreement 
signed between Ohkay Owingeh, the Forest Service, and the 
Bureau of Land Management. It will allow Ohkay Owingeh, who is 
in my district, to work alongside the Forest Service and BLM to 
maintain precious resources in that area. And I look forward to 
seeing a lot more of these agreements. So, let it be known I am 
going to be asking about those.
    I just came from my office with the San Felipe Pueblo, who 
wants to make sure that some important areas of theirs are 
protected that are not being protected. We are going to look 
for those kinds of co-stewardship agreements because we hear 
over and over again in San Felipe Pueblo there is an inholding 
completely surrounded by reservation land that needs to be 
protected.
    In Caja del Rio, which is near Santa Fe, very much needs 
protection, and we have vandalism that is happening. We know 
where the vandalism is. It is on those beautiful petroglyphs. 
We need to figure out how to protect it. And until we can 
actually move something congressionally, we are going to rely 
on the Federal agencies to do that.
    So, Mr. Crockett, why don't you describe to me what you 
need so you and your partners can work to stop some of these 
attacks on these beautiful places like Caja del Rio, like the 
area of concern within San Felipe, like these other areas? What 
all do we need to get you so you can help protect these areas?
    Mr. Crockett. Thank you for the question, and I do want to 
acknowledge that the story that you told around the vandalism 
that is taking place to the historic petroglyphs that are 
there, we agree it should not happen.
    Obviously, it is multi-jurisdictional. The Forest Service 
manages a component of it. We think bringing the tribal voices 
to the table to assist with designing more protection measures 
would be important. We generally think of this through the co-
stewardship lens, just as you described about the other project 
that was just signed. So, we would welcome an opportunity to 
engage with tribes more in the co-stewardship realm on how to 
manage the site to protect the petroglyphs.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Yes, thank you, and I would note that 
in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law we had $116 million that 
was going to advance the work. I think many on this Committee 
on both sides of the aisle have talked about the importance of 
the Good Neighbor Authority, the importance of the Tribal 
Forest Protection Act, and there was another $32 million 
identified for the national priority landscapes so that we 
could have more of the state and tribal working together.
    I would once again make a plea that the Interior 
appropriations bill, as advanced by the Republicans, included 
an overall cut to the Forest Service of $255 million, and this 
would include a $32.56 million cut to state, private, and 
tribal forestry account. I think it is important that, as we 
talk about these programs that I think are pushing us into the 
right kind of collaboration, co-stewardship, that they also 
take resources, right?
    As we asked you how are you going to work with Ohkay 
Owingeh, how are you going to work with Cochiti, Santo Domingo, 
Santa Clara, and the other tribes that are trying to protect 
the petroglyphs, and the Forest Service needs to devote 
resources to that. They don't have the resources, so we need to 
make sure that we provide them the funding, provide them the 
budget to get that done. Would you agree with that?
    Mr. Crockett. I agree, resources are needed for protection 
of areas. And the additional resources that were provided 
through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law has definitely helped us do more engagement 
and put more funding in the hands of tribes directly, and 
provided more opportunities to do co-stewardship opportunities 
with tribes. So, yes, resources are always helpful.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you. I see my time is up, so I 
yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Shaw, if you have any comments in regards 
to the question there, you are welcome, too.
    Mr. Shaw. Just one comment in terms of the traditional 
tribal environmental knowledge. I have been involved with this 
for a long time, 25 years, when it was considered anecdotal 
when tribes were bringing up a lot of the co-management 
opportunities. So, very happy to hear that, yes, from a Federal 
standpoint, that we will implement a lot of the tribal 
environmental knowledge not considered anecdotal, but really 
taking a look, as the purpose of this hearing is, to talk a 
little bit about how we do that.
    And TFPA, Good Neighbor Authority, great opportunities, so 
I am glad you brought that point up.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady yields. I would now like to 
recognize Mr. Westerman for his questioning.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you again, Chairman Tiffany, and thank 
you to the witnesses. And I thank the gentlelady from New 
Mexico for setting up my question so well by talking about the 
Tribal Forest Protection Act and the Good Neighbor Authority, 
which are two tools that have been provided by Congress to 
create additional cross-boundary forest management projects in 
cooperation between the Federal Government and tribes.
    Associate Deputy Chief Crockett, can you please talk about 
the successes of both of these authorities and areas where they 
could be improved by Congress to incentivize more cross-
boundary forest management projects?
    Mr. Crockett. Thank you for the question. Yes, I will start 
by going back to 2004, when the Tribal Forest Protection Act 
was put in place.
    We had what I would describe as small measures of success 
related to it, particularly because it was an unfunded mandate, 
and we had to figure out how to put resources in place to 
support it. And we did it primarily through stewardship 
contracting.
    Fast forward to now, well 2018, and the most recent version 
of the Farm Bill, where we got the expanded authority for Good 
Neighbor to engage with tribes, still missing the revenue 
retention piece of it. So, that revenue retention piece is 
extremely important from tribes. This is what we have heard as 
Federal land managers from tribal interests.
    So, we have been able to develop Good Neighbor Authority 
projects. We have 30 that have been put in place since the 2018 
Farm Bill with 17 tribes, and they have been able to do that 
many Good Neighbor Authority agreements without the revenue 
retention piece. So, imagine if that revenue retention piece 
was in place, how many more would we be able to do with tribes 
who really want to be able to retain the receipts from the Good 
Neighbor Work to be able to put those resources back into the 
projects on the ground.
    For the Tribal Forest Protection Act, we have been able to 
accomplish 22 agreements with an investment of over $40 million 
since the 2008 version of the Farm Bill has been put in place, 
and it also provided us with the 638 demonstration authority, 
which has also been helpful.
    Mr. Westerman. I am so glad you talked about the receipts 
part of Good Neighbor Authority. Earlier this year, the House 
unanimously passed the Treating Tribes and Counties as Good 
Neighbors Act, and this bill would make tribes full partners in 
the Good Neighbor Authority by allowing them to retain timber 
receipts. It has not been passed in the Senate yet. We hope to 
work to get that in the Farm Bill if the Senate doesn't pass it 
on its own.
    You have talked about this a little bit, but how much do 
you think this would improve Good Neighbor Authority if the 
tribes were able to retain those receipts and have the funding 
to go do the next management project, and the next management 
project?
    Mr. Crockett. I think it would be extremely helpful if 
tribes received that authority, and I will put it in the 
category of parity. The states have had the authority for quite 
some time in the original version of the Good Neighbor 
Authority. But tribes and counties, because counties were named 
in the authority, as well, did not get revenue retention in the 
2018 version of the Farm Bill. And if that is able to be 
rectified, I think the amount of agreements that we see both 
with tribes and counties would start to increase.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you.
    Mr. Shaw, earlier this fall the Intertribal Timber Council 
released the fourth-ever assessment of tribal forest management 
practices and trends, along with their recommendations to 
Congress. And among the primary concerns flagged in that report 
was the fact that the overall health of tribal forests remains 
a major concern with ``excessive stand density, high fuel 
accumulations, and insect, and disease.''
    If Congress doesn't take action to address the health of 
our nation's tribal forests, what do you think that will mean 
in the long term for the resiliency of these forests?
    Mr. Shaw. Thank you for that question, and I think, 
obviously, given the background that we are currently operating 
in, we will see the continual decline, more catastrophic fires 
continuing.
    It is not news to anybody in the room here that every year 
we seem to hit a new high water mark when it comes to damage, 
the amount of Federal funds expended for fire suppression, and 
the long-term damage to these coniferous forests in the West.
    And without having the full opportunity--and when I say 
full opportunity, and working in partnership with Intertribal 
Timber Council also recognized in the Indian Forest Management 
Assessment Team, we will continue to have catastrophic impacts 
to our tribal forests. Not only tribal forests, but those 
impacts on the tribal communities.
    I think, as everyone is aware, the trust assets, when we 
talk about timber, the common denominator there are those 
communities live off the revenue generated from the timber that 
is on their reservation. I am very happy to hear, especially 
from the Good Neighbor Authority, having the potential 
opportunity for the tribes who work on, through the Good 
Neighbor Authority, to have that opportunity maybe eventually 
to get some of the revenues. That will add to the labor pool 
and, once again, affect an impact, positively, tribes, tribal 
communities at work in those surrounding areas, whether it be 
on their ceded, usual, and accustomed lands. It could be very 
important.
    So, thank you for that question.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields back, and that is it for 
the questioning for this panel.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Crockett and Mr. Shaw, for joining 
us today. We, the Committee, really appreciate your testimony. 
And at this time, we are going to move on to our second panel 
of witnesses.
    As the Clerk resets the witness table, 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, please 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.
    [Pause.]
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you to our second panelists for joining 
us.
    I would like to recognize the Honorable Robert Rice, 
Council Member of the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
    Mr. Rice, I think we met in the elevator this morning, 
didn't we?
    Mr. Rice. I think so.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Tiffany. Well, it is great to make your acquaintance. 
And Councilman Rice, you have 5 minutes for your testimony. 
Welcome.

 STATEMENT OF THE HON. ROBERT RICE, COUNCIL MEMBER, MESCALERO 
              APACHE TRIBE, MESCALERO, NEW MEXICO

    Mr. Rice. Good afternoon, Chairman Westerman, Chairman 
Tiffany, and the members of the Subcommittee, and a special 
hello to Representative Leger Fernandez. My name is Robert 
Rice. I have been honored to serve on the Mescalero Apache 
Tribal Council for 2 years now. Thank you for this opportunity 
to testify about tribal forestry management practices.
    Before I begin, I want to acknowledge members of the Tribal 
Council who have joined me today on that side.
    Our ancestors roamed the Southwest, but always returned to 
the sacred White Mountain and its forests.
    [Slide.]
    Mr. Rice. As you can see, the Lincoln National Forest 
borders our reservation to the north and the south. The forest 
was carved out of our ancestral homelands, and is part of the 
initial reservation that was promised in our treaty. We have 
maintained our connection to these lands. Our people continue 
to gather medicines and conduct ceremonies throughout the 
Lincoln.
    For the Mescalero people, forestry is part of our way of 
life. To us, the forest provides water, food, and shelter to 
our people. For more than a century, we worked with BIA to make 
the forestry program one of the best in the Southwest. The 
Tribe has treated more than 180,000 acres through commercial 
harvest and thinning projects. Hazardous fuel reduction 
projects are vital to our management practice. By reducing tree 
density we enhance the available water, light, and nutrients to 
the trees.
    [Slide.]
    Mr. Rice. On the monitor there is a photo of the southern 
boundary border with Lincoln National Forest. You can clearly 
see the difference in the forest management styles. The dense 
area is the Lincoln National Forest. This dense forest, 
particularly in drought, becomes very vulnerable to insect 
infestation and, of course, wildfire. The 2012 Little Bear Fire 
showed the impact of an unhealthy forest.
    This fire started with a lightning strike. The Forest 
Service viewed it as non-threatening, and allowed it to smolder 
for days. On the 5th day, the fire exploded and crossed onto 
the tribal lands. As the fire approached the reservation, our 
hazardous fuel treatments were critical in preventing complete 
devastation to the reservation and the village of Ruidoso. 
However, the fire burned more than 44,000 acres of prime timber 
and destroyed more than 255 homes. The damage exceeded $100 
million.
    While our hazardous fuels treatments limited the damage, 
the Tribe's resort, Ski Apache, suffered more than $1.5 million 
in losses. Ski Apache is vital to our economy, generating 350 
jobs and contributing millions to the local economy. So, again, 
strong forest management is critical to our community. Our 
reservation and nearby communities rely heavily on watersheds 
sustained by the forest as well as on the forest itself.
    In the past, we have operated two sawmills. The Mescalero 
Forest Products sawmill was a vital first line forest 
management tool for our program. Closure of the sawmills more 
than a decade ago has limited the effective management of our 
forests. Since closing the mills, we have experienced an 
increase in density and associated decline in forest health. As 
a result, the groundwater levels are dropping, causing the 
Tribe to redrill range water and domestic wells. If something 
isn't done to reinstate the sawmill or find an alternative, we 
estimate that in 20 to 25 years reservation forest conditions 
will be the same as those in the Lincoln National Forest.
    The work of the tribal forest managers nationwide has 
proven effective to protecting lives and property throughout 
Indian Country, while maintaining the healthiest forests in the 
nation. In closing, I want to make two recommendations to 
enhance the work of the tribal forest management.
    First, we must bring the tribal forest management funding 
into parity with Federal forest funding. We support the IFMAT 
IV recommendations to increase tribal forestry funding by $96 
million, increase fire preparedness by $42 million, and 
establish a separate budget line for tribal forest roads at $89 
million per year.
    Second, Congress should enhance tribal control over Federal 
lands. To accomplish this we urge the Committee to amend the 
Tribal Forest Protection Act to establish a pilot program to 
authorize tribal co-management of Federal lands to implement 
tribal forest management practices. Tribal work under the TFPA 
should extend beyond adjacent lands and be authorized 
throughout Federal Forest Service and BLM lands where tribes 
have proven connections.
    Our forest is our home. We must work together to ensure its 
health. Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I 
am prepared to answer any questions.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Rice follows:]
           Prepared Statement of Robert Rice, Council Member,
                         Mescalero Apache Tribe
    Good afternoon Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members 
of the Subcommittee. My name is Robert Rice. I serve as a Council 
Member of the Mescalero Apache Tribe (``Mescalero'' or ``Tribe''). 
Thank you for this opportunity to testify about opportunities to 
enhance tribal forest management practices.
Background: the Mescalero Apache Tribe

