SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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2003
2003
THE PRESIDENT'S HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
APRIL 30, 2003
Serial No. 108–3
Printed for the use of the Committee on Agriculture
www.agriculture.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia, Chairman
LARRY COMBEST, Texas
JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio
Vice Chairman
RICHARD W. POMBO, California
NICK SMITH, Michigan
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
JERRY MORAN, Kansas
WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota
DOUG OSE, California
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
CHARLES W. ''CHIP'' PICKERING, Mississippi
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska
MIKE PENCE, Indiana
DENNIS R. REHBERG, Montana
SAM GRAVES, Missouri
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota
MAX BURNS, Georgia
JO BONNER, Alabama
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
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STEVE KING, Iowa
CHRIS CHOCOLA, Indiana
MARILYN N. MUSGRAVE, Colorado
DEVIN NUNES, California
CHARLES W. STENHOLM, Texas,
Ranking Minority Member
COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota
CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
JOE BACA, California
RICK LARSEN, Washington
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
ANÍBAL ACEVEDO-VILÁ, Puerto Rico
ED CASE, Hawaii
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
FRANK W. BALLANCE, JR., NORTH CAROLINA
DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
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EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
KEN LUCAS, Kentucky
MIKE THOMPSON, California
MARK UDALL, Colorado
RICK LARSEN, Washington
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
Professional Staff
WILLIAM E. O'CONNER, JR., Staff Director
KEVIN KRAMP, Chief Counsel
STEPHEN HATERIUS, Minority Staff Director
CALLISTA GINGRICH, Clerk
ELYSE BAUER, Communications Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
Goodlatte, Hon. Bob, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Virginia, opening statement
Gutknecht, Hon. Gil, a Representative in Congress from the State of Minnesota, opening statement
Janklow, Hon. William J., a Representative in Congress from the State of South Dakota, opening statement
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Stenholm, Hon. Charles W., a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, opening statement
Smith, Hon. Nick, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, opening statement
Prepared statement
Witnesses
Bosworth, Dale, Chief, U.S. Forest Service
Prepared statement
Hardesty, James, U.S. director, Global Fire Initiative, the Nature Conservancy, Gainesville, FL,
Prepared statement
Helms, John A., professor emeritus, forest science, University of California Berkeley
Prepared statement
Koehn, Steven W., State forester, State of Maryland; chairman, Water Resources Committee, National Association of Foresters
Prepared statement
Rey, Mark, Under Secretary, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Prepared statement
Answers to submitted questions
Rousspoulos, Peter J., Director, Southern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, Ashville, SC
Prepared statement
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Walls, James K., executive director, Lake County Resources Initiative, Lake County, OR
Prepared statement
Watson, Rebecca, Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management, U.S. Department of the Interior
Prepared statement
Submitted Material
Moore, W. Henson, president and chief executive officer, American Forest and Paper Association, submitted statement
Society of American Foresters, ''Forest Health and Productivity, a Prospective of the Forestry Profession''
THE PRESIDENT'S HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Agriculture,
Washington, DC
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1300 of the Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Bob Goodlatte (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Smith, Lucas of Oklahoma, Moran, Jenkins, Gutknecht, Ose, Hayes, Osborne, Putnam, Janklow, Burns, King, Nunes, Stenholm, Peterson, Holden, Etheridge, Hill, Baca, Case, Alexander, Ballance, Scott, Marshall, Boswell, Lucas of Kentucky and Thompson.
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Staff present: Brent Gattis, Kathleen Elder, Kevin Kramp, Callista Gingrich, clerk; Sam Diehl, Elyse Bauer, Kellie Rogers, and Andy Baker.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB GOODLATTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. This hearing of the Committee on Agriculture to review the President's Healthy Forests Initiative will come to order.
We appreciate you taking the time out of your schedules to join us this morning to talk about the President's Healthy Forests Initiative. It is very appropriate that we have this discussion at this juncture in the month we celebrate Earth Day, and as we face another season with higher than average risk of forest fire in many parts of the country.
The Chief of the Forest Service made a very interesting point in a speech he delivered on Earth Day when he said there are great issues and great diversions. Great issues are matters that cry out for public attention and resolution. Great diversions are relatively unimportant matters that take up a lot of our time and effort. Healthy forests and how we create them is a great issue.
There are 747 million acres of forested land in the United States, across all boundaries, covering Federal, State and private lands. And many of these forests are in good healthy condition, but 190 million acres are at elevated risk of catastrophic fire. After the devastating fire season of 2000, the agency's task with taking care of these lands collaborated with the States, the counties, and many conservation and environmental organizations, along with interest groups, to develop the National Fire Plan. And everyone agreed, and still agrees today, that many of our forests are in grave danger. They are not in the state to be sustainable for future generations or even the present generation. Many of these forests are not only a danger to themselves, but a danger to the communities they surround.
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A great thing happened when the National Fire Plan was developed. The agencies, communities, environmental groups, and industry groups all coalesced around one idea: Our forests need help. The plan has identified the forests at risk and the communities at risk, and now we need to find a way through the maze of laws, regulations, and policies that communities and forest managers must find their way through without getting lost in the process or perpetually tied up in litigation—not litigation aimed at protecting our forests, but litigation aimed to protect the desires of one interest group to the detriment of all others involved and impacted. We need to bring people to the table who care about our forests and who want to play a constructive role in restoring them.
To get back to what the Chief talked about on Earth Day, I see two real issues facing us today: the health of our forests and the health of our communities, especially, our rural communities. From rural communities in Virginia to rural communities in Oregon and Washington State, there is a need to restore fragile economies, many of whom depend or previously depended on natural resources.
The community of John Day in rural eastern Oregon has a population of approximately 3,000 people and is a classic example of where management policies on Federal lands have impacted not only the national forests, but also the local community, businesses, schools, and the way of life. John Day is surrounded by 1.6 million acres in the Malheur National Forest. The John Day School District has been on a 4-day school week since 1996 in an effort to stay within their budget. The current management plan the forest is working under proposes a yearly timber harvest of 185 million board feet, but in the past 5 years, less than 10 million board feet have been sold annually. Thus the situation remains, little Federal timber harvest causing local industry to be idle, creating high unemployment, business shutdowns, and 4-day school weeks for the children along with much larger class sizes. This situation could be largely remedied by returning to a balance in Federal lands management.
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We are not talking about the boom and bust economy of the turn of the last century, another great diversion, but a stable, sustainable economy supported by good stewardship and sustainable forest management; not a management plan of 100 years ago, but a 21st century community's idea of restoring a forest and sustaining a rural economy. What we have are rural communities struggling to survive in horrible economic circumstances in many places surrounded by forests bursting at the seams with overgrowth, in desperate need of management, with no way out.
How much sense does it make that we have people in communities in desperate need of employment when we have forests in desperate need of management? Unfortunately, we have a few powerful groups holding both the forests and the communities hostage with their misleading messages and rhetoric. Look around at our Nation's forests and look at the plans the agencies have for management. Of the 190 million acres of land at elevated risk to wildfire, the agency only has plans to treat approximately 1 percent this year. The goal is fundraising and fear works. Scare someone into thinking the Forest Service is about ready to slick off all the trees in the land, and you have a great diversion and a great fundraising hook. And as an added bonus, you can help mold policies that will have absolutely no foundation in science, let alone good science, and have a devastating impact on the health of our Nation's forests and on the health of rural economies. That is a good example of a great diversion.
It has been a very successful tactic for diverting attention away from the real issue of creating healthy, sustainable forests, and good at diverting attention away from the real issue of the economy of the rural communities. Let us focus on the real issue of creating sustainable economies in rural areas and healthy, sustainable forests. Let us bring people together to work constructively on projects in our forests to reduce the fire hazard, to reduce the impact of infestations of insects and diseases, and to make the process manageable so we can have a positive impact on the environment.
The agency developed a report entitled ''Process Predicament'' where they examined the existing process and identified the problem areas. Where is the process failing? The Healthy Forest Initiative identifies solutions to some of these problems. I welcome you all before the committee today and look forward to hearing from you about the Healthy Forests Initiative, and it is my pleasure to recognize the Ranking Member of the committee, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Stenholm.
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OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES W. STENHOLM, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. STENHOLM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling this hearing today to address the catastrophic wild fires and the management question of our forests that have literally destroyed millions of acres of private and public forests in recent years.
Last year, 23 firefighters lost their lives and taxpayers spent about $1.5 billion to contain record-setting fires. In the rural communities nearest to the forest, tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes, thousands of structures were destroyed, and tourist dependent economies suffered significant financial losses. The bad news is that our national policy has been and is a part of the problem. For the last century, public land managers have suppressed all forms of wildfire, including natural small scale burnings that restore forest ecosystems. These natural small scale fires burn at ground level at relatively low temperatures, allowing some trees to survive and renewing the forest. Suppression of these natural small scale fires has resulted in an accumulation of fuel that supports wildfire of unnatural intensity. These catastrophic fires burn hotter, spread faster, and cause long-term severe environmental damage, sometimes even sterilizing the soil.
As land managers have tried to address this accumulation of fuel, they have been hamstrung by red tape and legal challenges. The good news is that by streamlining the implementation process for forest health projects, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act will allow Federal land managers to restore our forest to a more natural balance while maintaining tough environmental requirements.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for your attention to this important issue. I will be proud to cosponsor the Healthy Forest Restoration Act when it is introduced this week, and I encourage my colleagues to support the bill, and I encourage those who continue to oppose good management, sound science, to take a good look at your philosophical ideas and see whether or not you cannot also come around to supporting this act this year and seeing that it gets to the President for his signature.
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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman for his very concise and well thought out comments, and also, for his support of the legislation that we will be addressing this week.
Mr. STENHOLM. In complete disclosure, your promise not to muck around with my mesquite trees has been very helpful in bringing me back.
The CHAIRMAN. Well noted.
I am now pleased to recognize the gentleman from Minnesota who is the chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over our forests. The gentleman from Minnesota.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GIL GUTKNECHT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit for the record a written statement. Because I want to hear from the witnesses, I will shorten this. For the benefit of the Members, I will say this, that Adam was told to tend the garden, and in some respects, we are charged with the responsibility of tending these forests, and I think any objective observer would have to conclude that the Federal Government has not done as good a job as they should be doing. So I want to thank you for having this hearing and I want to thank the President for his leadership in the Healthy Forests Initiative.
