    [Senate Hearing 109-826]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 109-826

           H.R. 4200--THE FOREST EMERGENCY RECOVERY AND RESEARCH ACT

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTRY, CONSERVATION, AND RURAL REVITALIZATION

                                     of the

                           COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
                            NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                           ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                 AUGUST 2, 2006

                                   __________

                           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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               COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

                       SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia, Chairman

    RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana            TOM HARKIN, Iowa
    THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi            PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
    MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky            KENT CONRAD, North Dakota
    PAT ROBERTS, Kansas                  MAX BAUCUS, Montana
    JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri            BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas
    CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming                DEBBIE A. STABENOW, Michigan
    RICK SANTORUM, Pennsylvania          E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska
    NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota              MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
    MICHEAL D. CRAPO, Idaho              KEN SALAZAR, Colorado
    CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa

                Martha Scott Poindexter, Majority Staff Director

                    David L. Johnson, Majority Chief Counsel

                  Vernie Hubert, Majority Deputy Chief Counsel

                          Robert E. Sturm, Chief Clerk

                    Mark Halverson, Minority Staff Director

                                      (ii)

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

    Hearing(s):

    H.R. 4200--The Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act........     1

                                  ----------

                           Wednesday, August 2, 2006
                        STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS

    Crapo, Hon. Mike, a U.S. Senator from Idaho......................     1
    Coleman, Hon. Norm, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota................    12
    Lincoln, Hon. Blanche L., a U.S. Senator from Arkansas...........     8
    Salazar, Hon. Ken, a U.S. Senator from Colorado..................    10
                                  ----------

                                   WITNESSES
                                    Panel I

    Rey, Hon. Mark, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and
      Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture....................     4
    Scarlett, Hon. Lynn, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of the
      Interior.......................................................     3

                                    Panel II

    Crouch, Jim, Executive Director, Ouachita Timber Purchasers
      Group, Russellville, Arkansas..................................    22
    Kupillas, Sue, Executive Director, Communities for Healthy
      Forests........................................................    20
    Ringo, Charlie, Oregon State Senator, Beaverton, Oregon..........    24
    Thompson, Alan, Commissioner, Ravalli County, Montana, on behalf
      of the National Association of Counties........................    19

                                   Panel III

    Helms, John A., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Forestry, University
      of California, Berkeley, on behalf of the Society of American
      Foresters......................................................    33
    Karr, Jim, Ph.D., Ecologist and Professor Emeritus, University of
      Washington, Seattle, Washington................................    34
    Krepps, Robert L., St. Louis County Commissioner, Duluth,
      Minnesota......................................................    36
    MacSwords, Leah W., Director and State Forester, Kentucky
      Division of Forestry, on behalf of the National Association of
      State Foresters................................................    38
                                  ----------

                                    APPENDIX

    Prepared Statements:
        Crouch, Jim..................................................    48
        Helms, John A................................................    53
        Karr, Jim....................................................    61
        Krepps, Robert L.............................................    66
        Kupillas, Sue................................................    70
        MacSwords, Leah W............................................    76
        Rey, Hon. Mark...............................................    80
        Ringo, Charlie...............................................    85
        Scarlett, Hon. Lynn..........................................    87
        Thompson, Alan...............................................    91

           H.R. 4200--THE FOREST EMERGENCY RECOVERY AND RESEARCH ACT

                                  ----------

                           Wednesday, August 2, 2006

                                   U.S. Senate,
     Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural
                                         Revitalization
             Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9 a.m., in
    Room SR-328A, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Mike Crapo,
    Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Crapo, Coleman, Lincoln, Daytan, and
    Salazar.

    STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE CRAPO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
                                 IDAHO

        Senator Crapo. The hearing will come to order. This is the
    Senate Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural
    Revitalization, holding its hearing regarding H.R. 4200, the
    Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act. I want to thank
    everybody for being here today to discuss H.R. 4200, and I
    would especially like to thank our Deputy Secretary, Lynn
    Scarlett, and Under Secretary Mark Rey, and all the other
    witnesses, many of whom have traveled great distances and gone
    to a lot of work to be here. I want to thank everybody for
    taking the time to be here and provide your testimony for this
    important legislation.
        H.R. 4200 is a bipartisan bill introduced by
    Representatives Greg Walden and Bryan Baird and co-sponsored by
    146 of their House colleagues. It was passed by the House of
    Representatives on May 17. The legislation is a product of 2
    years of work to identify and address obstacles to forest
    recovery following catastrophic events.
        3 years ago, this committee worked in a bipartisan fashion
    to pass the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and many of you
    here today were here then to help make that a success. I was
    pleased to work closely with the subcommittee ranking member,
    Senator Blanche Lincoln, to see that that bill was enacted.
        With millions of acres of Federal land at high risk of
    catastrophic fire, prolonged drought affecting many States
    across the Nation, and the potential for hurricanes and storms,
    the Healthy Forest Restoration Act has provided Federal land
    managers with the tools necessary to improve the health of
    forests and rangelands. Progress is being made. Work is under
    way to limit the risk on our Federal lands.
        However, as work is being done additional storms and fires
    and other natural events are contributing to the backlog of
    more than one million acres of national forests in need of
    reforestation. For instance, the National Inter-Agency Fire
    Center is currently reporting large fires in Arizona,
    California, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North
    Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah,
    Washington, and Wyoming. These fires are destroying property,
    degrading air and water quality, damaging fish and wildlife
    habitat, and threatening lives and communities.
        I recognize the important and valuable role that fire plays
    in our ecosystem. However, in many cases we are not talking
    about normal healthy ecosystems. The fires that are a result of
    unnatural fuel loads do tremendous damage to our forests and
    with the current state of our forests this is all too often.
        However, this legislation is about more than forest fires.
    It is about what happens when the last flame from a forest fire
    is extinguished. It is about what happens after a tornado, such
    as the tornado that tore a 12-mile swath through Idaho's
    Payette National Forest in June, impacting nearly 5,000 acres
    of public land and private forested land. It is about what
    happens after hurricanes knock vast stretches of forest land.
    It is about what happens after insects infest forests,
    threatening neighboring communities.
        This legislation is about restoration and ensuring that
    Federal land managers can respond in a timely manner when
    disaster strikes to limit the impact on neighboring
    communities. The legislation is about planning ahead. It seems
    to me that it is just common sense to be as prepared as
    possible to respond quickly and effectively when a catastrophe
    occurs.
        While we cannot always predict the specifics of natural
    disasters, we can be prepared with recovery plans when disaster
    strikes. An important aspect of this legislation is that it
    provides for that kind of forward planning by providing for the
    establishment of pre-approved management practices.
        The legislation also strengthens research by requiring
    forest health partnerships with colleges and universities when
    establishing post-catastrophe research projects and requiring
    development of independent third party peer-reviewed research
    protocols.
        The bottom line is that failure to bring a forest back to a
    healthy condition after a catastrophe can leave the forest more
    susceptible to additional fire, pest outbreaks, and threaten
    families and wildlife that live in and or around our natural
    resources.
        Today we are going to hear from witnesses representing the
    administration, local stakeholders, the environmental
    community, the private industry, scientists, and foresters. All
    of our witnesses have a valuable perspective to share as we
    look to provide our Federal land managers with the tools
    necessary to ensure timely recovery from catastrophic events. I
    know the committee is going to find this information presented
    very helpful as we move forward to consider this legislation.
        With that, I am going to move on to our first panel. Let me
    remind not only our first panel, but all of our witnesses, that
    you have been notified to try to keep your remarks to 5
    minutes, and we have a little clock in front of you to help you
    do so. I almost always jokingly say in my case my 5 minutes is
    gone before what I have to say is done. Please be assured that
    the reason we have the 5-minute rule is so that we can have a
    good give and take in questions and answers, and if you do not
    have the opportunity to finish your statement during your
    initial presentation you will certainly have an opportunity to
    make your points in the question and answer period. So please
    try to pay attention to the clock.
        For those like me occasionally who forget to pay attention
    to the clock, if it starts running over too much I will just
    lightly tap the gavel to remind you to take a glance at it.
        With that, we have with us today, as I indicated, in our
    first panel Lynn Scarlett, the Deputy Secretary of the U.S.
    Department of the Interior, and Mark Rey, the Under Secretary
    for Natural Resources and Environment of the U.S. Department of
    Agriculture. We will start with you, Ms. Scarlett.

