[Senate Hearing 108-688]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-688
REVIEW OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HEALTHY FOREST RESTORATION ACT OF 2003
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTRY, CONSERVATION, AND RURAL REVITALIZATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 24, 2004
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.agriculture.senate.gov
______
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94-732 PDF Washington : 2004
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi, Chairman
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana TOM HARKIN, Iowa
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas KENT CONRAD, North Dakota
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois THOMAS A. DASCHLE, South Dakota
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia MAX BAUCUS, Montana
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas
MICHEAL D. CRAPO, Idaho ZELL MILLER, Georgia
JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri DEBBIE A. STABENOW, Michigan
ELIZABETH DOLE, North Carolina E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
Hunt Shipman, Majority Staff Director
David L. Johnson, Majority Chief Counsel
Lance Kotschwar, Majority General Counsel
Robert E. Sturm, Chief Clerk
Mark Halverson, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing(s):
Review of Implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of
2003........................................................... 01
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Thursday, June 24, 2004
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS
Cochran, Hon. Thad, a U.S. Senator from Mississippi, Chairman,
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.............. 21
Crapo, Hon. Michael, a U.S. Senator from Idaho, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural
Revitilization, Committee on
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry........................... 01
Baucus, Hon. Max, a U.S. Senator from Montana.................... 10
Coleman, Hon. Norm, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota................ 03
Lincoln, Hon. Blanche, a U.S. Senator from Arkansas.............. 08
Talent, Hon. James, a U.S. Senator from Missouri................. 12
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WITNESSES
Panel I
Calvert, Chad, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals
Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC.... 07
Rey, Mark, Under Secretary, National Resources and the
Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.... 05
Panel II
Cope, Robert, Commissioner, Lemhi County, Salmon, Idaho,
representing the National Association of Counties.............. 28
Daly, Carol, President, Communities Committee and Member, Society
of American Foresters.......................................... 30
Sledge, James, L., Jr., State Forester, Mississippi Forestry
Commission,
Jackson, Mississippi, representing the National Association of
State
Foresters...................................................... 26
Panel III
Crouch, James R., Jim Crouch Associates, Russellville, Arkansas,
representing Ouachita Timber Purchasers Group, Ozark/St.
Francis
Renewable Resource Council, and the Lake States Federal Timber
Purchasers Group............................................... 37
Kennamer, James Earl, Senior Vice President of Conservation
Programs, National Wild Turkey Federation, Edgefield, South
Carolina....................................................... 40
Partin, Tom, President, American Forest Resource Council,
Portland, Oregon............................................... 38
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APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Rey, Mark and Chad Calvert................................... 50
Cope, Robert................................................. 65
Crouch, Jim.................................................. 86
Daly, Carol.................................................. 82
Kennamer, James Earl......................................... 97
Partin, Tom.................................................. 92
Sledge, James L.............................................. 60
Document(s) Submitted for the Record:
Jeffrey Hardesty, Director, Global Fire Initiative the Nature
Conservancy................................................ 108
Gary Mast, President, National Association of
Conservation Districts..................................... 104
REVIEW OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HEALTHY FOREST RESTORATION ACT OF 2003
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THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2004,
U.S. Senate,,
Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural
Revitalization, of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition
and Forestry,,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Michael
Crapo, [Chairman of the Subcommittee], presiding.
Present or Submitting a Statement: Senators Crapo, Cochran,
Coleman, Talent, Lincoln, and Baucus.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL CRAPO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM IDAHO,
CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTRY,
CONSERVATION, AND RURAL REVITALIZATION, COMMITTEE ON
AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
Senator Crapo. The hearing will come to order. This is a
hearing of the Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and
Rural Revitalization. We are here today to review the
implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. It has
been nearly a year since the Committee held its first hearing
on the act and over just 6 months since this important
legislation was overwhelmingly enacted into law.
There was and is a clear need for this legislation, and I
am pleased that I was able to work with so many of my
colleagues on this Committee and in the Senate in a bipartisan
manner to get the much-needed bill through. Throughout the
debate on this legislation, we talked about the wide scope of
the problem: 190 million acres of Federal land at high risk to
catastrophic wildfire; millions of trees being ravaged by
insects and disease and that these are not geographically
isolated problems. They are nationwide concerns, concerns that
have a direct impact on neighboring lands.
Despite the scope of that problem, some have the impression
that with the passage of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, we
have solved the forest health crisis. This is an important step
in the proper management of our forests, but it is not a silver
bullet. The 2004 fire season is expected to be another
difficult year. The drought facing our country continues to
exacerbate the fire risks, and many States in the West are
expected to have another above normal fire season.
I raise this to make the point that we will have large
fires this year, and we will have large destructive fires the
year after and the year after that and the year after that.
Addressing these threats is a long-term goal. I've also heard
from many in my State who understand how large this crisis is
and who are anxious to see projects in their communities and in
their forests.
We will get this straightened out here in a second. The
authorities under this bill will help and are crucial to
addressing the threats on private and public lands, but the
bill will not be implemented overnight. Another point to keep
in mind is that we were cautious in this bill not to override
environmental laws. The agencies must continue to fully comply
with the Endangered Species Act, the Historic Preservation Act
and other applicable laws. Those of you with experience with
the ESA know that it does not make any activity easy to
implement.
Given the hurdles, the agencies are making good progress in
implementing this legislation. I appreciate the overall efforts
on fuels reduction under this authority, under the Healthy
Forest Initiative Authority, and the many projects that have
been underway since before these authorities were provided.
However, we, Congress and the public, must continue to pressure
and oversee the agencies to ensure aggressive and proper
implementation of all aspects of this bill.
It has been my experience that the more open and inclusive
the process, the more accepted it is by the public. With that
philosophy in mind, I appreciate the efforts the agency have
undertaken to collaborate with the public. I note the
interagency Website that the agencies have developed to serve
as an easily accessible clearinghouse of information for the
public, and it is my hope that they will continue to place a
priority on www.healthyforests.gov as an important link to the
public.
The role of the communities in addressing forest health
cannot be understated. As such, I am pleased that one of our
witnesses today is Commissioner Robert Cope from Lemhi County,
Idaho. Commissioner Cope has been a leader in the Idaho State
Fire Plan working group. That group has worked to get more and
more Idaho categories to develop county wild land-urban
interface fire mitigation plans. Somebody could make an acronym
out of that one.
These will be important in working with agencies on fuels
reduction projects, and I am pleased that Idaho is a leader in
identifying threats from wild land fires and creating local
solutions. I appreciate your being here today, Commissioner
Cope.
I also want to commend the Society of American Foresters,
the National Association of State Foresters, the National
Association of Counties, the Western Governors Association and
the Communities Committee of the Seventh American Forest
Congress for their work in developing a handbook to guide local
community efforts in developing their wildfire protection
plans.
Many of the groups that developed this plan are here today,
and I want to take a moment to thank them for their leadership
in the development of this handbook. I expect that this
handbook will be a vital tool for communities looking to
prepare for fire risks.
I am pleased today to have Mark Rey, Under Secretary for
Natural Resources and the Environment at the Department of
Agriculture and Chad Calvert, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Land and Minerals Management at the Department of the Interior
here to testify on the implementation of the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act and the progress that they have made in
implementing this act since it was signed into law last
November or December, and I am particularly interested in
hearing what progress has been made in managing the small
diameter materials that come off of our forests.
The growing loss of infrastructure is troubling, and I am
curious about what is being done to help develop markets for
this material. Following their testimony, we will hear from
individuals representing those affected by this legislation. I
look forward to their insight and will introduce them when we
bring up their panels.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today,
and I look forward to an informative hearing. Senator Lincoln,
who is very interested in this hearing, will be here shortly,
and when she does, we will interrupt and allow her to make any
opening statement that she would like to make. I see that
Senator Coleman is arriving, so, Senator, I am going to wrap up
here in just a minute so you can get prepared for your opening
statement if you would like.
While Senator Coleman is taking his seat, let me just give
a few instructions to the witnesses: you all should have
received an instruction letter, and that letter should have
indicated to you that we would like for you to keep your oral
testimony to 5 minutes. We have a little machine here that
counts down and tells you what your time is, and the red light
starts blinking when your time has expired.
I want to encourage you to pay attention to that, because
we would like to have enough time to have dialog and give and
take with the Senators who are here. I can assure you that if
you are like most witnesses, your 5 minutes will expire before
you have said what you want to say. Please be assured that we
would like you to still wrap up and just conclude whatever
thought you are on when your time expires, and we will have
time for questions and answers, and if there are things that
you did not get to say during your 5 minutes, you will have an
opportunity during the question and answer period.
Your written testimony is all a part of the record, so you
do not need to worry about asking to make your written
testimony a part of the record, and your written testimony is
going to be very thoroughly and carefully reviewed, in fact,
many of us have already read it.
With that, Senator Coleman, do you have any opening
statement?
STATEMENT OF HON. NORM COLEMAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank
you for holding this hearing and for your leadership and also
for the bipartisanship displayed by you and my very good
friend, Senator Lincoln, with whom I have worked so closely on
many farm bill-related issues. This critical legislation would
not have ever happened, so thank you both for your strong
leadership and for the spirit in which you have made all of
this possible.
I want to thank the members of the panel for appearing
today to discuss the progress of this legislation. This Healthy
Forest Restoration Act is a solid piece of legislation. It
takes common sense steps to improving our nation's forests. At
times, forest health is frequently described as a Western U.S.
issue, but the reality is it is a concern to all of us and
certainly a concern to me, because in my home State of
Minnesota, we have two national forests, the Chippewa and the
Superior. These forests span 5.8 million acres across
Northeastern Minnesota.
Over the past few years, Minnesota has seen its share of
forest health problems. On July 4, 1999, heavy rain and
straight line winds in excess of 90 miles per hour blew down
trees and caused severe flooding over the more than 600 square
miles of the Superior National Forest. In 2002, forest
mortality exceeded net growth, and spruce budworm infestations
have resulted in the death of one-third of the balsam fir in
Minnesota.
According to the Superior National Forest, the potential
still exists for an extreme wildfire event in the blowdown
areas that could threaten visitors and communities outside of
the wilderness. These risks will reduce incrementally with the
completion of prescribed burn units over the next several
years. This brings me to an important point that I want to
stress: the Healthy Forest Restoration Act will fix these
problems over a period of many years rather than many months.
It will take the coordination of local, State and Federal
officials along with detailed planning and patience, but I know
that everyone is up to the task.
In Minnesota, we have seen many organizations continue to
work together ever since the blowdown which we talked about in
the Committee hearing of overwhelming magnitude. Folks have
come together; they have developed strategies and tactics to
prevent future disasters. This was originally possible because
special exemptions were issued from the Council on
Environmental Quality to work in high risk areas.
The implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act
will continue to help reduce procedural delays to projects that
reduce fire danger and address forest health problems. I am
pleased that the legislation accomplishes this, and it does so
in a way that involves the public throughout the process.
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act will better enable
forest managers across the country to prevent future disasters
by removing barriers that discourage cooperation. The Superior
National Forest has recently almost doubled their staff of
experienced fire specialists and increased fire safety training
for all its employees. They have worked aggressively to reduce
fuels, first in the highest-risk urban interface areas; to
integrate buffers by treating locations of concentrated
blowdown fuel on National Forest lands to slow the spread of
wildfire.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to have my complete statement
entered into the record, and I would just close by saying that
the nation's forests are living systems, and we have to
restore, manage and protect them. These principles will not
only help to wildfires; they will ensure that we have clean air
and water, quality fish and wildlife resources and strong
communities for generations to come.
I look forward to hearing from the panelists, for their
views and suggestions. Again, thank you.
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Senator Coleman, and
your full statement will be made a part of the record.
I should have said to the witnesses one last bit of
instruction, and that is that if you are like me, sometimes,
you will forget to pay attention to the clock, and if you get
to going too far over, I will just slightly tap the gavel up
here, and that should help you to remember to take a look at
that clock.
With that, we have already introduced our first panel, and
Mr. Rey, why do you not begin?
STATEMENT OF MARK REY, UNDER SECRETARY, NATIONAL RESOURCES AND
THE ENVIRONMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Rey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for the
opportunity to testify on the administration's progress in
implementing the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003.
President Bush signed this legislation just about 6 months ago
on December 3, 2003, and we are all grateful for the swift
action by the Congress, by this Committee under your leadership
for the swift action in passing this important piece of
legislation to provide the Federal agencies with additional
tools to deal with wildfire risk.
The Act complements administrative reforms that have been
put into place under President Bush's Healthy Forest
Initiative. These reforms facilitate hazardous fuel treatments
and ecological restoration projects on Federal lands. The Act
is also complemented by another important authority provided by
Congress early last year to expand the use of stewardship
contracting by both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management.
In the 7 months since Congress passed the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act, the Departments have taken a number of actions
to implement it, including issuing, in February of 2002, an
interim field guide that was jointly prepared by the Forest
Service and the Bureau of Land Management to assist Federal
land managers to better understand what would be required to
implement the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and I will
provide a copy of that field guide for the Committee's record
for this hearing.
We have also developed a variety of awareness and training
tools for agency employees, including a Web-based Forest
Service Internet site with overview training on the Healthy
Forest Initiative and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act and
other relevance information including on stewardship contracts,
endangered species regulations, collaboration on multiparty
monitoring, biomass information, and model environmental
assessments.
We have also made available to the public a wide variety of
materials on the Healthy Forest Initiative and the Healthy
Forest Restoration Act on the World Wide Web in the Website
that you mentioned.
Let me talk a little bit about what we are doing to
implement each of the titles of the Healthy Forest Restoration
Act. Title I provided us with expedited procedures to conduct
fuels treatment work and forest restoration work on Federal
lands administered by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management. All of the implementing regulations and guidelines
for Title I projects have been developed and sent to the field
for review.
Year-to-date, the Federal agencies have treated 88 percent
of their target acres with a little over a quarter of the year
left to go, so we will exceed the fuels reduction targets we
set for ourselves this year, and at the end of the fiscal year,
after all is said and done, we will have treated about 4
million acres of Federally-managed forest and rangeland, and
that will be an all-time record.
Title II provides information and resources to help
overcome barriers to the production and use of woody material
produced on fuels reduction and forest restoration projects.
