Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As someone who represents rural, forested communities that depend on our national forests, this is an issue I care deeply about. I know my…
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
As someone who represents rural, forested communities that depend on our national forests, this is an issue I care deeply about. I know my colleagues on the other side care deeply about this, too. We have many common concerns in terms of forest health, in terms of fuel reduction, in terms of dealing with bug infestations and other things.
There is, I think, a common interest in finding solutions to better manage our Federal forests. Millions of acres are in need of restoration to address disease, bugs, climate change, and fire, which was made painfully clear again this summer.
We need a long-term plan to provide for our rural forested counties. Right now, many of these counties are struggling to stay afloat. Counties in my district, for example, are near bankruptcy. Critical county services like public health, education, roads, and, most importantly, law enforcement have been slashed to the point where some counties have no rural sheriff's patrols and prisoners have been let out of jail, prisoners who should not be let out of jail.
The Federal Government made a commitment to these counties 100 years ago. Congress should honor that commitment. I think there are bipartisan ways to honor that commitment.
The inclusion of 1 year of county payments at fiscal year 2010 levels--substantially more than those proposed in recent legislation in the Senate--will provide a lifeline to more than 600 forested counties in 41 States.
I want to thank the chairman for his hard work on this provision in the bill. Any long-term solution on forest management will require bridge payments to counties. This bill provides a bridge payment.
This bill includes an extension of stewardship contracting authority and allows our Federal agencies to offer contracts up to 20 years. Stewardship contracts can help reduce the cost of restoration to our Federal agencies--and, thus, the U.S. taxpayer--to help treat large landscapes to prevent catastrophic wildfires we saw in the West this summer and provide predictability to local businesses and industry that incentivizes investment and creates jobs.
I met with a gentleman who is going to open a 2.5 megawatt biomass plant in Colorado in November. He is doing that with a 10-year stewardship contract on dead bug kill in the vicinity of his plant. It was done through a collaborative process. The result is the Forest Service will be able to do fuel reduction on twice as much acreage as if they had to appropriate taxpayer money to do it. He told me if that was extended to 20 years, which this bill does, that the cost would come down even more. So we would create electricity and make these forests more healthy by utilizing that biomass.
I particularly want to thank the chairman for working with Representative Walden, Representative Schrader, and myself to include our balanced, bipartisan solution for the statutorily unique O&C lands. These lands exist nowhere else in the country. They are historically, statutorily, and geographically unique.
The solution we came up with for these unique lands would not be appropriate for other land included in the larger bill. I spent many hours with Representative Walden and Representative Schrader and with you, Mr. Chairman, to work out a reasonable and fair solution to an incredibly complex and longstanding controversy in western Oregon. I admit it's not a perfect solution. There are things I would change. There are things that Representative Walden would change. There are things that Representative Schrader would change, and, Mr. Chairman, I'm certain there are things that you would have done differently. But that's the legislative process at its best. We did the best we could do and came up with a strong proposal. It's an Oregon solution to an Oregon problem, and I am pleased to see it included in this legislation.
That doesn't mean that I don't have strong concerns about other provisions in the underlying bill. I do. Members should know that H.R. 1526 would dramatically alter the way we manage our national forest system and would threaten the multiuse mission on our public lands.
The bill would establish ``timber production zones'' in every national forest and more than double timber harvest levels nationwide. In order to meet these targets, Federal forest managers would be required to allow logging and road building in current roadless areas and sharply curtail public review of proposed logging projects.
The bill would close the courthouse door to citizens concerned about their communities and quality of life in the neighboring forests by requiring plaintiffs to post bonds, a new precedent, in order to challenge Federal management decisions.
I have had communities in my district litigate against the Forest Service over timber projects that they felt threaten their drinking water supply. I have had the timber industry litigate, as we have had environmental groups. It doesn't mean it is not frustrating, but we can work on streamlining that process without shutting the door to the courthouse, as we did in the HFRA legislation, a bipartisan bill a number of years ago.
This bill would also devolve national forest management currently under the stewardship of the Forest Service to State boards and exempt these areas from major national environmental laws.
