Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, as we continue to work on the Interior appropriations this afternoon and tomorrow--and…
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, as we continue to work on the Interior appropriations this afternoon and tomorrow--and it appears there will be a couple of votes later on this evening--I wish to bring to the attention of Senators and to this country what we are talking about when we talk about healthy forests and why our requests for more money to replace the accounts in the Forest Service, in the Department of Agriculture, in the Bureau of Land Management, in the Fish and Wildlife Service, and in the Park Service in the Department of the Interior are important.
I stated on Thursday that this problem of forest fires which we have had in the West is a national problem and one we have to address if we are to manage our land for the environment, for the safety of those who work and recreate on public lands, and if we are to have public lands which Americans deserve and have paid for.
Once again, we have had a terrible fire season. Over 3 million acres have burned--most of it in the West and about a third of the acreage in my home State of Montana. I guess that makes us a little bit more sensitive about what we can do and what we can't do when it comes to forest fires and the protection of life, wildlife, and the health of our forests.
We took a firsthand look at the devastating impact of these fires on our parks, forests, and communities in August. We had a very dry and hot August in Montana. The fires were so bad in Glacier National Park and Yellowstone Park that they were closed to the public for many days. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality was issuing a daily alert for dangerous air and air quality throughout the State of Montana.
The impact of these fires goes far beyond losing trees, brush, and the flora of the forests of our Nation. We see a lot of the other ramifications also. Wildlife is destroyed and wildlife habitat is destroyed.
I will reiterate a conversation I had with some folks who lived here in Maryland who were watching the fire burn in Glacier. They were concerned about the loss of wildlife in those fires. They were concerned about endangered species. Where do they go? I said wherever they go, they will not have a habitat to come back to.
Another impact is poor air quality. Seniors and other people with respiratory problems suffer from the heaviest smoke which we have seen in many years. In fact, the airport in Missoula, MT, had to be shut down one day because of smoke.
The aftermath of these fires means contaminated streams and watersheds. Those watersheds not only feed wildlife but they also feed the municipal water supplies of our State.
Tourism in Montana is a huge industry. So there are lost recreational opportunities. Businesses and homes were destroyed. In fact, over 700 buildings and homes were lost. Unfortunately, there was also loss of life. Statewide, 27 firefighters lost their lives this year in wildfires.
We have an opportunity to act now to address the poor conditions of our forests and rangelands before they get any worse. We have an opportunity to change the conditions for the future of our kids and our grandkids.
In back of me is a map that depicts a great deal of both the east side and west side of the country which contain class 2 and 3 conditions. These conditions are classified as highly dangerous--or, let us say, flammable. I think the color red is pretty apropos. Not only do we see a lot of red up there in the panhandle of Idaho northwest of Montana, but look at the conditions in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and you can't overlook the conditions in Oregon and Northern California. In fact, those fire conditions run all the way down the Sierras in California. We have seen devastating fires there; fire conditions in South Dakota, in the Black Hills in the western part of the State; and over in the eastern part of the State, conditions for rain showers.
Nonetheless, we have to prepare for dry years. If you compare this last year to the drought of the 1930s, which was just as bad, had we not changed the way we farmed and ranched, we would have had another Kansas dust bowl, an Oklahoma dust bowl. This time it would have been more far reaching, reaching on up into the high plains of the Dakotas.
Look at northeastern Minnesota. Minnesota is almost solid red. Yet their fuel on the floor, the density of their forests, tells us it is high priority for fire. We see depicted the Ozarks of Missouri, the southern part of the State around the Lake of the Ozarks, reaching down almost to Poplar Bluff, into the southeastern part of the State.
If people in the northeast United States are not worried about what is west of the Mississippi River, take a look at the northern part of Pennsylvania and the wonderful forests of upstate New York. Right now our fuel load is high. Of course, after the storm this last week we might have a little more moisture; nonetheless, the fuel is there when it dries out.
Look at West Virginia. Look at Virginia. Look at Alabama. All of this is a national problem. Firefighters who were fighting the fires in the West--in Oregon, Idaho, and Montana this last time--came from Florida; the firefighters on the Robert fires were from North Carolina; firefighters from Kentucky--they are all trying to get the fires under control. This is not just a western problem; it is a problem for the forests nationwide. That is what it is all about when we talk about these situations.