    The Mescalero, Lipan and Chiricahua Apache, make up the Mescalero 
Apache Tribe. Long before the first European settlers came to this 
land, our Apache ancestors roamed the Southwestern region, from Texas 
to central Arizona and from as far south as Mexico to the peaks of 
Colorado. We were protected by our four sacred mountains: White 
Mountain/Sierra Blanca, Guadalupe Mountains, Tres Hermanas/Three 
Sisters Mountains, and Oscura Peak. We traveled the rough Apacheria 
through mountains and deserts but always returned to our sacred White 
Mountain.
    As Europeans began to encroach on our lands, the Apaches entered 
into a treaty with the United States on July 1, 1852. The Treaty with 
the Apaches promised the Tribe a permanent homeland in our aboriginal 
territory. The Mescalero Apache Reservation (``Reservation''), located 
in the White and Sacramento Mountains of rural south-central New 
Mexico, was established through a succession of Executive Orders in the 
1870s and 1880s. The Reservation spans approximately 720 square miles 
(460,405 acres). Our Reservation is home to 5,500 tribal citizens and 
approximately 200 non-Indian residents.
    The original Reservation boundaries included lands that are 
currently held in federal ownership, such as Lincoln National Forest 
(``LNF'') and Bureau of Land Management (``BLM'') lands surrounding the 
Fort Stanton State Monument. These federal lands were carved out of our 
ancestral homelands. However, the Mescalero Apache people have 
maintained strong cultural ties to these lands. To this day, we 
continue to gather plants important to our traditions and conduct 
ceremonies on these federal lands. To strengthen our ties to these 
lands and to have input into their management, the Tribe has entered 
into Memoranda of Understanding (``MOUs'') with federal agencies, 
including the U.S. military and LNF.
Mescalero Apache Forest Management

    For centuries, we have managed our forests holistically, as a way 
of life, to promote the growth of food and medicinal plants, to manage 
the wildlife in these forests, and to protect our lands from invaders.
    This tradition of forestry was put into formal practice when the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs (``BIA'') Mescalero Agency opened its Branch 
of Forestry in 1910. Mescalero's first major commercial timber sale was 
in 1919. With the opening of the tribally owned Mescalero Forest 
Products' (``MFP'') sawmill in 1987, the Tribe entered a new era of 
forest management. Today, the Mescalero forest remains one of the best-
managed, healthiest forests in the Southwest.
    For more than a century, the BIA Mescalero Agency and the Tribe 
have worked to develop a premier forestry program on the Reservation. 
During the 1990s and early 2000s, the BIA Branch of Forestry employed 3 
professional foresters and 2 forestry technicians in the Timber Sale 
section.
    This small staff was responsible for preparing and offering for 
sale lumber at 16.8 million board feet annually and completing all sale 
planning, environmental compliance work, timber sale layout and 
administration. Due to the amount of timber harvested, the BIA 
identifies the Reservation as a Category 1-Major Forested Reservation. 
Additionally, the Fire Management and Fuels Management Programs are 
each rated as High Complexity. These ratings describe not only the 
complexity of addressing fire concerns across a large landscape but 
also the need for coordinated efforts among programs and agencies.
    Operating on a shoestring budget, the Tribe's Division of Resource 
Management and Protection has been able to provide high quality 
forestry services on the Reservation, assisting the BIA in timber sales 
and performing fuels management projects. The strong working 
relationship with BIA Forestry and the implementation of contracts 
under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (P.L. 
93-638) helped the Tribe build a strong forest management system.
    Before the Tribal sawmill, Mescalero Forest Products (``MFP''), 
closed in 2012, the Tribe treated one full rotation of the commercial 
forest, totaling 183,876 out of a total Reservation land base of 
460,405 acres. All 183,876 acres were considered for logging. Areas 
that were not treated contained arch sites, threatened and endangered 
species, or homesites.
    Despite the importance of this mission and a small budget, the 
Mescalero BIA Branch of Forestry experienced a 43% reduction in its 
staffing levels since 2016. As a result, in FY2022 the Tribal Council 
passed a Resolution to contract for and take over the BIA Branch of 
Forestry and Branch of Natural Resources activities through Public Law 
93-638 Self-Determination contracts. This has allowed the Tribe to 
focus on prioritizing Tribal goals and objectives for managing our 
forest.
    We view our forest as a dynamic living entity. It provides water, 
food, shelter and a means of providing jobs and revenue for Tribal 
members. When the Tribe first began commercially harvesting timber, 
many opposed the concept. This resistance to proactive forest 
management began to dissipate in 1996 when the Tribe experienced its 
first large fire in recent history, the Chino Well Fire. This fire 
began on a windy spring day in April. Within one day, the fire 
threatened 42 homes, forcing evacuations, and burning a seven-mile 
strip of forest of more than 8,000 acres. Due to the rapid-fire 
response of Tribal fire crews, no homes were damaged. Soon after the 
fire, homeowners wanted to learn how they could protect their homes 
from future wildfires.
    With the advent of the National Fire Plan in the late 1990s, the 
BIA Branch of Forestry worked with the Tribe to develop strategic 
ridgetop fuel breaks and implement wildland urban interface treatments 
around residential and recreational areas across the Reservation. 
Through this program, the Tribe has treated an additional 63,968 acres 
through hazardous fuels reduction projects. These projects were 
coordinated with harvest operations, recognizing that understory 
thinning alone would not reduce the potential for destructive crown 
fires. As a result of implementing wildfire mitigation measures to 
reduce fire danger, the Tribe earned Firewise Communities/USA 
recognition in 2003 and was the first tribe in New Mexico to earn such 
recognition.
    National forestry policy has always been important to the Mescalero 
Apache Tribe. Mescalero leadership and forestry staff provided 
congressional testimony and advised the government in developing the 
Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 and the Tribal Forest Protection 
Act of 2004 (``TFPA''). The TFPA, in particular, helped pave the way 
for the Tribe to work with LNF to develop the first Tribal stewardship 
contract called the 16 Springs Stewardship contract in 2006 to 
implement hazardous fuel reduction projects on adjacent U.S. National 
Forest lands. Under the 16 Springs Stewardship contract the Tribe was 
able to complete approximately $6,000,000 of fuels treatments along the 
Tribe's southern boundary. The TFPA continues to be a useful tool to 
help the Tribe expand the implementation of our healthy forest 
management practices to nearby lands. However, as noted below, the Act 
needs to be expanded and updated.
    Hazardous fuel reduction projects are vital to our forest 
management practices. Forests are living organisms. With reductions in 
density, trees and ground cover are better able to thrive. Southwestern 
forests grow with very little precipitation. On the Reservation and in 
LNF, 26 inches of annual precipitation is considered a ``wet'' year. By 
reducing tree densities to ensure the crowns are not touching, we 
greatly enhance the available water, light and nutrients each 
individual tree receives. With open forest conditions, pine seedlings 
have a better environment to germinate, resulting in increased forest 
regeneration.
    In addition to its hazardous fuels management program, the Tribe 
used to operate the MFP sawmill. However, the decline in the lumber 
market, combined with process inefficiencies and a lack of by-product 
markets, resulted in the closure of MFP twice, once in December 2008 
and again in July 2012. The closure of the sawmill resulted in the loss 
of 55 jobs for mill workers and close to 150 supporting staff 
(including marking, harvesting, hauling, and administrative staff). The 
Tribe was also forced to close a second mill that it owned in 
Alamogordo, which employed 82 workers.
    The Mescalero Forest Product sawmill was a vital first-line forest 
management tool that enabled the Tribe to treat the larger trees of the 
forest overstory through selective harvests that were followed up with 
hazardous fuels reduction projects in the smaller size classes. Closure 
of these sawmills has significantly limited our ability to effectively 
manage our forest and assist in the management of LNF.
    Since the closing of Mescalero Forest Products in 2012, we are 
already experiencing significant increases in forest densities and 
associated declines in forest health. We are not able to effectively 
treat forest overstories to remove dwarf mistletoe and bark beetles, 
which does not allow the young understory trees to grow to their full 
potential. In the future, this will greatly affect the overall health 
of our forest. Furthermore, the ground water table levels are dropping, 
causing the Tribe to redrill many range water wells and some domestic 
wells. If something is not done to reinstate the sawmill or find a 
suitable alternative, Tribal and BIA Foresters have estimated that in 
20 to 25 years, Reservation Forest conditions will be the same as those 
in LNF.
    In addition, congressional funding cuts, implemented over the past 
two decades, have further strained our ability to continue our forestry 
practices. Prior to these cuts, the Tribe was able to manage our forest 
better than the LNF on a fraction of the federal agency's budget. 
Failure to restore this modest funding will ensure the demise of a 
hugely successful program.
Concerns with Federal Forest Health: Lessons Learned from the Little 
        Bear Fire

    While the Tribe has worked hard to maintain a healthy forest on our 
Reservation, Tribal leadership has long-standing concerns about the 
very dense forest conditions in LNF, which borders our Reservation on 
three sides. Due to the overly dense and unhealthy condition of the 
LNF, we have seen the escalation of insect populations, including bark 
beetles and other defoliators on the Reservation, and have watched as 
large swaths of USFS forest lands die around us.
    It is not too late to remedy this situation. A case in point is the 
successful stewardship contract that the Tribe entered into with the 
USFS pursuant to the TFPA. Through the 16 Springs Stewardship contract 
with LNF, the Tribe treated more than 6,300 acres of LNF lands mostly 
located along the shared boundary between our Reservation and LNF. Due 
to the Tribe's efforts, these USFS lands are much healthier than they 
were. However, there are many thousands of additional acres of dense 
forest within LNF that remain untreated and continue to threaten the 
lives and property of Tribal members and the public.
    Nature provided us a preview of what will happen if the Mescalero 
forestry program is allowed to fail. The Little Bear Fire started in a 
modest way on Monday, June 4, 2012. The initial small fire was caused 
by lightning in the White Mountain wilderness in LNF. Over the first 
five days, LNF deployed relatively few assets to contain what it 
thought was a non-threatening forest fire. Firefighters worked only on 
day shifts, air tanker resources were not utilized, and helicopter 
water drops were minimal. On the fifth day, the fire jumped the fire 
line and high winds turned the fire into a devastating inferno. By that 
night, the fire had blazed through the Tribal ski area, Ski Apache 
Resort (``Ski Apache''), and crossed onto Tribal lands. Within two 
weeks, the Little Bear Fire burned 35,339 acres in LNF, 8,522 acres of 
private land, 112 acres of state land and 357 acres of the Reservation. 
The fire also destroyed more than 255 buildings and homes in the region 
and burned 44,500 acres of prime watershed. The overall estimated cost 
of the fire, including suppression and damages, exceeded $100 million.
    The Little Bear Fire's impacts provided a clear contrast between 
the healthier tribal forests and much less healthy LNF, demonstrating 
the need for continued funding of smart fuels management projects and 
increased funding for Tribal Forestry Management.
    In 2008, the Tribe completed an important, cost-effective hazardous 
fuels reduction project on a portion of the Reservation called Eagle 
Creek. As the Little Bear Fire moved across the landscape, the 
previously treated Eagle Creek project area was used as a defensible 
space to turn the Little Bear Fire away from the steep, densely 
forested terrain of the North Fork of the Rio Ruidoso and prevented 
complete devastation of the Village of Ruidoso and its source waters. 
The Little Bear Fire is proof positive that hazardous fuels reduction 
projects work.
    Many members of the surrounding communities, including our Tribal 
community, felt that this fire should have been contained and 
controlled within the first few days after detection. The proximity of 
the fire to Tribal lands, Tribal infrastructure, the Village of Ruidoso 
and its location within a New Mexico State priority watershed should 
have triggered a more aggressive response to suppress the fire. 
Unreasonable restrictions placed on fire suppression actions within LNF 
wilderness areas contributed to the failure to immediately suppress the 
fire using all available resources. Had Mescalero not managed its 
forest through fuels management projects, the fire would have 
devastated the Village of Ruidoso.
Mescalero Apache Investments in Lincoln National Forest

    As noted above, much of LNF is carved out of the ancestral 
homelands of the Mescalero Apache. Evidence of our connection to LNF 
can be found throughout the forest, from rock art to mescal pits to the 
Apache Trail, which was a prime route for water in the Sacramento 
Mountains. These Mountains are home to the Mountain Spirit Dancers, who 
are holy beings that ensure our well-being.
    Since 1960, the Tribe has leased approximately 860 acres of LNF 
lands under two special use permits to establish, manage, and operate 
Ski Apache. Ski Apache is located on the northern border of the 
Reservation. The land is part of the Tribe's aboriginal homelands and 
is located within the Sierra Blanca Mountain Range, which is sacred to 
the Mescalero Apache people.
    Over the past 60 years, the Tribe has made significant improvements 
to the Resort. In 2012, the Tribe invested $15 million to triple the 
ski lift capacity at Ski Apache. In addition, the Tribe invested $2.6 
million for non-ski/year-round recreation at Ski Apache. Ski Apache 
employs 350 people during the ski season and contributes millions of 
dollars to the local economy.
    To protect these investments and our sacred lands, the Tribe has a 
considerable interest in preventing future wildfires and resulting 
flooding that would devastate the Resort.
    Under the current arrangement, the USFS administers these lands, 
and LNF has the legal responsibility to respond to emergencies, such as 
the June 2012 Little Bear Fire. However, it has been the Tribe that has 
acted as the primary first responder in emergency situations. If the 
Tribe had not taken the initiative, our assets at Ski Apache would have 
been lost in the Little Bear Fire.
    Ski Apache incurred over $1.5 million to tribal assets within the 
special use permit area due to the Little Bear Fire. Ski Apache is 
located at the highest point of the Little Bear Fire. Failure to 
address flooding at higher elevations would have made rehabilitation at 
lower elevations less effective. The Little Bear Fire crossed the 
Reservation line at a key topographic area. There are two major 
canyons, Upper Canyon and the Eagle Creek area, that start on the 
Reservation and then lead off the Reservation. Both areas are heavily 
populated off-Reservation. Because of the volume of trees that were 
burnt, there was a real danger that resulting flooding would have 
destroyed buildings, access roads, and existing ski runs. However, due 
to additional investments and hazardous fuels projects conducted by the 
Tribe, major flooding was avoided.
    Even though the Tribe, as a permittee, is solely responsible for 
rehabilitation and all costs incurred from the Little Bear Fire, the 
Tribe first had to gain approval from LNF prior to taking action to 
begin rehabilitation efforts. However, it took LNF months to respond. 
While LNF committed to cleaning piles of burned trees, it took over 18 
months for that action to occur.
    The BIA has a Burned Area Emergency Response (``BAER'') team that 
tried to communicate with the USDA/LNF/BAER team to discuss rehab, 
especially in the area of these two canyons. However, USDA/LNF/BAER and 
BIA BAER teams lacked coordination to fight fires and flooding, leaving 
the Tribe and Ski Apache in the middle and out of the loop.
    Little consideration was given to the importance of Ski Apache to 
the Tribe's and our nearby community's economies. Closure of Ski Apache 
for a single season would devastate the economies of both the Village 
of Ruidoso and the Tribe. Despite the importance of Ski Apache, LNF 
prioritized other areas for fire rehabilitation efforts instead of Ski 
Apache.
Specific Recommendations to Enhance Tribal Forest Management