Let me just share with the members some numbers here. The Forest Service own estimate show that planning and assessment compromised 40 percent of the Forest Service workload and eat up approximately 250 million of the taxpayer dollars. The same estimate suggests that this cost could lowered by $100 million a year simply through better management and elimination of the redundant and excessive requirements.
Now, I will just cut right to the chase. I think that this is an issue whose time has come. It really calls for common sense, and it seems to me that the proposals are being brought forward today, and hopefully, what we will be acting on in the future are the right remedies for this issue. Again, I congratulate the chairman, the staff, and the administration for their leadership on this issue. I yield back my time.
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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. Are there other opening statements? The gentleman from Michigan's statement will be made a part of the record and the gentleman from South Dakota is recognized.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA
Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am thankful you called this hearing. And also, the people in the State that I come from that have bronchitis, and the people that have lung cancer, the people that have emphysema, the individuals in my State who are newborn babies whose lungs are still developing, the citizens who breathe the air in South Dakota, we thank you for holding this hearing.
You see, in the last five major fires in the Black Hills over the last 3 1/2 years, 20 percent of the Black Hills of South Dakota have burned down, costing tens of millions of dollars. In addition to that, over the last 3 years, 17 million acres of forest in this country have burned down in fires; 8.4 million in 2000; 3.6 million in 2001; and 6.9 million in 2002. The cost of fighting those fires from the Federal perspective is over $4 billion. $4 billion, a huge portion of which could have gone into things like schools, education for our children, conquering disease, solving problems of hungering, or fixing problems with forests.
The State foresters of this Nation aren't all idiots. They all understand what is going on in the forests in their States, and we don't listen to them in Washington. No one listens to these local people that have the expertise and have the sound science behind them. I congratulate Mr. Bosworth, Mr. Rey, the President, this administration, for the bold initiative they have taken in the face of the kinds of criticism they are receiving with respect to the forests.
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If I can show you, Mr. Chairman, a picture in this book, the picture on your left is a picture of the Black Hills National Forest when General Custer's expedition was out there. The picture on the right is what that identical spot looks like today. You can see far, far more trees. There were no trees in the Black Hills area, in that particular area, when the picture was taken when General Custer was out there. But the key thing with respect to these forests is that they have been driven for at least the last decade by political management—for several decades. It isn't just the last decade—by political management, and not the expertise in how you run the forest.
Foresters that work for the Federal Government have been given direct orders from Washington as to the decisions they ought to make with respect to their discretion under the law. The rules are so Byzantine in how you get a forestry program approved, there are some instances where there are 800 different steps that Federal agencies have to take in order to get a process approved within the National Forest. That is unbelievable, it is immoral, it is wrong, Mr. Chairman. So I thank you for conducting this hearing and I look forward to the testimony these witnesses will give because they will assist in enlightening all of us as to one of the worst things that we can do to the environment. There is no worse environment than to be cold, and hungry, and unemployed. And as a result of the fires in the West and the way they are burning down and managing the forest, we have people who are cold, hungry, and unemployed. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. I understand the gentleman from Michigan does have a brief statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. NICK SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
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Mr. SMITH. Just as part of my total statement that I wanted to introduce for the record, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that in order to protect our forests more comprehensively, that any healthy forest initiative provide programs that address, also, the disease and insect infestations. In Michigan, we have been invaded with the emerald ash borer that is now threatening 700 million ash trees in Michigan. It is spreading into Ohio. The Department estimates that there is a potential 2 percent loss of total lumber in the United States if this is allowed to continue to spread, with an estimated cost of $20 to $60 billion.
So fires and what happens in that fire management is important, but also, what happens with disease and insect infestation is also important. Thank you.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. NICK SMITH A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
I want to thank Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Minority Member Stenholm for holding this hearing to review the President's Healthy Forests Initiative. I applaud the administration and the various agencies represented here today that have been working within the current system to address the problems that face America's forest ecosystem. As we have heard today, catastrophic wildfires have decimated our forests over the last several years and will continue to do so if we do not act to streamline the procedures by which fire prevention strategies are implemented. Removing some of the bureaucratic red tape for performing fire prevention measures is not only environmentally friendly but also fiscally responsible, as fire prevention costs American taxpayers approximately one-fourth of what it costs to fight catastrophic forest fires.
In addition to fires, disease and insect infestations are also detrimental to our forest ecosystem. In southeast Michigan, we have been combating an exotic beetle known as the emerald ash borer which has been destroying our ash tree population. This invasive pest has resulted in the quarantine of all ash products in six counties in southeastern Michigan. With 28 million ash trees in the six quarantined counties, an estimated 700 million ash trees in Michigan, and findings that the pest is spreading into Ohio, the magnitude of this problem is apparent. Preliminary data from the Forest Service estimates that the potential national impact of the emerald ash borer is a loss of up to 2 percent of total timber and a value loss of between $20 to $60 billion. Thus, in order to protect our forests more comprehensively it is important that any healthy forest initiative provide programs that address problems of disease and insect infestations as well as streamline procedures for implementing fire prevention strategies. I thank the chairman for supporting the inclusion of our Michigan emerald ash borer problem in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003.
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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, and you will be pleased to learn that the legislation coming forward does specifically address the emerald ash borer. Now, I am delighted to welcome our first panel.
The Honorable Mark Rey, Under Secretary of Natural Resources and the Environment of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the Honorable Rebecca Watson, Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals Management with the U.S. Department of the Interior; Mr. Dale Bosworth, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service; and Dr. Peter Roussopoulos, Director of the Southern Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service of Ashville, North Carolina.
Mr. Rey, welcome. We are pleased to have your testimony. We would ask all of our witnesses to limit their statements to 5 minutes, and their entire statement will be made a part of the record.
STATEMENT OF MARK REY, UNDER SECRETARY, NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Mr. REY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As this is our first appearance before you since you became chairman, I want to start by congratulating you and expressing our desire on the part of the Department, the Department of the Interior as well, to work closely with you during your tenure. I also wanted to express my appreciation on behalf of both departments and the President for your leadership and that of Mr. Stenholm in introducing the Healthy Forest Restoration Act.
We have one statement for the record, which has been submitted on behalf of both departments. Each of us will summarize. I will talk a little bit about how the 2002 fire season went, what we have done to restore our lands and prepare ourselves for the 2003 season and how that, we think, is shaping up. Secretary Watson will talk about the administrative elements of the Healthy Forests Initiative. The Chief will talk about how we are moving to implement the stewardship contracting authority that you granted us in the omnibus appropriations bill. And Dr. Roussopoulos will talk about insect and disease infestation problems and what we are doing to address them.
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The 2002 fire season, by the time it was over on November 19, 2002, burned 7.2 million acres nationwide. We expended $1.6 billion, making it the most expensive fire season in history. We had wildfires reported in each of the 50 States, so this is not a regional issue by any stretch of the imagination. We spent 62 days at preparedness level 5, the highest level of preparedness. That is 22 days longer than we spent at that level in 2000, our worse fire season in the last 100 years.
Nevertheless, 99 percent of all of the wildfires were stopped during initial attack due to the extra resources and coordination provided by Congress and developed through the National Fire Plan. We used additional firefighting assistance from a mobilized U.S. Army battalion and from firefighters from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, countries with whom we have reciprocal relationships. Nevertheless, the larger fires did have devastating effects on watersheds, wildlife habitat, air quality, tourism, soil erosion, and even old growth forests.
We are now in the process of doing the advanced restoration work to address the impacts of those fires. The majority of work that is still needed will be to respond to the six to eight worst fires. Through our Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation Program, the Department of Agriculture has spent $72 million to that end, and the Department of Interior has spent $78 million. We have carryover funds in the 2003 budget runs for another $50 million in restoration work. We have also reviewed over the course of the off season our preparedness and cost structure for firefighting. We have reviewed aircraft safety and developed new safety standards for contract firefighters. We have assisted over 11,000 communities in prevention work and provided over 5,000 rural and volunteer fire departments with training or equipment, including the New York Fire Department, the Fire Department of New York City. As part of their training in the incident command system, they will be participating with us this summer in some wildland fires. I think we will be able to pick them out by their accent probably.
The costs of last season also spurred an interagency accountability team to review expenditures on large fires and establish new cost containment procedures and clearer financial accountability for incident commanders. And we are also implementing new systems to assure real time accrual of expenses from all large fires.
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What I would like to do in the last minute, with the assistance of a map which someone I hope will put up here shortly, is to talk about what the 2003 fire season looks like. It is shaping up as long-term drought persists and is expected to intensify over much of the interior west. Unless weather patterns change dramatically, 2003 has the potential and will in all likelihood be an above normal fire season in portions of the Pacific Northwest, the northern and central Rockies, and northern Great Lakes. The areas in Crosshatch Red are areas where we expect above normal fire risks for 2003. The areas with Crosshatch Green are where we expect lower than normal fire risks as we enter this fire season. So there is good news and bad news on that map. The good news is in the Southeast, where the drought has been broken, and that will allow us to do a lot of prescribed burning this summer, which we were unable to do last summer. The bad news is in the northern Rockies, and Oregon, and Washington, where we expect above average fire risks.
That will conclude my statement, and I will turn the podium to Secretary Watson.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Secretary Rey. Secretary Watson, welcome. We are pleased to have you with us today as well.
STATEMENT OF REBECCA WATSON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, LAND AND MINERALS MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Ms. WATSON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. The Department of Interior is honored to be here to work with Secretary Rey and discuss the President's Healthy Forests Initiative. In August 2000, the President introduced his Healthy Forests Initiative, which seeks to address the dense, unhealthy condition of forests, rangelands, and woodlands in Federal ownership so that they can be resistant to disease, and insects, and catastrophic wildfire. As a predicate to the administrative changes that I will quickly walk through, I want to show you some photographs to demonstrate why the President has shown leadership in this area.