The practical impact would be to reverse 100 years of national forest precedent and undermine--or in some cases, eliminate--multiple use of the national forests over substantial parts of our forest, harming recreation, hunting, fishing, and tourism.
H.R. 1526 represents the largest proposed change to the modern Forest Service since it was created by Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt in 1905.
I want to reiterate that the Democrats stand ready to work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle on forest management. There is common ground. There is bipartisan agreement on some issues. Hopefully, this bill is the beginning of that conversation, not the end, as we attempt to have a real legislative process with the Senate on these issues.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Wasco County,
Board of County, Commissioners,
The Dalles, Oregon, September 4, 2013.
Congressman Doc Hastings,
Chairman Natural Resources Committee,
Washington, DC.
Congressman Peter DeFazio,
Ranking Member, Natural Resources Committee, Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Hastings and Ranking Member DeFazio: In
America's national forests money and jobs do grow on trees. A
failed Federal Forest management system has led to the loss
of thousands of family wage jobs and has left our rural
forested counties with a host of preventable social and
economic problems that need to be addressed; action is long
overdue. For most Oregon counties the only solution is to
return to a sustainable harvest level that provides reliable
family-wage jobs and provides a solid tax base to support
crucial services.
There are three main recurring themes choking sustainable
forest management:
1. Litigation that stalls or prevents much of the harvest
necessary for responsible, sustainable forest management.
2. Funding to prepare sales.
3. The environmental analysis and review time for
management activities.
An increase in sustainable forest management is essential
if we are to ever create and support the healthy forests
envisioned by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Forest
mortality we are facing destroys wildlife habitat and creates
a platform for catastrophic wildfires that leave millions of
forest acres bare and susceptible to erosion and extensive
insect infestation.
H.R. 1526 provides a common sense approach for returning to
sustainable forest management where planned harvests occur at
a reasonable pace. While we appreciate legislation that
allows for a temporary extension of the Secure Rural Schools
and Community Self Determination Act, the long term social
and financial health of rural forested communities depends on
family-wage jobs that stem from a healthy forest products
industry. Wasco County fully supports H.R. 1526 and will
contact our House members to speak in support of and vote for
the bill.
Rod Runyon,
Chair.
Scott Hege,
County Commissioner.
Steve Kramer,
County Commissioner.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to my colleague from Oregon, Representative Schrader.
I inquire of the gentleman how many speakers he has remaining.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to spend a little bit of time directly addressing the concerns and questions of some constituents back in Oregon regarding the O&C plan in this bill. As Representative Schrader said, there is an extraordinary amount of disinformation and obfuscation out there.
This is the bottom plan. It provides everyone at the table with something that they don't currently have. For failing counties in western Oregon--and Representative Schrader did a great job talking about that, as did Representative Walden--it means $1 billion over 10 years to help pay for basic government services like law enforcement, public health, and education. It means putting sheriffs back on the roads, keeping violent criminals behind bars, having better public health, and rebuilding our infrastructure. All of those things are good jobs, necessary jobs, and things that enhance the quality of life for Oregonians and all Americans.
For forested communities and local economies, this plan means sustaining or creating thousands of good-paying jobs. I have counties that have chronic unemployment in the double digits. I've taken to telling some people I represent the new Appalachia. When you go and visit these depressed communities, when the last mill closes in one of my counties, I talk to the owners of the mill and they said, If your bill had passed, we'd be hiring 100 people, instead of firing 100 people, in a community where 100 would be the largest employer. This means keeping those mills open, or maybe adding shifts. This plan will keep the raw logs here at home, rather than exporting our timber to places like China.
For the environmental community, many of whom have totally disregarded or created propaganda about this bill, it means the first- ever legislative protection for mature and old growth forests in western Oregon. They are not legislatively protected now. In fact, if the Clinton forest plan, the Northwest forest plan, is ordered fully implemented, in pending litigation in a court here in D.C., that old growth will be some of the first to be harvested. Since I've come to Congress, I've been attempting to preserve the old growth. This would do it. There would be 1.2 million acres of old growth preserved, habitat that is fabulous. It is a carbon sink. It has the best areas to recreate.