The buildup of forest fuels occurred due to past management--or the lack of past management practices. Those practices allowed ladder fuel to grow into the healthy crowns of large trees; practices that did not effectively treat insect infestations and thus the high mortality rates in our forests; practices that did not effectively let us treat for tree mortality.
We talk about thinning and taking fuel off the forest floor. I would love to see a demo project comparing thinned and unthinned forests. Let one forest grow with no management and have an area not too far away that has been managed. Fire behavior in managed and unmanaged forests is quite different.
I remember as a young man way back I was on a couple of fires: The Edith Peak fire in Montana in 1953--and we lost a person on that fire, by the way--and the Tango fire in 1953. We learned a lot about how these fires react. I can state firsthand these fires now are hotter and are more devastating. There is more fuel on the floor of the forests.
This picture on the left is of a forest that has been thinned. In other words, the underbrush has been taken out, some of the trees have been thinned, and the larger trees can then grow. Where the sun is shut out part-time, you do not have nearly the amount of underbrush for fuel. Compare that to the picture on the right where nothing was done in the forest. Notice the downed timber and the old logs on the floor of the forest. They bored the logs
and checked the moisture. Some only contained 6 percent moisture. That is how dry and hot it was. The desks in this Chamber have at least 6 percent moisture. When the fire creates that much heat, it takes everything. It takes the humus out of the soil. It loosens the soil. So after the winter and then the spring thaw, we see erosion on the hills because there is nothing to hold the dirt in place. That is the difference.
The thinned forest is a managed forest. Sure, we will have fires. We will have lightning. And someone will have a campfire get away from them every now and then. We will always have fires, but they do not have to be of the intensity of the unthinned forests.
We watched a rampage fire move almost 2 miles--they move quickly-- while we were standing there, in only 15 minutes. They had a 30-knot wind and the flames shot almost 200 feet into the air. That is where most of our problem is, trying to thin and to clean up under the fuel that is on the forest floor.
Grazing takes care of part of this. Where we had grazing permits, we did not have those hot fires because the fuel on the floor was not as dense.
The next example describes forest health and fuels reduction and the impact on the forest. See the healthy forest on the left. That is a young forest with trees running from 8 to 12 inches in diameter. I guarantee we cannot get from that young forest to this forest unless we thin and get the fuel off the floor of the forest. It is that simple. We cannot put a dense growth on the ground, experience drought and lightning storms, and have it not burn. That is why you can only grow so many trees if you want many big trees, beautiful forests, habitat for wildlife, habitat for endangered species, also a place to enjoy recreation. The forest needs a little intervention when it comes to management.
It is very simple. That is the reason, when farmers plant corn--and I appeal to my good friend in the chair today--they do not plant it an inch apart or they will have nothing. Give them space. Let them grow. Let them reproduce. We cannot get from the condition on the left to the condition on the right without effectively treating the conditions that have contributed to the poor health of our forests and our rangelands.
I have an illustration of the life history of a tree on the lower right hand side. This is a boring taken from a 100-year-old Ponderosa pine. Notice the healthy growth for the first 20 years. It is very healthy. Then notice the declining growth for the next 70 years. Finally, notice in the last 10 years, after the thinning occurred to allow that tree to breathe. The growth rate picked up again after it was thinned from competing brush and maybe other trees. That is what we are talking about, the life of a tree. A tree is just like you and I: It sprouts, it grows, it ages. Then one day it dies of old age, just like the rest of us.
The House passed H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, a couple months ago. Now we have the opportunity to do the same. I am concerned about the healthy forest issue as I am concerned about replenishing the money we borrowed to fight fires within the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. So we have to work very hard to make sure our prevention money is not used in suppression.
Now, there is one other thing we did not bring up. Any time you don't thin, any time you lose trees, some die. And we have an infestation of pine bark beetles up in our part of the world. I will show you a chart that demonstrates the infestation of that.
Is it a western problem? No. That little beetle may be called a different name somewhere else, but basically, again, we have a national problem. The heaviest infestation is in California, northern California, even down into the Sierras. Right now, it is estimated they have anywhere from 400 to 800,000 acres infested with pine bark beetles.
What pine bark beetles do is they kill the trees. In other words, they destroy the cambium, its ability to grow. The cambium is the growing part; it is what makes the rings. If you are counting the rings, you are counting old cambium. It is the growing part of the tree. I took a couple years of forestry. I surprise myself every now and again.