    The work of Tribal Forest managers nationwide has proven effective 
to protecting lives and property throughout Indian Country while 
maintaining the healthiest forests in the nation. In addition, Tribal 
Foresters, through activities taken on through the Tribal Forest 
Protection Act, our practices have worked to improve the health of 
nearby federal forests. To enhance the work of Tribal Forest 
Management, we make the following recommendations:

     The primary barrier to enhancing Tribal Forest Management 
            is the lack of funding. Tribal forestry programs receive 
            far less funding than our state and federal counterparts. 
            The 2023 Report by the Indian Forest Management Assessment 
            Team acknowledged that ``Indian forests [receive] much less 
            forest management funding per acre than adjacent forest 
            landowners.'' BIA allocations to tribes average only $3.11/
            acre, while National Forests receive $8.57/acre and state 
            forests in the western U.S. average an astounding $20.46/
            acre. At one-third to one-tenth of the funding our state 
            and federal counterparts receive, tribes still accomplish 
            vastly more reductions in hazardous fuels and have 
            healthier, functioning forest ecosystems. In addition to 
            greatly reducing wildfire hazard on reservations, tribal 
            land managers have seen forest thinning treatments result 
            in increased water yields despite the current extreme 
            drought situation. However, this work is not sustainable.

RECOMMENDATION 1: We support the IFMAT IV recommendations to increase 
Tribal Forestry funding by $96 million, increase fire preparedness by 
$42 million, and establish a separate budget line for tribal forest 
roads to be funded at $89 million/year. All of this would bring Indian 
forest funding closer to parity with federal forests.

     Tribal governments are among the largest owners of forest 
            lands in the United States. Of the approximately 56 million 
            acres of federal Indian trust land, more than 18 million 
            acres are forest lands. The Forest Service shares 
            approximately 4,000 miles of boundaries with Tribal lands, 
            and much of the National Forest System and BLM lands were 
            carved out of Indian Reservations and ancestral Tribal 
            government homelands and include lands on which Tribal 
            governments exercise legal treaty rights.

    As noted above, it is not enough that tribal forest managers work 
to protect tribal homelands. Missteps and mismanagement of nearby 
federal lands can just as easily destroy thousands of acres of adjacent 
Indian lands. The TFPA is working to improve communication and Tribal 
government input in federal forestry decision-making, but it has fallen 
far short. Few federal land management agencies implement Tribal Forest 
management practices or incorporate Tribal forestry knowledge. In 
addition, while the TFPA is working to protect adjacent lands, dense 
and unhealthy forests exist throughout Forest Service and BLM lands--
which continues to pose a risk to Indian lands and communities.

RECOMMENDATION 2: While the Biden Administration has attempted to 
enhance Tribal co-management of federal lands, these policies need 
congressional authorization to take real effect. Amend the TFPA to 
establish a Pilot Program to authorize Tribal Co-management of federal 
lands to incorporate Tribal Forest management practices throughout 
Forest Service and BLM lands to achieve landscape-scale management. 
TFPA Tribal work should extend beyond adjacent lands, and instead be 
authorized throughout certain federal Forest Service and BLM lands with 
which Tribes have proven connections. The contracting tools developed, 
such as PL 93-638, should facilitate the process of co-management. 
Legislative language to accomplish a portion of this goal was included 
in Section 302 of Chairman Westerman's Emergency Wildfire and Forest 
Management Act of 2016, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

RECOMMENDATION 3: Make the 2018 Farm Bill's 638 Tribal Forestry 
Demonstration Project permanent and dedicate funding to TFPA 638 
contracts. Use of 638 authority provides a funding mechanism through 
the Forest Service to cover the cost of Tribal staff and resources 
(prior to the 2018 Farm Bill, those costs would have to be covered by 
the Tribal Nation in question). However, no funding for this purpose 
was allocated in the 2018 Farm Bill, which has limited implementation 
of the program.

RECOMMENDATION 4: Federal land management laws provide state and local 
governments and non-profits to administratively acquire federal lands 
but fail to permit similar transactions with Tribal governments. To 
achieve parity and respect for the governmental status of Indian 
Tribes, Congress should amend these laws to provide the Forest Service 
and BLM with legal authority to administratively transfer federally 
managed forest lands back to Tribal governments in situations where 
such lands are former reservations or encompass ancestral lands.
Conclusion

    The Reservation is our permanent homeland. Our lands serve as the 
groundwater recharge areas for much of south-central and southeastern 
New Mexico. We cannot allow a century of work to restore forest health 
and reduce the threat of wildfire to simply fall by the wayside. 
Congress must work with tribes to find large-scale long-term solutions 
to this problem to maintain the forestry infrastructure necessary to 
accomplish a fully integrated forest health treatment program that will 
help maintain our way of life, create jobs in Indian Country, and 
sustain the vital watershed for the Apache people and our neighbors.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you very much, Councilman Rice.
    Next, I would like to introduce Mr. Cody Desautel, 
President of the Intertribal Timber Council and a member of the 
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
    Mr. Desautel, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Welcome 
back before the Committee.

   STATEMENT OF CODY DESAUTEL, PRESIDENT, INTERTRIBAL TIMBER 
   COUNCIL, CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE COLVILLE RESERVATION, 
                      NESPELEM, WASHINGTON

    Mr. Desautel. Thank you, Chair Tiffany.
    Hello, Chair Westerman. Good to see you again.
    I am Cody Desautel, President of the Intertribal Timber 
Council and Executive Director for the Confederated Tribes of 
the Colville Reservation in north central Washington State. On 
behalf of the ITC and its more than 60 member tribes, I 
appreciate this opportunity to examine the existing and 
potential value of Indian forest management nationwide.
    I will start by describing some of the authorities and 
opportunities tribes have for cross-boundary management, and 
then touch on the challenges, including those documented in the 
recent IFMAT report.
    The most widely used authority to date has been the Tribal 
Forest Protection Act, or TFPA. TFPA allows tribes to petition 
the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to perform 
stewardship activities on their lands adjacent to Indian lands. 
The 2018 Farm Bill expanded TFP authority to include 
contracting under the Indian Self-Determination and Education 
Assistance Act. The 2018 Farm Bill also gave tribes and 
counties the authority to enter into Good Neighbor Agreements, 
or GNA, with Federal agencies.
    However, a technical oversight has restricted tribes from 
using GNA. A legislative fix to include tribes as eligible 
partners to use project revenue for restoration services would 
address this. I appreciate this Committee's work to pass 
Representative Fulcher's legislation to ensure that tribes can 
fully participate in GNA.
    The Department of the Interior also has a program called 
Reserved Treaty Rights Lands that funds treatment of adjacent 
lands with ancestral and reserved treaty rights. This is a 
competitive grant program that helps tribes protect their 
natural and cultural resources through restoration projects on 
non-tribal lands with high wildfire risk. However, funding is 
limited to $15 million annually.
    ITC has worked hard in partnerships with the Forest Service 
and BLM to ensure that both tribes and Federal land managers 
are aware of these programs and implement them to improve 
forest health and resiliency to wildfire. There are many 
success stories, but also continuing barriers. My own tribe can 
provide one such example.
    In 2014, the Colville Tribe submitted a TFPA proposal for 
the Sanpoil Project on the adjacent Colville National Forest, 
which resulted in a TFPA agreement. In June 2023, the U.S. 
District Court for Eastern Washington ruled in favor of an 
environmental lawsuit aimed to stop the Sanpoil Project. 
Despite the technical input and partnership with the Colville 
Tribes and the need to protect the reservation from wildfire, 
the court's decision never mentioned my tribe or the TFPA 
agreement.
    This example demonstrates that even when tribes and the 
Forest Service agree on what is right for the land, a Federal 
court can stop years of collaboration and analysis simply based 
on technicalities. Perhaps Congress can provide additional 
direction to Federal judges, as it did in the Healthy Forest 
Restoration Act, to weigh the long-term impacts of inaction 
versus the short-term impacts of forest management activities.
    Indian people suffer most from forest mismanagement at 
places like Colville, Yakama, and Warm Springs. The national 
forests are our largest neighbor. Limited suppression resources 
are often sent to higher-risk Federal forests, allowing 
wildfire to destroy our resources and impact sources of tribal 
revenue for generations. For example, the Colville Tribe has 
seen more than 1 billion board feet of timber burn since 2015, 
with a current delivered log value of approximately a half 
billion dollars.
    Despite all this, there is no greater partner than Indian 
Country to bring balance and restore resilience to Federal 
forests.
    Another impediment to getting TFPA and GNA work done by 
tribes is internal capacity. Many tribes are under-funded to 
manage their own land, let alone have additional staffing 
needed to plan large landscape projects on adjacent Federal 
land. Despite generous funding from Congress to implement TFPA 
and GNA projects, relatively few have been initiated because of 
limited tribal capacity. The Tribe would like to work with this 
Committee and the Administration to find better ways of 
building tribal capacity to get work done on Federal lands.
    The primary finding in this IFMAT report and the three that 
preceded it are the significant inequities in Federal funding 
for Indian forest management when compared to other Federal 
forests, such as the U.S. Forest Service and BLM. The IFMAT 
report found that budget parity between the BIA-responsible 
forests, national forest system, and BLM forests would require 
an additional $96 million per year to the current $56 million 
per year budget for BIA forestry, and $42 million in additional 
wildfire funding to the current $120 million BIA budget.
    This Committee is vested with oversight of all of these 
agencies and their budgets. I urge you to engage with the 
Department of the Interior in a constructive dialogue about how 
to change the massive funding disparities across federally 
managed forests.
    I also request that the House Natural Resources Committee 
hold a full oversight hearing on the IFMAT report to ensure 
that its recommendations are heeded and not forgotten on a 
bookshelf.
    I would like to close by restating Indian tribes across the 
country stand ready to bring our traditional knowledge and 
modern expertise to Federal forest management. I appreciate 
this Committee's continued interest in and support of 
partnerships with Federal agencies. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Desautel follows:]
  Prepared Statement of Cody Desautel, President, Intertribal Timber 
           Council & Executive Director, Confederated Tribes
                      of the Colville Reservation

    I am Cody Desautel, President of the Intertribal Timber Council 
(ITC) and Executive Director for the Confederated Tribes of the 
Colville Reservation in Washington State. On behalf of the ITC and its 
more than 60 member Tribes, I appreciate this opportunity to examine 
the existing and potential value of Indian forest management 
nationwide.
Background

    All of America's forests were once inhabited, managed and used by 
Indian people. Today, only a small portion of those lands remain under 
direct Indian management. On a total of 334 reservations in 36 states, 
19.3 million acres of forests and woodlands are held in trust by the 
United States and managed for the benefit of Indians.
    Tribes actively manage their forests for multiple uses, including 
economic revenue, jobs, cultural foods and materials and for other 
cultural purposes. Catastrophic wildfire can negatively impact all of 
these uses for multiple generations.
    The risk of wildfire to Indian lands is compounded by the thousands 
of miles of shared boundary with federal agencies, primarily the U.S. 
Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. There are countless 
examples of wildfire spilling over from federal lands onto tribal 
forests, causing significant economic and ecological losses. These 
fires regularly pose a risk to human life on Indian lands and have 
resulted in fatalities.
Available Tools