The bill also increases wilderness protection on the O&C lands by 250 percent, doubling the size of the Rouge Wilderness, adding Devil's Staircase, and it also will add 130 miles of wild and scenic designation. There will be more river protection on the O&C lands in one plan than in the previous 50 years combined, and we will quadruple the watershed protection compared with Oregon State standards. They keep saying this is just the way Oregon private forestry is done. No. We're going to have four times the riparian protection, and in terms of herbicides and pesticides, we're going to require the development of an integrated pest-management plan through a public process for these lands. This is not Oregon forest practices as we know it, and as they are picturing in ads. If they have concerns about Oregon forest practices, they ought to go to their Governor and State legislature, because this bill is not that.
Of the 2.8 million acres, 1.2 million acres of old growth will be preserved. That is 300,000 acres of additional riparian reserve to protect our water quality for consumption and for fisheries and other values. There will be 1.3 million--less than half--that will be managed. Areas that have been previously managed, many of which need thinning and they need restoration work, half of those 1.3 million managed will be managed on a rotation of over 100 years, providing, again, tremendous environmental benefits.
Here's what the plan doesn't do. It doesn't privatize or sell any Federal lands. In fact, these lands will remain in Federal ownership, and we will pay the Federal Government $10 million a year to manage these lands, and the Federal Government will save tens of millions of dollars every year because of the management being done by a board, which would be appointed by our Governor and would actually govern these forests and manage these forests through an open public process under the Oregon open-meetings law.
It will not return to the unsustainable levels that occurred during the watch of my predecessor. There were 1.6 million board feet the year I ran for Congress on these lands. That was not sustainable, and they would tell people we're going back to that. No, we're not. I ran against that, and we're not going back there. It looks like the best estimates are we would probably get to about one-third of that level on these lands with a environmentally responsible plan. It does not eliminate national environmental laws. They would still apply.
This plan is about trying to restore balance and predictability to western Oregon. I was pretty surprised at the statement, better known as a SAP, that claimed this proposal would create more legal uncertainty. I don't know how it's possible to create more legal uncertainty on the O&C lands. The BLM is in the current of a multiyear, multimillion dollar process to rewrite the management plan for these lands. The new plan is intended to replace the old plan, which resulted from a lawsuit. The old plan was litigated and withdrawn. Their new plan was withdrawn by this administration because they said they couldn't defend it in a lawsuit. Now they're developing yet another new plan at the cost of tens of millions of dollars, which will certainly be litigated. And just recently, a decision in Federal court has confirmed that the O&C Act means what it says, ``permanent, sustainable timber production.'' This decision throws the status quo further into an uncertain area.
Now the BLM is required to offer for sale the allowable sale quantity every year. It hasn't been doing that. There's another lawsuit that would make this decision retroactive. That would be over a billion board feet of timber. Yet, another lawsuit pending seeks to return the O&C logging levels back to the 1970s and 1980s. This says nothing of the pending lawsuits on individual timber sales. That's not certainty; that's chaos. I'm pushing a balanced O&C plan that does three things: provides predictable payments to failing counties; creates jobs and sustains the existing infrastructure; and legislatively protects the environment and public health.
This is the first beginning, on either side of Capitol Hill, of a long legislative process, the first step toward getting a bipartisan bill finally negotiated and sent to the President hopefully not too distant from now.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
As I stated earlier, this is an imperfect vehicle. I have major concerns about three of the titles in this bill, but this is the beginning of a legislative process. It's almost become pretty rare here in Washington, D.C. We put something forward. We send it to the Senate. The Senate takes up that or a similar legislation. We go to a conference committee. We work things out. And we solve problems. It was that for most of the first 25 years I was here. That's a rare thing these days.
This holds promise to enter into the real legislative process, a real beginning. Now, if we fail to act, we just reinforce the status quo; and I've got to tell you, the status quo is totally unacceptable. There are some who would prefer that. They think they win with the current paralysis. Well, if you want permanent protection of our old growth, if you want additional wilderness on the Rogue River, if you want the Devil's Staircase wilderness, and if you want better forest health, the status quo won't get you there. If that's what you really care about, it won't get you there.