That problem is not just west of the river. Look at Michigan. One of the best forestry schools is in Madison, WI, the University of Wisconsin. They have problems in their area, which is in the northern part of their State, the northeastern part of Minnesota, and the northwestern part of Wisconsin. It is also in the areas of Georgia, Tennessee, and northern Alabama. We have a little bit of a problem over there in a little State called New Jersey where we have a little bit of a problem with pine bark beetles. It works the same, but I think it has a different name. I am not big on names right now; I am just big on bugs.
But, nonetheless, it gives you the understanding this is not just a problem isolated to one region of the United States. It is time we come together: industry, land managers, and people who use those lands maybe for recreation, maybe to make a living. It is time we all come together. But it seems as though every time we get together on this bill everybody becomes a land manager and everybody becomes a forester, and sometimes that does not work.
But we know one thing. We have absolutely been crippled--they call it analysis by paralysis--in putting together a management plan to deal with this problem: both disease and fire. But we can do it. We have the ability to do it. We can do it in a way that I think Americans want it done.
They are tired of seeing fires every night on their summertime television and the destruction they bring and what they cost the taxpayers. Actually, we are about $850 million in arrears right now in the Forest Service, and that is taxpayer money. Everybody puts money into that pot.
We need to put a little more into prevention rather than in this devastating thing called fighting fires. So it is not a conservative or liberal view. Agriculture and plants and soil and water and sunlight don't claim any politics. The relationship of those four contributes to how well we manage our forests. If you have ever been in a forest fire--and I have--it is an experience you will never ever forget.
So we are going to have an amendment that puts money back into the Forest Service and the BLM for things such as forest stewardship, prevention, and water quality because, I will tell you, we will have-- and it was the case in the Yellowstone fires in 1988--we will have erosion, we will have water quality problems for a long time just because once the growth is gone from the side of the mountain, then the soil comes down. There is nothing to hold it. So it is just not very good conservation. Now we see preservation--don't touch it; that is the way God meant it to be or whatever. This is a problem you run into because there have been 30 years of no management. Let's not say bad management but no management. We just could not get it done.
So we have an opportunity to do what is right for our forests and for our agricultural lands because from these forests come livelihoods, products that all of America demands. They are still building houses and there is still a great demand for forests and forest products. There is great demand for the recreational areas, great demand to protect our wildlife. And, remember, once that forest is burned up, there is no habitat to come back to. So we have an opportunity, and I think we should seize that opportunity and do the right thing for our forests.
Mr. President, I will yield the floor. I see my good friend from New Mexico has an amendment he wants to offer and speak to. I have to go to a little hearing on Iraq. I am not smart enough to shift gears quite that fast. I can't go from one to the other quite that quickly. But I took a little of the time of my good friend from New Mexico, and I appreciate his indulgence.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, we have this bill narrowed down to about five or six amendments we are working on right now. I would like to alert Senators, though, if they have any amendments they want to be a part of this bill, they should file them tonight if possible for their consideration. We want to tie this bill up tomorrow and pass it and get it into conference and to the President's desk. We don't want to deny anybody their right to file their amendments, but we suggest they get them over here tonight because we are going to finish the bill tomorrow.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
I thank my friend from South Dakota. We are running the trapline now. We have an objection to the Bingaman amendment, and someone wants to speak on it. Then we can vote in the morning. That will go away very fast. We are now running the trapline on the modifications of the Senator from South Dakota. We should have some kind of answer on that. I do not think we are going to vote before 5:30.
With regard to the Senator's amendment on reforming the trust and dealing with this problem, the policy has almost been set by the courts, as the Senator well knows. There is litigation on this. So I think what the Secretary of the Interior wants to do is to move forward with a system so they can finally bring closure to this problem that has been going on for how many years. This stretches more years than the Senator from South Dakota and I have probably been in the Senate.
We have not managed the trust moneys very well. Just getting the system up and knowing where we are so we can conform with parts of the litigation is quite the challenge we have right now, and I think that has to move forward because right now we cannot do it. I do not know if anybody wants to identify the horse or the cart. In fact, I am not real sure which one should go across the road first right now. I am not real sure that they know at Interior but at least they have a system in order to solve it, and we cannot move forward unless they have those dollars. So that is where we are.
There are a lot of people in Indian country who are very concerned about this and so we should move on that, but we are running the traplines.
I appreciate the distinguished minority leader coming today and offering his modification. We should have an answer for him pretty quickly, and I thank the minority leader for that.