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The first is a photograph from the area I come from, Montana. This is the western side of Montana in Bitterroot. Similar to the picture that the Representative from South Dakota showed us, a little bit later than General Custer, this is a photograph in 1895 that showed the forest as open and dominated by fire tolerant trees. By 1980, the picture in the middle, you see that the trees have formed a dense thicket around this cabin. They are prone to disease and vulnerable to drought and wildfire. 2000 is the aftermath of the fire season we experienced there. The cabin was moved, which is an option not available to most homeowners, but the trees have been burned and only a few trees are left.
The next picture shows San Bernardino in California. This is an example of why we have such tremendous costs in fighting fires in the wildland-urban interface. The wildland and urban interface is quite close in this picture, as you can see. The houses are intermixed among the trees. The trees are red because they are filled with disease and they are dying. Again, to get to a point that was raised by another representative, the insect infestations are difficult and time is of the essence, which is why we have put these administrative reforms in place. For example, in San Bernardino, in August 2002, 100 acres were infested with insects. By October, 60,000 acres were infested. By January 2003, 151,000 acres were infested. And then just 3 months later, in April of this year, 350,000 acres. So these insects move fast and we have to be able to deal with this in a more timely fashion than we have been.
San Bernardino isn't the only place. Areas of Boise, ID have similar growth of the urban interface. New Mexico and Colorado face an outbreak of the IPS beetle that is spreading rapidly. What we propose to do is to address this situation. This is a picture showing how fire reacts in an unthinned forest. It leaps to the crown, travels very fast, throwing out embers miles in front of the fire front. And the front of the fires can be huge, like we saw in Arizona and Colorado, presenting challenges to fight them.
This is the aftermath of a fire like we saw in the crown fire, burned trees, nothing really left in its aftermath. The next picture shows how fire reacts in a healthy forest, in a treated forest. The fire drops to the ground and can work through, clearing out the underbrush and adding nutrients to the soil, not damaging the soil. That is our goal, is to get fire to operate in that fashion. The aftermath in a thin forest is this. This forest was burned, but it doesn't look like it was burned. It was thinned, the fire dropped to the ground, and trees survived.
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I think a most dramatic representation of this is in this last photograph, which shows the Rodeo Chediski wildfire. This demonstrates areas of burn. The red is the most severe burn, the yellow is a less moderate severity, and the green represents areas that weren't burned. It also represents areas that had been thinned. And you can see the impact of thinning on that forest. I just quickly want to talk about the administrative changes that the administration has proposed or enacted. First, in the area of the National Environmental Policy Act, we have proposed two categorical exclusions; one for hazardous fuels reduction and the other for post wildland fire restoration. They are narrowly crafted to only apply to areas that have less sensitive environmental concerns. They are informed by other 3,000 similar projects, and we have received some 39,000 comments on those proposals.
The third NEPA proposal we have is the model environmental assessment, and this is guidance that was put out by CEQ on how to do the paperwork for NEPA in a more expeditious fashion. We have 15 projects testing that. Both agencies have proposed administrative appeals process changes to encourage meaningful public participation at the beginning and the design of the project and to address appeals first at the head of the list, so these appeals get heard quickly to reflect the emergency situation we have.
We have also made changes to how the Endangered Species Act is processed so that we do it in a more intelligent and expeditious fashion, working collaboratively between Fish and Wildlife Service and the action agency designing projects ahead of time to avoid species, and then doing projects in a bunched fashion. And the finally, Chief Bosworth will talk more about the stewardship contracting authority that we requested in legislation and which was given to us in the appropriates bill. We think these tools will allow us to get more work done on the ground in a timeframe that is meaningful to citizens and to the health of the forests and rangelands. We look forward to working with the committee on legislation. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Secretary Watson. Chief Bosworth, we are pleased to welcome you to the committee as well.
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STATEMENT OF DALE N. BOSWORTH, CHIEF, U.S. FOREST SERVICE,
Mr. BOSWORTH. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here. Our goal at the Forest Service is healthy forests in some cases that is going to mean that we need to do restoration work so we can get the conditions that we need to have in the forests in order to have them be healthy.
For example, we have been very successful, as people have mentioned, at suppressing wildfires over the years. But because of that, and because of our inability to do some of the necessary thinning, we have some conditions of overstocked stands or stock forests that are leading to the situation that we are faced today. The ponderosa pine forests are a really good example, I think, particularly in the West. The ponderosa pine forests in the West are great examples of how that fuel built up and fire dangers increased.
The central focus that we have at the Forest Service is of what we leave on the land, what conditions we need to leave on the land, the right number of trees, the right size of trees, the right species of trees, so that we can have those healthy conditions. That is much more important than the arguments about what we take from the land. I believe there is some serious threats facing our Nation's forests and grasslands and I would like to just mention three of the four that I think are the most serious are going to be facing us over the next 20 years.
Fire and fuels is No. 1 in my viewpoint. It is a continued concern and the best way to address that is through active management to restore healthy forests. Number 2 is invasive species. It is a big problem and it contributes to unhealthy forests, and I am talking about insects, diseases, and plant species that are spreading throughout the country. Invasive weeds, for example, cover an area that is one-third larger than the State of California. And then the third one I would like to mention is habitat fragmentation through land conversion that contributes also tot his critical issue and affects our ability to have healthy forests and clean water. And that is also a great threat to wildlife and losing our ecological integrity in the land.
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And I would like to commend the Agriculture Committee for helping address that issue through programs that will allow economic incentives for keeping blocks of land undeveloped. Things like the Farmland Protection Program, the Grassland Reserve Program. The administration is also addressing this issue by proposing a large increase in funding for the Forest Legacy Program that was authorized by the Agriculture Committee in the 1990 farm bill and we appreciate that.
We also have issues with our processes that have grown to the point where paperwork impairs our ability, I believe, to act in a timely manner. In our desire not to make any mistakes on the land, we are making a huge mistake of doing nothing. The administration's proposed actions, I think, would allow us to update our procedures and to modernize the procedures so we can act in a much more timely manner while providing appropriate environmental review and protection.
So now I would like to also commend the committee for the support on the Stewardship Contracting. The inclusion of this authority and the Omnibus Appropriations Act I believe will be really helpful and useful for the agency in focusing on resource conditions as outcomes of projects. So some of the things that we are doing we have already undertaken in the Forest Service, at least, have had the authority for a few years, and we have undertaken in the Forest Service a lot of resource work under the 1984 pilot projects that were previously authorized. We have successfully engaged in local collaboration on these pilot projects and we in the Department of Interior will be doing the same as we expand the use of this tool.
We have already conducted listening sessions with the Department of Interior to engage the public as we expand on issues and will continue to involve the public in developing guidelines. The agencies will exercise authority over the design and the implementation of these contracts, and I read in the newspapers that we are simply proposing to turn over the management of these forests and rangelands to private industry. That simply is not the case. We will still be following all the environmental laws, we will still be administering contracts like we have always administered contracts. This is going to be just a different tool that we will use in order to accomplish the desired condition on the land. We plan to engage a broad array of partners and projects and will include multi-party monitoring of the effectiveness of this authority. I believe that in 10 years, we are going to have strengthened our capacity significantly for community based forestry, though, more on local capacity for collaboration, and will have increased the constructive involvement of the public in forest management decisions.
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I thank you for the opportunity to be here, as I said, and I am looking forward to answering any questions. Now Dr. Roussopoulos will continue on.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Chief. Dr. Roussopoulos, welcome. We are pleased to have your testimony.
STATEMENT OF PETER J. ROUSSOPOULOS, DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN RESEARCH STATION, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, ASHEVILLE, NC
Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. And thank you for inviting me from your neighboring State to the south to be a part of this distinguished panel.
We want, before we close today, to address another issue that we deem to be serious that is facing America's forest and rangelands, the spread of invasive species and native bark beetles. Forest insects, fungi, and parasitic plants have always been an integral part of our forest ecosystems and rangeland ecosystems in the United States, and they play critical roles in the succession of the species composition, structure, and function of our systems on our wildlands.
Though they have been with us for a long time, they are behaving differently today than they have in the past, or some of them at least are, and this is due in part to changes in the structure, composition, and dynamics of the forests themselves, due in part to lack of active management, and to prior exclusion for such a long period of time. And of course, introduction of non-native exotic species has exacerbated some of the problems that we are experiencing, particularly, the pathogens and insects that are affecting our forests today. And of course, the drought conditions that our entire Nation has been experiencing over the past 3 or 4 years tends to make our forests more vulnerable to invasion and damage by these pests that are performing in nontraditional ways or nonhistoric ways.
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Large insect and disease outbreaks know no boundaries. They do not respect jurisdictions, they do not respect political lines on a map. They affect Federal, State, and private landowners. When these outbreaks occur, local managers try to assess the situation, and where they can, do what they can immediately to minimize the potential losses of those situations. Many cases, however, require extensive environmental analyses, and often—has been referenced earlier this morning, often, the opportunity to effectively act to protect our resources is lost in the interim. An example that comes to mind for me is southern pine beetle in the Cherokee National Forest in eastern Tennessee, where an inability to act in a timely fashion has very seriously diminished the pine resource in eastern Tennessee on the Cherokee National Forest and beyond.
Two comprehensive strategies have been developed by the Forest Service to address southern pine beetle and western bark beetles. The goal of those strategies is to treat ongoing infestations and reduce the likelihood of future large infestations. Suppression of an epidemic, of course, is only the first step in the long-term process required to establish and maintain forests and rangelands that can withstand—or will be less susceptible to future attack.
Public and landowner education programs and continued research in support of suppression, prevention, and restoration activities are key to these strategies. We are currently in the process of developing a comprehensive strategy for the broader range of invasive pests that have been discovered and we expect to be discovering. The interesting thing about these threats is that we have to start from scratch in understanding them. Very little is known in their areas of native habitat, or very little is documented about them, and they operate differently when they come to a new environment here.
We conduct research in the Forest Service on native and invasive insects, pathogens, and plants at our network of experiment stations across the south. We collaborate with a large number of agencies and institutions in doing so, and that work has led to many of the policies that are in place today in dealing with gypsy moth, emerald ash borer, Asian longhorned beetle, hemlock woolly adelgid, sudden oak death, and so forth. For example, some of the fundamental biological work that is guiding quarantine policies for the Asian longhorned beetle and sudden oak death stemmed from Forest Service research programs in collaboration with the many folks we work with.