Within the next couple of weeks, we will announce the results
of the 2004 grant solicitation process for the Biomass Research
and Development Act, which was modified by Section 201 of the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and this action will generate a
significant increase in woody biomass related research.
The results of our ongoing research on the utilization of
woody biomass are provided for you and some examples of new
applications that I brought from our wood products laboratory
in Madison, Wisconsin. The materials there are self-
explanatory. The filters you see there use juniper, which has
very little other commercial value, but it turns out to be an
excellent filtering agent in a variety of industrial
applications.
Title III authorizes the Forest Service to provide
technical, financial and related assistance to private forest
land owners aimed at expanding their forest stewardship
capacities. The Forest Service is working with state foresters
and Indian tribes to develop separate guidelines for the State
Watershed Forestry Assistance Program and the Tribal Watershed
Forestry Assistance Program.
The Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior announced
during a forest health conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, 2
weeks ago the formation of a series of partnerships to help
implement Title IV and other titles of the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act in the southern United States. Among these are
the Forest Service partnerships with southern universities and
State forestry agencies to conduct two landscape scale applied
research projects on the Ozark/St. Francis National Forest to
address infestations of the southern pine beetle and the red
oak borer, which threaten forest health in that region.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service has been
designated to administer the Healthy Forest Reserve Program
authorized under Title V of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act,
and the regulations implementing that title will be issued
shortly. Finally, with regard to Title VI, the Forest Service
has developed and published the Forest Early Warning System for
forest health threats in the United States, which describes for
the first time in one place the nation's system for identifying
and responding to forest health threats, including Websites to
obtain further information. I will provide a copy of the Early
Warning System for the Committee's record at this hearing as
well.
In conclusion, we have been hard at work implementing all
of the titles of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and with
these new authorities, we will exceed the target we set for
fuels reduction this year, which is the highest target and
highest accomplishment that the Federal Government has ever
maintained in this area.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rey can be found in the
appendix on page 50.]
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Mr. Rey. We appreciate
your work.
Mr. Calvert.
STATEMENT OF CHAD CALVERT, DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, LAND AND MINERALS MANAGEMENT, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Calvert. Thank you.
First, I want to thank the Subcommittee for the hard work
on the Healthy Forest Restoration Act and particularly you, Mr.
Chairman, for your leadership in getting that act through the
Congress.
I will just elaborate on what Mr. Rey has said and maybe go
through some of BLM's particular accomplishments. With regard
to training, following the issuance of the field guidance, the
Department of the Interior put together a larger guidance
document that is available on the Web to help field managers
understand all of the tools that were contained not only in the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act but the administrative tools
from the Healthy Forest Initiative.
We have had a series of satellite training seminars with
all of the field managers; to date, more than 90 of the field
managers have completed that training. We have also cooperated
very closely with our Department's contracting officers, who
have held a series of outreach meetings that have included
community participants, the BLM and the contracting officers to
help them walk through the process for putting together
successful stewardship contracts. In fact, we had three of
those in Idaho this year: one in Idaho Falls, one in Post Falls
and one in Grangeville.
The Department is also working to propose a woody biomass
utilization rule that will allow an option for service
contractors to remove woody biomass as a part of service
contracts, where it is ecologically appropriate, and in
accordance with the NEPA documents and the law, of course.
With regard to Healthy Forest Restoration Act projects, our
2005 project list was approved this spring, and the BLM expects
to use the tools in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act on
approximately 170 of those projects, covering around 90,000
acres. As an update on our 2004 fuels projects accomplishments,
for the Bureau of Land Management, we have so far completed to
date 306,000 acres of treatments in non-WUI, which is around 70
percent of our target for 2004 and have completed almost
150,000 acres in the WUI, which is approximately 83 percent of
the target, and I am proud to let you know that the State of
Idaho is leading for the BLM on fuels treatments and has
accomplished over 75 percent of their 2004 targets.
I want to walk through a couple of the stewardship
contracts, because that authority is something that the BLM
really sees as being a key to the success of accomplishing
fuels reduction. The BLM is prepared to let 37 contracts in
2004 and has plans to clear and let an additional 70 contracts
for 2005. There has been a lot of interest. The BLM is working
to set up workshops with the Intertribal Timber Council to help
tribes understand how they can become involved, and they are
preparing supplemental guidance to address a series of issues
that have arisen, particularly how to use forage, cheatgrass,
things of this nature in stewardship contracts, how to improve
on community collaboration, how to coordinate best with the
Service First offices in the Forest Service and how to
establish interagency agreements with local governments and
tribes.
A couple of the examples of BLM stewardship contracts,
particularly in Idaho, which are of note is the Whiskey South
project, which unfortunately has currently been protested and
appealed, but it is approximately a 1,000 acre project in Idaho
and would allow for harvest of up to 8 million board-feet as a
part of the service contract. I believe the stewardship
contract would accomplish roughly $1 million in ecological
restoration at the same time. This project actually would
return some additional money to the program in Idaho for new
projects.
A couple of projects that are underway for the rest of the
summer that have been approved is one in the shrublands, which
is something that is a little more peculiar to the Bureau of
Land Management than the Forest Service, but it is over 1,000
acres of mechanical treatment of juniper in the shrublands and
will improve critical deer habitat among other things.
In the Lemhi-Aspen Restoration Project, which is roughly
1,000 acres over a couple of years for removing Douglas fir and
juniper, and there, we have a really good partnership with the
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which is contributing some funds
for that.
In closing, the BLM, I just want to assure the
Subcommittee, is deeply committed to an aggressive
implementation of this act. We plan to work very closely with
communities to develop community wildfire protection plans, and
we think that's another key to the success of this.
Senator Crapo. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Calvert. We
appreciate both you and Mr. Rey and the efforts of your
agencies for the implementation of this legislation.
Before we begin questions, we have been joined by Senator
Baucus and Senator Lincoln, and I would afford each of you an
opportunity for an opening statement if you would like to make
one at this time.
STATEMENT OF HON. BLANCHE LINCOLN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM ARKANSAS
Senator Lincoln. Thank you so much. Is this working? I have
it on. Here, let me get a little bit closer. These are big
chairs.
A special thanks to Chairman Crapo, who has done just an
incredible job. I am proud to be here working with him to
discuss the implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration
Act, which we both worked very, very hard on, and I can safely
say not only was it something that I felt good about doing on
behalf of Arkansans, but it was a delight to work with Senator
Crapo. We came into the House together; we came into the Senate
together, and he has been great to work with, and so, I thank
you, Mr. Chairman for all of your hard work.
Senator Crapo. Well, I return those same thoughts. We
actually not only came into the House together; we ended up
sitting beside each other in our first Committee assignment, so
we have had quite a history of working together.
Senator Lincoln. We have. It is a great friendship, and I
am proud to be part of it.
This was such an important piece of legislation that we
have all worked closely on during the Congressional
consideration, and I am also very proud to be here today to
exercise our oversight responsibility and get an update on the
progress of implementation. Follow-through for us is very, very
important up here. Oftentimes within the Beltway, we get things
done, and then unfortunately, we tend to lag in terms of
review, and that is most important, and we are pleased that you
are here to work with us from this panel and the other panels.
Before I begin my very brief remarks, I also want to thank
the panelists for your participation not only in today's
hearing but in both the bringing about of the new Act and also
its implementation. I am particularly pleased that we have with
us before the Subcommittee today Mr. Jim Crouch of
Russellville, Arkansas. Mr. Crouch is a tremendous help to me
and my staff on the forestry issues with many, many years of
experience in the field and great people in Arkansas that he
can call on for expertise as well. I consider him a good
friend, and I look forward to his testimony and appreciate his
work.
I also want to take this opportunity to publicly thank
Under Secretary Mark Rey. He has, on more than one occasion,
taken the time to sit down with me and my constituents to
answer some of our questions, listen to our views, visit with
us, help us walk through many, many issues, and I very much
appreciate his generosity of time and his knowledge.
I look forward to his testimony and getting to read it. I
am sorry I missed it, but working with him, too, to ensure that
implementing this new law is done in a timely and effective
manner. We appreciate that working relationship, Mark.
Mr. Rey. Thank you.
Senator Lincoln. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act takes
the necessary steps, we believe, to ensure that we can address
the many problems affecting all of our nation's forests, both
on public and private forest land. In southern and western
forests and throughout both hardwood and pine ecosystems, this
legislation was intended to correct the direction of forest
legislation in our country.
I was very proud to be joined in a bipartisan effort to
ensure that the bill was passed and signed into law and look
forward to in that same bipartisan effort being able to make
sure it gets implemented with all of the good intents that we
had.
I believe that the important legislation focuses much-
needed attention on a number of extremely critical goals for
our National Forest policy. One lesson that we learned over the
years is that if we value our forests, and if we want to
conserve our woodland resources, if we want to preserve their
natural beauty, and if we want to ensure that the natural
bounty of our forest land is available to future generations,
then, it is important that we manage those lands and resources
with a careful eye toward their long-term health.
Now, the rest of these gentlemen, after we finished voting
at 11 last night, probably went home and went to bed. I,
however, went home and packed two trunks for two little boys
who are going off to camp in the woods.
[Laughter.]
Senator Lincoln. As you may well know, many of us look at
these projects and look at this legislation as something that
is vital not only to our nation but to some of the ways of life
that many of us grew up with and something we want to continue
for future generations. Having spent much of my time growing up
in the forests of Arkansas with my father and with my family,
it is critically important that we recognize that in order to
maintain and to have that sustainability for future
generations, we must manage our forests correctly.
For my State of Arkansas, I am very proud the legislation
incorporated language to provide the Forest Service with the
tools necessary to immediately address the epidemic of oak
decline and mortality in the Ozark Highlands of Arkansas and
Missouri. Just as our Western forests are under constant threat
from fire, our Eastern forests are under constant threat from
insect and disease.
We cannot let any more time pass without ensuring that the
Forest Service can quickly mitigate the effects of insect and
disease damage throughout our forests before it reaches
disaster proportion. The time has now come to implement these
tools so that our forests, our rural economies and our
environment can reap the benefit that we intended when we
passed this legislation through Congress and that future
generations can continue to enjoy the wonderful heritage that
we have in this great land.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for all of your hard work. I have
a few questions for the panelists, and so, I appreciate very
much your leadership on this issue.
Senator Crapo. Well, thank you very much, Senator Lincoln,
and I, too, want to commend you for your hard work on this
legislation. It was our joint bill that became part of the
ultimate vehicle that got to the President's desk, and I
appreciated the opportunity to work with you, and it was that
bipartisan effort that pushed this across the goal line.
Senator Baucus.
STATEMENT OF HON. MAX BAUCUS, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MONTANA
Senator Baucus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate especially your calling this hearing, because
I believe that follow-up and accountability and oversight is so
very important. I know you and others have worked very hard to
make this happen.
Mr. Chairman, I believe strongly in what the Healthy Forest
bill was supposed to do. It was supposed to give the Forest
Service better tools to address the build-up of hazardous fuels
in our forests. It was supposed to help the Forest Service
protect homes and communities from catastrophic wildfires. I am
still confident that this is what we accomplished, but I am
concerned that we are a very long way from accomplishing our
goal.
Where are we today in implementing the Healthy Forest bill?
I am very interested in hearing how the witnesses address this,
because I have had great difficulty in tracking down specific
information on how the Act is being implemented. How many acres
have been treated under the authority of the Healthy Forest Act
and where? How much money has been spent to implement the
Healthy Forest Act? Is implementation going smoothly, or is it
not?
I was quite surprised when I learned that the Forest
Service is not tracking or does not have available data on
whether fuels reduction projects are being done under the
authority of the Healthy Forest Act or under other authorities
like a categorical exclusion or stewardship contract.
It is a bit difficult for me to sit here and have a
conversation with our witnesses when the Forest Service does
not even know where, when and how its people are using the
agency's new authority. I hope the witnesses prove me wrong,
though, and can provide me with the specific data I am looking
for.
Last year, this bill was an imperative for the Forest
Service, because we faced dangerous conditions in some areas of
our National Forests due to population growth, drought, high
fuel loads and other factors. The Forest Service told us they
needed expedited authority to go in and thin areas suffering
from insect infestation and disease, where fuel loadings were
particularly higher near homes and watersheds.
I and my colleagues agreed. We worked very hard working
together on a bipartisan basis. We wanted to help the Forest
Service protect our communities, protect our watersheds, reduce
wildfire fighting costs and improve the overall health
condition of our forests. We worked hard. We forged a
compromise under the leadership of Senator Crapo and others to
help make this happen.
Yet while there has been a slight increase in the number of
acres treated for fuels reduction in fiscal 2004 as compared
with fiscal 2003; that is in my State of Montana, the number of
acres treated is still very low. The total number of acres
treated so far this year in Montana is about 44,000. Of that
44,000, more than 30,000 were treated with prescribed fire,
only about 12,000 treated mechanically through thinning or
other treatments. That is for all nine National Forests in the
State of Montana.
In the Flathead, the scene of severe forest fires over the
past few years, exactly zero acres were treated mechanically
during this fiscal year, and only 250 acres were treated with
prescribed burns. The Forest Service has the authority under
the Healthy Forest bill to treat up to 20 million acres of high
priority, at risk National Forest lands. $750 million new
dollars were authorized to help pay for this.
I am concerned about the progress and how the money is
spent. I do understand there will be growing pains. Maybe I am
missing something here, but this strikes me as part of a larger
pattern of behavior at the Forest Service that has me very
concerned. Given the urgency with which the Forest Service
promoted Healthy Forest legislation last year, going so far as
to tell us that even a 60-day delay for appeals and public
comment between approval of a project and implementation could
spell disaster for threatened communities, I am quite surprised
that the agency has not hit the ground at full speed and has
thrown all of its considerable expertise at aggressively using
the Act to protect such threatened communities.
Let me quote from a letter I received on June 15 of this
year from a small mill timber task force member in the State of
Montana. Quote, it has been over 1 year since our small mill
task force met with you--that is, me--in Billings to discuss
our needs for a sustainable Forest Service timber sale program
in order for our businesses to survive. Now, one year later, we
feel is an appropriate time to provide an update as to the
status of our task force efforts to secure this necessary
timber volume.