        STATEMENT OF HON. LYNN SCARLETT, DEPUTY SECRETARY, U.S.
                       DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

        Ms. Scarlett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
    opportunity to discuss the Forest Emergency Recovery and
    Research Act. The administration and the Congress have provided
    Federal land managers with tools to improve health of public
    forests and rangelands. As you noted in your remarks, these
    tools are making a difference. Together, the Forest Service and
    Interior's agencies have reduced hazardous fuels since 2001 on
    over 17 million acres of public and tribal lands.
        However, when fire, drought, insect epidemics, or other
    catastrophic events occur on public lands, procedural delays
    under current laws still prevent timely implementation of
    recovery and restoration activities. H.R. 4200 would provide
    tools to expedite recovery and restoration activities. To date
    this year, over five million acres have burned. Much of these
    acres would benefit from post-fire restoration actions in a
    timely fashion.
        Post-fire situations often require a rapid coordinated
    response to assure effective recovery and restoration efforts.
    Current authorities and procedures make coordinated
    decisionmaking among Federal, State, and local land managers
    difficult. For example, the Bureau of Land Management missed an
    opportunity to coordinate salvage and restoration activities
    with an adjacent landowner in the area burned by the Timbered
    Rock Fire in 2002 in Oregon. The adjacent landowner moved ahead
    immediately with salvaging and within 1 year had salvaged and
    replanted all 9,000 acres of burned land. Because of the
    procedural requirements to salvage and replant on Federal
    lands, most of the Bureau of Land Management portion of the
    burned area was not salvaged, although a portion was eventually
    replanted.
        Provisions of H.R. 4200 would increase the likelihood of
    effective restoration on a landscape or watershed basis. The
    bill establishes a process for pre-approved management
    practices that may be implemented immediately after
    catastrophic events to recover economic value of timber as well
    as undertake reforestation and revegetation.
        The need for this authority is acute on Bureau of Land
    Management rangelands as well as forests and woodlands. For
    example, after the 67,000 acre Jackie Butte Fire near Vale,
    Oregon, the Bureau of Land Management proposed a 33,000-acre
    emergency stabilization rehabilitation project to drill and
    seed the site to reestablish sagebrush steppe. The project met
    with protests, appeals, and delays to the point that fall
    seeding windows were missed. Though some 28,000 acres were
    eventually seeded due to light snowpack in the winter, the
    rehabilitation benefits were significantly less than had we
    been able to do that project in a timely fashion.
        H.R. 4200 would replace some current BLM planning and
    program operations for post-catastrophic event recovery and
    restoration with a new system of pre-approved management
    practices for events affecting 1,000 or more acres of Federal
    land. The list and use of pre-approved management practices
    meet the NEPA requirements. By authorizing rapid responses to
    prevent the loss of deteriorating timber resources after a
    catastrophic event, H.R. 4200 strives to make post-fire
    landscape and community economic recovery a priority. The
    administration strongly supports these goals.
        Fuels projects and post-fire recovery can produce
    significant amounts of small diameter woody materials. Better
    coordinated technical support, investment, and incentives can
    enhance development of infrastructure and help new technologies
    that make profitable use of forest and rangeland resources
    available at the advent of emergency salvage and recovery
    projects.
        H.R. 4200 also addresses one of the Department's most
    vexing problems, the inability to implement recovery actions on
    fire-damaged lands despite agency compliance with current laws.
    In cases such as the Timbered Rock Fire, the environmental
    impact statement was developed with extensive public
    participation in the NEPA process and included a peer-reviewed
    science research component. Nonetheless, subsequent litigation
    resulted in BLM being prohibited from conducting many of the
    proposed restoration activities, including salvage logging of
    17 million board-feet of dead and dying timber worth about $1.3
    million.
        In the BLM's portion of the Biscuit Fire in Oregon, where
    the Bureau proposed to harvest 2.4 million board-feet of dead
    and dying timber worth about $124,000, a judge recently lifted
    restrictions on harvest of post-fire materials. Unfortunately,
    in the years during which the BLM has been responding to
    litigation the timber has deteriorated to the point that it is
    almost unsalvageable. In the last 2 years it has lost 75
    percent of its value.
        While the administration strongly supports the House
    version of H.R. 4200, we do continue to have some concerns
    about the spending provisions of Title 4. We welcome the
    opportunity to work with the committee to address any of these
    concerns, and I would be happy to answer any questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Scarlett can be found on
    page 87 in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Rey.