    There are many tools to support cross-boundary forest health 
restoration work with tribes. The Department of the Interior has a 
small program called ``Reserved Treaty Rights Lands'' that funds 
treatment of adjacent lands with ancestral and reserved treaty rights. 
This is a successful, competitive grant program that helps tribes 
protect their natural and cultural resources through restoration 
projects on non-tribal lands that are at high risk from wildfire.
    Congress recognized the need for tribes to work closely with their 
federal neighbors to reduce the threat of fire across shared 
boundaries. The result was the Tribal Forest Protection Act (``TFPA''), 
which allows tribes to petition the Secretaries of Agriculture and 
Interior to perform stewardship activities on their lands adjacent to 
Indian lands.
    The 2018 Farm Bill not only expanded TFPA authorities but also gave 
tribes and counties the authority to enter into Good Neighbor 
Agreements with federal agencies. I appreciate this committee's work to 
pass Rep. Fulcher's legislation to ensure that tribes are able to be 
full participants in the GNA program.
    The ITC has worked hard, in partnership with the Forest Service and 
BLM to ensure that both tribes and federal land managers are aware of 
these programs and implement them to improve forest health and 
resiliency to wildfire.
    There are many success stories, but also continuing barriers. My 
own tribe, the Confederated Tribes of Colville provides one such 
example.
    For years the Colville Tribes urged the adjacent Colville National 
Forest to address the forest health problems in in our ancestral lands 
near the Reservation. Years of fire suppression followed by a lack of 
forest management activities created areas of overstocked stands that 
are infested with disease and are now vulnerable to catastrophic fire 
events. We worked with the National Forest on the Sanpoil Project, 
which resulted in a TFPA agreement.
    In June 2023, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington sided 
with an environmental lawsuit aimed to stop the Sanpoil project. 
Despite the technical input and partnership with the Colville Tribes, 
and the need to protect the reservation from wildfire, the court's 
decision never mentioned my tribe or the TFPA agreement.
    This example simply demonstrates that even when tribes and the 
Forest Service agree on what's right for the land, a federal court can 
stop years of collaboration and analysis, simply based on 
technicalities. Perhaps Congress could provide additional direction to 
federal judges--as it did in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act--to 
weigh the long-term impacts of inaction (e.g., catastrophic wildfire) 
versus the short-term impacts of forest management activities.
    Another impediment to getting TFPA and GNA work done by tribes is 
internal capacity. Many tribes are underfunded to manage their own 
land, let alone have additional staffing needed to plan large, 
landscape projects on adjacent federal land. Despite generous funding 
from Congress to implement TFPA and GNA projects, relatively few have 
been initiated because of limited tribal capacity. The ITC would like 
to work with this committee and the Administration to find better ways 
of building tribal capacity to get work done on federal lands.
    Reconnecting tribes to their ancestral homelands is not just a 
matter of righting past wrongs. The removal of Indigenous people from 
the land and the discontinuation of seasonal lifeways over millennia 
have had drastic consequences on the land. Indian Tribes want to 
reverse those negative consequences, and I do not believe significant 
progress can be made without integrating Indigenous concepts of balance 
and interconnectedness back to the land.
    Tribes hold razor thin threads of knowledge passed through native 
languages for thousands of years that tie us to places in which our 
people lived, died, and practiced unique cultures. We are collectively 
grasping those threads to regain knowledges that help guide our 
stewardship of our resources.
    Indian people suffer most from forest mismanagement. At places like 
Colville, Yakama, and Warm Springs, the reservations are the largest 
neighbor of National Forests that were carved from our original 
homelands. When fires burn, we breathe the smoke. We suffer the loss of 
wildlife habitat. Our water quality is impacted, our fisheries damaged. 
Fires from federal lands burn our own lands, destroy our timber 
resources and impact sources of tribal revenue for generations. For 
example, the Colville Tribe has seen more than one billion board feet 
of our timber burn since 2015, with a current delivered log value of 
approximately $500,000,000.
    There is no greater partner than Indian Country to bring balance 
and restore resilience to federal forests. Yet we, too, are at a 
breaking point.
IFMAT Report

    Unlike any other federal forests, Congress mandates an independent, 
scientific review of Indian forests and their management. Every ten 
years, the ``Indians Forest Management Assessment Team'' (or ``IFMAT'') 
prepares and presents a report to Congress and the Administration. The 
fourth such report was finalized earlier this year and presented to 
you.
    I request that the House Natural Resources Committee hold a full 
oversight hearing on the IFMAT report to ensure that its recommendation 
are heeded and not forgotten on a bookshelf.
    The primary finding of the IFMAT report--and all those that precede 
it--is the significant inequity of federal funding for Indian forest 
management versus other federal forests, such as the U.S. Forest 
Service and BLM.
    Based in the IFMAT report's finding, BIA Forestry is funded at 
about $2.89 per acre for tribes without hazardous fuels funding and 
$4.89 for those who receive hazardous fuels funding.
    Compare that to an estimated $12.24 for National Forest System 
lands and $41.41 for western Oregon BLM lands. Thus, forests managed by 
the BIA for tribes receive four times less than the Forest Service and 
14 times less than BLM forests.
    With respect to wildfire-related funding, the IFMAT report found 
that BIA receives $3.98 per acre for preparedness--compared to $10.88 
per acre for the U.S. Forest Service. The BIA received $2.34 per acre 
for hazardous fuels reduction, while the Forest Service receives $3.53 
per acre. Also, much of this funding is competitive, which makes it 
difficult to build the capacity needed within tribal programs to treat 
landscapes at scale with funding uncertainty.
    The result of this inequity is catastrophic on Indian communities. 
The IFMAT report found reduced funding to BIA for forest management 
resulted in $400 million is foregone timber revenue to tribes between 
2010-2019. That means $400 million was not generated to provide 
essential social, educational, and public safety services to some of 
the most vulnerable Americans.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


    .epsThe IFMAT report found that budget parity between BIA-
responsible forests, National Forest System and BLM forests would 
require an. Additional $96 million per year for BIA Forestry and $42 
million in additional wildfire funding.
    This committee is vested with an important oversight of all these 
agencies and their budgets. I urge you to engage with the Department of 
the Interior in a constructive dialogue about how to change the massive 
funding disparity across federally managed forests.
Conclusion

    Indian Tribes across the country stand ready to bring our 
traditional knowledge and modern expertise to federal forest 
management. I appreciate this Committee's continued interest in and 
support of our partnership with federal agencies. Thank you for 
inviting me and my colleagues from other tribes to share our 
perspective with you.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Desautel. Next, I would like to 
recognize Mr. Michael Skenadore, President of Menominee Tribal 
Enterprises from my home state of Wisconsin.
    Mr. Skenadore, welcome, and you have 5 minutes.

  STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SKENADORE, PRESIDENT, MENOMINEE TRIBAL 
                ENTERPRISES, KESHENA, WISCONSIN

    Mr. Skenadore. Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and 
members of the Subcommittee, I would like to thank you for the 
invitation to provide testimony on opportunities to promote and 
enhance tribal forest management. My name is Michael Skenadore, 
and I am the President of Menominee Tribal Enterprises, a 
wholly-owned entity of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. 
We are located about 50 miles north and west of Green Bay in 
Wisconsin.
    Since the establishment of our reservation in 1854, my 
Tribe has practiced sustained yield timber harvesting, a forest 
management practice where the allowable harvest does not exceed 
the annual estimated forest growth. As a result, my Tribe has 
harvested nearly twice the volume of our Menominee forest, but 
today we have 40 percent more standing timber than when we 
started managing our forest in 1854. Our methods do work.
    Our history. Our harvesting philosophy was first proclaimed 
by Chief Oshkosh shortly after the formation of our 
reservation. And he said, ``Start with the rising sun and work 
towards the setting sun. But take only the mature trees, the 
sick trees, and the trees that have fallen. When you reach the 
end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to 
the rising sun, and the trees will last forever.''
    We have clear-cut our entire reservation two-and-a-half 
times using that basic philosophy. This philosophy prioritizes 
sustainability and preservation by only harvesting weak, sick, 
and fallen trees, and leaving behind mostly healthy trees to 
grow, reproduce, and hopefully improve the genetic stock of our 
forest and improve the quality of our standing timber. As a 
result, our forest gets healthier and the quality of timber 
improves over time with mostly assisted regeneration and very 
limited planting activities.
    My Tribe grew and developed our forestry and milling 
operations with great success. But when Congress terminated its 
trust relationship with our Tribe in 1954, this period of 
growth and prosperity came to a halt, and we were thrust into 
poverty. After tireless advocacy by our tribal leadership and 
the support of President Nixon, Congress later restored our 
nation-to-nation relationship in 1973, recognizing the 
partnership between our Tribe and the United States in managing 
our forest resources.
    Today, Menominee Tribal Enterprises still embodies the 
philosophy of Chief Oshkosh while incorporating the latest 
scientific developments and technology into our practices. One 
example is the use of drones to help us identify trees 
suffering from oak wilt, so that our loggers can remove them 
before they infect other trees. Our fuels team uses the modern 
practice of mechanical mastication, but also the traditional 
practice of controlled burns, an ancient practice our ancestors 
understood for millennia to remove material that could cause 
wildfires, but also to provide beneficial habitat for 
traditional medicines, plants, and forest regeneration.
    Our sustainable forestry practices have been documented and 
recognized worldwide by the Forest Stewardship Council, the New 
York Times, and the Princeton Ecological Review, and many 
others.
    The future of our forests. Despite our successes, we still 
face challenges that the United States, our trustee and partner 
in forest management, must help us to overcome. While 
controlled burns are widely used, our non-tribal neighbors 
often do not understand, and fear the practice. We actually 
have the Wisconsin DNR that tells us not to burn on our tribal 
lands because they do not understand the practice.
    Congress must appropriate funds to support efforts to 
increase education on controlled burns and their important role 
in forest management. Our increased reliance on technology 
requires expanded internet available and computer processing 
power. We urge this Subcommittee to support our efforts to 
continue investing in tribal broadband infrastructure and 
future funding practices. It is critical that we develop 
trained and educated foresters, ecologists, IT specialists, and 
loggers essentially to managing our forest.
    I thank you again for the invitation to provide testimony 
on opportunities to promote and enhance tribal forest 
management. I look forward to answering any questions you have.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Skenadore follows:]
  Prepared Statement of Michael Skenadore President, Menominee Tribal 
                              Enterprises

    Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to provide testimony on 
opportunities to promote and enhance Tribal forest management. My name 
is Michael Skenadore, and I am the President of Menominee Tribal 
Enterprises, a wholly-owned entity of the Menominee Indian Tribe of 
Wisconsin. Since the establishment of our 235,000 acre reservation, 
which is 93 percent forest, my people have practiced sustained yield 
lumber harvesting, a forest management practice where the allowable 
harvest does not exceed annual forest growth. After nearly 170 years of 
sustainable forestry, my Tribe has harvested nearly twice the forest's 
former volume of timber, but has 40 percent more standing wood than 
when we started.
Our History

    Our harvesting philosophy was first proclaimed by Chief Oshkosh 
shortly after the formation of our reservation in 1854. Chief Oshkosh 
said,

        Start with the rising sun and work toward the setting sun, but 
        take only the mature trees, the sick trees, and the trees that 
        have fallen. When you reach the end of the reservation, turn 
        and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun, and the trees 
        will last forever.

Chief Oshkosh's philosophy of forest management prioritizes 
sustainability and preservation by only harvesting weak, sick, and 
fallen trees and leaving behind healthy trees to grow and reproduce. As 
a result, the forest gets healthier and the quality of wood improves 
over time, without having to plant a thing.

    In 1908, a significant wind event downed millions of feet of timber 
on our reservation. In response, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 
established three sawmills on the reservation to process the downed 
timber into boards--the last of the original three mills is still 
standing and in operation in Neopit, Wisconsin. My Tribe grew and 
developed our forestry and milling operations with great success. But 
like over 100 of our fellow Tribal Nations, the Termination era brought 
this period of growth and prosperity to a screeching halt: Congress 
terminated its trust relationship with our Tribe in 1954.\1\ The 
Menominee Termination Act devastated the Tribal economy and bankrupted 
Menominee Tribal Enterprises as the business struggled to maintain the 
reservation's land base. After tireless advocacy by our Tribal 
leadership, Congress later restored our nation-to-nation relationship 
in 1973,\2\ recognizing the relationship between our Tribe and the 
United States as partners in managing our reservation's forest 
resources.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Pub. L. No. 83-399, 68 Stat. 250 (June 17, 1954).
    \2\ Pub. L. No. 93-197, 87 Stat. 770 (Dec. 22, 1973).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Forest Management Practices

    Today, Menominee Tribal Enterprises still embodies the philosophy 
of Chief Oshkosh while incorporating the latest scientific developments 
and modern technology into our practices. We have seven departments 
with unique responsibilities, and each department makes decisions based 
on what is best for the forest--not people, or profit. For example, our 
Harvest Preparation team surveys thousands of acres of forest annually 
and identifies sick and old trees that are more than ten inches in 
diameter for harvesting. Our loggers then wait until winter, when the 
ground is frozen, to harvest the trees, so that the logs do not damage 
the ground.
    Our Fuels team uses controlled burns, an ancient practice our 
ancestors understood thousands of years ago, to burn undergrowth and 
logging leftovers at the start of the summer. This practice, now 
recognized by the U.S. Forest Service \3\ (USFS) as an environmental 
resilience strategy, removes material that could cause wildfires. These 
burns also clear small spaces of the forest to assist in the growth of 
oak trees, which require plenty of sunlight, and increase fertile 
ground to support berries and other wild gatherable resources.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ See U.S. Forest Serv., National Prescribed Fire Resource 
Mobilization Strategy (2023), https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/
files/2023-06/Rx-Fire-Strategy.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Though we still abide by the foundational principles and practices 
established by our ancestors, we incorporate science and technology to 
effectively manage our forest. Drones help to identify trees suffering 
from oak wilt, a fungal disease, so that our loggers can remove them 
before they infect other trees. Geographic information system (GIS) 
mapping allows our foresters to identify and monitor forest cover 
types, forest soil types, forest harvest compartments, known 
archeological/historic sites where logging is prohibited, and the 
spread of disease and pests throughout the forest. Light detection and 
ranging (LIDAR) and other flyover technologies allow our foresters to 
view the impact of human activity on the forest floor, such as by 
identifying burial locations and village sites.
    Our forestry practices are integral to our Tribal culture. My 
people tap maple trees for syrup each spring, gather medicinal plants 
like bitterroot and ginseng, and use our wood resources for traditional 
crafts, such as basketry and canoes. On the business side, for which I 
am responsible, our lumber sales account for approximately 50 percent 
of our Tribe's economic activity. We employ 125 full-time staff, most 
of whom are Tribal members.
    Our sustainable forestry practices have been recognized worldwide. 
The Menominee Forest was one of the first to receive certification from 
the Forest Stewardship Council after its formation in 1993. A 2018 
study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and 
Dartmouth College demonstrated that our forestlands ``exceed nontribal 
lands in measures of ecological function (biomass, carbon storage, and 
plant diversity) and the criteria commonly used to assess forest 
sustainability (sustained yields, forest stature, and diversity, 
natural regeneration success).'' \4\ And journalists have come from 
around the world to document our forestry for publications like the New 
York Times,\5\ Yale Environment360,\6\ and Orion Magazine.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ Donald M. Waller & Nicholas J. Reo, First Stewards: Ecological 
Outcomes of Forest and Wildlife Stewardship by Indigenous peoples of 
Wisconsin, USA, 23 Ecology & Soc'y, no. 1, at 11 (2018).
    \5\ Cara Buckley, The Giving Forest, N.Y. Times, Apr. 27, 2023, 
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/climate/menominee-forest-
sustainable-earth-day.html.
    \6\ Fred Pearce, Tree Keepers: Where Sustaining the Forest is a 
Tribal Tradition, Yale Env't360, July 24, 2023, https://e360.yale.edu/
features/menominee-forest-management-logging.
    \7\ Alexandra Tempus, The People's Forest: How the Menominee Are 
Facing Climate Change, Orion Mag., Dec. 30, 2018, https://
orionmagazine.org/article/the-peoples-forest/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Future of Our Forest

    Despite our highly successful forestry practices, we still face 
challenges that the United States, as our trustee and partner in 
managing our reservation forest, must help us overcome. This section 
outlines some of the most pressing issues we face and what Congress can 
do to ensure that our forest continues to thrive for generations to 
come.