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It is not just forests, but rangelands, also, in particular, become havens for herbaceous non-native species. An example, I guess, is cheatgrass in the West that also has an interesting kind of interaction with fire in that it is an extremely flammable species and propagates itself substantially in the wake of wildfires, so you get a cycle developing where the presence of cheatgrass encourages fires, that encourages the growth of cheatgrass, and you have got an ever-widening spiral of degradation.
We deem these issues to be critical threats, these biological agents that we are experiencing on our forests, to be critical threats to the health and productivity of our forests and rangelands. We are pleased to see that measures to accelerate research and management activity to address these threats are being considered by the Congress today, and we thank you for your interest in these matters. I believe we stand ready for questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rey, Ms. Watson, Mr. Bosworth, and Mr. Roussopoulos appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate all of your comments this morning. It is clear, I think, to most people, that unhealthy forests have not only an economic, a devastating economic impact, but also, a devastating environmental impact; especially, when forest fires result from the overload of fuel, and that manifests itself in a number of ways, not just the absolute destruction of these forests, not like a healthy forest fire that drops to the ground and burns the undergrowth and so on, but just destroys the entire forest, may not regenerate for years, if not generations. but it has other impacts as well. It clearly destroys the habitat for various wildlife.
There is no doubt that in the past few years, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of acres of habitat for spotted owl have been destroyed. Notwithstanding, all of the, in my opinion, misguided efforts to try to protect that species in ways that have caused more harm to it than good for it. Degradation of streams and fish in those streams, and in an area that I raised in a hearing last year—Secretary Rey, I know you were with us then—that I think is repeatedly overlooked and which the gentleman from South Dakota alluded to in his comments, about the concern for the health of his constituents from respiratory illnesses and other effects of air pollution. It seems to me that when you burn 7 million acres of forest land, a billion or more trees, that the air pollution impact of that must be absolutely devastating and must be in some way quantifiable.
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And I know that there is research under way by the Department to accomplish that. I wonder if you can tell us, Secretary Ray or Chief Bosworth, if you have made any progress in that regard and elaborate on the types of impact that we have seen over the past few seasons during these catastrophic events?
Mr. REY. We are undertaking some research now to be able to project what kinds of emission loads are generated from wildfires. There is a fair number of variables in terms of when the fires burn, what kinds of areas they are burning through. But we do know some things that are pretty straightforward. We know that the particulate size that is emitted from a wildfire is of a particular concern to EPA for human health reasons because it does have significant human health effects in areas where we have those fires. We also have a visibility impact that occurs over an even larger area and diminishes the vistas that we have in some of our wildland areas as well. We had a little bit of that here last summer, getting some of the smoke from the fires that were burning in Quebec during several days last summer when we had less than ideal visibility.
We also have an impact on some non-attainability areas so it complicates EPA's regulatory program in areas where air quality is already impaired as a consequence of industrial or mobile sources. So those are all significant impacts. They occur both from wildfires and from prescribed fires. The difference is that with a prescribed fire, you can control the time and to some extent the duration and intensity of the smoke that is going to be generated, and you have a much less severe result. But that underscores the fact that there is a limitation in the use of prescribed fire that has to be accounted for when we put together our burning plants.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Chief Bosworth, does anybody else want to add to that?
Mr. BOSWORTH. I would only add one brief thing. It just makes sense that when you do a certain amount of thinning and remove some of the material and make use of some of that smaller diameter material, that you are going to have less—less is going to go up in smoke. And we are working very hard through our forest products lab in Madison, WI to develop more and more uses for small diameter materials so that we can make use of it rather than leaving it in the forest to burn through wildfire or through prescribed burning.
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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. In my opening statement, I mentioned one community as an example of the impact that forest management has had on the fabric of communities, and I know that there are similar stories in many other towns. How will the Healthy Forests Initiative affect these communities? Secretary Watson and anybody else who wants to answer.
Ms. WATSON. I think that one of the things the president emphasized in the Healthy Forests, he titled it Healthy Forests and Strong Communities, and the idea here is in addressing our forest health, to also address the health of our communities by looking for ways that we can work collaboratively with communities, giving them the equipment to help us suppress fires, but also, more importantly, involving them in how we improve the health of forests and rangelands. So that is a very strong component. That is why Stewardship Contracting is something we at the Department of Interior are looking forward to utilizing and developing. We think that that gives us an excellent opportunity to involve communities in economically sustainable rangeland and forest restoration activities.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Does anybody else want to comment on that?
Mr. REY. I think the important thing to focus on with the Healthy Forests Initiative is that we are primarily interested in the quality of the forest we leave behind. But within that primary objective, there still is going to be a large amount of material that is going to be removed and the contribution to the economic well being of those communities is going to be finding ways to utilize that material, to provide it on a sustainable basis, and then to utilize it to generate economic activity.
The CHAIRMAN. One last question. Earlier this week, a District Judge in Montana, substituting his forest management knowledge for that of professional forest managers, ordered the stoppage of all activity on the Lolo National Forest. If the bill being considered in the Resources Committee today had already been enacted, could it have changed the outcome of that decision, Secretary Rey?
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Mr. REY. I believe it well could have. Let me start by saying it is our hope that as the Judge reviews the full record in that case, that he will reach an alternative conclusion than the one indicated in his preliminary injunction order. But by the same token, section 107 of the bill that you have introduced and that many of your have cosponsored, provides direction to the courts when they are evaluating the wisdom of preliminary injunctions to look at both the short-term effect of the activity that is proposed and the long-term impacts of inaction. In this particular case, the analysis that we did on those restoration projects strongly indicates that the long-term impacts of inaction are going to be far more severe from an environmental standpoint than the effects of the activities in question.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Secretary Rey. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Hill.
Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to thank you for holding this hearing on a very important issue. I represent southern Indiana, and the bulk of the Hoosier National Forest is in my congressional district. I also represent Indiana University, and there are many people connected to the University in the city of Bloomington who are in contact with me on a regular basis about what you are proposing, Mr. Secretary, and they are adamantly opposed to it. They call your description of the President's Healthy Forests Initiative laughable in terms of its definition. Why are they wrong and you are right?
Mr. REY. Well, I hate to generalize, because that usually does a disservice to the people who you are generalizing about, but there are two competing points of view, at least, two general competing points of view at large in this debate. One point of view is that these systems will fix themselves, and that if we are just simply patient enough, that nature will take care of itself, and that intervening in that is a bad thing. Now, I don't agree with that point of view, but I respect the fact that people have it.
And the contrary point of view, which is the one I hold, is that we know enough science, and we have enough technology and wisdom, to be able to provide some assistance to bring these forests back into a sustainable situation which they are not currently in. Fire is a natural part of most North American forest systems. The fires that we are experiencing today are not natural fires from an historical or ecological sense. But if you hold the former view, that everything will be fine if we just let nature take its course, then nothing I say is going to sway you with regard to what is needed to be done to improve the health of the forest.
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Mr. HILL. Well, but nature taking its course has kind of been our policy for a lot of years. Why, suddenly, do we need to change that policy?
Mr. REY. Well, we actually haven't been letting nature take its course for the 100 years because we have been suppressing fires and allowing this fuel buildup to continue, and that increased fuel, the difference in the pictures that both Secretary Watson and Congressman Janklow showed you, are what is fueling these large, intense catastrophic unnatural fires. My view is that we have a responsibility to correct mistakes that have been made in the last 100 years, and we have to do that in a way that is sensitive both to the ecological needs of these systems, but also reflective of the fact that things change. We have a lot of people living among these forests now, and just stepping back and letting nature take its course isn't going to be too attractive to them if their homes are in the way of the fires that are going to burn.
Mr. HILL. Let me ask you this then, Mr. Secretary. These same people that have expressed their concerns about your plan are also concerned that this proposal that you are making would lead to a lot less public comment. Assuming that you are right and they are wrong, they feel like this bill gives them less of an opportunity to point out their point of view. Would you disagree—does your proposal do that?
Mr. REY. No. I think that the proposal provides the opportunity for public comment and tries to make that comment occur when it is most likely to be useful to decide how to proceed with a particular project or group of projects. What we are trying to do is to change the public dialog so that it is more collaborative, it is occurring earlier in our decision making process, and it is less prone to confrontation. Right now, the public comment process that we have is far too prone to be coming an adversarial process with a too heavy emphasis on appeals and litigation. It is our hope that as we modify the public comment techniques that we use and build a better sense of collaboration, more people will come together and we will find some common ground or commonsense management changes that need to be made to help these forests and rangelands out.
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Mr. HILL. What, specifically, are you proposing that you want to modify then, in terms of the public comment period? What are you doing?
Mr. REY. Well, let me give you a fairly straightforward example in dealing with the changes to our appeals process. The Forest Service, unique among agencies, has an appeals process that doesn't require an appellant to participate in the public comment process while a decision is being made and before it is completed. So if you are determined to stop an activity from occurring, it is in your interest not to apprise the agency of your concerns while the issue is still before the public for review. You are better off to wait until the decision is final and then spring your appeal so that you can ambush the agency. That is debilitating to the people who are doing the work on the ground to get the project done. It is unfair to the people who participate in the development of the project on a good faith basis and it is ultimately unproductive.
What we are changing in our appeals process, if we are giving our land managers the authority to involve the public earlier in the process and we are imposing a requirement that if you want t thereafter be an appellant once a decision is reached, you have to have participated in the public comment period when the project was proposed and open for public comment. Some people are characterizing that as eliminating their rights of appeal. Well, it is not. It is putting everyone on an equal footing, that if you are concerned about a project, we want to talk to you while we are formulating it. We want to hear what your concerns are so that we can address them if we can and talk about them at least if we can't, and thereafter, if you are still dissatisfied, you get to file an appeal, but only if you participated to begin with.
Mr. HILL. Okay. I see my time has expired, so thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Smith.
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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, with all the other great things about Michigan and our superiority in different areas, you might not have realized that Michigan ranked between 10 and 15 in terms of the top States in the Nation in terms of forest production. We have about 5 million acres of forest land, about half are owned by Government, either State or Federal, and so the forest problem is always real. One of my questions deals with the insects, the beetles, the invasive species. Throughout history, we have always thought that we were doing the right thing. We always thought that we had the scientific knowledge to do what was right for forest lands, and now in review from the early concerns of fire and whatever, the 1905, 1910, through the 1920's, we decided we are going to put out all fires.