        STATEMENT OF HON. MARK REY, UNDER SECRETARY FOR NATURAL
       RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

        Mr. Rey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
    inviting me to talk with you today about H.R. 4200. The
    administration strongly supports Congressional enactment of
    H.R. 4200 and I will submit the administration's statement of
    policy issued during House consideration of the measure for the
    record of this hearing.
        President Bush recognized the need to restore our Nation's
    public forests and rangelands to long-term health with the
    introduction of the Healthy Forests Initiative. The President
    directed the Federal agencies under Under Secretary Scarlett
    and my jurisdiction to develop tools to allow Federal land
    managers to restore hazardous fuels conditions in a timely
    manner.
        The Congress passed legislation that allowed for long-term
    stewardship contracts to implement management goals, including
    fuel reduction projects. This committee was instrumental in
    enacting the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003, which is
    helping to address severe forest health conditions in a
    meaningful timeframe.
        While we now have tools to assist us in treating forests
    and grasslands to recapture healthy conditions before a
    catastrophe occurs, we still have the need for similar tools to
    help us recover and restore areas after catastrophic events,
    such as wildfires, hurricanes, or tornadoes and other wind
    events, and ice storms and insect and disease infestations have
    occurred.
        So far this year, wildland fires have burned over 5.6
    million acres on Federal, State, and private lands throughout
    the Nation and destroyed over 1700 structures. Last summer
    Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast destroyed
    cities, tragically took many lives, and disrupted millions of
    others. These storms also caused moderate to severe damage to
    about 20 million acres of woodlands, including private, State,
    and Federal ownerships, across the Gulf States from Texas to
    Florida.
        Along with causing physical damage, Hurricanes Katrina and
    Rita have adversely impacted many ecosystem functions and
    processes that create conditions for attack by invasive
    species. Invasive insects and diseases pose great risks to
    America's forests and have risen to catastrophic levels over
    the recent past. 20 million ash trees have been killed already
    by the emerald ash borer in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois,
    Maryland, Ohio, and Virginia. The non-native hemlock woolly
    adelgid is currently affecting over half of the native range of
    hemlock species. Sudden oak death has the potential to affect
    susceptible oaks in most of the eastern United States. In
    Colorado and Wyoming alone, bark beetles have killed trees
    covering 1.7 million acres, and across the western United
    States there are currently 6.6 million acres similarly
    affected.
        These are some of the examples of the scope of the
    challenges to our research managers and we are using our
    current authorities to address these matters. However, we
    believe H.R. 4200 would provide some additional innovative
    authorities to improve the ability of the Secretary to promptly
    implement recovery treatments in response to catastrophic
    events affecting Federal lands. While these treatments include
    the removal of dead and damaged trees, the bill covers the
    entire spectrum of resource needs. Reforestation treatments,
    road and trail rehabilitation, and infrastructure repair are
    among other commonly critical aspects of post-disturbance
    recovery covered by the bill.
        H.R. 4200 would also support the recovery of non-Federal
    lands damaged by catastrophic events and would provide similar
    authority for Forest Service experimental forests.
        The Department strongly supports the goals of the
    legislation and its intent to get recovery actions accomplished
    promptly, while focusing on maintaining sound environmental
    decisionmaking and public involvement. We urge rapid Senate
    consideration and enactment of the measure.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Rey can be found on page 80
    in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Mr. Rey.
        I will ask questions first and then as I turn to our
    colleagues who have joined us, we will give you an opportunity
    if you want to make an opening statement at that time, and then
    you can proceed with questions.
        First I have a couple questions for both of you together
    and I encourage both of you to respond. The first question is
    what are the current impediments to active recovery and
    reforestation on the Forest Service and BLM lands?
        Ms. Scarlett. Yes, Senator. As I mentioned in my testimony,
    we are continuing to face litigation, protests, appeals, and
    other actions when we try to move rapidly forward with our
    post-catastrophe restoration activities. As I indicated, in the
    Biscuit Fire, in its wake, that brought us to 2 years to 3
    years after the actual event occurred before we could get in
    and do constructive work. That is one example, but we face that
    across the landscape in many instances.
        Mr. Rey. I think even in more perfect situations, where
    there are not appeals or litigation, the case law that is
    already developed concerning the kind of analysis and the depth
    of analysis that is required makes many projects' timeframe not
    susceptible to rapid recovery of these systems. So the burden
    of existing case law, particularly the kinds and scope of
    analysis required by NEPA, is an impediment to moving very
    quickly. We are, within the landowning community, the Federal
    Government is by far the slowest actor in recovering from a
    natural catastrophe.
        Senator Crapo. When Senator Lincoln and I joined forces a
    few years back to bring the Healthy Forest Restoration Act
    forward, these same kinds of issues were presented and we
    developed an approach to addressing them in that act. I
    understand that that act had limited parameters in terms of its
    applicability, but has the approach taken in the Healthy Forest
    Restoration Act worked to address these kinds of issues?
        Mr. Rey. It has worked very well to address these kinds of
    issues in situations involving actions that are preventative in
    nature, and that is its major thrust, providing us expedited
    authorities in some respect similar to those in this
    legislation for 20 million acres of Federal land to do
    preventative work. What we are talking about in this situation,
    in this legislation, is what we do after a catastrophe has
    occurred.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        The GAO report released on Monday highlights the need for
    better prioritization of recovery projects. Does this act help
    address the need for that by mandating post-event evaluations?
        Ms. Scarlett. I would suggest that this act would be a
    significant advance with respect to our ability to set
    priorities with restoration activities. It does ask that we do
    a post-catastrophe evaluation, work also with community
    wildfire protection planning processes to integrate our
    identification of restoration priorities with neighboring
    communities and adjacent lands. So I would suggest that it will
    be a significant help in that regard.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        In your testimony, Mr. Rey, particularly your testimony,
    you indicate that the debate over salvage logging is carried on
    without the benefit of a lot of effective science, scientific
    information. One of the emphases of H.R. 4200 is to improve
    forest restoration and recovery science. Do you believe that
    the provisions of the act in the area of science are effective
    or will be effective?
        Mr. Rey. I think the act rightfully encourages the
    development of additional data to apply what we know in a more
    site specific sense. The big problem with the debate as it is
    being carried out today is that it exists at a very general
    level, with some parties saying that salvage is good and some
    parties saying salvage is bad as sort of a categoric statement.
    The truth lies closer to when is it good and when is it bad,
    based on what you are trying to accomplish in the site specific
    circumstances associated with the disaster that you are
    responding to.
        I think what this bill does is provide some mechanisms
    forest report us to generate additional data to answer those
    kinds of questions on a more site specific basis.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Another one for you, Mr. Rey. There is a lot of debate
    right now over the environmental effects of logging after a
    fire. Could you please speak to this argument or this issue,
    but particularly I am looking at the comparison of the
    potential negative effects that some have identified versus the
    negative effects of taking no action at all.
        Mr. Rey. We will submit for the record a synthesis of the
    existing research on that question that was produced by the
    Forest Service's research establishment. But I think that the
    short answer is that in many cases, not all, but in many cases,
    active recovery can restore a forest system faster than
    allowing nature to take its course, and that we do know enough
    in many cases to apply that knowledge to assist that recovery
    taking place.
        That is quite apart from whether it makes sense to get some
    value from trees that have already been killed by a fire or a
    natural catastrophe. Putting that question aside, the simple
    issue of does active management assist more rapid recovery, the
    answer is yes in many instances, but not all, and the important
    thing is to look at the site specific circumstances to decide
    whether this is an issue, an area where that will happen.
        Now, bringing in the question of should we put to use trees
    that have been killed by some natural catastrophe, a fire or an
    insect epidemic, it seems to me that that is the essence of
    conservation, because the alternative is to simply allow the
    material to go to waste, and I do not think that is a very
    conservationist point of view.
        Senator Crapo. I just have one last question and I would
    encourage each of you to respond. Critics have claimed that
    this legislation lifts the Endangered Species Act and NEPA
    protections in order to speed up logging after a natural
    disaster. Does the legislation do that? Does this legislation
    require logging? Or, well, just could you respond to those
    criticisms?
        Ms. Scarlett. Mr. Chairman, the act specifically addresses
    ESA provisions as well as NEPA provisions. In the pre-approved
    management elements that the secretaries of the respective
    agencies would put forth, there are public comment
    opportunities that are deemed in the act to be consistent with
    meeting NEPA requirements. With respect to the Endangered
    Species Act also, the act specifically sets forth that the
    activities would conform to the existing requirements under ESA
    for emergency actions. So I would suggest that the act is fully
    consistent with our fulfilling those responsibilities as well
    as our forest health responsibilities.
        Mr. Rey. In fact, the provisions of the act dealing with
    NEPA are virtually identical to the provisions in the Healthy
    Forest Restoration Act. And those same charges were levied 3
    years ago when this committee was considering the Healthy
    Forest Restoration Act. Indeed, it was asserted that if the
    committee enacted the Healthy Forest Restoration Act the world
    as we know it would come to an end and the sky would certainly
    be on the ground, and none of that has happened in the ensuing
    3 years.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
        I will turn next to our ranking member, Senator Blanche
    Lincoln. Blanche, thank you and welcome here today.