     While controlled burns have received more widespread 
            recognition, our non-Tribal neighbors often do not 
            understand and fear the practice. This is unsurprising, as 
            federal and state laws criminalized and stigmatized 
            controlled burns for decades. Now that the practice is 
            recognized as a critical component of forest stewardship 
            and wildfire prevention, Congress must appropriate funds to 
            support efforts to educate residents of land adjacent to 
            forests about controlled burns and their important role in 
            preservation and preventing wildfires.

     Our increased reliance on drones, GIS mapping, LIDAR, 
            satellite imagery, and other airplane flyover technology 
            requires expanded computing power and Internet availability 
            to support these data intensive practices. The Menominee 
            Indian Tribe received $500,000 from the Tribal Broadband 
            Connectivity Program \8\ to deploy a middle-mile and Fiber 
            to the Home network in rural areas of the reservation. We 
            know firsthand the impact that Congressional infrastructure 
            investments can have on Tribal communities, and we urge 
            this Subcommittee to support efforts to build on these 
            investments in future funding packages.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ Round One Award Recipients: Tribal Broadband Connectivity 
Program, Nat'l Telecomm. & Info. Admin., https://
broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/funding-programs/tribal-broadband-
connectivity/award-recipients#M (last visited Nov. 28, 2023).

     A trained and educated workforce is essential to managing 
            our forests. We need to employ foresters, ecologists, and 
            IT specialists to ensure we are leveraging cutting-edge 
            science and effectively using the latest innovations in 
            forest management. In addition, we need additional 
            investments in workforce development to attract young 
            people to our work, improve forestry education, and 
            preserve our forestry philosophy and practices. This 
            Subcommittee should support efforts to fund our Tribe's 
            outreach programs to middle and high schools, paid forestry 
            internships for college and graduate students, and post-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            doctoral study opportunities.

     Menominee Tribal Enterprises frequently hosts budding 
            forest management professionals, including those employed 
            by the federal government, to learn our forestry practices 
            and sustained yield philosophy. Our Fuels team often 
            travels the United States to share its expertise in 
            controlled burns. Most of this education is uncompensated. 
            We deserve fair compensation for sharing this proprietary 
            knowledge, and this Subcommittee should direct the BIA and 
            other federal agencies to enter funding agreements with our 
            Tribe when federal employees are sent to the Menominee 
            forest for training. We also urge this Subcommittee to 
            support efforts to establish grant programs that could 
            support our forest management education.

     As the Congressional Research Service detailed in its 
            October 5, 2020 report, the Good Neighbor Authority allows 
            states, counties, and Tribes to enter into a Good Neighbor 
            Agreement (GNA) with the USFS or Bureau of Land Management 
            (BLM) to perform forest, rangeland, and watershed 
            restoration work on the federal land managed by those 
            agencies.\9\ As also detailed in the report, in 2018, 
            Congress specified that, through Fiscal Year 2023, funds 
            received by a state through the sale of timber under a GNA 
            may be retained and used by a state on additional GNA 
            projects. However, no such provision exists for Tribes or 
            counties. Providing parity for Tribes and counties could 
            make these GNAs more attractive to enter into. There is 
            federal forest land adjacent to the Menominee forest, and 
            my Tribe would be very interested in bringing our cutting-
            edge practices to our neighboring federal lands under a 
            GNA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ Anne A. Riddle, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF11658, The Good Neighbor 
Authority on Federal Lands (2023), https://crsreports.Congress.gov/
product/pdf/IF/IF11658.

      As such, we would like to thank Representative Fulcher for 
            introducing bipartisan legislation (H.R. 1450, the 
            ``Treating Tribes and Counties as Good Neighbors Act'' 
            \10\) which seeks to address this problem by extending the 
            ability to retain timber receipts from GNA projects to 
            Tribes and counties for additional restoration 
            projects.\11\ This legislation would also improve cross-
            boundary restoration work by allowing restoration projects 
            to occur on non-federal lands as well as federal lands.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ Treating Tribes and Counties as Good Neighbors Act, H.R. 1450, 
118th Cong. (2023).
    \11\ H.R. Rep. No. 118-168, pt. 2, at 3 (2023), https://
www.congress.gov/118/crpt/hrpt168/CRPT-118hrpt168-pt2.pdf.
    \12\ Id.

      As a member of the Intertribal Timber Council (ITC), our Tribe 
            echoes the testimony of ITC President Cody Desautel before 
            this Subcommittee on May 23, 2023.\13\ In addition, we 
            would like to thank this Subcommittee for expeditiously 
            holding the hearing, both the House Natural Resources 
            Committee and the House Agriculture Committee for 
            unanimously reporting this legislation out, and the whole 
            House of Representatives for passing it by an overwhelming 
            bipartisan majority on a voice vote. Finally, we would like 
            to thank Senator Risch for introducing the companion 
            legislation in the Senate as S. 697.\14\ We urge the Senate 
            to expeditiously pass this bipartisan, commonsense 
            legislation to provide parity for Tribes and counties under 
            the Good Neighbor Authority.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ Legislative Hearing on H.R. 188, H.R. 932, ``Treating Tribes 
and Counties as Good Neighbors Act'', ``Continued Rapid Ohia Death 
Response Act of 2023'', ``FIRESHEDS Act'', ``Direct Hire to Fight 
Fires'', ``Emergency Wildfire Fighting Technology Act of 2023'', ``Fire 
Department Repayment Act of 2023'' and ``Forest Service Flexible 
Housing Partnerships Act of 2023'' Before the Subcomm. on Fed. Lands of 
the H. Comm. on Nat. Res., 118th Cong. (2023) (testimony of Cody 
Desautel, President, Intertribal Timber Council), https://
naturalresources.house.gov/uploadedfiles/testimony_desautel_.pdf.
    \14\ Treating Tribes and Counties as Good Neighbors Act, S. 697, 
118th Cong. (2023).

     As a member of the ITC, our Tribe also echoes the findings 
            of the 2023 Assessment of Indian Forests and Forest 
            Management in the United States \15\ and encourages this 
            Subcommittee to review and support the recommendations 
            outlined in the report. Pursuant to the National Indian 
            Forest Resources Management Act,\16\ this assessment of 
            Indian forest lands and management practices is produced 
            every ten years through a cooperative agreement between the 
            BIA Division of Forestry and the ITC. The 2023 report is 
            the fourth of its kind and offers recommendations to 
            improve the U.S. government's management of Indian forest 
            lands. In particular, we emphasize the importance of 
            increasing BIA forestry funding to achieve parity with the 
            USFS and BLM, clarifying federal responsibilities in 
            forestry co-management, and addressing immediate threats to 
            Tribal forests, such as wildfire resiliency, staff training 
            and workforce development, and education on controlled 
            burns. The Subcommittee should examine the annual budget 
            requests for forest management and fire management across 
            the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the 
            Interior for discrepancies in funding between Tribal 
            forests and federal forests, and demand parity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ Fourth Indian Mgmt. Assessment Team, Intertribal Timber 
Council, Assessment of Indian Forests and Forest Management in the 
United States (2023), https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/
media_document/ifmat_iv_report.pdf.
    \16\ 25 U.S.C. Sec. 3111(b).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion

    Thank you again for the invitation to provide testimony on 
opportunities to promote and enhance Tribal forest management. The 
Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin looks forward to continuing to work 
with this Subcommittee to advance the priorities articulated in this 
testimony, preserve the Menominee forest for generations to come, and 
advance sustained yield forestry practices throughout the United 
States.

                                 ______
                                 
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Skenadore. Now I would like to 
recognize Ms. Dawn Blake, Director of the Yurok Tribal Forestry 
Department.
    Ms. Blake, welcome. You have 5 minutes.

   STATEMENT OF DAWN BLAKE, DIRECTOR, YUROK TRIBAL FORESTRY 
                DEPARTMENT, KLAMATH, CALIFORNIA

    Ms. Blake. Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, members 
of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to speak on 
behalf of Yurok Tribe Forestry Department. My name is Dawn 
Blake. I am an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and a 
Yurok descendant. I became the Yurok Tribe Forestry Director in 
February 2021.
    My expertise in forest ecosystems started with my study of 
pileated woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are considered ecosystem 
engineers because they provide habitats for themselves and 
other animals, in part, by creating cavities in trees. Their 
presence and activity influenced the entire forest ecosystem.
    Native people are also ecosystem engineers. Fire management 
clears the way and invites other animals and species into the 
forest. Prohibition of placing low-intensity fires on the 
ground has prevented us from fulfilling this ecosystem role in 
the forest and initiating some of these long processes, such as 
snag development and cavity development. This has been our 
battle cry for decades, and while prescribed fire is happening 
again, Native people do not have control over the process.
    Fire management must return to tribal hands. Right now, 
burns are overly reliant on the BIA and other agencies. This 
creates a backlog of forest acres that should burn, including 
site preparation acres that allow for reforestation. We have 
dedicated significant time and resources to professional 
development and increasing qualifications for tribal members. 
We are capable and ready to step up. I strongly urge those who 
oversee prescribed fire to recognize this local expertise.
    Tribes also benefit from broader access to the forest. The 
tribes that I am affiliated with manage their land for multiple 
beneficial uses, including food and medicine. But we should 
continue to expand access and use.
    Our culture is inextricably linked to the land, and we need 
prescriptive solutions to enhance our culture and provide for a 
higher quality of life and human resilience.
    There are also funding issues that could be resolved. 
Tribes often need capital to complete projects and currently 
work on a reimbursement basis. However, reimbursement processes 
can be lengthy. For example, in these authorities that we are 
talking about, funds transferred from agencies like the Forest 
Service to the BIA, then make the funds available to the tribe. 
This takes a lot of time for the tribe to track down those 
funds as they go into the IFLA accounts. It would be better to 
have a mechanism for a direct transfer from the agencies to the 
tribes in these cases.
    Checkerboard jurisdictions. Our issues created by 
burdensome land transfer processes should also be addressed. 
The Yurok Tribe has both lands held in trust as well as fee-
simple land awaiting trust status. The fee-simple land is more 
difficult to manage, and subject to state jurisdiction 
different from Federal trust lands. This is an issue for the 
Tribe, which sometimes has fee-simple land positioned next to 
trust lands. Both areas have the same land use, but are subject 
to different jurisdictions. This increases vulnerability to 
lawbreakers, creates compliance issues, and complicates 
management.
    Frustratingly, the jurisdiction issues remain a problem 
throughout the several years it takes for the land to be taken 
into trust. One suggestion to ease this burden is for Congress 
to adopt language that includes tribal ownership as tribal land 
in fee simple, awaiting to be taken into trust.
    My effort as Director is more than just a job to me. It is 
a passion that reflects both my personal beliefs and culture. I 
appreciate working for a tribe that leads with its values. I 
hope to pass on my experience not just from a scientific 
perspective, but culturally.
    In my last 12 seconds I would like to veer from my script 
and just say that I dedicate my life and my career to 
increasing the health of my people in body, mind, and spirit, 
and I think that what we are talking about in forest health is 
really directly correlated to the health of the people who 
depend on that land, as well. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Ms. Blake follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dawn Blake, Director of the Yurok Tribal Forestry 
                               Department

I. Introduction

    Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, members of the 
Subcommittee, let me express my sincere thanks to you for inviting me 
to speak on behalf of the Yurok Tribe's Forestry Department about the 
important issues involved in forest land management.
    My name is Dawn Blake. I am an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley 
Tribe and a Yurok descendant. I became the Yurok Tribe Forestry 
Director in February 2021. In September 2022, I was appointed to the 
California State Board of Forestry of Fire Protection.
    Prior to becoming Director of the Forestry Department, I spent 20 
years as a wildlife biologist for the Hoopa Tribe's Forestry 
Department. As a biologist, I helped with various projects within the 
wildlife department, including the long-term demographic study of 
spotted owls (Strix occidentalis), known fate study of Pacific Fisher 
(Pekania pennanti), and my own study of pileated woodpeckers on the 
Hoopa Valley reservation. Additionally, I assisted with the capture and 
processing of spotted owls, fishers, bears, bobcats, mountain lions, 
and salamanders.
    I have also participated on the Tribe's Interdisciplinary Team for 
sales, including timber sales, and for Forest Management updates. In 
2020 I developed a team and carried out a Natural Resources Symposium 
for the local region highlighting some of the great works of the local 
tribes for restoration and conservation.
    My testimony will cover the following five main points: (1) the 
role of Native American people as ecosystem engineers; (2) the 
importance of relying on Tribe's expertise in managing prescribed 
burnings to improve forest health; (3) expanding forest access and 
tribal management power; (4) funding issues exacerbated by burdensome 
administrative processes; and (5) complications related to checkerboard 
jurisdiction.
II. Natives Americans are Ecosystem Engineers