As the volume report shows, the results to date have been
extremely disappointing. Not only has industry worked with the
Forest Service to help secure additional funding and political
support for their timber sale program, but the agency was also
provided with a whole new toolbox full of new tools with which
to work in December 2003 with the passage of the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act.
It is not a good indication of progress that we are two-
thirds of the way through fiscal 2004, and the Forest Service
has sold only 17 percent of their target sales volume; the
availability of Forest Service saw log volume to support the
eight remaining independent sawmills in Montana is less today
than 1 year ago.
Mr. Chairman, I have a long statement here. There are many
more pages, and I am not going to give it all, but I will
summarize by saying that I am disappointed based upon what I
know thusfar. I do not think the Forest Service has done a very
good job. There is something wrong up there. I do not know what
it is, whether it is management, whether it is dollars or
whether it is lack of mission, guidance.
I do not know what it is, but they are not getting the job
done that we all thought was going to get done, and I would
just like to, as I said, find out why and what we can do about
it, because after all, these are taxpayers' dollars we are
talking about here. These are people in our States who are
really very concerned about fires and the need for Healthy
Forest legislation to pass, and it is up to all of us to make
sure that what did pass is what people expected to pass and the
results are what people expected.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Crapo. Thank you, Senator Baucus.
Senator Talent.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES TALENT, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSOURI
Senator Talent. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate the hearing being held. Just very briefly, we
have 14 million acres of forest land in Missouri, most in the
Mark Twain. The red oak borer is a major problem. Ms. Lincoln
probably referred to it in her statement, and I was very
pleased that Title IV of the legislation allows accelerated
plans in dealing with these kinds of pests, and I am interested
in knowing what we are doing to use that as expeditiously as
possible.
I have another hearing in Armed Services, and Senator
Danforth's nomination is coming up on the floor, so I am not
going to be able to stay.
Senator Crapo. As a matter of fact, I suspect that the
panelists would--let me just say, I am going to guess that
there will be questions that you will get from us following the
hearing as well, and we would like to ask all of the panelists
to be prepared to respond to any questions that we may send you
other than those that we discuss with you here during the
hearing.
We will proceed to the questions now at this point, and as
I am sure is the case with all of the Senators here, I have a
number of questions myself. We will go through a number of 5
minute rounds until we get them all taken care of.
Mr. Rey, I first have a question that actually does not
deal directly with the Healthy Forest Act, but there are some
issues that are particularly pressing right now as we approach
fire season or are actually in fire season in many areas, and
that is that I understand that with respect to forest fires,
the Forest Service's initial attack success this year has even
exceeded last year's.
Given the current situation with the heavy tankers, that
surprises me. Can you explain the situation?
Mr. Rey. As we stood down the heavy tanker fleet for safety
reasons following the report of the National Transportation
Safety Board, we immediately moved to reconfigure our aviation
fleet to replace the lost capacity from the heavy tankers, and
we have completed that reconfiguration with the addition of 139
different aircraft: heavy helicopters, medium and light lift
helicopters as well as a larger component of single-engine
tankers.
The objective of the reconfiguration of the fleet was to
continue to match the success we have had at initial attack at
extinguishing fires at initial attack. So far, in Forest
Service Region III, which is Arizona and New Mexico, where the
fire season is at its peak right now, so far this year, our
initial attack success exceeds our initial attack success year-
to-date last year in Arizona and New Mexico.
We feel very good about what we have been able to achieve
through replacement aircraft. At the same time, as the
contractors of the heavy tankers have indicated that they felt
that the National Transportation Safety Board study unfairly
impugned the safety of their aircraft, we have offered them the
opportunity, working with the Federal Aviation Administration,
to see if we can certify their aircraft as airworthy. That
effort is underway with the FAA, and we will move to complete
that hopefully early next month, and if some of the heavy
tankers can be certified as airworthy, we will put them back
into service, because they are a more cost-effective asset, and
then, we will stand down some of the replacement aircraft that
we have contracted for to use otherwise.
Either way, we feel confident that we will maintain a 98
plus percent rate of success on extinguishing fires on initial
attack.
Senator Crapo. All right; thank you very much. I appreciate
that. Now, I want to move to the Healthy Forest Act. Actually,
this question can be answered by either or both of you, but in
both of your testimony, you talked about your success to this
point in meeting your targets and exceeding your targets. Could
you correlate those numbers, the targets that you have set and
your accomplishments to date and relate them to the authority
in the act?
What I am getting at is in the act, we authorized treatment
of 20 million acres. We did not specifically set a time limit
on that. Theoretically, you could do 20 million acres in 1 year
if you were successful, if I understand the way we drafted the
act. How are we in terms of getting toward that 20 million
acres? I ask that in the context of the fact that we have 190
million acres at risk.
This act was really a first step. I almost consider it to
be a pilot project to show how, if we can get these authorities
in place and get successes on this 20 million acres, then,
maybe we could expand these authorities to the other acreages.
Could you relate to where we are on the 20 million acres in
the context of your targets?
Mr. Rey. Sure. We will at year end distinguish between
projects that were conducted under the authority of the Healthy
Forest Restoration Act and projects that were conducted under
other administrative authorities or part of the Healthy Forest
Initiative, and we will have to make that data split, because
we have to account for what our progress is against that 20
million acres.
Right now, I would say that the majority of acres treated
to date have been acres treated under the authority of the
Healthy Forest Initiative with relatively fewer projects under
the Healthy Forest Restoration Act authorities. There will be
HFRA projects complete by the end of this year.
Our rate of progress has to be evaluated in a broader
perspective. I have read popular media coverage around the
passage of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act where people were
saying good, Congress passed a law. There are not going to be
any more forest fires.
Well, we know that is not true. I have read other coverage
that said good, Congress passed a law. Now, within a fairly
short period of time, we will deal with the fuels treatment
problem. Unfortunately, that is not true, either. We have 190
million acres at risk. This is a problem that has been
developing for decades. We did not get into it overnight; we
are not going to get out of it overnight.
Of that 190 million acres, we believe that roughly 80 or 90
million represent priority treatments. They are areas that have
to be treated to protect communities or to protect ecological
values. Last year, in fiscal year 2003, we treated 2.6 million
acres. That was the highest level ever to that time. That is
more than double the amount of acres that were treated in 2000.
In 3 years, we doubled the size of this program. This year,
as I indicated earlier, at the end of the year, we will hit
about 4 million acres total, almost doubling it again, and we
will hit that level, slightly higher, in 2005, doubling it
twice within a 4-year span.
Unfortunately, we are probably going to have to double the
size of the program again to get to an average program of 8
million acres a year, and when we get to that point, then, we
will be at a level where within a decade, we will have this
problem solved, but that is what it is going to take.
It is not a problem that is going to be solved in one or 2
years; it is going to be a problem that is going to take 10 or
11 years to resolve, because if you are at 8 million acres a
year, by 11 years out, you have 90 million acres worth of
treatments completed.
Senator Crapo. Thank you.
My time has expired, but Mr. Calvert, if you want to
respond.
Mr. Calvert. I would just elaborate briefly on that to help
understand the time line. As you know, our project lists that
we put together for fuels reduction are developed with the
State foresters and communities and done pursuant the Strategic
Implementation Plan of the National Fire Plan. The 2004 project
list was developed and approved in the spring of 2003.
NEPA work was either underway or completed by December 2003
for those projects, so the majority of the 2004 project list
was already underway for its environmental planning when the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act was passed. We are looking
forward to using the Healthy Forest Restoration Act NEPA tools
in our 2005 project list, and that is at least for the Bureau
of Land Management, we plan to use that for about 170 of the
projects for the next fiscal year.
We will just leave it at that.
Senator Crapo. All right; thank you very much.
I did not see which of the two of you came in first.
Senator Lincoln, you are next.
Senator Lincoln. Thank you. Everybody knows, chivalry is
not dead in the U.S. Senate.
Gentlemen, we have worked desperately on this bill and in
theory feel that we have produced something that is a good
tool. We know that a tool is not good unless it is something
that can be used in the field that actually gets the results
that we aim for. Obviously, that is why we are here today.
Mr. Rey, you know from the work that we have done on the
Healthy Forest Act as well as your recent trips to Arkansas
where my concerns have always centered, and that is around the
insect damage that is devastating the forests in Arkansas. I
guess my question is what are the tools here that we have given
you that you feel like have made a measurable difference in
helping you or helping the forest managers begin the process of
dealing with this infestation? What are the best tools, what
are the ones that exist that are not as productive as we had
hoped, and why? Why are they not? Is it resources? What is our
problem there?
Mr. Rey. Well, I do not think that any of the tools that
you have provided are unproductive. There is nothing in our
experience in the first 6 months of implementation so far that
we are prepared to come back to you and ask you to change.
With regard to the work that we need to do on the Ozark-St.
Francis and on the Ouachita National Forests and on national
forests throughout the south to deal with insect and disease
infestations, the two most useful tools that we found and
utilized are the Title IV Accelerated Research Projects, two of
which we announced 2 weeks ago in Little Rock and also the
Stewardship Contracting Authority, which we also announced in
Little Rock, a stewardship contract that we are doing with the
Nature Conservancy on the Arkansas National Forests.
For insects and disease specifically, those two tools are
going to prove the most useful. I imagine as we get further
along, we are going to find that we will do some work related
to insects and diseases using the Title I authority. Outside of
the Healthy Forest Restoration Act but as part of the Healthy
Forest Initiative, we have done a lot of insect disease and
sanitation work using the categorical exclusions that we
developed a year ago this past May.
Senator Lincoln. Well, definitely, we felt like the
categorical exclusions and exemptions would be helpful in
accelerating some of the things that we wanted to see happen.
I guess my question, and again, my attitude in what we do
here is that legislation is not a work of art; it is a work in
progress, and that is why it is so important for us to have
these types of hearings to understand better what we have given
you in terms of tools and what works and what does not.
Some of the concerns that we have had is the ASQ that we
have as well in our forests and why we are not meeting those
ASQs.
Mr. Rey. The ASQ stands for allowable sales quantity, which
is a measure of how much commercial timber that a forest can
produce while still meeting other land management objectives. I
would say that there are a number of reasons why some forests
are falling short of their allowable sale quantity. Probably
the most significant is just the time and effort it takes to
produce a commercial timber sale. Senator Baucus noted that so
far, the National Forests in Montana have met only 17 percent
of their timber sale target this year.
That is a little bit deceiving, because typically, the
majority of our commercial timber sale offerings are produced
in the last quarter of the fiscal year, so I do not know that
they will get to 100 percent, but I know they are going to be a
lot higher than 17 percent----
Senator Lincoln. Why is that?
Mr. Rey [continuing]. At year's end.
Simply because it takes that much time to get the paperwork
done to produce the sale and to put it through the public
comment period and the appeals process, and usually, we end up
bunched up at the end of the year. We are trying to level that
a bit, because a lot of our timber purchasers would like to
have a more even flow of timber during the course of the year,
and that is one of the objectives.
That is, however, I would clarify a somewhat different
program than the Healthy Forest program. There is some measure
of commercial timber coming off the land as a result of these
fuels treatment projects, but the allowable sale quantity and
the commercial timber sale program are supposed to be and are
measured separately. I would say we are doing better on our
fuels treatment work right now proportionately than we are on
the commercial timber sales program.
Senator Lincoln. I guess my question is is does one take
away from the other? Certainly, we can do both of these
activities at the same time through the Forest Service and
that's what we have seen with the allowable sale quantity in
Arkansas is that in previous years, we have met some of those
ASQs, and for this year and I guess last year, we have not been
able to meet those.
Our objective is to be able to do all of the tasks that we
have in different agencies, and we want to make sure and we
want to know that if one is distracting from the other, that is
an important thing for us to know and to figure out how we
remedy.
Mr. Rey. It is not supposed to.
Senator Lincoln. Right.
Mr. Rey. One is not supposed to substitute for or distract
from the other. One of our challenges at year-end will be to
look back across this year, the first year with the Healthy
Forest Restoration Act and the first full year with the Healthy
Forest Initiative tools and evaluate whether in fact there was
a diversion of effort from one program to the other, and if
there is, then, we will have to take steps to avoid that.
Senator Lincoln. Well, the hope is that they would
complement one another, and if we can implement them in that
way, we hope that that will happen.
Mr. Chairman, I have other questions, but I will submit
them. Thank you very much.
Senator Crapo. We will also have additional rounds. We will
try to stick to 5 minutes each round, but we will do as many
rounds as we can do.
Senator Baucus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, I am speaking more out of a sense of
constructive comments, because we all want the Forest Service
to do a good job. We have a special sympathy and almost
reverence for the Forest Service in my State because, after
all, we have so much National Forest Service land in Montana,
and Region I is headquartered in Missoula, Montana. I have
known many Forest Service personnel, some retired, who are just
wonderful people. They care about their jobs and care about the
land and have done just an absolutely terrific job.
I have to be honest in saying over the years, I just do not
sense the same kind of caliber and focus on mission. A few
years ago, I walked around the Forest Service, just went to the
Region I headquarters just to find out what I could. I found a
very low morale, a very low morale because there is no--they
did not know what their mission was. It was just changing all
the time. They just did not know what they were supposed to be
doing.
Now, that may have changed a bit now; I do not know. That
admittedly was several years ago. Hopefully, that has changed.
Over the years, I have just had a devil of a time with the
Forest Service trying to get them to do something. It is like a
huge bureaucracy, like punching a mattress; thud, nothing
happens. I have been doing this for years and years and years.
I said I was not going to complete my statement; I am not
going to ask any questions, so I am going to complete my
statement in the time I have allotted just to give you a sense
of some of the problems that we have encountered with a view
toward trying to solve them. These are not helpful, that is,
these problems. I hope people are going to be helpful, but it
is certainly not helping a lot of people.
For example, I recently learned that the Forest Service is
spending a considerable amount of time and money to reorganize.
This reorganization, I have learned, will result in the loss of
more than 30 jobs at the Forest Service office in Libby,
Montana alone, and those are good, high-paid jobs, but they
will be gone. The Forest Service is spending a lot of time and
energy reorganizing, which leads one to conclude, well, why are
they not spending time and energy doing their job, their
mission, whether it is categorical exclusions or whether it is
Healthy Forest Act or whatever it might be.