       STATEMENT OF HON. BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
                                ARKANSAS

        Senator Lincoln. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is certainly a
    pleasure to be here with you again this morning to take up
    another issue that falls under our jurisdiction in the
    subcommittee. As always, I very much appreciate the chairman's
    strong leadership in this committee. He does a tremendous job
    in making sure that we are paying attention to the things that
    we need to, and I think holding this hearing today is evidence
    of that.
        Before I have any brief remarks, I also want to thank the
    panelists for their participation. I am particularly pleased to
    have before the subcommittee today Mr. Jim Crouch of
    Russellville, Arkansas. Jim is a tremendous help to me and my
    staff on forestry issues, with many years of experience in the
    field, and we are very proud to have his testimony here today
    and I look forward to him sharing with the subcommittee on the
    next panel.
        I would also like 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 staff to
    answer some of our questions and to listen to what our views
    and concerns are, and I just want to say how much I very much
    appreciate the generosity of your time and your attention when
    we have these issues before us, and we look forward to working
    with you on this.
        As many of you know, I have worked closely with Senator
    Crapo and certainly others in the committee to craft the
    bipartisan Healthy Forest Restoration Act several years ago. In
    my view, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act takes necessary
    steps to ensure that we can address the many problems that are
    affecting our Nation's forests, both on public and private
    forest lands, in the Southeast, the southern areas, the western
    forests, and throughout both the hardwood and the pine
    ecosystems.
        I do firmly believe that if we value our forests, and I
    certainly do--I grew up with one of the smallest and yet one of
    the probably premier hardwood natural forests, national
    forests, in my back yard, in the middle of the Arkansas Delta.
    But if we can conserve our woodland resources, if we can
    preserve their natural beauty, and if we want to ensure that
    the natural bounty of our forest land is available for future
    generations, then it is important that we actively manage those
    lands and those resources with a very careful eye toward their
    long-term health.
        With that national forest in my back yard growing up, I
    never will forget looking at the age and the quality of those
    hardwoods and then being told by my father that 100 years ago
    it had just been pasture land. So without a doubt the
    management of forests and taking an eye to that is critically
    important.
        We are here today to discuss a bill that provides new tools
    for our forest managers to more swiftly salvage timber and
    conduct reforestation activities in our national forests
    following some catastrophic events, events such as the
    wildfires that are currently wreaking havoc in so many of our
    western States. But also there are tornadoes, there are ice
    storms, there is insect infestation that commonly plagues
    eastern forests in States like my home State in Arkansas.
        I understand that we are going to hear a diversity of
    viewpoints on this bill from our panelists this morning and I
    certainly appreciate that. I think we all believe that that is
    tremendously helpful to us in coming about and bringing to the
    table the right combinations of solutions and ideas that we
    need to make our forest across this great land the best that it
    can be.
        So I look forward to the testimony. I have got just a few
    questions, Mr. Chairman, and I will pass it over to others here
    today.
        Secretary Rey, are the savings from what we are talking
    about here in our Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act
    adequate to cover the treatment of the additional acreage that
    would have been left to nature to heal, I guess I am looking at
    the resources that we really need. I know that you had
    mentioned earlier that letting those things waste is not in the
    best interest of conservation. But do we have the resources
    there? And if not, where will the money come from?
        I have got some concerns that the bill would allow the
    limited resources for active forest management, particularly on
    our eastern forests, to be diverted to post-fire salvage
    projects in western forests. Obviously, the forests are so much
    larger out West than what we have. We may not have the volume,
    but we do feel like we have the important task in the East of
    preserving the forests that we do have.
        Mr. Rey. I think the bill will have the effect of reducing
    significantly the costs of post-catastrophic recovery projects
    and that will allow us to do more as we approach these
    catastrophes, wherever they occur. I think one of the benefits
    of the bill is the geographically evenhanded way it addresses
    forest and rangeland catastrophes, with a particular emphasis
    on insect and disease epidemics, which are becoming more and
    more a problem in the East, particularly now in the Midwest,
    with invasive species like the emerald ash borer and the Asian
    longhorn beetle.
        So I think there is a real opportunity in this bill to get
    a lot more done than we are currently doing in responding to
    those kinds of epidemics, as well as responding to wildfires.
        Senator Lincoln. Are there any real specifics that you have
    in terms of how it would reduce the cost?
        Mr. Rey. I would say, based on our experience with the
    Healthy Forest Restoration Act and using the somewhat similar
    tools that that has provided, on larger projects we are seeing
    cost reductions of about 30 to 40 percent.
        Senator Lincoln. Would either of you like to comment or
    give us some ideas of what would be included in a set of pre-
    approved management practices and how you might arrive at those
    practices? You have talked about how they would be beneficial
    and how they would be consistent with what already exists in
    terms of management practices.
        Mr. Rey. I think the way that we would arrive at those
    practices is pretty clearly specified in the bill, in that it
    requires a notice and comment rulemaking as well as a peer
    review for scientific integrity. What I think you will see in
    those lists of management practices is practices associated
    with specific kinds of catastrophes in individual forest types.
    So you will not necessarily see the same list of practices for
    dealing with a southern pine beetle epidemic in Arkansas as you
    would necessarily seeing--as you would with a wildfire recovery
    in central Idaho.
        So they will be fairly--I think they will be fairly
    specific to the forest and rangeland type involved.
        Ms. Scarlett. If I could just add one element to that, the
    act specifically sets forth that we would undertake these
    recovery and restoration activities pursuant to the existing
    land use plans and the land use planning objectives that we
    already have set forth. So the management tools selected would
    be those most germane to achieving those on-the-land healthy
    outcomes that are set forth in our land use plan.
        Senator Lincoln. So more complementary of what already
    exists, as well as specific, because the specifics is important
    to me, as you know, in the case of the insect infestation like
    we saw with the red oak borer in Arkansas. So that would be
    critical.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much. I want to also say how
    much a pleasure it is to work with you, Blanche. We always talk
    about our history, but we seem to sit on the same committees
    and we seem to like each other and get things done on a
    bipartisan basis. So it is good to work with you.
        Senator Salazar.