How do we now know—I guess, first, on the invasive species, is there any relation to what we have done in the past that is causing increased problems with insects, and disease, and invasive species?
Mr. REY. I don't think the growth in invasive species is a function of mistakes we have made in the past so much as it is a reflection of the globalization of trade, technology, and travel today. And because of that, we have a far greater opportunity to introduce new species in areas where they previously didn't exist and into systems that aren't as adapted to deal with them, and that, I think, is why we are seeing the more rapid spread of invasive species today.
Let me also correct a misapprehension I think I may have made with one of my previous answers. Putting out all fires at the turn of the last century was not a mistake when viewed in the contemporary context of that time. We had to show that we could actually bring some semblance of control to the open range and to open fire systems in order to make the forestry a sustainable proposition in the first place. So it wasn't a mistake then, but it obviously is something we have to remedy now.
Mr. SMITH. I mean, there could be a disagreement. I disagree with that, but in terms of the right balance, for example, in fires. How do we know what the right balance is between allowing Mother Nature and fires to some extent, so whether we are talking about the Kirkland warbler or anything else that results from that balance, how do we know it is the right balance? Maybe just a quick response from each of our witnesses, and then I will——
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Mr. REY. The balance we are trying to achieve is to reintroduce fire into these systems in a way where fire can play an historic and natural role of keeping vegetation reduced, and the result of that will be systems that are sustainable and adapted to fire, as opposed to systems which have too much cellulose fiber, such that when fire does ignite, it has catastrophic effects.
Mr. SMITH. And maybe Chief Bosworth, if that gets down to you, also, give the committee an idea of where we have gone as far as timber harvesting on Federal forest lands over the last century.
Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, in terms of timber harvest, we restarted to increase the amount of timber harvested from the National Forest after World War II, and we reached a peak of probably about 12 billion board feet a year during the 1980's, and then began to reduce that amount to where we sell about 2 billion board feet a year now. A lot of that has to do with social values, what people wanted from the national forests. Every administration, both Democrat and Republican administrations with bipartisan support through those years, supported in some cases increased timber harvest for a variety of different reasons.
But today, we look at the forests in a little bit different way because social values and people's desires of the national forest have changed. But the main thing we are trying to do right now then is to try to have healthy forests, and again, I believe that in order to have that, we need to do active management, particularly in these dry pine forests, so that we can get fire back into those fire dependent ecosystems in a controlled manner.
Mr. SMITH. Can Mr. Roussopoulos give us a short response, Mr. Chairman, to the questions, and maybe Secretary Watson?
The CHAIRMAN. Please, without objection.
Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. Thank you. I guess I would rise to the challenge of responding in an abstract way on this one. It seems to me it comes down to what people value from their forests, and that is central to the notion of sustainability. I believe the balance that you are seeking is the balance that will provide for the values that people want from their forests today and in a way that ensures that future generations can derive their values as well. Now, that implies some understanding of how these natural systems or systems affected by humankind will respond to the way that we manage them or don't manage them and how that translates itself into production of the values that people want from them. And it is going to be a different answer in every part of the country and in every social institution that you seek advice from.
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Ms. WATSON. I would just add to that what everyone else has said. I think the role of science is an important one in achieving that balance. The USGS, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Department of Interior, together with the Bureau of Land Management, work together on these questions. We don't have all the answers, we will never have perfect knowledge, but I think we have improved knowledge over what we have had in the last 100 years to try and achieve a balance. And we can't go back to the time of Adam and the Garden of Eden and let nature work. We have to put our values as a society and what we want, and our values have changed over the last 30 years, what is important to us, and we need to manage our forests and rangelands to recognize those values, introduce national processes, but at the same time, recognize that the West has changed. People live now in the forest and natural fire would be unacceptable for some of the reasons that Representative Janklow laid out, health reasons.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Ballance.
Mr. BALLANCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a good bit of forest, private and public, in North Carolina. And it seems to me that management sounds good. In my mind, I think the public is interested in what is going to happen to the private logging and is this change going to mean a substantial increase in going into our forests and just cutting—whoever can help me out on that?
Mr. REY. Well, I will take a stab at that. Depending on where you are at and what the forests look like, making the forests healthier with regard to fire is inevitably going to result in some material being removed. Now, there are forests that are not in fire regions where fire is that frequent, and in those cases, you are probably not going to see a lot of that. But in the areas where we have frequent fires and we have stands of trees that are unnaturally dense, where we have thousands of trees per acre, where historically, there might have been like 20 or 30 trees per acre, there is only one way to get from a couple of thousand to 20 or 30, and that is to remove the ones that you need to remove in order to bring that area back into some semblance of balance so that fire can thereafter burn through those stands in a low intensity fashion that is not destructive.
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So yes, while our primary objective is to improve the health of the forest, and the quality of the forest, and the integrity of the systems that we leave behind, this will mean, inevitably, some more material being taken off.
Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Chairman, a follow-up. Is that where the rub comes in between those folks who may be opposed to this legislation and those who support it? I can't think that people—if you have unhealthy trees, that doesn't seem to be a problem. But if you have healthy trees, and they are sitting in the forest, and people want to go and look at them, and hug them, and then those trees get cut down, some people are going to be upset.
Mr. REY. That is where the rub comes in, and the difficulty is that it is not always apparent or always a matter of immediate agreement as to what is healthy and what is not. A stand of trees in an area that is characterized by frequent fires, that has small land that are densely packed trees, there are a couple thousand per acre, may have trees that are green and healthy looking, but inevitably, they are going to become drought stressed because there are too many of them there, and as they become drought stressed, they will be more subject to insect infestations. That, in fact, is why we have fairly rapidly moving insect infestations in many parts of the South and the West. And as the insects work them over, they are going to be more susceptible to fire.
Mr. BALLANCE. One final question, I think, Mr. Chairman. Will this be one national policy, or can the folks in North Carolina, Doctor, look at our forests and have input and make some decisions on what North Carolina, or define what North Carolina values are on those trees?
Mr. REY. This will be a policy that will have to be driven by the local needs of the forest systems in question. The same approach isn't going to necessarily work in the southern Appalachians as will work in the Ponderosa Pine Forest of Arizona and New Mexico because they are different systems with different ecological needs. So it is going to have to be a locally based—even if we weren't trying to involve the local public to a greater degree in coming to some agreement on what needs to be done, which we are trying to do—but even if we weren't trying to do that, it would still have to be locally based because the same procedures, the same prescriptions, the same changes aren't going to be equally applicable across the country.
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Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. May I offer comment? I believe your district is in the coastal plain of North Carolina. Is that correct?
Mr. BALLANCE. Yes, eastern North Carolina.
Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. Very little of the forest land within your district is in Federal ownership. It would almost all be in private ownership, largely, occupied by long leaf pine in the past century, and probably largely in loblolly pine today, I think characterizing Mr. Rey's description of much more densely stocked forests than would have been Savannah under the natural condition and much more susceptible to pine beetle attack than the natural ecosystem would have been. But unless my understanding is incorrect, the private land policies and practices would not be directly affected by this measure. Am I right on that?
Mr. REY. That is correct.
Mr. BALLANCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Minnesota, the chairman of the Forestry Subcommittee, Mr. Gutknecht.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In listening to some of the earlier discussion, I am reminded of the story that most of us know about the preacher who came out and visited the farmer, and it was a beautiful farm. And at the end of the little tour, the preacher turned to the farmer and he said, God has blessed you with a beautiful farm. And the farmer thought about that for a minute, and he said, well, yes, He has, but he said, you should have seen it when He had it all to himself.
It seems to me that that is where we come back to this. If you view the responsibility of we, the Federal Government and the people, to manage the forests, it seems to me that you come to the logical conclusion to use commonsense and go about this
I want to come back to some examples, because I think we haven't really talked about the problem. And let me ask Mr. Bosworth—I understand that the Forest Service manages 155 national forests, and each must complete a forest plan periodically. On average, how long does it take to complete one of these plans?
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Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, in the past, it has been taking anywhere from 4 to about 10 years, probably averaging around 8 years and increasing, and that doesn't count the appeal and litigation process that we go through sometimes. So the problem is that it is taking us, by the time we have worked our way through, 8 to 10 years to do a 15-year forest plan to get it completed.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. And share with the committee why it takes so long. Now, I just want to know, for the benefit of the committee, we won World War II in less than 5 years.
Mr. BOSWORTH. I think President Kennedy said that he wanted to put somebody on the moon and return to the earth, and it took less time than it takes us to do a forest plan. I think the reason is the reason that was mentioned a little earlier, that Representative Janklow mentioned that it takes almost 700 or 800 different steps to make a decision through our processes these days. And we have done some fairly intensive evaluation of our decision making process through our forest plans as well as our projects, and it really is a number of processes that have added on over the years to try to assure that we are never going to make a mistake. And then also, to try to assure that we can win in an appeal or in litigation. So what happens is you get additional case law. It kind of raises the bar for the amount of analysis that we are going to do because you have a new decision in court, and then another one, and then another one, until finally, we have ended up stocking on so many things that it takes an extremely long time to get the job done.
Now, we have proposed some new regulations for planning that I believe would modernize the process. They are out in draft right now. We will be making some—evaluating the public comment, but the objective there is to get the timeframe back down to 2 or 3 years. My belief is that a member of the public, if somebody wants to be involved in forest planning process and decisions, you have to be a paid person in order to be able to sustain it over 10 years. So the person down the street who cares, who just wants to be involved, can't do it; not when it takes 7, 8, 9, 10 years to work your way through the process.
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So we need to be able to involve people up front, do it in a short period of time, and then move forward to implement these forest plans.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Can you talk a little bit about environmental impact statements? It is my understanding that you continue to do assessments even on plans which you probably are never going to implement, and that adds an enormous amount of bureaucratic red tape to all of this.
Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, our process, for any process we use for all projects, everything we do, and there is different degrees of analysis as well as documentation that we are required to do. Everything from what we call categorical exclusions, which exclude us—we are excluded from the requirement to document an environmental impact statement, we still do analysis, clear up to the more complicated projects where we do environmental impact statements. And those are the ones that take the longest time, take the most work.