Now, my counties can't wait. The status quo, I have two counties who are experimenting, essentially, with how does a county go bankrupt. It's something that's never happened before and isn't provided for in Oregon statute. And I have others who are not too far behind.
My rural communities are in desperate need of real jobs. They can't wait either. So we cannot fail to act. We move forward tonight or tomorrow with a vote, and then it will be time for the Senate to come up with its version. Then we can go to a conference committee. We can work out final legislation and take it to the President.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Like many here tonight, I'm frustrated by the seemingly endless appeals and litigation on efforts to responsibly manage our forests, but not all appeals and litigation are frivolous. We know that some zero-cut groups seeking to end all logging in national forests have been successful in nitpicking the Forest Service's submission in Montana. However, this amendment literally tips the scales of justice.
The underlying bill already places extraordinary restrictions on parties--which I mentioned earlier, over which I have concern--on parties seeking to protect public resources. Do we really want to tell people they can't protest a government activity if the Federal Government violates a procedural requirement?
Failing to give notice of a major activity is a procedural requirement. Shouldn't the community be able to appeal an activity that's moving forward if they think it might impact their drinking water and they were never notified about the proposal?
Failing to properly advertise for bids is a procedural requirement. Shouldn't a small business be able to stop a project from being awarded to an out-of-State company if the Forest Service failed to follow proper contracting protocol?
The underlying bill already has numerous provisions that accelerate the approval of the projects and makes litigation much more difficult. We don't need to tip the scales further towards the power of Big Government and away from the public.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
I yield myself the balance of the time.
We did have a hearing on this and similar issues, and I did find common ground with folks on the other side of the aisle.
We had a vigorous debate over fuel reduction 13 years ago, which ultimately resulted in a law called HFRA,
and I participated in writing that law here on the House side, very much a bipartisan law with myself and Mr. Miller on the Democratic side and Scott McInnis, John Shadegg, and Greg Walden on the other. And we gave this tool to the Forest Service, and they pretty much haven't used it. They've used it in very minor ways.
And at the hearing, I asked the Deputy Chief, What about HFRA? Do we really need to change the laws further or prevent--do these radical things like preventing appeals and litigation?
And he said, Well, no. We're moving ahead with a major, major landscape-scale collaborative process in the Black Hills.
I said, Well, that's great, Mr. Deputy. I said, How about all the rest of the intermountain West? How about central Oregon and other places where we need these sort of landscape-scale projects that can't be nitpicked, you know, acre by acre, but they are developed collaboratively and we move forward? And as I mentioned earlier, we can do them under stewardship contracts, which will attract investors who will utilize the biomass and lower the cost to the Forest Service.
There is a way to better do this. We need to push the Forest Service on these issues. If there are minor changes that need to be made in HFRA, they should let us know.
I believe one is that it doesn't allow for them to go into areas of bug kill, and that is something that should be fixed and was fixed in a bipartisan bill in the Senate, which we recommended, in part, in a Democratic alternative here which was offered in committee but not allowed on the floor because of scoring issues.
So I believe there is a way to move forward here and solve some of these problems, but this is not the proper way.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, on that I demand a recorded vote.
Well, the previous amendment was going to limit public access to information. Now we're going to ask the public, the Forest Service, to produce more information. Although, actually, we aren't asking them to produce more information. We're asking them to produce less information than they currently make publicly available.
It would require an annual report to Congress as a result of implementing title I, amendment requiring an annual report, volume of timber, cost of preparing timber sales, revenue from the sales, and how it's distributed to counties on one page.
Well, the Forest Service does prepare these reports on a quarterly basis--it is available online--but no, it's not one page. I guess we could put it on one page. I'm having trouble reading it at this scale, which is 18 pages. This is the 18-page report for the Beaverhead- Deerlodge Forest.
If we look at the report, they offer 3.4 million board feet of timber, the amount of timber delayed, withdrawn from sale, what was successfully bid on, what didn't get any bids. There are also quarterly cut and sold reports, showing the value of these sales. In the first quarter of 2013, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge sold $312,000 worth of timber, nearly all of it Lodgepole pine.
If we limit it to one page, we might lose other things, like the report on Christmas trees--$6,050 value for sales of Christmas trees; mushrooms, $1,500 in the Bitterroot National Forest.