      STATEMENT OF HON. KEN SALAZAR, A U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO

        Senator Salazar. Thank you very much, Senator Crapo and
    Senator Lincoln, for holding this hearing, and thank you to
    Mark Rey and to Lynn Scarlett also for being here this morning.
        Let me say that, with respect to House of Representatives
    Bill 4200, the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act, I am
    open to looking at how we can do things better on the ground
    after we have a catastrophe and we are responding to how we
    best recover from it and how we clean it up. If there are ways
    by which we can improve by changing the law, we certainly ought
    to be open to them, and I appreciate the initiative of you
    coming forward with ideas that need to be reviewed.
        I wanted to go back, though, to an issue that is very near
    and dear to my heart, that both of you have heard me talk
    about. That is what we are doing under the current authorities
    and the current funding streams with respect to the beetle
    infestation that we see in many places around the country, and
    here specifically for me in Colorado, where the 1.5 million
    acres that you referred to, Under Secretary Rey, are something
    that I see and hear about every day and something that concerns
    me.
        When I look at what might happen yet this summer, this
    fall, or in the next year, I can see hundreds of thousands of
    acres of our national forests going ablaze and continuing to
    see the spread of the bark beetle throughout the western part
    of Colorado. About 2 weeks ago someone reported to us that they
    had seen the first of the bark beetles flying throughout the
    forest. Well, those bark beetles are now searching out their
    new habitats and soon we will see some of those large acreages
    that are now green start becoming red and part of the forest
    dying.
        My question to you, which is one that I am going to
    continue harping on, is why are we not providing the funding
    that is needed for us to be able to do the treatment with
    respect to many of these acres of land that have already been
    approved by the NEPA process? I think that we have had about
    280,000 acres of treatments that have already been NEPA-
    approved. We have another 235,000 acres in the pipeline that
    have been NEPA-approved. But it seems like it is the funding
    problem that is keeping us from addressing the treatment of
    those acreages.
        So I would like you to respond to that if you could, Mr.
    Rey.
        Mr. Rey. We have some acres that are NEPA-approved, that
    are still awaiting funding. But I do not think, with all due
    respect, that that is the major impediment to proceeding on
    some of this recovery work. I think the major impediment to
    proceeding with some of it is the unit costs associated with
    getting the NEPA work done and getting the other analytical
    work done is consuming a substantial amount of resources. Bills
    like H.R. 4200 give us a real opportunity to reduce those costs
    and to, by reducing those costs, transfer more money into
    getting that work actually applied and finished on the ground.
        This is a budget environment which is very challenging, but
    the fact is that our fiscal year 2007 request for this kind of
    on-the-ground work is the largest budget request that any
    President has made of any Congress since the previous one we
    made, which was itself a record, and the one before that, which
    is a record.
        So we are devoting a substantial amount of money to this
    work as a Presidential priority. But we are still spending in
    some areas--and the Colorado Front Range is not our highest
    cost area, but it is a pretty high-cost area. But in our
    highest cost areas we are spending upwards of $3,000 an acre to
    get this work done. At that rate, there is never--there is no
    prospect for us ever to get ahead of things like pandemics of
    bark beetles. We have to reduce that rate substantially in some
    cases, not so much in Colorado, but substantially in other
    areas, before we are going to get ahead of this problem. This
    bill does that.
        Ms. Scarlett. Senator, I would like to, if I could, just
    add one thing. Of the 400,000-plus acres in northern Colorado
    infested by the beetle, about 10 percent of those are BLM
    lands, and I am pleased to say that what we have done is to
    shift money at the Washington office level to Colorado to
    supplement what would have been the Colorado State office
    funding to address those issues. So we are putting resources
    into Colorado, recognizing that challenge.
        Mr. Rey. As are we, but again it is a very big problem.
        Senator Salazar. I appreciate that.
        Will we have another round with these two witnesses?
        Senator Crapo. We certainly can.
        Senator Salazar. Let me just make a comment on this and I
    have some other questions that I want to ask. While it seems to
    me that there may be changes in the law that can be made, Mr.
    Rey, to expedite what we are trying to do with respect to
    dealing with these infestations and these fire emergencies that
    we see throughout the West. The fact of the matter is that I
    think money is still a huge problem. I think when you look at
    the fact that in Colorado you have 283,000 acres that are ready
    to be treated, if we look at the average of the last several
    years we are going to treat 50 to 80,000 acres in Colorado.
    That is a huge gap. That is almost 200,000 acres that are not
    being treated.
        I think we just need to be straightforward and direct with
    the people and communities who are affected, and that is that
    there is not the resources available to go and treat these vast
    swaths of bark beetle-infected forests in our State, and that
    really necessitates, it seems to me, two things. One, we need
    to have the money in order to be able to deal with the problem.
    We just need to say that that is a reality. Second, if there
    are changes that we need to make in the law, some of which you
    might have suggested here, we ought to look at those if we can
    do this thing in a less expensive way.
        But I do not think we can escape the reality here that one
    of our major problems is that we just do not have the money to
    be able to go out and deal with these huge swaths of
    infestation that we see throughout the West. When we talk about
    1.5 million acres in Colorado that have been infested by the
    bark beetle and we know how bark beetle is spreading throughout
    those western States, we have a catastrophe on our hands and we
    need to be smart about it, both in terms of the money that we
    put behind it as well as creating the kind of legal framework
    that will help us address the issue.
        Mr. Rey. I think we are in agreement on both counts.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Senator Coleman.

     STATEMENT OF HON. NORM COLEMAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA

        Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank both
    you and the ranking member for holding this important
    subcommittee hearing on the Forest Emergency Recovery and
    Research Act. I will note that I have to preside over the
    Senate at 10 o'clock. I am going to miss the third panel, where
    we are going to have St. Louis County Commissioner, Land
    Commissioner, Robert Krepps, here. So I apologize for that, but
    duty will beckon.
        I have a fuller written statement, Mr. Chairman, that I
    would like to have entered into the record.
        Senator Crapo. Without objection.
        Senator Coleman. And just if I can, just make a couple
    observations. I think quite often folks think about forest
    issues as a western issue, but you can see from this committee
    certainly it is a southern issue and it is a Minnesota issue.
    We have got two national forests that span 5.8 million acres
    across northern Minnesota.
        Consideration of this bill is particularly important and
    timely for me. We have got two wildfires right now that are
    currently burning. That is what those pictures are, in the
    Boundary Waters Canoe Area located in the Superior National
    Forest. These fires started in mid-July, have burned nearly
    34,000 acres. We have had some rain in the last couple of days,
    which has been helpful, but we are thinking that these fires
    could burn for the rest of the season.
        We had blowdown in 1999 that had straight-line winds in
    excess of 90 miles an hour, that caused severe flooding,
    damaged more than 600 square miles of Superior National Forest.
    In 2002 our forest mortality exceeded net growth and the spruce
    budworm infestations resulted in the death of one-third of the
    balsam fir in Minnesota.
        So we have got challenges, as we do around the rest of the
    country. I thought we made a start with Healthy Forest
    Restoration. I think this is now the next step and we have to
    get there. I am proud to be a co-author with Senator Smith on
    the Forests for Future Generations Act, I think under the next
    phase here. So these are all living systems. We have got to
    restore, we have got to manage and protect them. I think we
    share that commitment, and it affects broad areas of America.
        So I am pleased to be here at this hearing today. Mr. Rey,
    it is always a pleasure to have you in front of this committee.
    Ms. Scarlett, it is great to have you here.
        Just in reference to fires, could the two fires--it may be
    too hypothetical. Could these have been prevented or at least
    minimized if further recovery actions were taken following the
    1999 blowdown? That is one of the big complaints of folks back
    home, that we did not do recovery then and now we have this
    situation.
        I guess the second part of this would be, how are the fires
    affecting adjacent land that is not Federal land and is that an
    area of concern?
        Mr. Rey. I think the fires that you are experiencing now
    could have been minimized. I doubt that they could have been
    prevented. Some portion of the blowdown was in wilderness and
    we would not normally have treated that. We did go to CEQ to
    get alternative arrangements under the existing regulations to
    treat the areas that we did treat. As a consequence of the
    treatments that we did do, we were able to get the Cavity Lake
    Fire to lay down for us and we were able to protect the
    dwellings and the structures around the Gunflint Trail.
        I think the important thing is that, had H.R. 4200 existed
    when the blowdown occurred in 2000, we would not have had to go
    through the additional process of getting alternative
    arrangements from CEQ and the treatments that were done would
    likely--would certainly have been faster and would likely have
    been more extensive, given the authorities in this legislation.
        So I think it would have had a material effect on reducing
    the size and the intensity of these fires. But the Boundary
    Waters Area is not dissimilar to a lot of western forests. It
    is a fire-dominated system. In fact, some of the Forest
    Service's earliest research on the effect and periodicity of
    fire in forest systems was done in northern Minnesota by Myron
    Heinzelman, a Minnesotan who had a long research career with
    the Forest Service.
        Senator Coleman. If I can then follow up, FERRA requires
    thorough environmental review, which is critically important,
    full evaluation of environmental effects of catastrophe event
    recovery, a lot of important protections. It is a key component
    of this proposal that I support. The question I have is, could
    the legislation be implemented to protect the environment
    without slowing what is intended to be a speedy emergency
    forest mitigation process? Either witness.
        Ms. Scarlett. Senator, I think that is precisely what the
    bill does strive to do, by allowing us--with two components:
    first, a research component that allows us to better understand
    how we can achieve the land health outcomes that we are seeking
    and yet by doing that be able to implement those more
    expeditiously and more routinely. But second, I think the act
    in addition will allow us to get in there and undertake these
    actions, undertake them consistent with our environmental--our
    Endangered Species Act requirements, the National Environmental
    Policy Act requirements, water quality requirements.
        None of the provisions would absolve us from those
    responsibilities. They would rather allow us to address those
    responsibilities in an expedited fashion.
        Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
        I have concluded my questions and so we will start a second
    round, if any of the rest of you would like to ask further
    questions.
        Senator Lincoln. Just one quick question. Are the
    provisions in 4200, H.R. 4200, are there any in there that
    would require the Forest Service or the BLM to leave certain
    legacy stands for habitat and ecosystem restoration?
        Ms. Scarlett. Yes, Senator, there are. Our land use plans
    actually already specify the retaining of legacy stands and so
    forth, and the act specifies that the actions we undertake in
    recovery and restoration would link to those requirements in
    the land use plans. There are additional provisions beyond that
    that specifically suggest if those land use plans do not have
    such provisions that we would give special attention to
    ensuring that such legacy stands remain as we develop the plans
    for restoration.
        Senator Lincoln. So if those specific requirements were not
    included in existing forest land use plans, you would still
    have to, is that correct?
        Ms. Scarlett. That is my understanding as I read the bill.
        Mr. Rey. Per the requirements of section 109 of the bill.
        Senator Lincoln. Thank you very much.
        Thanks, The Chairman.
        Senator Crapo. Senator Salazar.
        Senator Salazar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Let me ask you a question with respect to the site specific
    actions that you would take. I guess my question would be on
    pre-approved management practices, how specific will they be
    for the Forest Service and DOI in preparing them? Let me give
    you a specific example, the Hayman Fire in Colorado, 135
    million acres burned. If this bill were to become law and it
    were to be implemented by your agencies and you are looking at
    how you respond to an area like the Hayman Fire, those 135,000
    acres in those four counties, would there be an environmental
    analysis with respect to how you move forward to dealing with
    those 135,000 acres that would be specific to Hayman or would
    instead what you would do is to look at other forests that are
    in similar ecological zones and elevations and say, well, this
    is the program then that would apply to the Hayman Fire?
        Mr. Rey. I think the short answer is the bill would require
    both. We would develop pre-approved management practices for
    mid-elevation ponderosa pine systems, which is largely what
    burned in the Hayman fire, and then in the development of a
    catastrophic recovery project, per Title 1 of this legislation,
    there would be some more individual analysis associated with
    that particular instance.
        Senator Salazar. Spin that out for me just a little bit,
    Mark, in terms of what you would look at with respect to the
    site specific analysis?
        Mr. Rey. I think what you would look at in the individual
    project analysis is the size of the incident, the intensity of
    the fire over various parts of the incident, any specifics
    about the watershed. If there are threatened or endangered
    species in that particular locale, that would be part of the
    project level analysis as well, because that would not
    necessarily be covered in the development of the pre-approved
    management tools.
        Senator Salazar. What do you think the timeframe would be
    to come up with that plan once you have a catastrophe like
    Hayman?
        Mr. Rey. I think the bill requires that it be developed
    within 60 days and that would be our objective, to try and do
    it within 60 days.
        Senator Salazar. Do you think that is sufficient time to do
    the analysis to make sure that we are doing the right thing on
    the ground?
        Mr. Rey. I think so. I think one of the advantages you have
    here is you have already developed some of the preapproved
    management tools and then you are doing an individual analysis,
    which you can do more quickly, to evaluate how you would use
    those tools in a specific instance, what restrictions you would
    place on them and that sort of thing.
        So I think this has the prospect of cutting our turnaround
    time for one of these kinds of projects probably by about
    three-quarters.
        Senator Salazar. Ms. Scarlett, do you have any comment?
        Ms. Scarlett. I do not know that I can add to that. The
    idea I think of the act is that we would begin with the
    preapproved management arrangements or elements, having