These jobs eventually would move to yet to be determined
call centers or service centers in some centralized location.
This has not been noted in the public. This is something that
we just found out, and the county commissioners let us know. It
is something the Forest Service has not broadcast very much at
all. Seemingly, it is a little embarrassed about it.
I personally cannot see how gutting field offices, that is,
people on the ground working with folks in the timber industry
and the conservation community, that is, people on the front
lines of managing our forest is going to improve customer
service. I do not see the point of a call center. Who knows
where? Bangladesh? I do not know where the call center is going
to be. It does not seem to make a lot of sense.
I just don't see any cost-benefit analysis on this or any
evaluation of how such reorganization is going to really
enhance the agency's mission to help people on the ground.
Then, we have, as has been referred to, the Forest
Service's recent decision to ground an entire heavy air tanker
fleet, including Neptune in Missoula, Montana, in response to
the NTSB's recommendation issued at the end of April of this
year. I must say that even though NTSB's safety recommendation
was directed at the entire firefighting fleet, entire fleet,
all planes in the Forest Service to ensure safety, the Forest
Service determined that it should just ground air tankers, one
segment, not all, just one segment, air tankers, including
responsible operators with no safety blemishes on their record,
like Neptune, in Missoula, Montana.
Moreover, this decision was made after the fire season had
already started and after operators like Neptune had already
invested millions to prepare and after Neptune, for example,
had purchased two new planes last fall at the request of the
Forest Service.
I understand the NTSB's report was issued at the end of
April. The NTSB informs me that they were in constant contact
with the Forest Service during preparation of their report and
the recommendation, constant contact over the last 2 years with
the Forest Service. The Forest Service knew what was coming,
and that the Forest Service was very aware of what kind of
recommendation the NTSB was going to make.
I agree 100 percent that the safety of pilots, crews and
people on the ground should be our No. 1 concern. That is
clear. I am also concerned about the abrupt nature of this
decision and the unprofessional and shabby way that good,
responsible operators like Neptune that have served Montana and
the Nation over the years have been treated.
Neither Neptune nor the type of plane that Neptune operates
were the subject of the NTSB investigation that led to the NTSB
safety recommendation on April 23. I ask, would it have been so
difficult to evaluate the safety and airworthiness of air
tankers like Neptune prior to the canceling of their contracts
rather than more than a month later, as these companies ran out
of operating capital and were faced with laying off their
employees and closing their doors?
Neptune provides nearly 100 good-paying jobs in Missoula.
To date, I have not received an adequate response or
explanation from the Forest Service outlining their decision. I
have spent a lot of time on this, as you well know. I have
talked to you one or two times. I have talked to the chief. I
have talked to lots of people about this, trying to straighten
this out. So far, I have received virtually no response of any
value.
I am going to hand-deliver a letter to Chief Bosworth in
about 15 minutes this morning with my unanswered questions
clearly listed, and I hope that this time, we finally can get
some answers.
The Forest Service also will spend upwards of $40 million
this year in an attempt to replace the capacity and function of
the heavy air tanker fleet. Now, you have mentioned--you were
referring to tankers; you did not mention how much more costly
that is going to be. It is my understanding, is it about $40
million that it is going to cost. That is the transfer.
I am asking where is the money going to come from? I have
been told that because the air tanker fleet is grounded, in
addition, helicopter logging operations are stranded for lack
of helicopters. There are several folks in Montana who have
decked out their timber, but they cannot get helicopters now,
and their concern is because of this.
In addition, I might point out that I have recently come
across a June 2, 2004, General Accounting Office report that
outlines the damage being done to the Forest Service programs
by the repeated practice of borrowing from other accounts to
pay for fire suppression costs and then failing to adequately
reimburse those programs, even though money is returned to the
agency by the Congress.
Every time we in Congress attempt to assist the agency with
a long-term solution, our efforts are shot down by officials at
OMB or others in the Forest Service, and this practice of
borrowing from other accounts to pay for fire suppression has
had a direct impact on my State, resulting in delayed and
canceled contracts, deferred post-fire rehabilitation and
generally undermining core Forest Service programs.
For example, the June 2 GAO report specifically referred to
an example in the Bitterroot National Forest in my State, where
$1.2 million needed to stabilize a road was transferred to pay
for fire costs. OK; there was a fire. Two years later, the
project received only $430,000, less than half of what it had
originally been allocated, even though Congress had reimbursed
the Forest Service for at least 80 percent of its additional
expenditures to fight fires.
The road is still collapsing. Sediment continues to run
into a nearby stream, degrading fish habitat.
Finally, I have been pushing the Forest Service for years
to reinstate a categorical exclusion for small timber sales
that have a negligible environmental impact. The Service
finally issued several new categorical exclusions for various
purposes, including small timber sales of different types last
year. I have recently been informed that the Forest Service has
completed precisely one project in Region I in this fiscal year
using this categorical exclusion, only one. That is totally
unacceptable. This useful Forest Service tool is rusting in the
agency's tool kit along with many others.
I hope you are seeing the same pattern here that I am; that
is, the cumulative impacts of many actions and decisions by the
Forest Service that are having a direct negative effect on the
economy and health of my State, and I would guess it is
probably occurring in other States, and frankly, I have about
had it.
I want to believe in the Forest Service. My default view is
they are a good agency. They are a good resource agency. I have
to tell you, Mr. Secretary, that I have also got to look at the
facts, look at the evidence, and over time, I see bureaucratic
lethargy. I see a sclerosis in the Forest Service. I don't see
them performing their job. I see a lot of obfuscation. I see a
lot of double talk.
I don't get direct straight talk and answers. I have had
it, frankly, I have had it. I am not one to let things go by
the wayside. We are going to do something about this, and the
far better way to do something about this is for the agency to
shape up and do what it is supposed to be doing.
I am sure that you have some answers to some of the points
I have made, but I am also sure that those are only partial
answers. They are not answers that are going to get to the core
of the problem. For example, you mentioned just recently how
well you are doing on the attack response--I forgot what the
phrase is--but the fact is that that is not a very fair
statement. It is a misleading statement. Why? Because most of
the fires last year in the area of the country that you talked
about were man-made. There are virtually no man-made fires so
far this year. Anyway, I have that straight.
The number of man-made fires is way down this year, which
means that the severity of fires is lower, and so, you are
comparing apples with oranges when you are trying to compare
your initial attack success this year with prior years. It is
just not a fair comparison.
I am not here to create an argument. I know you have your
points, and I deeply regret; this is very unfair that I have to
go talk to the chief now, so I cannot stay here and answer all
of your questions, but I hope you get the import and the tone
of what I am trying to say, which is constructive.
I am not trying to badger you for the sake of badgering. I
am trying to ask tough questions for the sake of getting good
results for the people of our State and our country.
Mr. Rey. I will spit out as many answers as I can before
you have to leave.
Senator Baucus. Well, we can always have another meeting. I
invite you to come to my office.
Mr. Rey. OK; let us do that.
Senator Baucus. After the recess and with straight answers,
not a bunch of stuff.
Mr. Rey. Let us do that.
Let me just start with morale, because what I would invite
you to do is to walk through the Region I office in Missoula
today, because you are going to find a lot more motivated and a
lot more excited people----
Senator Baucus. I will do that. I will be in Missoula this
next week, and I will do that.
Mr. Rey [continuing]. Led by a brand new regional forester
who is one of our most talented people.
In late January, all of our forest supervisors met to talk
about the implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act,
and the charge I left with them was the success in implementing
this act is what is going to measure their success during their
professional tenure. They are going to be judged on the basis
of how well they do in implementing this act.
After I left, all 153 or so of the forest supervisors
signed a pledge to meet or exceed their fuels reduction
targets, which is the path that they are on this year. We are
at roughly 90 percent achievement so far this fiscal year with
a quarter left. With regard to reorganization, the principal
reorganization effort we have underway is to reorganize our
financial systems to bring them up to 21st Century financial
systems so that we can continue to achieve clean audits.
We have had two clean audits, the first two in the Forest
Service's history each of the last two fiscal years.
Consolidating that financial accounting function will save the
agency about $50 million a year, money that can then be used
for on the ground work.
Senator Baucus. This is not a good way to run a railroad,
Mr. Secretary. I do apologize. I do not think you want me to
keep your boss waiting.
Mr. Rey. OK.
Senator Baucus. I was supposed to meet with him 20 minutes
ago, and he has to leave at 11. You want me to go meet with
your boss. That is my guess. If that is incorrect, I would like
for you to tell me.
Mr. Rey. Well, the only thing that is inaccurate is that I
am actually his boss but----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rey [continuing]. I would prefer----
Senator Baucus. Well, that is all right. You are right.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rey. I would prefer that you meet with the Chief, and
he can continue to respond.
Senator Baucus. Do you want me to meet with the Chief?
Mr. Rey. Yes.
Senator Baucus. Thank you. I apologize.
Mr. Rey. We will talk again.
Senator Baucus. I do apologize.
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
We have been joined now by our Chairman, Chairman Cochran.
Senator would you like to make an opening statement?
STATEMENT OF HON. THAD COCHRAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
MISSISSIPPI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND
FORESTRY
Senator Chafee. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I appreciate your
conducting the hearing. The Subcommittee is very interested to
find out how we are succeeding and moving toward implementation
of the Healthy Forest Initiative. We appreciate the leadership
Secretary Rey has shown and others in the administration,
Secretary Veneman as well. We thank you for your hard work and
your efforts to help make sure this legislation turns out to be
successful in practice, as it is in theory.
We look forward to working with you and trying also to help
make sure that we get the funds appropriated so that you can
carry out the responsibilities under this act to the fullest
extent possible.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman points out a very important point, and there
is a lot of concern about the shifting around of funds in the
budget and so forth, but that a big part of the responsibility
there lays right here in Congress with the way that we have
been forcing the agency to deal with these funding shortfalls
in fighting fires as well as with OMB and some of the other
more global budgeting issues that we have here in Washington,
and we need to pay attention to that as well.
Senator Cochran, would you like to ask questions at this
point?
Senator Chafee. Mr. Chairman, I have a statement that I
would like to have printed in the record, and it touches on
some of the issues that we need to address, but I know you have
other panels of witnesses, and I do not want to unnecessarily
delay them, since one of them is from my State.
Senator Crapo. Well, I have a few more questions of this
panel. Let me just go back to a couple of my questions, and I
will keep them brief.
I actually have a bunch of questions, and I will just ask a
few of them and then submit the others and see if you can
respond to those in writing after the hearing.
One of the questions that I had followed up on my first
series of questions. My first series, if you will recall,
talked about the targets and the 20 million acres and where we
are in that whole process. Then, Senator Lincoln, in her
questioning, started getting into the area of commercial timber
activity as well, and we realize that the Healthy Forest Act
was focused on fuels treatment and on not on the commercial
side of things but on the fuels treatment side of things, if I
got the terminology correct there.
The question I have there is whether--well, I am referring
to a portion of your testimony, Mr. Rey, toward the end where
you talk about the fact that although we recognize that the
Healthy Forest Initiative and the Healthy Forest Restoration
authorities are helping to restore the forests and the
ecosystems, we also need to recognize that much of the woody
material removed is below merchantable size and is expensive to
treat, and we need to get the public's understanding that it is
OK to do mechanical treatment that removes merchantable trees.
It is my understanding that we can remove fuels
commercially--in commercial activity, we can engage in
management activities that in and of themselves are going to be
helpful in terms of maintaining healthy forests and dealing
with the companion objectives of fuels treatment and the like.
Could you address that?
Mr. Rey. Sure. The way we have tried to express this
initiative and its relationship to the production of commercial
materials is the objective of the Healthy Forest Initiative and
Healthy Forest Restoration products go to the kinds of forests
we want to leave behind, so that we leave behind a healthy,
resilient, fire-resistant forest where fire can play a natural
role.
That is the primary objective. Now, in achieving that
objective, some of the material that we are going to remove is
going to be noncommercial; in fact, much of it, perhaps most of
it is going to be noncommercial. Some of it is going to have
commercial value. There are going to be big enough trees so
that they could be put to some commercial use. It is our view
as well that those uses ought to be achieved.
The wood ought to be used for commercial purposes, because
the alternative is to waste it, which is the antithesis of
conservation. The Healthy Forest Initiative will produce some
amount of commercial material. It is not the primary objective
of the initiative, but it is a result of the initiative, and
that material will hopefully be put to good use in the form of
sawn lumber or other wood products.
Senator Crapo. I want to get into that in a minute, but the
reverse is also true, is it not, that when we have purely
commercial sales, those sales can be done in a way that will
achieve the objectives of forest management and fuels reduction
and protection against forest fire.
Mr. Rey. Sure, and the design of commercial sales is such
that we try to make sure that we do not increase fire risk or
diminish the sustainability or the health of the forest.
Senator Crapo. All right; like I say, I have a bunch of
issues that I want to go through with you, but I am just going
to talk about two more, and then, we will move on. The first
one is that the way that the Act was written really focuses on
public involvement. I just want to ask each of you first of all
to recommit--to commit your understanding of that fact and the
importance of engaging in the collaborative process that we
contemplated in the Act and then maybe to indicate how you
intend to make sure that we accomplish that objective of the
Act.
Mr. Calvert. Well at least for the Bureau of Land
Management, the Forest Service had some experience with
stewardship contracting. The BLM has recognized that there is a
lack of uniform guidance among the field offices of how they
should reach out to communities and involve communities in not
only community protection plans but in a whole array of fuels
reduction activities occurring on Federal lands outside of
their WUIs.
The BLM is preparing some additional guidance that should
be ready for review this summer, and we are engaged in a
process of talking with field offices, trying to figure out
what best practices are, looking for some models of successful
collaboration. The agency is also reaching out to the tribes
pretty aggressively and trying to work out a way to engage in
interagency agreements with them to carry out fuels reduction
projects.
Senator Crapo. Thank you, Mr. Calvert.
Mr. Rey. The thrust of what the Healthy Forest Restoration
Act does is to set forth procedures that involve the public
earlier in our decision-making processes in a way that
encourages open dialog and collaboration as opposed to what had
become more commonly a later more adversarial process.