    My expertise in forest ecosystems started with my study of pileated 
woodpeckers. Woodpeckers provide habitats for themselves and other 
animals, in part, by creating cavities in trees. Their excavation of 
these holes and presence in the ecosystem furnishes important habitats 
for a multitude of other animals to use the forest. They are considered 
ecosystem engineers. The cavities that woodpeckers place on the 
landscape are relative to their body size from 3 in downy woodpeckers 
to 24 in pileated woodpeckers. For example, large mesocarnivores, such 
as fishers, use cavities that pileated woodpeckers place on the 
landscape. Each cavity has the capability to host a suite of animals 
throughout the forest.
    In many ways, the native people are also ecosystem engineers. Our 
forest management takes a holistic approach. The role we play in the 
forest can welcome and improve the success of other animals within the 
requisite proximity. Every species here evolved with fire by way of 
native management of our respective spaces. The residual tress in this 
region still represent that management. Large diameter hardwood and 
conifers that are becoming uncommon on the landscape embody the effects 
of low intensity fire management. We do not know what the next 
recruitment of trees will look like in the absence of this management 
or the effect of the dependent humans and animals. Cavity dwellers and 
fire management go hand in hand. The prohibition of placing low 
intensity fires on the ground in regular intervals has prevented us 
from fulfilling an essential part of our jobs as ecosystem engineers. 
Now many of these cavity dwelling species are in peril because fire has 
been excluded for the last 100 years.
    Prescribed fire is the most efficient way to reduce fuels and to 
treat acreage. The number of acres that need to be treated throughout 
the country to discourage uncontrollably high intensity fires is 
daunting. And the current method for doing this is becoming antiquated 
and is unable to sustain the scaling necessary.
    This has been our battle cry for many decades and while we are 
finally being heard, and prescribed fire is happening again, the native 
people do not have much control over the process. The California 
legislature recognizes cultural practitioners as burn bosses. A similar 
framework at the federal level would be beneficial to tribal people and 
the ecosystem.
    It is not only a critical time in traditional ecological knowledge, 
but culturally as well. I burned my grandmother's basketry patch with 
her when I was 13. She did this on an annual basis to ensure she had 
sticks for her baby baskets. That was in the 80's. As she aged out of 
active management, her basketry material areas have been unmanaged, 
while simultaneously her type of burning has increasingly been 
criminalized and deemed as arson. We are now at a place in time where 
local expertise is in peril as many of the threatened and endangered 
species of our forests also are.
III. Fire Management Must Rely on Native Expertise

    Fire management must come back to Tribal hands, at least for the 
tribes with capacity and expertise to manage it. The Hoopa and Yurok 
tribes have dedicated significant time and resources to professional 
development and increasing qualifications for Tribal Members. Now, 
multiple Tribal individuals can navigate federal agencies and conduct 
conversations around the same science-based systems.
    However, the process for implementing a successful burn is arduous 
and overly reliant upon the BIA and other federal agencies. This 
creates a tremendous backlog in forest acres that are slated to burn, 
even site preparation is backlogged in this process, and there are so 
many other reasons to prescribe fire for community protection, culture, 
and forest health. Even though not every tribe's capacity to manage 
prescribed fire is identical, they are nonetheless regulated 
identically. This undermines the decades that we have dedicated to 
raising our qualifications to someday prescribe fire on a large scale 
or prescribe fire at all. Jurisdiction resides with federal agencies. 
Our ability to develop and apply our local expertise is stymied. At the 
same time, those who oversee prescribed fire must rely on the local 
expertise to efficiently manage intensity.
    Likewise, when I caught woodpeckers, I knew when the conditions 
were correct, even though I was not able to scientifically list or 
catch the variables that would make a successful capture event. There 
was a feeling about it that I was sure of. I have had the great 
pleasure to have witnessed a local expert in action, and he has a great 
sense of the conditions and exactly the way a fire will burn. Then, the 
fire behaves as he said. Local expertise is invaluable and encourages 
safe practices.
IV. We Must Expand Forest Access and Tribal Management

    The current framework facilitating formal agreements between tribes 
and federal agencies related to land management is a great starting 
point but could be improved. The framework has successfully given ease 
to partnership for the goal of reducing forest threats that might 
affect tribes and resources on Tribal land. Historically, the 
agreements tend to focus on fuel reduction projects. However, while 
fuel reduction is a worthy cause, we must also consider other causes.
    For instance, tribes benefit from broader access to the forest for 
food and medicine. The tribes that I am affiliated with manage their 
land for multiple beneficial uses in addition to timber production, but 
some tribes do not have that ability and have lost access to the 
forest. Of all ethnic groups, Natives have the lowest age of mortality. 
Although this issue is multifaceted, certain forest management goals 
can provide health benefits. Some tribes are missing some of the food 
sources that were integral to their wellbeing over the last 50-100 
years. That is a trust responsibility issue that can be supported by 
several federal agencies. Now that native people are nearly wholly 
reliant on packaged foods, and many reservations are considered food 
deserts, increasing the ability for natives to access the forest for 
food and medicine, provided by forest management, is vital.
    Our culture is inextricably tied to the forest, and the ability to 
weigh into decision making action within our ancestral footprint can 
provide opportunities for human resilience. This concept is most easily 
demonstrated in youth initiatives. Our children have naturally high 
ACES scores and provide them with resilience despite their traumas. As 
I've learned in Trauma Care Training, you cannot change the experience 
of children, but you can provide them with resilience. The most 
efficient way to do so is through culture. We have seen the 
extraordinary success of individuals through these types of initiates 
who have flourished in their lives and careers, but who would otherwise 
seemingly be on a fast track to prison.
    In many cases these are lands within the ancestral footprint. 
Getting to co-management rather than co-stewardship will be a great 
endeavor. Co-stewardship has materialized as Tribes essentially being 
contractors for the federal agencies.
V. Funding Issues

    Although the relationship building between tribes and the federal 
government has been positive, there are some issues that could be 
resolved, especially when it comes to funding. Tribes often need 
capital to complete projects, and work on a reimbursement basis. 
However, the reimbursement process can be lengthy and inefficient.
    For example, Forest Services first transfers funds to the BIA, who 
in turn make funds available to tribes. However, tribes must follow up 
with BIA frequently. This process is cumbersome for tribes and diverts 
resources away from other priorities. If there were a mechanism for the 
transfer of funds directly from agencies to tribes, that would be 
better for tribes.
    Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law have provided funding for much needed projects. Lack 
of internal personnel to carry out necessary tasks sometimes makes it 
difficult to commit to funding. Consequently, we have lost out on 
opportunities that the Tribe has need for. It would be beneficial for 
the federal government to consider alternative funding processes. For 
example, the government could consider delivering funding to tribes in 
a similar manner that they are delivered to states.
VI. Complications with Checkerboard Jurisdiction

    Checkerboard jurisdiction issues created by burdensome land 
transfer processes should be addressed and simplified. Tribes have been 
getting land back, both through initiatives and through tribal 
constitutional goals. The Yurok Tribe is no different and has both land 
held in trust and fee simple land awaiting trust status.
    Ultimately, this is a great feat that moves the tribe in the right 
direction. However, the lands in fee simple are more difficult to 
manage and subject to a different jurisdiction than trust land. This 
has been an issue for the Yurok Tribe, which sometimes has fee simple 
land positioned next to trust land. Both areas have the same land use 
but are subject to different jurisdictions--state jurisdiction for the 
fee simple land and federal jurisdiction for trust land. This makes 
newly acquired land vulnerable to lawbreakers, difficult to manage for 
beneficial use, and expensive in the interim.
    To make matters more frustrating, the process for taking fee simple 
land into trust is lengthy, often taking multiple years to complete. 
All the while, the jurisdictional issues remain. There are several 
solutions for this. One suggestion is to adopt language that would 
include tribal ownership as tribal land in fee simple awaiting to be 
taken into trust.
VII. Conclusion

    At a young age, I recognized the great affinity that my people have 
for woodpeckers. They are represented in our tribal regalia and given 
great reverence and appreciation. When I was a young mother of a red-
headed son, he was regularly referred to as pileated and acorn 
woodpecker in both the Hoopa and Yurok language by my elders. 
Eventually, I went on to develop my own affinity for the bird. That 
affinity turned into a career of service and commitment to improving 
the conditions of wildlife and the forest.
    My effort as director is more than just a job to me, it is a 
passion that reflects both my personal beliefs and culture. It is the 
only career I have known; a career that has allowed me to raise and 
teach my four children, and I appreciate being able to work for a Tribe 
that leads with its values. I hope to pass down my experiences, not 
just from a scientific perspective, but culturally, too. To do my part 
in maintaining a continuum of traditions, food sources, and to preserve 
the bond between tribal members and our inherent cultural core.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Ms. Blake. Finally, I would like to 
recognize Mr. Phil Rigdon, the Vice President of the 
Intertribal Council, and a member of the Yakama Nation.
    Mr. Rigdon, welcome back. You have 5 minutes.

 STATEMENT OF PHIL RIGDON, VICE PRESIDENT, INTERTRIBAL TIMBER 
         COUNCIL, YAKAMA NATION, TOPPENISH, WASHINGTON

    Mr. Rigdon. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member 
Neguse, Chairman Westerman, and the distinguished Subcommittee 
members. I am Phil Rigdon.

    My Indian name is Shiakul, Inme Waniksha Shiakul. I am an 
enrolled member of the Yakama Nation from south central 
Washington State. I serve as the Vice President of the 
Intertribal Timber Council, and I appreciate the opportunity to 
share some of Yakama Nation's success and challenges in 
forestry, and priorities for improvement to Federal policies 
with respect to the management of tribal forest lands.

    Yakama Nation Reservation consists of approximately 1.4 
million acres, of which 650,000 acres is forest and woodlands. 
These lands provide our way of life with water, food, medicine, 
spiritual values, employment, and revenue. We operate modern, 
innovative, and comprehensive natural resource programs 
premised on our connectedness among the land, resources, and 
our people. For example, when we look at managing a piece of 
land, we are not just looking at one resource. We are thinking 
about our timber, habitat for our foods such as deer, elk, the 
roots, the berries, protection of our water that support our 
salmon, our way of life.

    So, as we have managed our forests, there are many 
challenges that we face. And with respect to that, we are very 
proud of what we have accomplished on our land itself, and it 
is an important part of who we are. But one of our main 
challenges is the inability to have the necessary workforce to 
meet the needs of our land and our people. We are fortunate 
with the conversation going on here as we expand out and look 
at doing work on adjacent forests. But it is an important role 
to play and to what we are trying to see within just what is 
happening on our reservation.

    Last year, the BIA only completed one timber sale at the 
Yakama Nation. Under the National Indian Forest Resource 
Management Act and implementing regulations, express trust 
duties were established for Federal management of Indian 
forests. Unfortunately, due to the workforce challenges and 
lack of funding, the BIA Forestry Program at the Yakama Nation 
has failed to hire many dozens of vacant forestry positions for 
more than a decade.

    This neglect, evident via a profound lack of staffing in 
the BIA Forestry Program, has forced the Yakama Nation to 
accept lost revenue, as well as put our forest infrastructure 
at risk, through sheer neglect. This is a fundamental breach of 
the United States' fiduciary trust responsibility owed to the 
Yakama Nation. Jobs are threatened, Yakama members are losing 
trust revenue that we should be receiving through a viable 
timber economy.

    As recommended by the most recent Indian Forest Management 
Assessment Team Report, improved management by the BIA and more 
funding and resources along with educational and training 
programs are needed to ensure Federal programs can fulfill its 
fiduciary duties. Tribal lands must be appropriately 
prioritized to respond to and recover after wildfires. We need 
to see those things such as in 2015, when the Cougar Creek Fire 
burned over 50,000 acres, most of it on our reservation that 
hit some of our most productive forest lands.

    It is important to note that Yakama Forest Products was 
founded in 1985. It is the second-largest tribal enterprise 
employer on the Yakama Reservation, providing 220 living-wage 
jobs in the poorest county in Washington State. However, 
without better forest management and modernization of our mill, 
Yakama Forest Products will be forced to curtail its employment 
and could be forced to shut its doors. Hundreds of livelihoods 
are at stake.

    The inability of the BIA to adequately supply us with 
enough logs annually is having an impact on our ability to 
secure long-term financing for our mills, despite aggressively 
pursuing bank financing, Federal grant opportunities, and tax 
incentives. Modernizing our mill is crucial. Forest 
infrastructure is crucial for the work that we are doing 
jointly on adjacent lands, but critical for what is happening 
on the reservation.

    Even with these challenges, Yakama Nation is trying to meet 
our forest needs and our innovative approaches. An example 
would be the LiDAR-Assisted Single Tree Forest Inventory. In 
collaboration with the BIA, this project utilizes LiDAR imagery 
and inventory plots to create an accurate inventory database at 
a single tree level. Implementing this ground-breaking approach 
assists us in making better forest management decisions, and is 
currently being utilized to modernize the Yakama Nation's 
forest management plan.

    Furthermore, the Tribal Forestry Program has used this 
LiDAR inventory to complete a fire risk analysis across our 
landscape. This analysis is assisting us in prioritizing fuels 
and forest health treatments that will provide more resilience 
to insects, disease, and catastrophic fire.