So the Forest Service is already producing this information. They are posting it online. I know it's kind of de rigueur around here to say let's get it all down to one page. Well, we could put it on one page, but you're going to need a microscope to read it, unless you want to leave out a lot of the stuff we're getting. And that's kind of interesting, if you really want to know what's going on in the forest.
If you want to know valid bids, no bids, delayed bids, withdrawn, resold, re-offered, regular sales, cancelled, opted other volume, resold, re-offered, previous fiscal year volume, replacement volume, I mean, how are you going to fit all this stuff on one page?
So we're just going to tell them, ``Don't bother anymore to produce this data. We don't want it. The public doesn't want it''?
So under the guise of asking for information, we're actually going to tell the Forest Service to produce less, which, you know, they might be kind of happy with because they will be less accountable if they produce less information.
With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Well, the Forest Service isn't always responsive, but I believe if the committee chairman--in fact, I would be happy to join as the ranking member with the committee chairman and the gentleman from Montana and any other members of the committee interested in a letter to the Forest Service saying, Hey, you produce all this incredible amount of data. Some people think it's too much. So how about a one- page executive summary that covers these points, which would precede the other 18 pages online--they don't have to print them, so there's no cost to the government--I think that might solve this problem.
I don't believe we need to pass a law to get an executive summary. I mean, most Federal agencies provide executive summaries of all sorts of stuff for people who don't have time or interest in knowing things in more detail.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
I have the right to close, and I'm prepared to close if the gentleman wants to summarize his previous arguments.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time a I may consume.
Again, this is an area where we do have some grounds for potential agreement. Part of the problem is the Forest Service budget. Not only are they spending half their budget on fighting fires, they've had a brain drain because of cuts in personnel and staffing, and they really don't have the personnel to go out.
I suggested a number of years ago, the last time we had a salvage rider, that a great alternative would be to have the Forest Service establish a strike team to go out to major fires--in fact, while they're probably still burning--and begin to map out a recovery effort--where it might be appropriate to go in and do some salvage, where there are critical watersheds at risk and there's going to have to be some immediate mitigation with the planting of grass or other efforts to mitigate problems that will come with the rainy season in a few months in California.
I believe there is a better way to get there. But there's a new kind of current trend online. It's called throw-back Thursday. To me, this is really throw-back Thursday to one of the most controversial pieces of legislation ever adopted by this body back in the 1990s, which was a massive salvage rider.
I have participated in a much more discrete, individual process when I was first here as a sophomore Member of Congress with Senator Mark Hatfield from Oregon. We sat down with an area that had been burned and we negotiated and legislated a salvage which preserved the areas that needed to be preserved.
There was a potential for 186 million board feet. We ended up legislating somewhere around 70 million board feet. The industry was disappointed. The environmentalists were appalled. But in the end, we got no additional sedimentation, we didn't get any slope slumping, and we did get 70 million board feet of timber out of there. We
didn't build a road into a sensitive, roadless area. We did it with helicopter logging. And the Forest Service still made money.
So there are ways to do this. But this, I don't think, is the best way to go forward. The underlying legislation already allows significant waivers of NEPA. Any project less than 10,000 acres is not required to go through an analysis. But this would allow a project to move forward no matter what the size or where it's located, without judicial review, if the project is salvaged, dead, damaged, or downed timber in an area impacted by fire this year.
We don't really know yet. I don't think a lot of the areas of Rim fire have yet been surveyed. Certainly, the Forest Service doesn't have the assets to do and find out what the impacts were--where the spot burns are, where the through burns are, what the conditions are, what areas would be critical to surviving wildlife, what areas are critical to watersheds and how we will deal with those areas, how we're going to recover the recreation in that area in the future, what would happen with building of roads and logging and salvage logging in those areas.
So I believe that this is a bridge too far in terms of expediting recovery and/or potentially salvage efforts, and I would oppose the amendment.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I'm prepared to close.
Mr. Chairman, actually, this wouldn't apply just to the Rim fire, as I read it. The gentleman can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe it applies to any area that burned in 2013 anywhere in the United States of America, which would certainly include both Democratic and Republican districts. Fires are not very partisan in their destruction.