    researched them, having known that they are effective applied
    to certain kinds of categories of circumstances, but then using
    that as a foundation off which we tier additional information
    at that site specific level.
        I think Mark is right, I think the timeframes set forth in
    the act would be sufficient to do that tiering down to the
    specific level at the site.
        Senator Salazar. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Rey, Under Secretary Rey, I want to ask you a question
    concerning the management of our forests in Colorado, and that
    is with respect to the Gunnison, the Uncompahgre, and the Mesa,
    the so-called GMUG forest plan. The plan had been put together
    for those three forests covers a time span of about 4 years,
    about 3 million acres involved in those 3 forests. We were
    supposed to see the plans published by USDA last week some time
    and my understanding is they were pulled from the shelf.
        It is a tremendous concern to me and to our community in
    Colorado as to why that happened, and I was hoping this morning
    that you could help me shed some light on that.
        Mr. Rey. Sure, I would be happy to give you a briefing on
    where we are at with that. First let me say that the forest
    supervisor, who you by the way stole from Senator Lincoln,
    Charles Richmond, who used to be the supervisor on the
    Ouachita, has done an outstanding job of involving local
    interests in the development of that plan. So there appears to
    be a substantial amount of local support for the plan. That is
    the good news.
        Now, the less good news is that as the plan came forward
    and we did the standard quality control review that we do on
    every draft plan before we put it out for public comment, we
    discovered a couple of problems. Problem one is the issue
    associated with what is required of us now to comply with the
    2005 Energy Policy Act, and in particular with regard to the
    GMUG we are obliged to do an assessment of compliant and super-
    compliant coals and the availability of those resources as part
    of a land and resource management plan revision. It was not
    clear that that was done adequately, and this was one of the
    first plans with significant energy resources associated with
    it that has come forward since the enactment of the Energy
    Policy Act.
        That is a fairly minor problem. What the forests agreed to
    do is to supplement the record with an analysis of those
    resources and we do not think that will take more than a couple
    of weeks.
        The larger problem is a little more complex and will take a
    little longer to address. In our 2005 planning regulations we
    gave forests the opportunity to do plan revisions using a
    categorical exclusion from NEPA, provided that the decisions
    that they are making in those plan revisions fit within that
    categorical exclusion. They are allowed to do more and make
    more decisions in the plan, but if they do then they are going
    to engender a higher level of NEPA analysis as part of the
    obligation of revising the plan.
        As we looked at the plan, it appeared to us that it would
    not fit as it was written under that categorical exclusion. So
    we told the region and the forest, you have two options. You
    can either scale back some of the decisions that are being made
    if you want to avail yourself of that categorical exclusion and
    use the 2005 regulations; or if you want to do a more fulsome
    plan with a larger range of decisions, then you have to do
    either an environmental assessment or an environmental impact
    statement.
        Last night the forest responded to us and said they would
    prefer to use the 2005 regulations and to fit their plan
    squarely within the categorical exclusion for more detailed
    NEPA analysis that we have provided. In order to make those
    modifications, that is in order to comply with the National
    Environmental Policy Act, it is going to take them until about
    November 15 to make those changes.
        I am relatively certain that they will be able to get that
    done. When they do, the plan will then go out for public review
    and comment as it would in any other case.
        So two issues: one, compliance with the Energy Policy Act
    of 2005; and the second, compliance with the National
    Environmental Policy Act of 1969. In both cases I think they
    are on a path to make those changes so that they can be in
    compliance with both statutes and the public will have a plan
    to look at about mid-November.
        Senator Salazar. Mr. Chairman, I know my time is up, but
    could I just pursue this for just a couple more minutes?
        Mr. Rey, I appreciate the briefing and appreciate the fact
    that you are taking more time and we will have another plan for
    public review by the 15th of November. I would only say that,
    with respect to the GMUG plan, it is an incredibly important
    three set of forests for my State. It covers the area above
    Grand Junction up into the Gunnison and the Uncompahgre River
    Basin. When we think about 3 million acres of our national
    forest land, which we consider to be our crown jewel, I am
    concerned because of the fact that there was so much of an
    effort that was made in Colorado to make sure that the public
    support that you talked about at the beginning of your comments
    was in fact there, that you had the communities that were
    affected in these three forests saying this is a good plan that
    we have created together in collaboration with the Forest
    Service.
        Then it seemed like at the last minute before it was
    approved that the Forest Service decided, well, we are going to
    pull it off the table to address these issues. I can only tell
    you that I will be watching closely, as I am sure my
    constituents in Colorado will be watching closely, as you go
    through those revisions leading up to the November 15th
    publication of the plans.
        I think for all of us who sit on this subcommittee our
    forests are our crown jewels of our State and we need to make
    sure that we do not do things with these long-term management
    plans that are going to diminish the sustainability of the
    forests. When I think about a 15-year plan, I can think about a
    4 or 5-year timeframe, but when I think about 15 years that is
    a very, very long time. So we just have to make sure that we
    get it right.
        I look forward to staying in touch with your office and I
    ask you to stay in touch with us as you move forward with this
    issue.
        Mr. Rey. We would be happy to do that. For better or for
    worse, the GMUG has always been a pioneer. It was one of the
    first forest plans produced under the 1976 National Forest
    Management Act. It was appealed and later litigated and now it
    is one of the first forest plans being revised per the 2005
    planning regulations and in the aftermath of Congressional
    enactment of the Energy Policy Act.
        I have read some of the editorial coverage which seems to
    suggest that there is some conspiracy afoot. I can only make
    two observations on that score. One, if there was a conspiracy
    we probably would have waited to hatch it when the plan was
    going final, not when it was going to go out for public review,
    since obviously it is going to be transparent and everybody is
    going to have their shot at it. Second, as a personal insight,
    I have found that you can explain most instances of our
    sometimes confusing behavior by simple mistakes, without
    needing to find a conspiracy to explain it. So those would be
    my observations on that score.
        Senator Salazar. I look forward to staying in close touch
    with you on it. I will tell you that on the rumor mill there
    were meetings supposedly taking place over the weekend in high-
    level offices in Colorado as Washington officials and Colorado
    Forest Service officials were making decisions about what kinds
    of revisions were going to be made, and that they were
    dramatically different from what had been proposed in the
    earlier version of the plan.
        So I think that the sooner that you make the statement that
    you made here today, that you have a plan to move forward, to
    look at these two issues, with a date certain of November 15 to
    come up with a new plan, it will help, maybe not eliminate, but
    it will help at least clarify what it is that the Forest
    Service is doing with the GMUG.
        Thank you very much. I have taken more than enough time on
    this issue and I appreciate your indulgence in letting me have
    this conversation. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Rey. Not to belabor that, but the forest supervisor is
    contacting the local communities today to explain his decision
    and how he wants to proceed to remedy the problems with the
    plan.
        Senator Salazar. Good move.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, and I want to thank Mr.
    Rey and Ms. Scarlett, thank both of you for your attendance
    here and for your continued assistance to this subcommittee as
    we work on these critical issues.
        We will excuse the first panel now and call up the second
    panel. While the second panel is coming up, I will introduce
    them. Our second panel consists of: Alan Thompson, who is the--
    I am going to say these names wrong--Ravalli County
    Commissioner from Montana; Sue Kupillas--and if I got your name
    wrong I apologize--who is with Communities for Healthy Forests;
    Jim Crouch with the Ouachita Timber Purchasers Group; and
    Charlie Ringo, an Oregon State Senator.
        Once again, I would like to welcome this panel here with us
    and thank you all for your preparation and for the information
    and wisdom that you are going to bring to our panel, to our
    committee today. We will go through the testimony of the panel
    in the order that I introduced you, which means we will start
    with you, Mr. Thompson. I would again remind each of you to try
    to remember to pay attention to the clock so we will have time
    for the Senators to ask questions and engage in some dialog.