Consequently, as we are designing these projects, our field
officers are working with people a lot earlier and working with
them through the development of the process. The changed
appeals regulations that apply to Healthy Forest Restoration
Act projects front-load the public involvement that is
associated with the projects as well, and then, last, there are
provisions in the bill for collaborative monitoring or third-
party monitoring by individuals who want to oversee how the
effects of some of these projects play out on the ground, and
we have started to develop some of those monitoring programs as
well.
As Mr. Calvert indicated, the stewardship contracting
process by its nature brings other people into the
decisionmaking process because the contractors with whom we are
contracting are in many cases not for profit organizations like
the Nature Conservancy and other groups who have come forward
to work with us in developing these stewardship contracts.
Senator Crapo. All right; thank you.
Actually, I do have two more questions, not just one more.
The first one is more of just a quick one. It can be a real
quick response, and that is I have been advised from the Forest
Service supervisors and regional foresters that my office has
been in contact with that they are very pleased with the
Healthy Forest Act authority, and one of the real bright spots
is the potential to get past the litigation, which you will
recall was one of the big debate points as we debated the Act.
Have we seen that playing out? Are we able to see already
results there of the streamlining that we were seeking to
achieve?
Mr. Rey. Yes, but I do not think we have enough data to
quantify that for you.
There are examples throughout the system where we have
worked with local environmental groups to design projects using
the procedures under this Act where the projects might
otherwise have been appealed and litigated and were not
appealed and litigated. I have numerous examples anecdotally
from our forest supervisors and regional foresters.
As we get a little further into this and we compile
statistics on appeals and litigation and compare these projects
to other agency projects, we will have a better sense of what
the quantitative difference is, but qualitatively there has
been a difference in the dialog and somewhat less litigation
and appeals on these projects.
I would also note that our Department of Justice and Office
of General Counsel are on a winning streak right now, and they
have won a fair number of lawsuits, and maybe that is having
some effect as well.
Senator Crapo. Good.
Then, last question here is you have provided--I cannot
remember which one of you provided this.
Mr. Rey. That would be from us.
Senator Crapo. The Forest Service. These are some of the
products that are coming off of the thinning that we are doing
for our fuels management, and they are very creative products.
I will share those with our Chairman to look at as well. I
could have brought some from my office-if I had known you were
bringing some-that some folks in Idaho have shown me that they
are making.
This is a very important part of what we are talking about
here, because as we try to make the commercial aspect of the
thinning viable, as we try to develop these different
approaches to what we do with the biomass once we go in and
thin the forests, it is very critical to make sure that these
kinds of products or whatever else can come out of it are
utilized and that industries can develop around them.
Frankly, the experience that we have seen so far with the
Idaho companies that have been trying to do this has been
frustrating, primarily because it is difficult, often--in a lot
of these cases, the products are designed for reuse in the
forest or for use in some other aspect of Federal contracting,
and we do not seem--I know there is an Executive Order on this,
but we do not seem to be able to get the Federal contracting
authorities focused on changing their rules or procedures or
whatever it is to start utilizing these types of products, and
I would just like to ask both of you to talk about whether you
understand this issue and what we can do to get past this
point.
We have companies that are willing to do some really
creative things with these products, with this material, this
biomass material, but once they do it, they just cannot seem to
get broken through into the Federal contracting system for that
part of the issue.
Mr. Rey. That is a problem that the Congress addressed in
the 2002 Farm bill legislation with a responsibility that was
assigned to the Department of Agriculture to develop a
Government-wide set of bio-based procurement regulations. Those
regulations are either out for public comment now or soon to be
out for public comment, and that will be a fairly long and
complicated rulemaking, because every agency will have its own
views, every Department will have its own views about what we
are suggesting by way of procedures for bio-based procurement.
I am not personally involved in that effort, but if you
want, I can ask Keith Collins, the Department's chief
economist, who is actually leading the Department's rule
writing team, to contact your office and give you a more
detailed briefing on where they are with the regulations. It is
a problem, one that the Congress identified, one that we are
responding to.
Senator Crapo. I would appreciate that, if you would have
him contact my office, because first, there was an Executive
Order on this, and then, you are right: you reminded me that we
put it into law in the Farm bill, and I still do not see it
happening. I hope that those that are working on those regs
will put somewhere in those regs in bold that we really mean it
and that we intend to see this approach work.
Anyway, I appreciate that, and I would appreciate your
passing that message along to them.
Last comment, and then, we will excuse this panel: Mr. Rey,
I know that as a result of the timing and Senator Baucus having
to leave, you were unable to respond, as I am sure you would
have liked to have had the opportunity to do so. I know that
you will have an opportunity to meet with Senator Baucus
personally, but if you would like to prepare a response to any
of the issues that he raised and have that be made a part of
the record, I would be glad to allow that to be put into the
record.
Mr. Rey. That would be fine, or I will just meet with the
Senator separately.
The only thing I wanted to clarify on initial attack
suppression numbers, I was using all fires, and I do not think
there is a distinction between man-caused or naturally caused
fires, but in the two States that are in the peak of the fire
season right now, the fact is we are having more ignitions this
year, and we are having more success on initial attack than we
did last year.
Senator Crapo. All right; thank you very much, and I would
like to thank both of you for your time and attention to these
issues and frankly for your work in helping this Act be
effective.
Mr. Rey. Thank you.
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
Senator Crapo. We will excuse our first panel, and we will
move now to our second panel. While our second panel is coming
forward, I will introduce them. Our second panel is made up of
Mr. James L. Sledge, our state forester from the Mississippi
Forestry Commission, representing the National Association of
State Foresters; also, the Hon. Robert Cope, Commissioner for
Lemhi County in Idaho, representing the National Association of
Counties; and Carol Daly, President of the Communities
Committee of the Seventh American Forest Congress. She is from
Montana, representing the Society of American Foresters and the
Communities Committee.
I would like to remind our witnesses to try to pay
attention to that little clock right there, because we tend to
get way out of time if we do not do that, and we will start out
in the order that I introduced you. Mr. Sledge, you may begin.
STATEMENT OF JAMES L. SLEDGE, JR., STATE FORESTER,
MISSISSIPPI FORESTRY COMMISSION, JACKSON,
MISSISSIPPI, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE
FORESTERS
Mr. Sledge. Thank you very much. I will try to stay within
the time. My only problem is I do not speak very fast, so it
may seem like I have talked longer than I have.
We appreciate the opportunity to testify before the
Subcommittee, and I have to make one small side comment: among
the people listed to testify today, there are three of us from
Mississippi State University.
Senator Crapo. Duly noted.
Mr. Sledge. State foresters manage and protect State and
private forests which make up two thirds of the nation's
forests. The six titles of this Act will help improve forest
health on all forest land ownership, and we appreciate your
work to enact such important legislation. While the most
obvious work to date has been devoted to implementing Title I,
NASF has worked with our Forest Service partners to draft
implementing guidelines for Watershed Forestry Assistance Act
Title III.
We urge Congress to fund this and other Healthy Forest
Assistance Act in the 2005 appropriations bill. In my written
statement, I briefly summarize the relationship the Healthy
Forest Act to the 10-year strategy for the National Forest
Service Plan. We must ensure that the Act continues and retains
the focus on improving forest health nationwide on all land
ownerships.
For Title I, NASF has recently worked with several
partners, including a witness on our next panel, to develop
guidance for preparing the Community Wildfire Protection Plans.
The Western and Southern Governors Associations have also
endorsed this effort. I would like to submit a copy of the
guide that was developed for this for the record.
Mr. Sledge. We designed the guide to help communities
prepare plans authorized by the Act. Our goal is that it can be
used by all communities facing wildfire risks regardless of
their proximity to Federal lands.
We are working with the communities in our State to
identify and prioritize actions needed to reduce hazardous
fuels and improve community safety. In my written testimony
highlights some of the activities in Idaho and Minnesota as two
examples of the work that is underway. As we implement fuel
reduction activities under Title I, we will make important
progress toward reducing fire risks for communities and the
surrounding forest lands.
With millions of acres at moderate to high risk of
catastrophic fires, it will take many years to carry out the
needed treatments, and because we are dealing with living
ecosystems, that change with time will require follow-up
treatments and ongoing forest management activities we will
continue to be needing.
In Mississippi this year, using the National Fire Plan, the
Stevens Amendment, to treat 85,000 acres together with the
State funds we already have applying to this, we should come
close to our goal in Mississippi to prescribed-burn almost a
half a million acres this year.
Wildfire prevention is also essential. Without a strong
focus on prevention, funds invested in suppression and
preparedness will be less effective. Much of our prevention
activity is devoted to the Firewise program, helping homeowners
learn to make their properties more fire safe. We have one
full-time and two part-time employees dedicated to Firewise in
Mississippi, and we are able to focus on high hazard wildland
urban interface areas. We are making a good progress in this
effort.
We also have an effort underway to prevent the spread of
the southern pine beetle in Mississippi. Tree mortality is a
major factor in increased fire risk. Much of the work is being
accomplished with State funds. These funds are becoming harder
and harder to maintain. Our situation is not unique. States
across the Nation are not able to implement Federal programs
without Federal funding.
Title II through VI of the Healthy Forest will also help
reduce hazardous fuel by providing needed tools for forest
management. Over time, these programs will lead to improved
forest health on all lands.
The Watershed Forestry Assistance Program, Title III,
focuses on improving forested woodland watersheds, and it will
be of great value to us in the South. NASF has been working
with the Forest Service to develop implementation guidelines
for this program.
I would like to remind you that two of the best tools to
achieve the goals of the Healthy Forest Act were authorized in
the 2002 Farm bill. These include the Community and Private
Lands Fire Assistance Program and Forest Land Donor Enhancement
Program. These programs need to be funded, and the future is
uncertain, but we certainly encourage your help in continuing
the programs.
We appreciate your support in the past, and we look forward
to working with you to continue to ensure healthy forests in
the nation.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sledge can be found in the
appendix on page 60.]
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Mr. Sledge.
Mr. Cope.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT COPE, COMMISSIONER, LEMHI
COUNTY, SALMON, IDAHO, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
COUNTIES
Mr. Cope. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
the opportunity to come back here. It is always a privilege to
visit our national capital and sauna.
I officially represent the National Association of Counties
here, but my area of expertise is central Idaho, so I will
concentrate on that area. We in Lemhi County feel that we are
head of the game and behind at the same time. We are ahead in
that as you well know, the counties of Idaho began the process
over a year ago of developing their own wildland fire
mitigation plan. This that I have brought with me is Lemhi
County's. This was done collaboratively and entirely locally
with no Federal or State dollars. We did this on our own
because we felt that outside entities coming in would not have
the integral knowledge that our own citizens did.
There is a list almost a page long of cooperating agencies
in local government, fire departments, fire marshals, the
county commissioners, the two cities in the county, the BLM,
the Forest Service. Everybody got together, and over a period
of months, we sat down on a nightly basis once a month and
talked things over, and this is what we came up with, and we
feel that it is a good plan. We feel that we can make things
work.
Unfortunately, my county is 92 percent Federal land, and
what we can recommend, even collaboratively working with the
Federal agencies is not necessarily what will happen, as you
well know. Senator Baucus alluded to the problems in Western
Montana. We are very much a part of that same boat. We live too
close to Missoula, and there are a couple of organizations
there, one of which has publicly stated that their objective is
to appeal any Forest Service project that involves timber
harvest under any guise.
Another group there has overtly said repeatedly that their
mission is to put the Forest Service out of the timber
business. We are too close to them. We are an obvious target.
This comes up time after time. We have a community in northern
Lemhi County that has been evacuated twice in the last 4 years.
The Forest Service has proposed a fuel reduction project around
that community. It has been appealed--I cannot remember if this
is the second or third time.
It is pretty patently obvious to those of us in Central
Idaho that fuel reduction in that area is a good idea, but
there are forces from outside the area who do not seem to buy
into that. Somehow, as Mark Rey said, we have to educate the
citizens who may not live close enough to the forest to
understand the peril that we face that these are necessary
things to do and that the simple fact of the matter is that
there is not enough money in the Federal budget anywhere to do
all the work that needs done on the 190 acres of Forest Service
land. It will take private sector investment; it will take
timber sales, and it will take timber harvest.
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act and the Healthy Forest
Initiative are excellent steps down the road toward recovery,
but I spent enough years as a country veterinarian that I know
that when you put enough critters in a pen and do not give them
any water, they are going to get sick, and that is happening to
our forests. We have too many trees. We have not enough water.
The forests are dying. They are susceptible to disease. They
are a biological organism, and they are susceptible to the same
rules of health that animals are.
We see pine beetles in Idaho reaching epizootic proportions
because the trees are stressed. They are not disease-resistant,
and yet, we are unable to go in and remove the trees that are
sick or dead. We are unable to thin the trees to allow the
resistance to that disease, most of which is done through
appeals and through litigation.
I believe there is also, as Senator Baucus said, probably a
low morale within the Forest Service. That is probably true due
to frustration on the parts of people who are resource oriented
within the Forest Service who really want to do their job.
There may also be frustration from other employees of the
Forest Service who believe that their job is to act in a
preservationist manner.
I personally have seen a division within Forest Service
employees between people who really feel that the people who
are appealing these sales are correct, and it should be a part,
and those who think that it should be a managed, well-
functioning organization. The fact is, however, that it is our
belief as county officials that the forest should be managed by
foresters and not by a judicial system and preservationist
groups as we feel is happening now.
Every timber sale that has been proposed on the Salmon
National Forest for 12 years has come under litigation and
appeal. The result of which is we harvest almost nothing.
Talking to Senator Crapo yesterday, I did discover that at the
time that our sawmill was functioning, it would have required
15 to 20 million board feet a year to make its quota and to
function as a good organization.
That saw mill today is closed. It has, however, been
replaced by a small-diameter mill, two post and pole plants, a
house log construction firm and a couple of independent
sawyers. None of them have the material they need. They would
probably require, best estimate, probably 10 to 15 million
board feet annually.
By the 1987 National Forest plan for the Salmon Chalice,
the allowable cut on that forest is 28 million board feet. We
are lucky to make 100,000 a year. We are lucky right now in
that we have the infrastructure to handle the product that
needs to be removed from our National Forest, but all of the
entities that I named are currently in financial difficulty
because they are having to import their raw material from
Canada and from Montana, from the State forests.