So that is an incredibly broad brush. That would mean there could be no analysis done by the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, or anybody else, before salvage efforts might begin on forests all across America.
If you're bidding on a salvage sale, it isn't your job to care about whether or not the road you're going to build in or the area you're going to access is subject to the slope slumping when the rain starts in a couple of months or the snows come in the inner mountain regions or up in the Northwest.
So this is extraordinarily and overly broad. We've already exempted things up to 10,000 acres. I believe there's a better way to approach this.
The other gentleman from California talked about getting in there and then we would have the money for strike teams. I would say that's just a little bit backwards. These are public assets. This fire is a disaster not only for the people of your district, the people of California, but the people of the Nation, particularly with the proximity to one of the Nation's most loved parks.
If we did have a strike team, we could have areas like that surveyed by spring and plans in place by spring to know where it might be appropriate to salvage and where it isn't appropriate to salvage, and it would still be valuable.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
I certainly don't know what is best for the Mark Twain Forest. And you had five Members sign your letter, so that would leave 430 who probably don't think they have any clue either about what would be appropriate in your forest.
We do have a committee of jurisdiction. There are times when the Forest Service bureaucracy is doing things that I do not approve of. I don't believe that the committee has done any oversight on this issue. I don't know if the issue was brought to the chairman before it was offered as an amendment here on the floor. This amendment wasn't offered in committee, nor was--I was there, there was no discussion of this in committee.
It's a very, very localized problem. I would suggest again, as we did earlier, that, first off, this bill is not going to become law before they're going to burn this winter--which is when they burn in the Northwest. I assume they do the same thing in your district, when the risk of fire is down because of other vegetation and when the moisture levels are higher.
This isn't going to be law by then--if it ever became law. If you're doing it to get their attention, perhaps you will get their attention if they're listening. But I would suggest that the gentleman initiate a process through the committee. Ask for a meeting with the Forest Service under the auspices of the chair and attempt to get answers to the questions he has. Doing it through this particular amendment is really not going to accomplish those goals in time if indeed there are immediate plans to go forward this winter.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Again, there are grounds for some agreement here. I agree with the gentleman from California that this very sensitive issue, access to forest lands, is critically important to people who live in, around or near the forest, or people who choose to travel there to recreate.
We recently had a disastrous example in my State. The Proposed Travel Management Plan in the Wallowa-Whitman Forest, which is in Mr. Walden's district in northeast Oregon, the plan was developed in 2009, little public input; would have closed a substantial amount of the road network. It became a huge, huge controversy because of the lack of public involvement. I had complaints from my constituents and we're 250 miles away. Although I do recreate sometimes in that forest, but it's not on the road. I access the areas by forest roads. So this is something that was of major concern.
A regional forester who was new said, yeah, you're right, they really screwed this up; let's do it over again. They started all over again in a very collaborative public process.
But this goes a little bit beyond requiring the public to be notified and involved. In fact, it's a little contradictory because major parts of this bill do away with NEPA, which does require meaningful public involvement and response to comments by the public meaningfully by the agency. So I don't know whether we've removed that requirement from the existing law for the removal of roads and that's why we have to have this amendment or not.
But this goes a little further. It says these would be legally created roads. As you know, I mean, we get people down in Nevada and elsewhere arguing with the government or even attempting to take back government property by saying these are legally created and are not the property of the Forest Service.
So first you have to decide which roads are legal, which are covered, which are illegal, not covered. Who is going to decide that? The Forest Service user group who has an informal road that they have established? How will that help with this problem?
It also requires the Forest Service to make a specific decision regarding a road or trail closure, including adequate and appropriate public involvement. Okay. Well, what are those standards as opposed to, say, the NEPA standards which should apply in these cases? So I think that this could actually lead to more confusion and litigation.
I agree with the gentleman that there is a problem. This is a sensitive area. In some areas the Forest Service has not dealt well with it and believe there are other avenues to a solution.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Well, that doesn't address the concern about legally created road or trail. Again, I'm not aware that there is a definition elsewhere in the bill, nor in this amendment, for ``legally created.'' And there is tremendous controversy and litigation over the issue of ``legally created.''