What we are trying to do is find—there are some projects that we do, that we do repetitively. We do them over and over again, and we evaluate and monitor, and we see that we are not having any significant effect on the environment. Well, after you have done some of those projects a few hundred times or a few thousand times, and find that you are not having any significant effect, it seems reasonable that you could lower the bar in terms of documentation, and that is where the categorical exclusions come in. So it is our effort to try to invoke more of these categorical exclusions for projects that we know through experiences and through monitoring they are not going to have significant effects, to reduce the amount of time and energy and cost for getting these projects done.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. But what we are really talking about is eliminating the possibility—well, not eliminating, but making it more difficult for people to just throw sand in the gears year after year after year to keep us from properly managing the forests. Isn't that what this is really all about?
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Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, I think in part that is what it is about, but in part, it is to try to bring people together in a more collaborative way. In part, it is to get people to come together up front, to participate in the decisions and in the analysis. I mean, the best way to come to agreement is to get people out on the ground. The second way is to work in a conference room. And the last, the worst way, is to do it in a courtroom. We need to get more people out on the ground looking at the condition of the land, and try to come in a collaborative way to come to an agreement what the desired future is, and then discuss the ways to achieve that desired future. And we need to have processes that are incentives for working that way rather than distancing us, and that is what we are really trying to do.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. All right. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Case.
Mr. CASE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am afraid to my State probably ranks 50th among the States just in terms of timber management and these issues. Nonetheless, I guess that gives me complete objectivity in my questioning. Just some pure science questions. I think there was a picture there of the Bitterroot, as I recall, from 100 years ago versus recently, and the 100 years ago showed pretty open spaces under the trees. Was that because of the evolution of just natural processes from fire or had there already been in that situation controlled burns or any kind of intervention nationally?
Ms. WATSON. Well, I think that something that a lot of people don't remember is that man has been on this continent for a long time, and the Native Americans used fire as a management tool for game, for clearing areas for agriculture, and so I can't say in particular as to whether or not the Bitterroot had that influence, but I suspect it did because there were native peoples living in the Bitterroot. And also, the natural fires would have made the forest look like that. There has been a lot of research on the history of fire that has been done by some scientists and have demonstrated that fire, both introduced by man and natural, made the forest patchy and open, sunlight for grasses.
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Mr. CASE. I guess I think where I am trying to get to is I think that an observation, the people who are skeptical of the bill seem to acknowledge that there is a need in the urban interface, perhaps, for streamlined procedures to allow for culling out the undergrowth. But the fear is that the initiative goes too far to the other direction in, essentially, exempting these processes from legitimate environment controls and converting the use of the forest through a purely economic perspective.
I think where I am trying to go is if we were to just say that we were narrowing this down to the urban interface, and that we were going to provide the exemptions in the bill, and the Stewardship Contracting, and the rest of the tools that you want, what percentage of the overall forests would we be talking about, just overall? How much of the problem is immediate to where we live comes into contact with where these forests are and how much is kind of beyond that pail and should be left to perhaps the natural processes?
Ms. WATSON. I guess I would like to address the predicate of your question before I address the percentage, and that is that the problem is only around the wildland-urban interface. This isn't just a problem of people and their property. It is a problem of disease, for example, and insects. You look at the statistics. I talked about how it grew from 100 acres to 350,000 acres infested by insects in less than a year. Treating around the wildland-urban interface won't address insect infestation.
Mr. CASE. But from a science perspective, I guess, isn't the natural evolution, the natural course of things, just allowing fires to take place, isn't that a form of insect control in the forest?
Ms. WATSON. I think that is a pretty harsh system of control. Again, given the modern force that we live in, people now live in these forests. People that live there are susceptible to lung impacts. People have homes in the forest and the other thing to think about is in the West, our water supplies come from the national forests and from public lands. If we only treated in the wildland-urban interface, we wouldn't address the fire and the sediment impacts that happen to the municipal water supplies that are far distant from the wildland-urban interface.
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Mr. CASE. But I guess by that measure, we should, basically, allow—I mean, you talk in your testimony, it is very nice testimony, about kind of priorities, you now, we are going to work our way into this, and of course, we want to take care of the urban interface first, and we have got some concerns with the insect control, which I grant you are legitimate. And in order to accomplish this, we want, essentially, expanded authority to waive some of the environmental controls and to allow for private utilization of the undergrowth or the resources, cull it out, take some of the valuable timber to help pay for that. And I guess by your—and the dilemma here policy-wise is that makes a lot of sense in the urban interface. But by your argument, that would really apply to, really, anyone of our forests because, as you say, there is going to be some interaction with people no matter where we are. So is there any kind of dividing line where we can say here we are just going to let natural processes run their course, which is a part of the scientific debate that other people hold to, but here we have no choice but to control it around towns in southern California or wherever they might be?
Ms. WATSON. Yes, and I think there is a dividing line. First, the National Fire Plan and direction from Congress has focused our efforts in the wildland-urban interface. We have been given direction to spend 60 percent of the dollars that you have given us on wildland-urban interface, so that is a direction that we are continuing forward with. The second thing is that the use of wildland fire is integral to how we are addressing this problem, and that is referred to as natural fie. There are areas where we will use wildland fire and the form of prescribed fire to burn and take its natural course, clearly, in areas like wilderness areas; national parks have frequently used that tool. So yes, there are dividing lines.
Number 1, Our focus will always be on saving lives. That will be our prime focus. I would just conclude by saying that we are not asking to waive any environmental laws. All environmental laws are going to be complied with. What we are asking is to use some of the tools that the National Environmental Policy Act already gives us to expedite processes. But we are not proposing to waive the Endangered Species Act, or the Clean Water Act, or the Clean Air Act, so that will conclude my answer.
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Mr. CASE. I just think that probably needs to be a little more clear, because in the under-rumblings of people that have some form of dissatisfaction with the proposal, if there are those kind of misconceptions, they definitely have to be cleared up.
Mr. BOSWORTH. Could I just add one thing to the discussion here? An awful lot of these fires, these catastrophic fires that we saw in the year 2000 and 2002, started back outside the wildland-urban interface and burned to the communities. We also have situations where the watersheds have been, the municipal watersheds, have be been affected. It would be outside the so called wildland-urban interface, but when you look at the Heyman fire outside of Denver, a good portion of that is outside of what a lot of people define as a wildland-urban interface, but it is in that municipal watershed and it is going to cost a huge amount of money to clean up that watershed that produces an awful lot of the water for the city of Denver.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman from South Dakota.
Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I could, Mr. Rey, you talked—I believe it was you that talked about the fires in Quebec affecting Washington, DC's opacity level, visual level. How far is Quebec from here?
Mr. REY. Over 1,000 miles, in any case.
Mr. JANKLOW. And these fires that burn in the West, that start in Idaho, Utah, California, Oregon, Washington, et cetera, the prevailing winds blow west to east, generally. What is your experience as to how far it takes particulates and really affects the air quality, for how great a distance when these huge configurations are going?
Mr. REY. Last year, our fires in the southwest had some visibility effects in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. And in 2000, the city of Chicago was affected by the fires.
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Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, given the nature of the condition these forests are in, in the West, and I am only familiar with the West. I am not familiar with other forests. I don't know them on the east coast, Hawaii, elsewhere. Would just an urban interface aspect solve the problem with respect to air quality, water quality, safety to human beings, safety to endangered species, and those types of things?
Mr. REY. No. The best dividing line about whether to treat a forest or not is not whether it is in the wildland-urban interface, but rather, whether the forest is in a condition that makes it susceptible to the kind of fire that is going to have the sort of air quality effects that we are talking about, or the water quality effects that we have observed, or the impacts on threatened or endangered species. That is the dividing line.
Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Bosworth, are you familiar with that Illinois court decision by the Federal District Court years ago that involved CEQ? Are any of you folks familiar with that decision?
Mr. BOSWORTH. That would be the Hartwood decision?
Mr. JANKLOW. Yes. Now, as I understood it, how large is that national forest down there in Illinois? Do you know?
Mr. BOSWORTH. Shawnee National Forest, it is a relatively small national forest. I don't know the number of acres. My guess would be less than 500,000.
Mr. JANKLOW. Now, as I understand it, tell me if I am incorrect, we have a national forest in Illinois, a small one, a relatively small one at least as forests in the West go, and a lawsuit was filed against the EQ regulations. A single Federal Judge ruled the CEQ regulations illegal and a decision was made by the then administration not to appeal that decision to the Court of Appeals, and ultimately, the Supreme Court. And once the time for appeal ran, and by the way, the Federal Judge in that case made his decision binding nationwide. So didn't we end up with a decision where a single Federal Judge, basically, on a reg lawsuit where no appeal was filed at the appellate level or higher, ended up making a decision nationwide as to what the law was or wasn't for this country with respect to aspects of the regulations of the Agriculture Department? Have I got that about right?
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Mr. REY. That is essentially correct.
Mr. JANKLOW. Some people say some of this stuff is laughable. Is there a way that we could adjust the statute so that we could let people vote in areas, and those that think it is laughable can leave their forests like they are, and those of us that don't think it is laughable, we can have our forests worked on so our people's homes quite burning, and our babies lungs can develop a little better, and our people with emphysema don't die earlier, and our water quality that we drink is better, and we don't have as many carcinogens in the water as the water mixes with these ashes after a fire. Is there a way we could separate these out in a practical way in the legislation?
Mr. REY. I doubt it. And of course, this is a question that, with all due respect, you are better equipped to answer than I am. But historically, we have not passed laws that applied differentially to the individual national forests.
Mr. JANKLOW. Right. Let me, if I can, ask you this. Mr. Bosworth, have you been a firefighter in the past?
Mr. BOSWORTH. Yes, I have. I started when I was 17 on a fire crew.
Mr. JANKLOW. And you are familiar with, I think you showed there, or somebody explained how fires can spot forwards. Isn't that correct?
Mr. BOSWORTH. Somebody was talking about that, but the fires during these very difficult fire seasons——
Mr. JANKLOW. Where you have a forest fire raging in a forest, towering inferno, high plume, what is your experience as to how far forward that fire can spot to endanger other property, and more importantly, to endanger firefighters and people trying to deal with the fire?
Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, let me say first, since we are talking about from my experience, my experience at throwing dirt and being out on the fire line goes back a few years, and we saw nothing in those days like what our firefighters are faced with today because of the buildup of fuels. And so while I have been out observing fires in the more recent years, they are much—they move further, faster, and they are much more intense than the ones that I was out on the fire line dealing with.
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Mr. JANKLOW. Can I ask one more question?
Mr. BOSWORTH. I would like to get some better information, specifically. I know of half-a-mile, mile, and maybe farther out where fire spots, depending upon the wind conditions, the fuel conditions, and whatnot.
Mr. JANKLOW. Let me ask you one more question, sir, with permission. You are familiar with the Jasper fire that was in the Black Hills?
Mr. BOSWORTH. That is correct, yes.
Mr. JANKLOW. Am I correct that that fire, given the climatic conditions, the nature of the forest, and that fire, it moved approximately 10 miles in 1 day?
Mr. BOSWORTH. I believe that is right, yes.
Mr. JANKLOW. No further questions. Thank you.
Mr. GUTKNECHT [presiding]. We have approximately 10 minutes remaining before the vote and I am going to yield to the gentleman from California, Mr. Thompson. It is his turn to ask questions.
Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. We are going to have to recess and move quickly to get over to vote on the rule.
Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of questions. I can't ask them in the 5-minute time, but I would like to get through some of them and submit the other for a written response if I could. And I am very concerned that people up in my part of California and up into Oregon are equally as concerned about how this legislation would impact fisheries. And specifically, sedimentation in the rivers, and any areas where there is going to be additional roads constructed, how this will provide for fish friendly road construction. And I think I am safe in saying, as it is written now, it doesn't. So I guess I would be more interested in hearing how you would propose that we could amend that to address those concerns.
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Mr. REY. Neither of the administrative initiatives that we have proposed nor the provisions of the bill that has been introduced would allow any expedited procedures to be used in a project that involves new road construction. So the issue of constructing new roads is off the table as far as these initiatives are concerned.
Mr. THOMPSON. In the areas that don't allow that now?
Mr. REY. Correct.
Mr. THOMPSON. But in the areas where there would be, would you be amenable to provide in some protection to make sure that these are, for lack of a better term, fish friendly?
Mr. REY. We are engaged, both of our departments are engaged in a long-term effort to look at our existing roads and to right-size the culvert so that we have better fish passage.
Mr. THOMPSON. And you would be willing to work with me and the——
Mr. REY. Absolutely.
Mr. THOMPSON [continuing]. In the bill to craft that amendment? And then I am concerned about the thinning that would take place along the watershed. It seems to me that we could put in some sort of—and there is precedent for doing this in other areas—put in some sort of buffer zones around the 1's, 2's, and 3 class streams that would prevent any type of sedimentation problems or any up-slope problems that would add to the sedimentation of the fish concerns, and I would be interested in hearing if you would be willing to work on that, also.
Mr. REY. I think what we would like to do is to sit down with you and talk about how these projects are laid out, and then we can evaluate whether the projects are a risk for sedimentation or whether inaction is a bigger risk.
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Mr. THOMPSON. So we will be able to see a forest by forest look at how this plan would come into play?
Mr. REY. Sure. I think we can sit down with you on your forest, in particular, and walk through some projects.
Mr. THOMPSON. The other area where I had concern is there seems to be some disparity between the biomass title and the watershed forestry assistance title, where the latter allows for, or I guess engages more public input in regard to this area, and it seems to me that we should have the same thing for the biomassing component as well.
Mr. REY. I think that the biomass title is more or less value neutral in terms of public participation. It is more of an authorization to give, for us, if money is appropriated to make some biomass grants, but certainly, in the course of undertaking that authority, we would follow normal public involvement, public participation procedures, or we could look at the other title and see whether there is something we want to draw from it. That certainly would be——
Mr. THOMPSON. It just seems to me that it is in everybody's interest to engage the public as much as possible.
Mr. REY. Absolutely.
Mr. THOMPSON. And clean water is very important. Don't take this the wrong way, but the biomass stuff and the thinning aspect of the bill is equally as important to large components of the public. I think we should bring them in. And I want to just touch on something that Mr. Case had mentioned about the urban interface and the watershed stuff. It seems to me that you can achieve both—address both his concerns and achieve your goals if you want to reduce fire protection and you want to reduce the ramification of burning forests in regard to health, that you can achieve that in areas that are important to watershed areas and the urban interface areas so you still get the cleaner air, you do the fire protection, plus you protect more of the public, plus you protect the public's water sources. And it would seem to me that that would be a priority over other areas. And just to say that we are here to thin the forest, to make the air cleaner, and reduce fire value, you can do the same thing in areas that would have a second bang for your back, and I think that should be somehow prioritized.
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Mr. REY. We have been expressed throughout in identifying the wildland-urban interface as a priority, but we have also been equally expressed in saying that there are important ecological values that occur outside the wildland-urban interface that justify treatments there as well.
Mr. THOMPSON. I appreciate it. I will submit the other questions that I have, and will you get in touch with me, Secretary Rey so we could work this stuff out?
Mr. REY. Yes.
Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, the gentleman's time has expired and there may be some other questions that Members would like to submit, but I will formally release this panel. We will come to the next panel when we come back from the vote. The committee stands in recess for approximately 20 minutes.
[Recess]
The CHAIRMAN. The committee will reconvene
We would now like to welcome our second and final panel. Mr. Steven Koehn, State forester of Maryland, on behalf of the National Association of State Foresters of Annapolis, MD; Dr. John Helms, professor emeritus of forest science of the University of California Berkeley, representing the Society of American Foresters; Mr. James Walls, executive Ddrector of Lake County Resources Initiative in partnership with Sustainable Northwest, he is from Lake County, OR; and Mr. Jeff Hardesty, U.S. director of Global Fire Initiative for the Nature Conservancy of Gainesville, FL.
Mr. Koehn, we welcome you and remind all of the panelists that their entire statement will be made a part of the record and we would ask you to limit your comments to 5 minutes. Starting with Mr. Koehn, welcome.
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STATEMENT OF STEVEN W. KOEHN, STATE FORESTER, STATE OF MARYLAND, CHAIRMAN, WATER RESOURCES COMMITTEE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE FORESTERS, ANNAPOLIS, MD
Mr. KOEHN. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. My name is Steve Koehn, and on behalf of the National Association of State Foresters, I am pleased to testify in support of the President's Healthy Forest Initiative. I am representing NASF in my role as chairman of the Resource Committee, and we strongly believe that the concepts of healthy forests and healthy watersheds are intertwined.
NASF has been deeply involved in development and now implementation of the National Fire Plan. We support the recent administrative efforts to facilitate implementation of the 10-year strategy and we support legislative efforts that are consistent with the 10-year strategy and implementation plan. We believe that the Healthy Forest Restoration Act introduced by you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, support these efforts.
State foresters recognize the urgency of reducing hazards to communities at risk of catastrophic fire. We must address hazards within the wildland-urban interface, but we must also look at the larger landscape and address the forest health and watershed issues on all ownerships.
NASF recommends including the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program in any Healthy Forest legislation. Because of my long involvement with the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort, I am particularly supportive of this program. It was considered last year as part of the farm bill, where it received bipartisan support in the Senate. The Watershed Forestry Assistance Program brings a national emphasis to the Healthy Forest Initiative.
Although ownership patterns and local conditions differ greatly between regions, the protection and management of watersheds for the production of clean water is of critical importance everywhere. In the eastern United States, where I live and work, this is particularly true since 90 percent of the forest land is privately owned. The private forests of the Northeast and Southeast, together, produce two-thirds of the water we need for recreation and for fish and wildlife habitat. They also provide the drinking water supply for millions of Americans in the East. In addition to environmental benefits, these same private ownerships produce 50 percent of the Nation's wood and paper products.
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The health of eastern forests is threatened by invasive pests and exotic species, uncontrolled fire, overstocking, poor regeneration, and land use fragmentation. The conservation, restoration, and stewardship of healthy private forest land is viewed as crucial to watershed health in the United States.
In the West, the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program is no less important. For example, it can provide assistance to landowners for the rehabilitation and restoration of burned watersheds to limit soil erosion and benefit community drinking water supplies.
NASF also supports forest biomass utilization as a tool to help reduce unnaturally dense fuels and the risks to communities and watersheds. Using forest biomass could be an effective way to reduce the cost of treating hazardous fuels. Using noncommercial wood products can bring environmental benefits, including renewable energy, lower risk of fire, and reduced carbon emissions.
Enhancing research programs to address forest pests will also help carry out the Healthy Forest Initiatives on all lands. Providing additional assistance to implementing pest management strategies would be helpful for all landowners while serving the public interest.
For example, Maryland has been dealing with hemlock wooly adelgid for several years now. If left unchecked, naturally occurring stands of hemlock, which are important in helping to maintain cold water fisheries, will be impacted with the same detrimental effects seen in adjacent mid-Atlantic States. Many other forest pests significantly impact our Nation's forests, from the southern pine beetle to the non-native emerald ash borer in the Midwest, to sudden oak death in the West, just to name a few. Accelerating the work to address these and other forest pests is critical to improving the health of our Nation's forests.
Legislation that will enhance the ability of the public and private land managers to improve forest health and provide for healthy watersheds will benefit both the public and the environment.
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On behalf of the National Association of State Foresters, I urge the committee to include all of the above programs in legislation to carry out the President's Healthy Forests Initiative. In particular, the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program will provide benefits nationwide. The improvement of watershed conditions on private forestlands will complement the other goals of the Healthy Forest Initiative by enhancing water quality generated from our Nation's forestlands.
Our abundant and magnificent forests helped to build our great Nation. Wise and sustainable forest policy will help to assure its continued strength.
I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to testify today and I would be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Koehn appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Koehn. Dr. Helms, welcome. We are glad to have your testimony as well.
STATEMENT OF JOHN A. HELMS, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF FOREST SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS, BERKELEY, CA
Mr. HELMS. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is John Helms and I am professor emeritus of forest science at the University of California, Berkeley. I am here today representing the Society of American Foresters. The Society has about 17,000 members dedicated to advancing science, technology, education, and the practice of forestry in the United States for the benefit of society at large. One of our core values is sustaining forest resources by simultaneously meeting environmental, economic, and societal goals and constraints, and I am very pleased to have this opportunity to testify on this important topic of forest health.
