To direct the Secretary of the Interior to establish a demonstration program to facilitate landscape restoration programs within certain units of the National Park System established by law to preserve and interpret resources associated with American history, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 309) to direct the Secretary of the Interior to establish a demonstration program to facilitate landscape restoration programs within certain units of the National Park System established by law to preserve and interpret resources associated with American history, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Many units of the National Park System were established to conserve U.S. military history. All these units have restoration of their historic landscapes as an important management goal. This restoration entails removal of landscape features, including trees, which were not present at the time of the relevant historic event. However, removal of any natural resources from a National Park must be undertaken extremely carefully. In addition, many of these park units report a lack of funding for such work.

H.R. 309, introduced by my colleague on the Natural Resources Committee, Representative Steve Pearce, would create a revenue source for such projects by allowing individual units to retain proceeds from the sale of timber removed from the unit. Importantly, the legislation is narrowly written as a demonstration project to apply within a defined list of 24 military parks and to prevent any change to existing environmental requirements governing logging on NPS land.

Representative Pearce has worked tirelessly on behalf of this legislation and is to be commended for his efforts.

We strongly support the passage of H.R. 309, as amended, by the House today.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate the comments by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva).

H.R. 309, introduced by me, would establish an innovative 4-year demonstration program in the National Park Service to improve and expedite landscape restoration programs within 24 units of the National Park System to better preserve and interpret resources associated with American military history.

One of the tenets of the Park Service is to preserve the look of national battlefields as they existed at the time of the conflict. Often this involves removing trees and other woody debris that encroach on sightlines. Under current law, these trees are removed and any funds from their sale are returned to the General Treasury.

As a part of this new program, selected parks would be permitted to retain receipts from any timber sales and use those funds on the respective landscape restoration programs and interpretive services. While this would not involve a lot of money, every little bit helps, especially given the National Park System maintenance backlog.

This noncontroversial bill was favorably reported last Congress by unanimous consent, and I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 309.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.