Until the day comes that we can utilize the product that we
have that we desperately need to remove, we are not going to
get the job done. The Healthy Forest Restoration and Healthy
Forest Initiative, as I say, are wonderful first steps, and
they are definitely worthy of funding. They are not a panacea.
They will take cooperation from all members of the community
and from the local and State and Federal Governments.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cope can be found in the
appendix on page 65.]
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Mr. Cope.
Ms. Daly.
STATEMENT OF CAROL DALY, PRESIDENT, COMMUNITIES COMMITTEE AND
MEMBER, SOCIETY OF AMERICAN
FORESTERS, COLUMBIA FALLS, MONTANA
Ms. Daly. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Chairman, I am here
representing the Communities Committee and the Society of
American Foresters, and thank you very much for the kind words
that you said about the handbook on preparing community
wildfire protection plans that we and our partners put
together.
The creation of the protection plan should bring together
all concerned stakeholders to collaboratively identify areas at
risk of wildfire and develop an action plan for reducing those
risks. Some clear benefits of that are that existing scientific
information as well as local indigenous knowledge can be
brought to the table. All participants learn more about the
forests around them, while urban residents, WUI residents, find
out what they need to do with their homes and their properties
to lessen the risk of loss to wildfire.
The fuels treatment priorities for both Federal and non-
Federal lands are set only after an open and inclusive
community discussion of the options. The action strategy covers
all land ownerships, public and private. Finally, a multi-party
monitoring process should ensure that the effects of the plan's
implementation are carefully evaluated and needed improvements
identified.
Collaborative planning is the heart of the community
wildfire protection planning process. Yet in this, as in other
recent forest-related legislation, mandates for collaboration
are not backed up with appropriate financial and technical
support. Many local governments, fire departments and State
forestry agencies, the decisionmakers in the process, generally
have little or no experience in collaborative processes.
It therefore falls to community-based forestry groups and
other non-governmental bodies to organize and facilitate the
collaboration. Lacking Healthy Forest or other Federal support
for that, we have to turn to private foundations and other
sources for funding, and frankly, these days, they are not
willing to give it. They see that as a Government
responsibility, not as a private sector responsibility to
implement a Government program.
As critical as collaboration is to the success of Healthy
Forests, it can no longer be left as an unfunded mandate.
Without Federal seed money to help communities get started,
community wildfire protection plans will not happen in many
places. Dr. Cope's was an exception.
Without having community wildfire protection plans, many of
the central features of healthy forests will not be used. We
are really pleased to hear that the House has set aside $5
million in the 2005 Interior approps bill to cost-share
wildfire planning with communities and we urge the Senate to do
likewise.
We need to target particular attention to poorer or lower-
capacity communities, those that lack adequate technical or
financial resources. Otherwise, they face a double-barreled
threat. They are more vulnerable to wildfire losses without a
plan and a strategy that they are implementing, and should they
have a severe wildfire, they have less capability to recover
from it.
Overreliance on the stewardship contracting mechanism to
fund Healthy Forest projects should be avoided. While some
hazardous fuels treatment activities will yield saleable
products whose value can be captured to cover all or a part the
reduction of hazardous materials, many will not.
Until more or larger markets are created for what are now
low or no-value products, adequate direct funding for HEFR
projects is essential. The increase in hazardous fuels
reduction contracting opportunities arising from Healthy
Forests and the National Fire Plan has led new contractors to
enter the field and many existing contractors to refocus their
operations and invest in new equipment suited to this market
niche.
On public lands projects, the transition has not always
gone smoothly. Cruising, bonding and contracting processes that
may have worked well on conventional timber sales must be
revisited in terms of Healthy Forests. Healthy Forests directs
the Forest Service and BLM to establish a collaborative,
multiparty monitoring process where significant interest is
expressed. Monitoring can be an important factor in proving the
value of Healthy Forests and allaying reservations about its
intent and impact.
The joint Forest Service-BLM interim field guide provides
that multiparty monitoring will be subject to available funding
and the ability of stakeholders to contribute funds or in-kind
services. The Wild Land Fire Leadership Council's proposed
monitoring protocol goes even further and requires that
stakeholders wishing to participate have, quote, appropriate
skills and knowledge for monitoring and, quote, be willing to
share costs. Such requirements could be used to limit or
discourage multiparty participation, defeating the purpose of
this important provision of Healthy Forests.
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act is still very much a
work in progress, as Senator Lincoln said earlier, and it will
take leadership and commitment to make it a success. We urge
that adequate time and support be given to allow for a full,
fair exploration of its potential.
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act is creating a
comprehensive approach to addressing our forests across
ownerships, within watersheds and ecosystems, and that is
something that we will probably need to look at in addition,
not just in fire-prone forests.
Both the Communities Committee and the Society of American
Foresters would be very happy to work with Congress, the Forest
Service, BLM and any others to help the issues we have raised
today.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Daly can be found in the
appendix on page 82.]
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Ms. Daly. I want to
give my thanks to the entire panel for really outstanding
testimony.
If Senator Cochran, if you would like to go first, I would
be glad to defer to you.
The Chairman. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
I am pleased to join you in welcoming this distinguished
panel of witnesses before our Committee. They represent those
who are qualified and well-educated and experienced to deal
with the problems that are confronting our forests throughout
the country, whether they are on Federal lands or private
lands.
Mr. Sledge pointed out how much of our State is filled with
forests that are privately owned. A large percentage of our
State is in woodlands. The success that we have in protecting
the health of our forests and helping to ensure a sustainable,
productive forest resource is a very important economic benefit
to our State. It is a great aesthetic benefit to our State; it
is a great environmental benefit to our State.
We have a lot riding on making the right decisions and
providing the funds that are available in the right way to help
achieve these goals. We were also lucky in that Mr. Sledge is
the immediate past president of the National Association of
State Foresters, so he has a wide range of contacts throughout
the country, and he is representing them all today, and I am
really grateful that you took the time to come up and join Dr.
Cope in this sauna of Washington; I thought that is what you
said; it does feel like a sauna out there on some of these June
and July days.
We appreciate the information that you are providing us on
how we can be more effective in channeling resources to
programs that you know will work and will benefit our States
and our National Forests as well, and we will try to follow
your advice and try to be persuasive as we talk with other
Senators and members of the other body for making available the
resources that we need for these important projects.
There is one question I did have for Mr. Sledge. In your
testimony, you mentioned the efforts dealing with the southern
pine bark beetle and how devastating that can be to some of our
resources. What are the keys to preventing outbreaks of this
and other insect threats in our forests in the Southeast?
Mr. Sledge. Well, particularly with the southern pine
beetle, maintaining the bigger of the stand is essential. This
means being able to keep the stands thin and also, as
appropriate, using prescribed fire to keep the trees healthy
and vigorous.
So far, in the last year in Mississippi, we have been
fortunate. We have not had a severe outbreak. These things run
in cycles, and it will just be a question of time. One of the
things that is very common also to the southern pine beetle,
maintenance of healthy forests is the same as you have found in
many of the Western States: we have to find additional markets
for small material when we do our thinnings.
It is very difficult to get a thinning done by a private
landowner if he has to pay to thin. He wants to be able to
market it for some amount at least to recover his costs, and
that is a vital part of this bill that would be of greater
importance. We look at it right now that our biggest task is to
prevent the attacks rather than have to react to them.
The Chairman. We heard the Chairman talk about these
products that are being developed, and Dr. Cope mentioned that
as well. Are we seeing any projects of this kind in the
Southeast related to biomass wood utilization? Is any progress
being made on that in our part of the country?
Mr. Sledge. We have, in Mississippi right now, one that I
find very exciting and have been involved with, a process
called TimTec, which came out of the private sector, but they
came to the Land, Water and Timber Board, which was set up by
the State Legislature, asking for funding for Mississippi State
for some research to take small stands--in a very unscientific
explanation, crush them and make a composite wood product out
of them which at this point shows very strong characteristics
to make it for construction lumber.
At this time, due to some money, grant money that we were
able to provide them, an outfit called Sugarlock Lumber Company
is in the process of building, trying to get financing to build
a plant which would consume, if I remember right, about 500,000
tons of material annually, which would be a tremendous asset to
the State.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Senator Cochran.
Just following up on the last line of questioning, I
appreciated each of the panelists in one context or another has
discussed the importance of making sure we utilize the biomass
products as they come out of our forests and finding a pathway
for that to be successful. Ms. Daly, if I understood you
correctly, you indicated that you thought that while we are
making that market transition, we may need to have some kind of
support to make sure that these transitions occur; is that
correct?
Ms. Daly. Yes, one of the things that we are seeing now in
Montana when you are dealing with projects with large amounts
of very small, low or no value material is that they very
quickly flood the available markets, and so, it becomes very
difficult for contractors to be able to take them out. They
have no way to sell them.
Really, they are going to have to be paid to remove them,
because there is not a market there. There are some small types
of new businesses starting to use some of these materials, and
then, there are some businesses like pulp mills that are
already set up to use some of them. You get into transportation
problems and a number of other things that raise the cost of
moving those materials and makes it difficult.
Senator Crapo. Well, thank you.
This is obviously an issue that we are struggling with here
at the Federal level, but our policy on the issue is clear. We
just need to make sure we get all the agencies to understand
the policy and to understand how serious we are about
implementing it, and then, we will find some ways to move
forward on that.
Mr. Cope, I wanted to use my time with you and talk with
you about some of the issues that you raised. One of the other
issues that I would like to get into, which you have discussed
in your testimony, is the relationship of commercial activity
to healthy forests. Very clearly, when we debated the Healthy
Forest legislation, our ability to build a strong, bipartisan
bill was dependent in large part on the fact that we focused on
protecting communities, and we focused on reducing the fuel
load and addressing that part of the forest management that was
not specifically connected to commercial activity.
However, as I have said earlier in the hearing today, I
believe that commercial activity can be beneficial to those
very same purposes and objectives, namely, reducing the fuel
load and accomplishing proper forest management techniques. The
reason I asked you to get those numbers yesterday and bring
them to the hearing with you today is because of an experience
I had in the Salmon National Forest in your hometown where, Mr.
Chairman, I visited--Salmon, as Mr. Cope has indicated, is a
county in Idaho which is 92 percent Federal land. There is one
community and then lots of folks living around the forest in
the available private land, but their economic activity is
dependent on our National Forest and on the resource-based
economy that has grown out of it.
I went there when I was a Congressman. This has been about
8 or 10 years ago, and we had one mill that employed, I
remember, 40 people. This mill--I toured the mill. They were
having trouble getting--they were in the middle of a giant
forest, and they were having trouble getting timber to run
their mill.
I asked them how many board feet they needed, and I had
forgotten the answer, and Mr. Cope gave me the answer here
today. It was around 15 to 20 million board-feet. They were
worried about having to close that mill down. Ultimately, they
did have to close it down and lost 40 jobs in that small
community.
That same day, I went to the Forest Service and asked them,
as we were touring and finding information from the Forest
Service, I asked them in their sustainable forest approach so
that they were meeting all environmental standards and not
overcutting the forest or anything, how many board feet could
they generate out of this forest? I had forgotten that number
as well. Mr. Cope brought it to me. It was approximately, at
least in 1987, it was about 28 million board feet, which was
well more than the amount that this little mill needed.
Well, we could not get it. Did you say that today, they are
getting about 100,000 board feet?
Mr. Cope. If we are lucky.
Senator Crapo. If we are lucky, off of the forest, which,
if I understand you correctly, means that the fuel load in that
forest is growing much, much faster than we are removing it.
Mr. Cope. Estimated at over 100 million board-feet per year
on that forest.
Senator Crapo. In terms of increase in fuel load every
year.
Mr. Cope. Correct.
Senator Crapo. We have a tinder box growing there just like
we have in some other parts of Idaho and other parts of the
country.
I just wanted to make that connection between--as we
address not only the impact and the management under the
Healthy Forest Act, I just wanted to make that connection with
the fact that we can use other tools, like the Healthy Forest
Initiative that the President has and our commercial activities
for little communities like this in these forests to not only
help economic activity and help these communities thrive with
their resource-based economies but to help proper forest
management.
Mr. Cope, if you would like to just comment on that in any
way, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Cope. Absolutely.
I was also able to pick up from our forest supervisor the
plans and projections for the next 5 years on fuel reductions
projects through prescribed burn and mechanical thinning.
Through 2009 or 2010, whatever the next 5 years are, the total
acreage for mechanical thinning and prescribed burn is a little
over 77,000, which amounts to 1 percent of our National Forest,
which is 5 million acres, 1.5 percent.
The simple fact is that on an area that vast and that
overgrown, we simply do not have the resources or the finances
to complete all that work. That is why I say it will take
commercial activity; it will take private sector investment.
There is simply too much fuel out there for the Government to
go out and pay to have it done. It needs to be a community
effort, partnership between industry, local and State
governments and the Federal Government and the land management
agencies.
I believe that can happen, but we have to be able to do
that on the community level, and right now, we have a lot of
help that we really do not need from other areas.
Senator Crapo. Well, Mr. Cope, the community that I am
talking about is Salmon, Idaho. Did you indicate that the
community had been evacuated twice?
Mr. Cope. That was Gibbonsville.
Senator Crapo. Oh, Gibbonsville, OK.
Mr. Cope. We have not had to evacuate Salmon yet.
Senator Crapo. I know we have not had to evacuate Salmon;
that is right, but I have been out there during some of the
last forest fires, where the community was literally in
jeopardy and have flown in one of the forest fire helicopters
over the community, and the forest was burning so hot just
right outside of town that each night, they would try to build
a fire break against it on a ridge, and the fire would just
leap the ridge and go on to the next one, and they kept
fighting and fighting and fighting it for weeks in that
particular fire.
This is as a result of the fact that we are just not able
to manage the forest well enough. I know that some are probably
a little uneasy about me bringing up the commercial connection
here, because we built a lot of our common approach to get the
Healthy Forest Act passed by staying away from the commercial
arguments. I am not trying to start a fight here that will
jeopardize our implementation of the Healthy Forest Act because
it does not focus on the commercial side of our forest
activity.
I do want to raise issue and hopefully help educate the
people in the country who are concerned about these issues as
to the fact that we can accomplish these proper objectives for
forest management through proper commercial activities, and at
some point, we are going to have to address that, and I hope
that we continue to recognize that need.