    Thank you for this opportunity to testify about the many 
opportunities and challenges we face within tribal forest 
management and also the leadership that tribes, I believe, are 
doing with the active management that we do across our 
landscape. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Rigdon follows:]
   Prepared Statement of Phil Rigdon, Superintendent, Department of 
           Natural Resources, Yakama Nation & Vice-President,
                       Intertribal Timber Council

    Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and distinguished 
subcommittee members, I am Phil Rigdon, a proud member of the Yakama 
Nation, Natural Resources Superintendent for the Yakama Nation in 
south-central Washington State, and I also serve as Vice-President of 
the Intertribal Timber Council (ITC). I appreciate this opportunity to 
share some of the Yakama Nation's successes and challenges in forestry 
and priorities for improvements to federal policies with respect to the 
management of tribal forest land.
    The Yakama Nation Reservation consists of approximately 1.4 million 
acres, of which approximately 650,000 acres is forest and woodlands. 
These lands provide our way of life with water, food, medicine, 
spiritual values, employment, and revenue to the Yakama Nation. We 
operate modern, innovative, and comprehensive natural resource programs 
premised on connectedness among the land, resources, and people. For 
example, when we look at managing a piece of land, we're not just 
looking at one resource. We're thinking about the timber value, habitat 
resources for our deer and elk hunters, impacts to water quality where 
salmon live, and so forth.
    I believe the Indian forest management approach is well balanced 
and allows for forest management practices that can emphasize several 
important categories and uses including primitive, general, recreation, 
traditional use, winter wildlife habitat and riparian areas. It is more 
focused on conservation of a resource than prohibition of an activity. 
We protect our resources; yet we understand that utilization is 
essential to sustain the health of our forests and meet and sustain 
economic, ecological, and cultural values. We rely on our forests to 
provide employment and entrepreneurial opportunities and to generate 
income needed to care for the land and provide services for our 
communities.
Indian Forest Management Assessment Team Report

    Unlike any other federal forests, Indian forests and their 
management, under the directive of the National Indian Forest Resources 
Management Act of 1990, are reviewed by an independent scientific panel 
every ten years. Earlier this year, for the fourth time since 1994, the 
Indian Forest Management Assessment Team (IFMAT) issued a report. A 
team of nationally known experts in forest management conduct the 
assessment and prepare this report for Congress. Among other 
conclusions, IFMAT IV found that tribal forestry departments are 
underfunded and understaffed compared to their neighbors and high stand 
density conflated with limited processing infrastructure has created 
complex forest health conditions. Specifically the report notes that, 
``for the fourth time the IFMAT analysis finds Indian trust forest 
lands funded at about a third per acre of comparable federal forests.'' 
The report also found that annual timber harvests are only 50% of the 
allowable levels under tribal forest management plans, resulting in 
tens of millions of dollars in lost annual revenue and employment 
opportunities for tribal communities and deteriorating forest health. 
We hope that Congress will take a serious look at this report and act 
on its recommendations.
Tribes partnering with federal agencies for forest management on 
        adjacent lands

    Many tribes, including the Yakama Nation, retain off-reservation 
treaty rights on ceded lands that became National Forests. Catastrophic 
wildfire on these forests directly and negatively impacts tribes. Since 
those retained rights are tied to specific areas by treaty, executive 
order, or agreements with the federal government, tribes are 
disproportionately impacted when those areas are devastated by 
wildfire. Even with effective treatments on our own lands, severe 
wildfires from adjacent federal lands inflict significant damage and 
economic cost to tribal forests and resources.
    As you know, authorities provided by the Tribal Forest Protection 
Act (TFPA) allow tribes to petition the Secretaries of Agriculture and 
Interior to conduct projects on federal land to reduce threats to 
adjacent tribal lands, trust resources, and values--including 
ecological, cultural or archaeological sites. The 2018 Farm Bill 
contained important expansions of TFPA authorities and also gave tribes 
and counties the authority to enter into Good Neighbor Agreements (GNA) 
with federal agencies. The Yakama Nation is currently using these 
authorities in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest to make 
improvements in an area adjacent to the northern exterior boundary of 
the Yakama Reservation that has shown increased susceptibility to fire, 
insect and disease outbreaks, declining habitat, and degrading aquatic 
habitat. This area is part of the tribe's aboriginal lands where ceded 
rights to hunt, fish, and gather are maintained. Also, the area 
includes features unique to the Yakama Nation, including trust 
resources, treaty rights, and/or culturally important areas and 
resources. The intent of this project--the South Fork Tieton project--
is to implement vegetation and fuels reduction treatments on the 
landscape to reduce brush, undergrowth and even tree density in over-
stocked stands thereby reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. 
Treatments within the project area include commercial and non-
commercial thinning, and additional service work items in a cooperative 
effort between the Yakama Nation and the U.S. Forest Service. This 
project will also contribute economic opportunities for local 
communities and supplement the only remaining log milling facility in 
Yakima County--our own Yakama Forest Products.
    While we have found some success in using these authorities to 
carry out important forest management and fire prevention activities on 
adjacent lands, these programs must be adequately funded and provide 
training and technical support so tribes have the resources and staff 
to implement cross-boundary projects, and recurring funding must be 
sufficient to maintain tribes existing forestry needs before a tribe 
can take on additional responsibilities. These are among the 
recommendations included in the IFMAT report.
    Tribal land must also be appropriately prioritized for response to 
and recovery after a wildfire. In 2015, the Cougar Creek fire burned 
over 50,000 acres of forested lands, the majority on the Yakama 
Reservation. We lost more than one-half billion board feet of timber in 
that fire with an estimated potential loss of $100 million in timber 
revenue. A significant amount of that fire was on some of the most 
productive commercial forest lands on the Yakama Reservation, 
critically important cultural areas. For the Yakama Nation to respond 
to the devastation, we requested a $4.1 million supplemental budget 
from DOI that included a salvage strategy. While our request through 
DOI was denied, we were eventually successful in getting funding from 
the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) at the U.S. 
Department of Agriculture and other avenues to help salvage some of the 
timber and conduct other recovery work. This episode shows that the 
protection and restoration of tribal trust resources must be 
appropriately prioritized by the federal government in the aftermath of 
a wildfire.
Workforce needs and training

    As I mentioned earlier, the Yakama Nation has a 650,000-acre 
forest, and last year the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) only completed 
one (1) timber sale. Under the National Indian Forest Resource 
Management Act and implementing regulations, express trust duties were 
established for federal management of Indian forests. Unfortunately, 
due to workforce challenges and lack of funding, the BIA Forestry 
Program at the Yakama Agency has failed to hire many dozens of vacant 
forestry positions for more than a decade. In 2014, the BIA Director 
identified that BIA Forestry at the Yakama Agency was, in his words, 
``on the verge of collapse.'' The program has only continued to 
deteriorate since then.
    The Yakama Nation made the decision, and consistent with the Indian 
Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEAA), for the 
federal government to provide direct services through the BIA Forestry 
Program. Importantly, forestry management directly implicates Treaty-
reserved rights and privileges. However, the lack of staffing in the 
BIA Forestry Program has forced the Yakama Nation to accept lost 
revenue through sheer neglect. This is a dramatic breach of the United 
States' trust obligations established by Treaty, statute, and 
regulation.
    This situation of lost economic benefit has put Yakama Member-owned 
logging companies out of business. The Yakama Nation's commercial mill 
can no longer sustain itself on timber harvested from the Yakama 
Nation's own forest--threatening over 200 Yakama Member-held jobs. 
Yakama Members are losing the trust revenues that they should be 
receiving from a viable timber economy. As recommended by the IFMAT 
report, improved management at the BIA and more funding and resources 
are needed to ensure that federal direct service programs can fulfill 
this federal duty so that the Yakama Nation and its members can benefit 
from the forest resources. There is also a great need for stronger 
educational and training programs provided by the federal government to 
ensure the BIA and tribes can hire and retain the workforce needed to 
staff and maintain these critical forestry programs.
Infrastructure needs