It does go on to say:
The fact that any road or trail is not a Forest System road
or trail, or does not appear on a Motor Vehicle Use Map,
shall not constitute a decision.
That leaves open the issue of informal-use roads, potentially in sensitive areas, that would have to go through a process before they could be closed. What if it's a newly developed ORV trail through a sensitive meadow? We had someone running doughnuts up in a very sensitive meadow in the Three Sisters Wilderness in an area--on the edge of the Three Sisters Wilderness. I mean, did that become a road or a trail that then would be available to vehicles and we couldn't close that area? And they did, they put in big rocks and other things to close the area off to motor vehicles. Would that have been precluded under this amendment? I don't know.
This opens too many questions to controversy and interpretation. There are times when we do need to act quickly when abuse is taking place. There are other times when the Forest Service has to act more deliberately. I believe the Forest Service can do a better job. I believe in having the public notified, the public fully involved; And the best way to do that on these roads is through NEPA.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has made the point that it is not mandatory, but the problem would be we already have inadequate funds for firefighting. As the gentleman, I'm certain, well knows, the Forest Service has devastated the remaining funds for fuel reduction, probably restoration activities, and a whole bunch of recreation activities and other things that have all been ripped from this year's budget because they had to spend $1 billion fighting fires, and I believe Congress appropriated less than half that amount.
This is an annual problem, and it's time to get real around here about the problem. One is to adequately invest in fuel reduction and not underinvest in firefighting. Until we do a lot more fuel
reduction across the West, we are going to have big fires. If we have big fires, we need to fight them. But we don't need to make the big fires more prevalent, more common, by cutting the fuel reduction budgets.
We had this discussion a bit in committee and actually found there was some common ground in this discussion. Certainly site rehabilitation and other activities, those are very desirable. But, again, to categorize them under firefighting I think could create major problems.
With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LaMALFA Mr. Chairman, in speaking of inadequate funds, if we were actually generating the funds by having actual timber harvest receipts, we wouldn't be looking to the government for the money for the type of fuel reductions that are needed. We would actually be making a living at it by taking adequate marketable timber, as well as operations that go along under a timber harvest plan that requires cleanup and replanting.
So we would be generating the receipts at the same time we would be doing this if we had this type of thinking involved with more of our forest management, not only in the current year where you're gaining those receipts, but in the future as you have a regenerated forest.
I would harken back to Weaverville, in Trinity County, in my area, where there was a fire some years ago that nearly burned the town; but then with no management, with no restoration, the land laid idle with brush, with snags, with all sorts of things growing back and remaining behind from that fire. It burned again just 7, 8, 9 years later and almost devastated the town once again. Whereas, we see on private lands, they're out there. They're salving. They're getting the job going again and restoring the forest, which is better for the habitat, better for siltation, better for the wildlife, better for the economy, better for everybody.
So let's move in the direction of fuel reductions, as my colleague from Oregon was talking about. Let's do the fuel reductions. But we don't have to do it with tax dollars. We can do it with the private sector having marketable timber being taken off and get the job done.
I, again, think this amendment will really help in this regard, so I respectfully, again, seek your support for this amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Fuel reduction and salvage are two infinitely different categories. Salvage needs to be carefully planned. We already discussed earlier, the Forest Service doesn't have the resources to do that. Yet, if we take and add that onto suppression costs, that will take money away from fuel reduction and other programs of the agency.
I know around here we spend a lot of time talking about sequestration and a lot of people think it doesn't have much real impact or it's just waste coming out of the government. That came out of the fuel suppression budget. Then a bunch of the firefighting money came out of the fuel suppression budget. And now we are going to act like there was enough money in the fuel suppression budget or the firefighting budget that we could spend it on other activities. Yes, we want to do restoration activity, but at some point we have got to suck it up and make the investments we need to make in our resource agencies so they can get the job done right.
We had a discussion of how to properly approach salvage earlier tonight. I'm not going to reiterate that issue. This amendment is not mandatory, but as an addition to an already inadequate account, which is stealing from other accounts, would not be good policy.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