Do you have any further questions, Mr. Chairman?
The Chairman. I was curious. Is Salmon on the Salmon River?
Mr. Cope. Yes, it is.
The Chairman. Because I recall going out there one time on
a reconnaissance float trip down the Middle Fork of the Salmon
River and being absolutely impressed, Mr. Chairman, with the
beauty of the region and the majesty of that river. We spent
four or five nights out on the river as we made our way down on
that trip.
I also remember, Mr. Chairman, that at one point, we passed
an area that had been devastated by a forest fire, and I asked
when did the fire occur? They said something like 20 years ago.
It looked like it had occurred last week. In our part of the
country, these forests grow back pretty quickly. They get
rejuvenated, and it is amazing how quickly they can be
restored.
Out in your part of the country, if a forest fire gets
loose out there, it does not come back in our lifetime, does
it?
Mr. Cope. No, our average precipitation is 11 inches per
year. It takes a long time to recover if ever, because you get
permanent land damage. We have had catastrophic fires so hot
that it sterilized the soil. What comes in on top of that
afterwards when things do grow tend to be noxious weeds.
Truthfully, I am not sure that--well, I am sure that we will
not see that country as it was, and I am interested to hear
that you have been there, because that gives you an
understanding of why it is that we care and love that country
so much and why we want to see it preserved and managed well.
The Chairman. We wish you all the best, and we hope that
the initiatives contained in the recent legislation that the
Chairman and I and others worked on will be helpful in the long
run. We are determined to make it work through increased
funding and targeted funding and programs that will really make
a difference in the future.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
We will excuse this panel and again, thank you for your
testimony.
Mr. Cope. Thank you.
Senator Crapo. While our third panel is coming forward, I
will introduce them. Our third panel consists of Mr. James R.
Crouch, from Jim Crouch Associates, representing--I am not
going to pronounce this----
Mr. Crouch. Ouachita.
Senator Crapo. Ouachita--I will let you say it--Timber
Purchase Group and several others: the Ozark/St. Francis
Renewable Resource Council and the Lake States Federal Timber
Purchasers Group; also, Mr. Tom Partin, president of the
American Forest Resource Council of Portland, Oregon; and Dr.
James Earl Kennamer----
Mr. Kennamer. Kennamer, that's right, sir.
Senator Crapo. I got it right, from the conservation
programs of National Wild Turkey Federation. We appreciate all
three of you being here with us, and we will have you testify
in the order I have introduced you.
Mr. Crouch.
STATEMENT OF JAMES R. CROUCH, JIM CROUCH ASSOCIATES,
RUSSELLVILLE, ARKANSAS, REPRESENTING OUACHITA
TIMBER PURCHASERS GROUP, OZARK/ST. FRANCIS
RENEWABLE RESOURCE COUNCIL, AND THE LAKE STATES FEDERAL TIMBER
PURCHASERS GROUP
Mr. Crouch. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good to see
both of you. I am one of these Mississippians, Senator Cochran,
so you have us en masse today.
The Chairman. We welcome you. Thank you for being here.
Mr. Crouch. I am, as the Chairman said, the owner of Jim
Crouch and Associates, a small forestry consulting business in
Russellville, Arkansas. Prior to 1987, I was forest supervisor
of the Ozark/St. Francis National Forest, and my testimony
today is on behalf of the Ouachita Timber Purchasers Group, the
Ozark/St. Francis Renewable Resource Council and the Lake
States Federal Timber Purchasers Committee. The members of
these organizations buy National Forest stumpage.
I am here today because our National Forests are unhealthy.
Our forest health crisis is not simply about catastrophic
wildfires, as many would have you believe, but rather, it's
about failed management that allows insect and disease
outbreaks that devastate our forests and makes possible the
catastrophic wildfires that we see on the evening news.
Many would argue that our National Forests are no longer
sustainable. However, there is ample evidence that well-
designed and applied forest management strategies can help. It
is also more economical to properly manage the forest than it
is to suppress catastrophic events when they occur and restore
the area. I strongly support active management based on sound
science and implemented through local decision-making.
HFRA represents a bold acknowledgement that our Federal
forests are in a crisis, and urgent, active management is
necessary. I believe for HFRA to work that the Congress must
provide additional funding. I believe the Forest Service must
promptly embrace these new tools, and I believe that the
administration and Congress together must support the existing
forest industry infrastructure and not lose what you have in
many of these small communities.
I work closely with many National Forests in the South and
the Lake States, and I find dedicated, hard-working, highly
skilled agency managers and specialists. These people know how
to keep these forests healthy and productive, but they are
terribly frustrated. Gridlock, high unit costs and limited
budgets prevent them from putting their forest plans on the
ground.
I'd like to talk briefly about Title I and Title IV. I
believe that in Title I, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan
has potential to improve the forest health if it is embraced by
the forest agencies and cooperators. That is a really good
piece of the legislation.
The Forest Service must use a mixture of prescribed burning
and mechanical thinning to reduce hazardous fuels and treat
stands that are candidates for bug and disease attacks. If such
stands are not actively managed, they face almost certain death
as they mature, become overcrowded, and their vigor declines.
Many of these acres are candidates for commercial thinning at
costs that are comparable to prescribed burning. If we look at
the National Fire Plan, it specifically includes mechanical
thinning as an approved method.
In Title IV, provides for expediting large-scale
silvacultural assessments on Federal lands that are either
experiencing or are prime candidates for insects or disease
outbreaks. As the Under Secretary stated this morning, we have
a couple of those underway already in Arkansas, and we believe
that is going to be a good part of the tool: southern pine
beetle and red oak borer.
As the health of the forest declines, forest-dependent
communities suffer. As an example, in the Lake States, 77 mills
have closed or scaled down their operations since 1989. In
Minnesota, where 16 mills were affected, the Forest Service
proposes to cut the volume of stumpage that the Chippewa and
Superior National Forests can sell by 25 percent. Companies in
close proximity to these two forests now import logs from
Saskatchewan and other Canadian provinces at greatly increased
costs in an attempt to keep their mills running. Both the
Chippewa and the Superior are currently experiencing major
health problems in stands that need active management. It does
not make a lot of sense to me.
Since 1905, we as a nation have invested billions of
taxpayer dollars to buy cut-over and abused forests and
agricultural lands, the lands that nobody wanted, if you would,
to reforest them and to nurture the young trees in today's
pristine National Forests of the South and the Lake States, and
I guess my question is are we now as a nation going to allow
bugs and disease to harvest these forests, or are we going to
actively manage them for the good of all citizens?
In closing, I would urge you and the administration to
properly fund and immediately embrace the new tools in HFRA. I
would urge the Forest Service to use these tools to reduce unit
costs and to make active management include thinning and
regeneration a priority.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Crouch can be found in the
appendix on page 86.]
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Mr. Crouch.
Mr. Partin.
STATEMENT OF TOM PARTIN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FOREST RESOURCE
COUNCIL, PORTLAND, OREGON
Mr. Partin. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Senator Cochran.
My name is Tom Partin, president of the American Forest
Resource Council, and first of all, I would like to say what an
honor it is to be in front of this Committee, knowing that you
worked so hard to pass the HFRA bill last year.
The American Forest Resource Council represents nearly 90
forest products manufacturers and timberland owners located in
12 Western States. Our mission is to promote balanced and
sustained management of our Federal forests, including a
consistent and predictable flow of raw materials from these
forests.
Most of our members are located in small, rural communities
throughout the West, and these rural communities are only as
healthy as the forest products industries located there.
Consequently, forest health means community health. During the
past decade, many of our Western forests have been the victims
of drought conditions and overcrowding due to lack of
management, which have left them ripe for wildfires.
Once a wildfire gets started under these conditions, they
are very hard to extinguish and often burn hundreds of
thousands of acres before being controlled. Further, we have
seen that any attempt to rehabilitate the burned landscape is
usually met with appeals from the environmental community,
resulting in these projects being tied up in the court systems
until the burnt timber has no value and the needed restoration
is postponed for several critical years while we are waiting
for a verdict from the courts.
We know that there has to be a better way of managing and
tending our Federal forests, and that is why AFRC worked very
hard with the Members of Congress to help pass the Healthy
Forest Restoration Act of 2003. The Bitterroot fires of
Montana, the Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona, the Biscuit fire
in Oregon and the San Bernadino fires in California point out
that this is a national crisis, and we can no longer fail in
treating unhealthy forests or rehabilitating them after they
burn.
The 2004 fire season is just getting underway, and Forest
Service Chief Dale Bosworth has assessed this year's fire
season as being as bad as the 2000 fire season, which, as we
recall, burned 7 million acres of timberland. With this grim
fire forecast, we believe the Forest Service and BLM should use
all of the HFRA authorities to attempt to double the number of
acres treated in fuel reduction projects this year.
To accomplish this task, the agencies must do a number of
things, including supporting community-based wildfire
protection plans to quickly treat the wildland-urban interface;
use expedited environmental analysis processes which require
only analyzing two alternatives which would quickly get
projects to the ground; to use new judicial review procedures
including the balance of harms provisions to be successful in
our court system; and to aggressively use new stewardship and
categorical exclusion authorities to treat additional acres.
Using these new tools, we do believe the Forest Service and
BLM, as Mark Rey said, can double the acres treated for fuels
reduction from 2 million this year to 4 million. It has been 6
months since the signing of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act,
and the success of any new program is driven, to a large
degree, by the attitude of those people doing the
implementation. It has been our observation that a new and
welcome can-do attitude is taking place within the agencies
when it comes to implementation of the HFRA.
We are already seeing new projects being planned in
watersheds at risk, in areas where we have fire condition class
two and three, in the wildland-urban interface areas most at
risk for fires and in areas where insects and disease are
causing forest health problems.
Other efforts underway involve using Title III funds to
assist in developing community-based fire plans and using new
authorities to more quickly rehabilitate areas in burned
wildfires. This last authority has been used very effectively
in Region VI by Regional Forester Linda Goodman. Emergency
action was requested and granted to remove salvage wood before
it lost its economic value and to more quickly implement
rehabilitation projects needed on three 2002 wildfires.
The EISes, of course, were challenged, as they all are, in
the court system, but the Forest Service prevailed because they
had done excellent work in their EISes, and the projects are
moving forward, delivering much-needed wood to our mills and
getting rehabilitation done on these burned areas. We strongly
support the Forest Service for making this emergency request,
and we ask that it be used more broadly.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the Healthy Forest Restoration
Act of 2003 has given the Forest Service and BLM needed tools
and authorities to treat our forests at risk to wildfire. This
authority is not a panacea, or it is not a cure-all for our
unhealthy forests, nor is it intended to take the place of the
regular green timber sale program that we need for consistent
volume. It is an aggressive and much-needed first step.
To date, we are pleased with the new attitude of the
agencies and how they are using their new authorities, and for
this effort, the members of AFRC give the forest management
agencies a B plus. It is important that the agencies deliver on
their promise to treat 20 million acres of unhealthy forest for
the sake of our forests, for the sake of our communities and
for the sake of our forest industries.
Again, I want to thank you, Senator Crapo, and the other
members of this Committee for inviting me here.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Partin can be found in the
appendix on page 92.]
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
Dr. Kennamer.
STATEMENT OF JAMES EARL KENNAMER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF
CONSERVATION PROGRAMS, NATIONAL WILD TURKEY FEDERATION,
EDGEFIELD, SOUTH CAROLINA
Mr. Kennamer. Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to
address what we believe may be the most important legislation
affecting our National Forests in many years, the Healthy
Forest Restoration Act.
The National Wild Turkey Federation has worked closely with
the U.S. Forest Service to carry out millions of dollars of
cost-share projects to benefit wildlife habitat on our National
Forests. This year, we completed two stewardship contracts on
the Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests to reduce the
threat of wild land fire and improve wildlife habitat.
Since 1980, we have worked successfully with the U.S.
Forest Service, Arizona Game and Fish Department, U.S.
Department of Agriculture, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
the Mexican Government to restore the Gould subspecies of the
wild turkey to the Coronado National Forest in Arizona. A
catastrophic fire could undo all of this work and set us back
for decades.
It is estimated that over 190 million acres of Federal
forests and rangelands in the lower 48 States are currently at
risk of large-scale insect and disease epidemics and
catastrophic fires. This places rural communities at risk and
seriously threatens watersheds and fish and wildlife habitats.
The poor conditions of our forests are a direct result of the
lack of active forest management over recent decades combined
with the exclusion of fire for over 100 years.
The Act provides new and better tools to put prescribed
fire back into the landscape, thus restoring fire-dependent
ecosystem and fire-adapted habitats. Prescribed fires also
safeguard rural communities from the ravages catastrophic
wildfire and improve the overall health of the forest.
The Act also provides tools to identify pests and stop
infestations before they spread. Insects such as the southern
pine beetle and the red oak borer would not have spread so fast
nor be so widespread had the Forest Service been allowed to
maintain the health of the forest over the last several
decades. One habitat that is lacking in many of our National
Forests is early successional habitat, which is characterized
by young trees.
Early successional habitat can be created through timber
harvests and thinnings. These thinnings and harvests also
create a break in the continuous fuel found on the forests so
that in the event of a wildfire, firefighters have a chance to
stop the fire when it hits these man-made breaks in the canopy.
Many fire-adapted landscapes require periodic fire to
maintain a healthy forest and the best wildlife habitat.
Prescribed fire opens up the underbrush, allows sunlight to
penetrate to the forest floor, and creates the early
successional habitats that are so rare on many of our forests
today. Even the catastrophic fires we saw in Yellowstone in
1988 improve wildlife habitat for grazers such as elk, but this
was dangerous and an expensive way to create wildlife habitat.
Under the current conditions of our forests, we have only
two choices: we can harvest the trees and follow the harvest
with prescribed fire to actually improve forest health and
habitat quality, or we can sit back and watch unnatural
infestations of insect pests kill the trees and degrade the
habitat. In many habitats, these infestations will be followed
by catastrophic wildfires like the ones we have all watched
destroy forests, homes, communities and human lives in recent
years and destroying wildlife habitat.
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act offers a beginning of
the solution. The act can only succeed with the proper
implementation and adequate funding. I urge the Committee to
work for full funding for the Act so we can reclaim our forests
and, over time, which will take decades to do, restore the
forest system that has supported this great nation for 100
years. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kennamer can be found in the
appendix on page 97.]
Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Dr. Kennamer.
I will start out my questioning with you, Mr. Crouch. In
your testimony, you indicated that the agencies have focused on
prescribed burns to meet fuels reduction objectives. I know in
the West, there are situations where fuel loads preclude
prescribed burns until we get in and do some mechanical
thinning. I assume the same thing is true in the South in some
areas; is that correct?
Mr. Crouch. Yes, you could look at the intermountain West
and look at places in the South, and you would certainly find
that similarity. You've got vast areas of either already dead
and dying trees, or you have trees that within our lifetimes
will certainly die from overcrowding and so forth.
We believe, as professional people, that there is a great
opportunity to manage the stocking control, hopefully
commercially so it is not with taxpayer dollars, and prevent
the bugs and disease attacking those and then them feeding the
big fires that you are seeing burning in parts of the West. We
would like to see you work on the other end of the horse, the
prevention end.
Senator Crapo. Well, I can certainly agree with that. The
pine beetle and the red oak borer--is that the one that you
have? We each have our own fair share of these problems, and we
can certainly solve a lot of it if we would get in and deal
with them. I certainly agree with that.
Mr. Partin, during the consideration of the HFRA, many
people viewed Title IV as the Southern title. Yet we in the
Northwest have severe problems with insects and disease as
well. Do you envision the type of landscape level projects that
are being proposed by the Forest Service in the Ozark/St.
Francis as something that we should be considering in the
Northwest?
Mr. Partin. We should consider these projects in the
Northwest, because as you know, we have severe infestations of
mountain pine beetle, spruce budworm that is causing damage to
thousands of acres, and we can take the template that they are
using in the South, convert it over to our Western forests and
be very effective.
I mentioned primarily wildfire in my testimony, because
that has been first and foremost on the issues that we have had
to deal with, but that only comes after we have infestations
from the bugs. The first step is to treat these forests riddled
by the bugs and get those in a healthy situation, and then, we
will avoid the fires.
Senator Crapo. Well, thank you. I also appreciated your
testimony about the new attitude that you recognize in the
agencies since the passage of the Healthy Forest Act. That has
been my experience, too, and I am glad to hear back a little
bit of input. Mr. Crouch, you are shaking your head yes. Are
you experiencing that?
Mr. Crouch. I am saying that the folks out there are very,
very capable ones. I deal with a very willing and very anxious
to do it if they could remove a few of these obstacles.
Senator Crapo. If we just provide them the authorities and
the ability to move forward, and I see Dr. Kennamer shaking his
head in agreement as well.
Mr. Crouch. The money.
Senator Crapo. The funding, and that brings it right back
here, which Senator Lincoln and I were talking about
previously.
Mr. Partin, you indicated that with this emergency EIS or
this emergency authority that was exercised that you were
describing to us and the EIS challenges being successfully met,
can you tell me, were those challenges brought after the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and were they handled under the
new authorities under the HFRA, or do you know?
Mr. Partin. The emergency action or emergency determination
was asked for this spring after HFRA, and I believe that is
part of the tools in that bill. Without that, we would not have
been able to get an expedited approach to these sales. What it
did was take the sales more quickly, complete the EIS, get them
in front of the courts, because as you know, all of these
projects are appealed.
The courts made a quick determination on them. They found
that the EISes prepared were good documents. They ruled in
favor of the Forest Service. Within a week after selling these
sales, they were being operated on the ground.
Senator Crapo. These are some examples--I do not know if
you followed the debate here when we debated the Act, but that
result was exactly what we were hoping to accomplish, and what
you are telling us is that we are seeing some of that on the
ground now.
Mr. Partin. We are seeing it on the ground, and that is one
of the reasons we bought in so heavily to HFRA, because we
needed something different. We could not allow these large
project wildfires to sit for two, three and 4 years while the
timber totally lost its value.
At least these are sales that are now going on in their
second summer. We are getting some commercial value out of
them. More importantly, we are getting this landscape
rehabilitated, because we would see fires, as you have seen in
Idaho and Montana that have sat for 5 years without
rehabilitation. We have seen the soil suffer, we have seen the
water, we have seen the air, we have seen the wildlife. We
cannot have that.
Senator Crapo. Well, thank you.
Dr. Kennamer, I am glad to have you bring the focus of
wildlife into this whole issue as well. One of the other roles
that I play here in the Senate on another Committee is the
chairman of the Fisheries, Wildlife and Water Subcommittee of
the Environment Committee. In that role, we pay a lot of
attention to these kind of issues. I do not have time; my time
is expiring here, but I just want to tell you I really
appreciate the perspective you brought to us today as you
discussed some of the critical issues relating to the impacts
of our decisions in forest management on wildlife and what that
can mean to us.
Senator Lincoln.
Senator Lincoln. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for
your patience with me today. I am in multiple places at one
time.
Senator Crapo. I understand.
Senator Lincoln. A very special thanks to our panel and
certainly to Mr. Crouch from Arkansas; we are glad to have you
here, Jim.
Mr. Crouch. My pleasure.
Senator Lincoln. I guess really to hear from you, and I do
hear from you on a regular basis, but to be able to share with
the rest of the Committee and others, what parts of the Healthy
Forest Act have really been the most helpful to you? Where have
you found the best results in terms of the tools that we have
given you?
Mr. Crouch. I believe that in the East, where we are
dealing more often with the maturing stands that are
overstocked, that are threatened by bugs and insects and so
forth, that will contribute to fires very shortly that we can
go back under the National Fire Plan and emphasize the thinning
aspect of it.
We saw the Ouachita National Forest this year, as a result
of extreme shortages in their green timber sale program
moneywise begin to figure out ways to do things like that, and
they, in fact, took a considerable number of dollars that were
National Fire Plan dollars to actually do the environmental
assessments, actually put the paint on the trees and in effect
sell a considerable amount of this volume that was being
threatened.
We are having to stretch a little harder in the East to
make some of these things work. It has taken a little bit
longer for us to get them working. We think the assessments
over under Title IV will help us, because there, you can
actually deal with significant blocks of timber, and you can
bring your research community, Forest Service research,
universities together, again, to learn a lot about that, maybe
how to prevent it, how to deal with it after it happens and so
forth.
Quite frankly, we would like to see the Healthy Forest
Restoration Act be a little more about health and a little less
about fire.
Senator Lincoln. Of the tools that are there and the
objectives we tried to reach with the Healthy Forest
Initiative, do you see anything that we did that maybe one
something in there that is not being as fully utilized as it
should and could be that could be really a much more
instrumental? Is there something that the administration or the
Forest Service is not really using?
Mr. Crouch. I am a little bit, after talking to many, many
Forest Service people and being old Forest Service myself, it
is a little harder for me to be as enthusiastic about it as you
may find other people. It is certainly a set of tools that
helps. Some of the reluctance, if you will, of the Forest
Service to really embrace it and get on with it is caused by--
--you do the 10 or 15 page each, for example, that Jim Connoton
and his group put out as a suggested one, but somewhere, you
have still got to have all of these exhibits and appendages and
so forth, and when you get through with it, it may not be a lot
different from what you have done.
I see some of those kinds of things. One area that I would
like to see tweaked a little bit, I like the counterpart
regulations, where the Forest Service basically has now got
full authority to do BEs under certain situations. I would like
to see something like that extended for the cultural resources.
There, you have to deal with the individual state SHPOs, and
you get widely varying situations from State to State; that is
a major problem right now, frankly, in Arkansas is the
tenderness, if you will, that you have to deal with the SHPOs.
Senator Lincoln. Something we could probably improve on.
Mr. Crouch. That could be a counterpart regulation,
probably, where you have qualified archaeologists and so forth
on staff.
Senator Lincoln. Well, thank you again for your hard work.
Dr. Kennamer, thank you so much. I have to say that my very
first experience in the National Forest was with my father
turkey hunting. He used to like to go to the St. Francis
National Forest, and he would take me up in the afternoons, and
I would walk the ridges with him, and he would bed down a
turkey, and then, he would go back and get it in the morning
when it came off the roost, let me sleep.
As the co-chairman of the Congressional Sportsman's Caucus
here, I have to say that I was a little bit selfish in working
so hard on this Act, because this spring was the first time I
got to take my twin boys turkey hunting, and it was wonderful
to watch them enjoy the outdoors, enjoy the forest, be amazed
at what they heard and saw when those beautiful creatures came
out, and it is a wonderful thing.
I am very pleased that your interest here in preserving our
forest for future generations and for something that we know is
a part of our heritage in the sportsman's world. I am very
grateful to you.
I know that you mentioned a little bit about the red oak
borer insect or the insect concerns that are there. We suffer
with the red oak borer in Arkansas, and of course, it has been
a huge issue for us, but the may be something there you might
want to expand on. I don't know.
Mr. Kennamer. Well, Senator, one of the things that we have
to deal with is we are going to be losing hundreds of thousands
of acres of oak that are in the older stages. We have to
regenerate that oak so that it will have economic benefit in
the future. Importantly, the early succession that it will
create, which is good for turkeys, because if we do not have
the early grassland stages, we do not have quail, and that is
one of the reasons for the decline of the bobwhite quail. We do
not produce wild turkeys.
Not only are we going to need that from the wildlife
benefits but just a safety issue: people in the woods trying to
go out and enjoy the woods like you did with dead timber,
climbing a tree to deer hunt or whatever; so we have to get
back into the active management and deal with the red oak borer
so that your kids and their kids will have the chance to come
back and hunt, because we need those early successions, and
this Act provides that opportunity.
Senator Lincoln. Well, it is so interesting to see, even
from those who are nonparticipants in the forest, people that
just drive by, particularly around the Ozark and the Ouachita,
because we have a lot of really scenic highways that go through
there, those that notice the devastation. We clearly had a
tremendous loss of trees due to those red oak borer, and it was
amazing just to again, those who were just passing by to see
that kind of devastation, it brought about a real reality of
the need to manage the forest.
When I was first elected to Congress in 1992, the Forest
Service was going to give me a tour of the St. Francis, and I
guess they did not know I grew up in it, but I asked them if I
could bring my dad along, and it was interesting, because we
went up in the forest, and they took us on a tour, and
afterwards, I was driving home, and I asked my father, and I
said did they show me everything? He said, well, they showed
you pretty much everything. There are a few places that they
did not show you that they probably should have.
He said but what most people do not realize is that this
beautiful forest, which is probably one of the best hardwood
timber forests in North America; although it is small, it is
very, very good timber, he said it was pastureland 100 years
ago. He said when pioneers came through here, they cleared it
and you can see that certainly, timber, like anything else, has
to be managed if it is going to be able to sustain itself, and
that is a critical part of what we have to do in these forests.
We appreciate all of you all, and I very much appreciate my
Chairman here, who has been great to work with and thank you
very much.
Senator Crapo. Well, thank you very much, Senator Lincoln.
I have to also indicate what a pleasure it is to work with you.
When we got put together on this Committee and got to work
together, it was just a treat for me, and it has been a benefit
for the country as we have been able to work in a bipartisan
way and get things done, which does not happen around here a
whole lot.
I just have one last question, and you are certainly
welcome to ask a last one if you want, but Mr. Partin, or
actually, Mr. Kennamer, the last question is for you, and that
is in your testimony, you mentioned stewardship contracting on
the Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests, and could you
please elaborate on your experiences with these contracts
briefly and tell us how they benefited both habitat and
wildlife?
Mr. Kennamer. I would be glad to, Senator. Both of these
examples happened this spring. They happened in about three and
a half to 4 weeks, which in Forest Service time scales would be
almost miraculous. We had a willing forester who was willing to
go out and help us get some stewardship contracting underway.
We were able to burn 1,200 acres on the Sumter National Forest,
which was beyond what the Forest Service would have had the
ability to do. We did it for under $20 an acre with a
subcontractor who was a former Forest Service employee. We also
employed local people in the community to help with the fire
lines, and so, we saved money for the Government. We created
more habitat that would not have happened otherwise.
On the Francis Marion, after Hugo, which was an event that
happened in the eighties, we looked at almost a billion board-
feet of timber on the ground. A lot of that has come back in
pine timber that is very small; it is crowded because, as
mentioned earlier today, we have real fast succession in our
part of the world, and we tried to reclaim on 62 acres that
hardwoods needed to be on that site, so we went in and removed
with the subcontractor that was able to go do it again at a
very competitive cost, remove the timber from 10 inches to two
inches, which heretofore, that would have either been left on
the ground or thrown away or would have died.
We took that out and took in the timber down to two inches
that was chipped and sent to the mill was enough timber to
produce about a million copies of your local newspaper. The
bark from the trees are going to be used to power the power
plant. They are going to bring the bark back in, so we have
good wildlife benefit; we can maintain it with fire; the local
economy benefited, and overall, the people in this country will
get more for their bang than they have ever had before.
Senator Crapo. Well, that is certainly the kind of success
story that we need to hear, that and the experience on
streamlining the process and the focus on prevention all are
the aspects of this issue that we need to make sure the
American public understands as a part of the solution.
Unless you have anything further----
Senator Lincoln. We need to get Dr. Kennamer up here to
help us squeeze a little more bump out of our dollars.
Senator Crapo. You got that right.
Mr. Kennamer. We will be glad to try to help.
Senator Crapo. Help the Federal budget. Could you come up
with about $470 billion?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Kennamer. That is a little beyond our means, Senator.
Senator Crapo. OK; well, first of all, as we conclude, I
want to thank this panel for your outstanding testimony as
well. Each of our panels today have provided outstanding
testimony, not only their presentations today but their written
testimony, and we want to thank you for the time and effort
that you have put into this. It has been very helpful to us.
I hope that--actually, I wish everybody in America was
watching today so that they could understand the kinds of
issues that we are dealing with and understand the fact that we
have identified some solutions that can move forward. If they
did understand it, we would be able to go forward and expand
the Act and reach more acres and do even more. Ultimately, we
will be able to do so.
With that, I want to just again thank all of the witnesses
and again, give a special thanks to Senator Lincoln. She
stepped up right there at the beginning and worked hard on
making this all happen.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:01 p.m., the Subcommittee adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
June 24, 2004
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June 24, 2004
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