    Founded in 1995, Yakama Forest Products (YFP) is the second largest 
tribal enterprise employer on the Yakama Reservation providing more 
than 220 living-wage jobs in the poorest county in Washington State. 
However, without better forest management and modernization of our 
mills, YFP will be forced to curtail employment and could be forced to 
shut its doors. Hundreds of livelihoods are at stake. YFP operates two 
mills that process Ponderosa Pine, Doug Fir, and other species. 
Completed in 1998 and 2001 as employment projects, these mills are no 
longer cost-competitive, and significant upgrades are needed to ensure 
that YFP remains a growing and competitive enterprise.
    The inability of the BIA to adequately supply us with enough logs 
annually to run at capacity and sell saw logs to supplement our cash-
flows and finalize our forest management plan is having an impact on 
our ability to secure long-term financing for our mill. We are 
requesting immediate assistance from the federal government in 
collaborating on short and long-term solutions for YFP to stay active 
as south-central Washington's milling infrastructure. YFP has created 
the opportunities to bring over $4 billion of economic benefit to our 
region since operations started during the late 1990s and we must 
continue this progress.
    Modernizing our mills is crucial to help us remain competitive by 
achieving improved energy efficiency, increased product recovery and 
throughput, enhanced product quality, and ensuring safer working 
conditions. Installing a wood-fired energy system for lumber drying 
will significantly reduce propane consumption and fossil-based 
Greenhouse Gas emissions. We also need to develop steep ground logging 
capacity on Yakama lands to reduce overstocking on fire-prone 
forestland; produce biochar from dead, non-merchantable forest 
material; and sequester biochar in soil and in long-term products, such 
as filtration systems for wastewater treatment plants. We estimate the 
total cost of the modernization project to be around $130 million and 
while our staff has been aggressive in pursuing private bank financing, 
federal grant opportunities, and tax incentives, we have found that the 
lack of a consistent timber sale program and a modernized forest 
management plan and other factors have hindered our ability to secure 
these critical financial resources. We would urge this committee to 
look at ways to make the many federal grant programs funded in recent 
years through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction 
Act and other legislation more accessible to tribes and give us the 
needed technical assistance and capacity to compete for these funds. 
This is in line with recommendations in the IFMAT report calling for a 
review of national policy on providing tribes with funding and 
technical assistance and its effect on the tribes' ability to develop a 
forest products infrastructure. Without forest infrastructure, our 
ability to implement this important work is jeopardized.
    Even with these challenges, the Yakama Nation is driven to 
sustainably manage our forestlands to meet the needs of our people and 
resources our lands provide. An example would be the Lidar-Assisted 
Single-Tree Forest Inventory. In collaboration with the BIA Yakama 
Agency, this project utilizes lidar imaging and inventory plots to 
create an accurate inventory database at a single-tree level. 
Implementing this ground-breaking approach assists us in making better 
forest management decisions and is currently being used to modernize 
Yakama Nation's updated forest management plan. Furthermore, the Tribal 
Forestry Program has used the lidar inventory to complete a fire risk 
analysis across our landscape. That analysis is assisting in 
prioritizing fuels and forest health treatments that will provide more 
resilience to insects, disease, and catastrophic fire.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to testify about the many 
opportunities and challenges ahead with respect to tribal forest 
management and I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Rigdon, and thank you to all 
our panelists for your testimony. Now I will turn to the 
Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Westerman, for 
his questioning.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany. And, again, 
thank you to the witnesses for your testimony today.
    Councilman Rice, as I discussed in my opening statement, I 
had the good pleasure to visit the Mescalero Tribe in the past 
couple of years, and it was astonishing the difference between 
the management on the tribal land versus the adjacent Lincoln 
National Forest.
    And I can see behind your shoulder there the real force 
behind that: Ms. Thora Padilla, the forester who showed me 
around that day. If you had the authority, if we gave you the 
authority to manage the Lincoln National Forest and you could 
unleash Ms. Padilla and her workforce, what difference could we 
expect to see?
    What would you do on the Lincoln National Forest that is 
not being done now?
    Mr. Rice. We would like to do some logging. Also, more 
hazardous fuels reduction. And to conduct more projects 
throughout the forest, not just on the border, and to require 
Federal land managers to adopt the tribal forestry practices in 
their management plans.
    Mr. Westerman. I am guessing everybody would probably be 
happy with that. There would be more elk on the Lincoln 
National Forest, as well.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Rice. Yes.
    Mr. Westerman. Mr. Rigdon, it is good to see you back here 
again. And you talked about in your testimony how Yakama has 
invested in mill infrastructure, and how you have created 
markets for the timber that comes off.
    But you also said that tribes are only harvesting about 50 
percent of the allowable timber harvest under the Tribal Forest 
Management Plans. What tools can Congress provide that would 
increase the sustainable timber harvesting among tribes so you 
could start meeting your timber targets?
    Mr. Rigdon. Thank you. First of all, I think we have the 
capability. It is resource-driven. But one of the biggest 
things I think that we really face throughout the West is 
having viable foresters, silviculturists, and leadership, and 
having bodies to be able to go out and do the work. I think 
that is one of our biggest challenges that we all face right 
now.
    So, really putting things into place so that we can build a 
workforce that is able to go out and do the necessary work to 
lead in the silviculture, and I do think to look how the 
Menominees, the Mescaleros, the Yakamas, the Colvilles, and the 
Yuroks, each of us have a unique place on how we approach. And 
I think getting forestry folks out there and allowing us to do 
that, but also having the resources to be able to support the 
type of forest infrastructure that is necessary. So, I think 
there is that investment.
    But also, people don't understand. Tribes follow all the 
Federal rules, the NEPA, we follow NHPA, we follow ESA, we do 
all of that and jump through all of those hoops. How do you 
streamline some of that to allow us to be able to achieve that 
landscape-level kind of approach? Come and see what we are 
doing throughout our reservations, and help us build the tools 
that are necessary.
    And I think it is a resource-driven thing, and also looking 
at how do you get that next generation of youth really 
interested in being foresters, and really interested in being 
or working in the woods.
    And the other part that I think is critical that people 
don't talk about is our forest infrastructure. If we don't have 
a million infrastructure, it is going to hurt our ability to do 
the type of management that we want. So, I think there needs to 
be a group that needs to really discuss and put the resources 
there, because from log truck drivers, to the loggers, to all 
the aspects of it, I think, is a critical need across not just 
us, but throughout the whole interior West.
    Mr. Westerman. Would you care to make a prediction on the 
UW Texas football game on the record?
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Rigdon. Go Dawgs.
    Mr. Westerman. Mr. Desautel, I had the chance to spend time 
with you touring the Colville. And you have also talked about 
tribal capacity is one of the primary impediments to increasing 
the pace and scale of management practices, like Mr. Rigdon was 
talking about.
    How could Congress help address this challenge and promote 
careers in forestry among tribal members?
    Mr. Desautel. Well, I think the easiest first step is to 
increase funding for BIA. Most of the funding that goes to 
tribes for forest management comes from the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs. And if you look at the most recent IFMAT report, and 
again, the past three had similar findings, they are vastly 
underfunded compared to other Federal agencies.
    If BIA had three times as much funding, presumably much of 
that funding would be passed down through 638 contracts to 
tribes. And much of the funding that we get now is competitive, 
so it makes it very difficult for us to grow a workforce that 
is needed to do the type of work that is needed to accomplish 
our forest management goals and, as I noted in my testimony, 
not just accomplish our management goals at home, but have 
extra capacity to do that cross-boundary work with our partners 
across the fence, whether that be the Forest Service, BLM, or 
State.
    Mr. Westerman. And you have also talked about the 
difference between fires on tribal land and Federal land, and I 
saw some examples of that when I was out visiting. Can you 
elaborate on some of the key differences between the wildfire 
management and suppression practices on tribal versus Forest 
Service property?
    Mr. Desautel. Well, I can speak for Colville, but I think 
this holds true across most of Indian Country, that tribes 
understand the value of fire and what place it has in the 
ecosystem. So, we are much more likely to do prescribed burning 
in the spring and fall, we are much more aggressive at initial 
attack in the summer when fire shouldn't be burning.
    So, what you see for post-fire effects on reservations 
tends to be better post-fire conditions than what you would see 
on adjacent Federal land. I think that Mr. Rice had a good 
example, where fires didn't get attacked in the initial attack, 
and ultimately you had that bad wind.
    What we have experienced over the last 5 to 10 years at 
Colville is that we are seeing the vast majority of the acres 
burning under those absolute worst burning conditions, those 
hottest, driest, windiest days. So, what you are seeing for 
post-fire conditions is something much more severe, much worse 
than what we would experience historically, particularly if you 
look at fire use by tribes pre-contact, where much of that 
burning happened on the shoulders of fire season where you had 
beneficial resource impacts from fire use at that point.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I recognize Ms. Leger 
Fernandez for 5 minutes for questioning.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you very much, and it is always 
difficult to come after a forester when we are talking about 
forests, except for the fact that I always learn so much from 
our Chair and his knowledge of good forest practices.
    Thank you so very much for coming and sharing your 
experiences, and I always really find it interesting. I mean, 
you are talking about forests across many different states, 
many different tribes, but some of the same themes keep 
emerging. And that is the benefit of this hearing, and I thank 
you for pulling it together, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member.
    I want to go to a favorite place. I love the Mescalero 
Apache Reservation, loved being there this summer, looking 
forward to being there in a couple of months once again. If you 
could share with us some of the 638 expansion programs, Mr. 
Rice, that you have done, because your recommendation is that 
we make this permanent. And we just heard about the importance 
of providing the funding to the BIA so that when you 638 those 
programs there is enough funding to actually carry out the 
intended purpose.
    So, Mr. Rice, could you share a little bit about what you 
have been able to do with that 638 funding?
    And then I would love to hop on over to Colville and get a 
sense from them, as well.
    Mr. Rice. Thank you for that question. Unfortunately, I am 
not prepared for that question right now, but I will get back 
with you as soon as I can.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. OK, thank you very much. Well, let me 
talk a little bit about the mill then, you raised what happened 
when the mill had to shut down. Do you think that it is 
possible to bring a mill back? And what would it take to do 
that? Because you see that as key for the forest, is that 
right, Mr. Rice?
    Mr. Rice. Yes. Thank you. The sawmills, looking at bringing 
it back again, there is other potential as far as biomass and 
the sawmill just breaks even.
    So, there are other potential areas as far as biomass and 
other value-added processing to get it reopened.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. I think there is, yes. I really 
appreciate the fact that technology has evolved, and there are 
lots of different opportunities about being able to use the 
resources from your forests.
    Mr. Rice. Yes.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Is that kind of what you are getting 
at?
    Mr. Rice. Yes. Also, just going back to the pellets, like, 
pellets you could use the whole tree, where there is no waste. 
We use everything. And that is where the biomass would come in.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Yes, thank you for that.
    Mr. Desautel, do you want to add a little bit to the 638?
    And then I do want to hear from Miss Dawn. I have about a 
minute, 36.
    Mr. Desautel. I will be brief. Additional 638 funding, or 
just the additional forestry funding that would come to tribes 
through 638 contracts in the BIA would be a great help in 
growing that workforce.
    But that funding doesn't have to come just from the BIA. If 
that 638 contract authority that we have for TFPA is expanded 
to just the Department of Agriculture in general, that gives us 
even more flexibility to continue to build that workforce, to 
continue to build that partnership with the Forest Service or 
BLM.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Right, and I think that is the whole 
benefit of the expansion, right, and we need to make sure that 
we, across so many different fields, not just this one, that we 
expand beyond BIA. Sorry if I limited it, but I did intend to 
have it as expansion.
    Ms. Blake, the importance of looking at how we look at 
prescribed burns and how we protect things, could you expand a 
little bit more on how you are looking at these problems that 
we face with regards to both pursuing prescribed burns and then 
fighting them?
    As you know, or you might not know, but we had a huge 
problem in my place that I am from with regards to prescribed 
burns that got out of control. So, we always want to be 
learning lessons.
    Ms. Blake. We have been trying to develop capacity in this 
arena for decades, and trying to navigate the system so that 
this prescribed burning can come back into tribal hands, and to 
be able to put fire on the landscape at a larger scale.
    At this point, we want to do prescribed burning on 
watersheds, not just a few acres at a time. It is the most 
efficient way to reduce fuel. And where we are, it is really 
expensive work to do mechanical treatments and other types of 
treatments to reduce fuel. So, that ability to do prescribed 
fire is extraordinarily important.
    We have to rely too much on other jurisdictions in order 
for us to be able to implement fire, and in the meantime we are 
not developing our local expertise in order to do that. And 
where prescribed fires happen, you have to rely on local 
expertise because a burn boss can come from anywhere throughout 
the country, but in order for the prescribed fire to consume 
properly or to not burn at too high intensity, you really have 
to depend on the expertise in that area and the local fuels and 
conditions.
    So, as tribes, we would really like that to come back into 
our own hands. And as you know, so many members of this 
Committee have said, we have done this for millennia, but now 
we are not able to implement this on our own. And I would 
really appreciate having that back.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. OK, thank you so very much.
    And my time has expired. I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady yields. I will recognize the 
Ranking Member for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Neguse. Well, I thank the Chairman. It is tough 
following the Chairman of the Full Committee, but it is even 
more difficult following the Subcommittee Chairwoman, Ms. Leger 
Fernandez. So, I want to just echo her remarks and associate 
myself with my colleague's sentiments.
    And she asked the question of you, Ms. Blake, that I had 
intended to ask, and I thought your answer was very revealing 
and, I think, instructive in terms of some of the 
considerations that this Committee and the other committees of 
jurisdiction need to make as we consider funding decisions.
    And I would just simply say I appreciate every witness, 
your testimony today, both the written testimony you submitted 
and your oral testimony.
    And I would also say that I think, for me, the takeaway 
among many takeaways is that it is not as though we don't know 
the challenges. It is very, very clear. You all have 
articulated them. They have been well documented in the 2023 
Indian Forest Management Assessment. The challenges are very 
clearly stated. The question is will the Congress have the 
political will to do what is necessary to help you resolve and 
ameliorate those challenges.
    And that starts principally, as one of our witnesses 
testified, I think, with making very specific, intentional 
decisions as it relates to BIA funding, and certainly something 
I support, and plussing up of various accounts that we know 
will ultimately be distributed to the tribes.
    It also means, I think, redoubling some of the investments 
that we made in the Inflation Reduction Act and in the IIJA, 
which have inured to the benefit of Americans, of tribal 
communities, of everyone. And, of course, it means continuing 
to be collaborative and looking to all of you as partners as we 
continue this important work. So, I thank you for being here. I 
have no questions and want to again thank the Chairman for 
holding this hearing, and I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you very much, and the gentleman yields. 
I am going to conclude questioning here. First of all, I would 
like to ask a couple of questions of Mr. Skenadore.
    It is great to have you here. When I was in the State 
Senate, I represented Menominee County, and it is always a 
privilege to be able to work with the Menominee Tribe.
    Menominee Tribal Enterprises has been in business for a 
long time and producing wood for America. What would forest 
management look like on Menominee tribal lands if you didn't 
have that mill?
    Mr. Skenadore. Thank you for the question. We would have a 
much more densely populated forest. We would have much older 
trees than we do. We would also have a lot more fuel on the 
forest floors. I believe our wildfire risk would have grown 
exponentially.
    I like to say Menominee Tribal Enterprise is in the 
business of forest management. But as a result, we get logs to 
turn into boards. So, those decisions to thin the forest, to 
selectively harvest, to try to make the forest better, all 
really relate to the quality of the forest that we have right 
now today.
    Mr. Tiffany. How many tribal members have jobs currently at 
MTE?
    Mr. Skenadore. We employ about 240 employees. We try really 
hard to have living-wage jobs for all of them, but that 
includes sawmill employees, forestry employees, and it also 
includes our contractors who are out in the forest, taking down 
trees.
    Mr. Tiffany. Well, thank you so much for the work you do. 
And MTE is always recognized as a fine mill that we have in 
northern Wisconsin amongst so many. And they are vital, aren't 
they, for us to be able to do proper forest management?
    Mr. Rigdon, I think you said something about, I am not sure 
I caught it clearly, but that you had a lack of wood at a time. 
Could you explain that a little bit more? I didn't catch all of 
that.
    Mr. Rigdon. Yes. During the last 10 years, due to the lack 
of forestry staff and filling positions within the Bureau of 
Indian Affairs, we have seen a significant decrease in the 
amount of timber sales that have been created for our active 
logging on the reservation. So, this last year we actually 
received more wood from John Crockett and the Forest Service 
than we did from our own mill on the reservation, which is 
trust income that goes back into our community that supports 
many governmental programs, and it plays an important role into 
that.
    But the fact is that we don't have enough silviculturists 
and enough timber sale planners to implement what we need to 
support our facilities. And it becomes an important part 
because, as you don't have as much wood but your cost to run a 
mill stays the same, the amount of board feet plays a key role 
in making that economical, and you get to this place where it 
costs you more than what you have to cut. And that becomes 
problematic.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, you really need staff to be able to 
complete those projects. Is that correct? To be able to get the 
wood to your mills?
    Mr. Rigdon. Yes, staffing plays a key role, and also the 
resources. And it falls in line with the IFMAT report into 
what----
    Mr. Tiffany. And I am hearing a little bit about that, the 
regulatory side of it can be challenging at times also. Are you 
supportive of some NEPA changes that would make sense to be 
able to perhaps streamline the process to be able to get wood 
to the mills?
    Mr. Rigdon. I think there are conversations to that. I am 
very proud that we, and most of the tribes, when we go into our 
conversation, it is within our internal community. We get 
feedback right away if our membership doesn't like it, they 
tell us right away.
    And it is some of the other things, the outside drivers, 
when Endangered Species Act and these things play a role that 
we aren't managing our forests for the benefit of our people, 
we are being dictated for spotted owl or for some other species 
that doesn't always have the same resource values. And we put 
our forests at risk on some of those things. So, that to me, 
becomes one of our challenges.
    Mr. Tiffany. Did we end up with better forest management in 
the Pacific Northwest as a result of the spotted owl scare?
    Mr. Rigdon. I want to say it this way. Especially in the 
Northwest, we ended up and we put every acre into these 
different models that were not sustainable. And I really think, 
when you look on the eastern side of the Cascades and fire-
prone communities trying to maintain that type of habitat, it 
is actually a destructive thing that has helped entice and 
enhance the type of catastrophic fires that we have seen.
    I think there needs to be a conversation. I think you can 
silviculturally achieve some of the same goals, and we need to 
do that to reduce the risk and the resilience of our forests. 
And I think that plays a role. I think the model that we used 
isn't achieving the goals that we want, and you could see that 
through what has come out of the Northwest Forest Plan and the 
survivability of the spotted owl.
    Mr. Tiffany. I want to ask just one other quick question. 
Mr. Desautel, there was a lawsuit filed by an environmental 
group to stop a forest management project. Could you tell us a 
little bit more about that lawsuit and the benefits that would 
have accrued to the tribe as a result of doing that project, 
and the health of the tribe and the health of the forest?
    Mr. Desautel. So, that project had about 15 miles of 
adjacent boundary with the Colville National Forest. The 
intention was to do a lot of forest health, forest restoration 
work, along with about 15,000 acres of prescribed burning. And 
really, the issue that the litigant had was some roadside fuels 
treatments that we wanted to do that were directly adjacent to 
the reservation boundary because it is tough ground. And that 
was really one of our opportunities to stop a wildfire.
    And subsequently, in 2021, we had a wildfire on the 
reservation side just south of that, and it burned 50,000 acres 
in at least a couple of hundred million board feet of timber. 
So, it did exactly what we were scared it would do. But because 
of the work that we did on the reservation, we thankfully held 
it on the reservation, and it didn't go on to the north half.
    But it was really driven by a very distinct recreational 
special interest. So, it is unfortunate that it stopped all of 
that good potential natural resource work because of one 
particular group.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, you are saying that lawsuit cost thousands 
of acres of forest to be burned?
    Mr. Desautel. No, the fire started on the reservation side, 
but that potential still exists on the Forest Service side. 
Their forest health issues are worse than what we had on our 
side. So, if we can burn 50,000 acres, they can definitely do 
that. And we would have lost the opportunity to do some work 
ahead of time that could have minimized the footprint of a 
future fire if we don't do that work now.
    Mr. Tiffany. Well, we have heard that many times here 
throughout the course of the last year.
    I would like to thank all the witnesses for your testimony, 
and our Members for their questions. We really appreciate that 
you would take the time and effort to come here to Washington, 
DC to share your thoughts.
    Members of the Subcommittee may have some additional 
questions for our witnesses today. We will ask that they 
respond to those in writing. Under Committee Rule 3, members of 
the Subcommittee must submit questions to the Subcommittee 
Clerk by 5 p.m. on Friday, December 8, 2023. The hearing record 
will be held open for 10 business days for these questions.
    And if there is no further business, without objection, the 
Subcommittee on Federal Lands stands adjourned.

    [Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]