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Now, I would like to address 8 points. The first one is that forest health is very difficult to define. The concept is imprecise, it is value laden, and it is very controversial. And there are at least 18 different definitions of forest health in the literature. The Society of American Foresters holds the view that forest health is a perceived condition, involving consideration of many ecosystem components.
Consideration of forest health also involves what constitutes a forest. More precisely, we should decide whether we are really concerned about the health of trees, the health of stands, or the health of forests. And this is we need to decide the spatial scale over which health is being considered. For example, an individual tree or a stand of trees could be deemed unhealthy, but the forest as a whole could be viewed as healthy.
And similarly, and equally importantly, we have to consider the temporal aspects, whether health is being considered at one point in time, over a period of decades, or over centuries. For example, following a windstorm or following insect attack, a particular forest may be perceived as unhealthy, however, a decade or two later it could regain the attributes of health. And basically, tree health, stand health, or forest health, in a similar fashion to the consideration of the health of human individuals, or human communities, or human regions, is basically a function of the resilience to withstand stress or the capacity to recover from disturbance.
The second point is that forestland in the United States is owned by a mix of Federal, State, industrial, family, tribal, and trust institutions. And each of these owners has different objectives and responsibilities for land management, and therefore, their forests have different structural attributes. And consequently, forest health issues commonly differ among ownerships and require individual professional analyses and prescription.
Third, forest health is a very complex concept and it is interpreted differently by different people, depending upon their viewpoint. It is, therefore, imperative to agree on which definition or which interpretation is to be used before one can conduct meaningful discussion or even craft satisfactory legislation.
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The fourth point, of all the characteristics of forest condition, the dominant factor determining vigor is stand density or the number of trees per unit area. In dense, unmanaged stands, or as the result of fire exclusion policies, trees are often very close together, have small crowns and very small root systems. And consequently, these stands are very low in vigor, are susceptible to drought, insects, disease, and catastrophic fire.
The fifth point is that natural stand development from regeneration to maturity includes a period that is commonly many decades or a century, depending upon site quality, that is characterized by high, natural tree mortality and a reduction in the number of trees from many thousands to less than a hundred. This is a high risk period. In modern times, when our forests are fragmented, contain dependent rural communities and other assets, and have intrinsic values for wildlife, aesthetics, and recreation, it is not acceptable to allow them to remain in an unhealthy overstocked and high risk condition.
Sixth, it has been demonstrated that prudent forest management and stewardship can lower the risk of unacceptable loss of property through judicious thinning and prescribed burning. A healthy forest is a sustainable forest.
Seventh, prudent forest management leading to healthy, sustainable forests requires investment in research and monitoring, and increased research effort is critically needed to obtain a new knowledge on how to develop and maintain healthy forests.
And finally, there are certain actions that we believe Congress and the administration can take to give forest managers the tools to improve conditions on national forests and private lands while maintaining both environmental protection and public participation. Many of the laws that apply to Federal forest management are outdated and need revision to ensure consistency with court decisions and other factors. Changes are also needed in a number of regulatory measures that often cause unnecessary delays to time sensitive management projects. And we are encouraged by the efforts made through the 2002 farm bill, Healthy Forest Initiative, and other mechanisms. However, a long-term solution that would change both regulations and laws is needed on both public and private lands, and the Society of American Foresters will continue to offer support among these concerns.
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So Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I thank you for the opportunity to appear.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Helms appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Helms. And now we have Mr. James Walls. Mr. Walls, I want to welcome you, also, on behalf of your own Congressman, Greg Walden, who is no longer a member of this committee but is vitally interested in the subject matter. So we are glad to have you with us.
STATEMENT OF JAMES K. WALLS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LAKE COUNTY RESOURCES INITIATIVE, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SUSTAINABLE NORTHWEST, LAKE COUNTY, OR
Mr. WALLS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and fellow committee members. I am from Lakeview, OR, Lakeview County, much like John Day that the chairman talked about earlier today, a very small community in Oregon, where 75 percent of our lands are Federal lands, and that is made up, primarily, of the Forest Service and BLM. Our forests are comprised of ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, white fir at he higher elevations, and juniper. At one time we supported five mills in the county, and now we are down to one.
Through fire suppression and high grading of ponderosa pine, we have created a dense, disease susceptible, highly fire prone forest. In a study we just completed with the University of Washington, we found that the Fremont National Forest is 63 percent in the high to moderate fire hazard category. We growth model projections out 30 years and the moderate climbs very rapidly to the high, creating even more disastrous conditions in the future.
The tool we utilized in doing this is a state-of-art tool, done by Yale University, University of Washington, and Pacific Northwest Research Station, Landscape Management System, LMS. It allows us to plan a forest for ecological and economic objectives over 100 plus years. We did simulations of what it would take to remove that fire threat and thin it down. We found that we couldn't just take real small diameter material, 9 inch or less, or even just 12 inch and greater material. It takes a combination of both small and some large to open up that canopy to really reduce the fire threat and make a more natural condition.
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As we looked at this and what we want to do, what would it take to accomplish this goal over 20 years. We found that it would create 150 to 250 direct jobs in Lake County and twice as many indirect jobs. That is substantial when you consider our workforce is only 3,300 people. It would mean removing approximately 250,000 to 350,000 tons of biomass per year. We can do this, and what we also showed in this simulation, we can do this while we restore our forest to more natural fire regimes, more natural species and structure characteristics that we would have found common 100 years ago, and thus, we feel creating a win-win for the environment and the economy.
But when you consider the size of material off these dense stands that have accumulated over the past 50 years and the volume to get them more back to natural conditions, what are you going to use that material for? We believe, depending on the size of the community, a small 5 to 25 megawatt power plants are definitely a part of that solution. The problem is that these plants need approximately 6 cents a kilowatt hour to break even and current prices don't substantiate that. Unlike large power plants, the smaller plants do not have the cash flow to operate under these low market conditions. It needs sometimes subsidy to make it work.
In the farm bill you have looked at 10 tons and it didn't pass, now there is 20 tons. I do caution you when you look at this to look at biomass, not just a subsidy to that one, because that could be a favor against other industries, but to look at the subsidy to remove thinnings and not just a particular industry. Another thing we might want to look at is green energy credits are a premium on that at the price of 5 to 6 cents. Or possibly, the emerging carbon market that has already reached $4 billion internationally this year with projections to $10 billion in the future.
The problem we have in our county is the Forest Service is spending the funds on fires and very little on thinning. On the Fremont-Winema National Forest, we have over 20,000 acres of thinnings NEPA approved and on the shelf and no money to thin them. In thinning, when you look at small diameter, it may cost you $345, but let us look at what the cost of doing nothing is. In Washington and Oregon we looked at fires from 1992 to 2002; the cost of fighting fires ranged from $271 an acre to $564 an acre, and the loss of timber value ranged from $978 to $2,022 an acre. This does not include regeneration costs, lost property costs, loss of life, and other associated costs.
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Considering all these costs, investments in thinnings and reducing fuel loads is wise, both economically and environmentally. Considering cheaper treatments versus watching the West being devastated by catastrophic fires is a good investment. Lake County has one person per square mile, a population of 750. We just finished fire refresher training for private contractors and their employees; over 145 attended. I find it sad that firefighting is becoming our largest industry, and I can tell you that is not sustainable forestry.
What I have briefly brought to you today is a way that we can boost our economy, create jobs, improve forest health, and just plain do the right thing for our families, our communities, and our forests, and I thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walls appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Walls. And now I would also like to welcome Mr. Jeffrey Hardesty. Mr. Hardesty.
STATEMENT OF JEFFREY HARDESTY, U.S. DIRECTOR, GLOBAL FIRE INITIATIVE, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY, GAINESVILLE, FL
Mr. HARDESTY. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thanks for the opportunity to provide testimony today. I am the U.S. director of the Nature Conservancy's Global Fire Initiative. I have worked in a variety of capacities for the Conservancy for 11-plus years, including collaborating with a diversity of partners to restore damaged ecosystems across the United States.
A little personal anecdote. In my family, fire has both personal and professional implications. My great-great grandfather and great uncle died while fighting the big Idaho fires in 1910 that Gifford Pinchot used as leverage to create the National Forest Service. My father fought wildfires in Oregon and Idaho for the CCC's during the Great Depression. So with a bit of irony, it would seem I have spent the last 11 years of my career promoting fire across the United States.
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The Nature Conservancy is dedicated to protecting the diversity of life on Earth. The Conservancy has more than 1 million individual members and over 1,900 corporate sponsors. We currently have programs in all 50 States and 30 nations, and to date, we have protected more than 160 million acres around the world. The Conservancy itself owns and manages some 1,400 preserves in this country. Our conservation work is grounded in sound science, strong partnerships with other landowners, and tangible results at local places.
For thousands of years, fires played a vital role in shaping North American ecosystems. Nearly all terrestrial and many wetland systems experience fire at some interval, and many include plants and animals adapted to or dependent on fire. When key attributes of a fire-adapted ecosystem are altered, for example, by fire exclusion, fires will burn unnaturally, resulting in long-term damage to ecosystems and sometimes to human communities.
In the United States, altered fire regimes are the result of more than 100 years of fire suppression, often coupled with incompatible forestry and grazing. We will not fix that problem overnight. Years of active restoration, adaptive management research, and citizen involvement will be required to protect human communities while also restoring ecosystem health. It is imperative that we commit to learning from both our successes and our missteps so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
The Nature Conservancy has identified more than 107 million acres of critical lands where altered fire regimes are seriously threatening biodiversity. The problem is particularly acute in areas where natural fires would occur frequently in a low intensity, such as ponderosa pine in the West or longleaf pine in the south. The trend in such areas is toward fires of increasing intensity and severity that threaten ecosystem health as well as life and property, especially, now in the wildland-urban interface.
For the past 40 years, the Nature Conservancy has engaged in a wide variety of ecological management activities, including managing thousands of prescribed fires to restore ecosystem health at hundreds of sites across the United States. In doing this, we have developed a conservation framework that relies on adaptive management, including working from a landscape scale perspective, working collaboratively with communities, setting measurable ecological goals and desired future conditions, monitoring to ensure that those goals are being met, and when