       STATEMENT OF ALAN THOMPSON, COMMISSIONER, RAVALLI COUNTY,
       MONTANA, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES

        Mr. Thompson. Good morning, Mr. Crapo, and Ranking Member
    Lincoln, members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the
    opportunity and the honor of testifying before you this
    morning. My name is Alan Thompson. I am a County Commissioner
    from Ravalli County in western Montana. I am also proud to
    represent the Montana Association of Counties on the Public
    Lands Steering Committee of the National Association of
    Counties, and it is on NACO's behalf that I appear today.
        I would like to speak to you today about a series of tragic
    incidents in our valley. Almost exactly to this day 6 years
    ago, lightning strikes started 78 fires in our valley that
    ultimately consumed 307,000 acres of Federal land and 49,000
    acres of State and private lands. Landscapes, homes, and lives
    were destroyed in the summer of 2000 in our valley. That was
    the first tragedy and my written testimony records the
    statistics and facts of how it affected the Federal lands and
    the citizens in our county.
        What I would like to speak to you today is about the second
    tragedy. While State and private lands began immediately to
    clean up their properties and salvage dead and dying timber,
    the Federal lands sat in limbo. When the dust settled from the
    lawsuits and the negotiations, we were able to salvage 4
    percent of the 1.2 billion, with a ``b'', board-feet of timber
    that was destroyed in the fires of 2000 on the Federal lands.
        Our county leads the State of Montana in the building of
    log homes. Yet with all the dead trees that were standing in
    our forests, local companies have had to purchase house logs
    from other counties, States, and from Canada. Since the
    restoration work was not done promptly, in the ensuing years we
    have seen mudslides from unstable slopes that have closed a
    Federal highway, county roads, and devastated ranchers' lands.
    Trees that were not cut and utilized now endanger hikers,
    hunters, and recreational forest users. Many trees have blown
    over, exposing their roots and allowing the fragile soils to
    run off and impact our streams and the world-class fishery of
    the Bitterroot River.
        As late as the 1980's, we had sawmills in our valley and a
    vibrant economy. When Federal land management policy changed,
    our valley changed and we no longer had the mills, we no longer
    had the vibrant economy, we no longer had the good-paying jobs.
    We are told now to look to tourism to sustain our economy. Yet
    with the runoff from burnt lands silt has impacted our
    fisheries, specifically endangering the threatened bull trout
    and the west slope cutthroat. What was once beautiful mountain
    vistas is now scarred landscape that very few tourists are
    interested in experiencing.
        I am sure that many of you have seen this particular
    picture of the elk in the river. This is the Bitterroot River
    and the fires, back in the fires of 2000. Not only human lives
    are impacted, but also wildlife and fishery. The cost to fight
    the fires in our valley was $54 million and much of that
    expense could have been recovered if there had been a Federal
    policy that would have expedited the salvage while the timber
    had some value.
        I believe H.R. 4200 holds great promise to improve the
    response time and I encourage you to adopt a similar Senate
    version of this bill.
        Second, we in the county were disappointed when elected
    officials had no say-so in the settlement. Citizens in our
    county should be represented in any settlement that directly
    affects our lives. Elected officials should have been given
    standing to speak on their behalf.
        Finally, I believe there should be a policy that requires
    the posting of a bond when a lawsuit is filed. If the belief is
    so strong that something wrong has been done, then there should
    be the will to back the suit with more than just the cost of
    filing.
        I would like to invite members of the subcommittee to visit
    our county, see for yourselves the difference between the State
    lands that was burned and the Federal lands, the restoration
    work that has taken place in the ensuing years. You can see on
    the ground the difference, what that landscape looks like at
    this time.
        Again, thank you for listening. I appreciate your ongoing
    efforts and the opportunity to be here this morning.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Thompson can be found on
    page 91 in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson.
        Ms. Kupillas. Did I pronounce your name right?

    STATEMENT OF SUE KUPILLAS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMUNITIES FOR
                            HEALTHY FORESTS

        Ms. Kupillas. ``Kue-PILL-us.''
        Senator Crapo. ``Kue-PILL-us,'' thank you. You may begin.
        Ms. Kupillas. Good morning, Chairman Crapo and Senator
    Lincoln and Senator Salazar. My name is Sue Kupillas. I am
    Executive Director for a nonprofit organization, Communities
    for Healthy Forests, based in Roseburg, Oregon. Communities for
    Healthy Forests' mission is to realize the prompt restoration
    and recovery of the conifer forests in the aftermath of fire
    and other catastrophic events, ensuring the presence and
    vitality of forest lands for future generations.
        We are an organization of community members, liberal and
    conservative, Republican and Democrat, who have come together
    around the common interests of the need to restore forests that
    have been devastated by catastrophic events. CHF was founded
    because this group of community leaders recognizes there are
    serious impediments to restoring forests in a timely manner.
        Communities for Healthy Forests is proud to support the
    Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act because the key
    principle underlying FERRA is the need to move quickly to
    restore forests, key watersheds, and wildlife habitats. Under
    current Federal law the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
    Management face an almost insurmountable amount of analysis,
    red tape, and bureaucratic steps following a catastrophic
    event. While Federal forests suffer crippling delay in the
    process, tribal, State, and private forest land managers move
    forward with recovery and reforestation projects much sooner
    following these catastrophic events.
        One of the best examples of successful forest restoration
    can be found in my home State of Oregon. Beginning in 1933, a
    series of four catastrophic wildfires burned over 350,000 acres
    of forest land now known as the Tillamook Burn. The people of
    the State of Oregon approved a measure to initiate a massive
    restoration effort to recover economic value from the burned
    timber, protect watersheds from erosion, and reforest the
    barrel landscape by seeding and planting young seedlings.
        As a result of these efforts, what was formerly known as
    the Tillamook Burn became the Tillamook State Forest. Since
    then the forest has returned over $2 billion in the form of
    revenue for county governments and needed rural jobs and
    schools. Most importantly, the forest now provides immeasurable
    benefits in terms of fish and wildlife habitat, clean water and
    open spaces for the enjoyment of Oregonians and people all over
    the world.
        Today's vibrant Tillamook Forest is a testament to the
    benefits of taking swift action to successfully restore and
    rehabilitate a forest ravaged by catastrophic wildfire. The
    values of this forest--the values this forest provides are now
    cherished by many, so much so that environmental activists
    recently ran an unsuccessful ballot measure to restrict forest
    management activities on half the forest.
        Mr. Chairman, this is just one example, and there are many
    others included in my testimony that serve as real-world proof
    of the benefits of taking swift action following catastrophic
    events.
        The need for legislation hits close to home for me. Right
    in my back yard is the 2002 Biscuit Fire, which burned almost
    500,000 acres. While approximately 178,000 acres are
    Congressionally withdrawn as wilderness and not appropriate for
    recovery, almost 322,000 acres were in need of restoration
    activities. Of this amount, 312,000 acres remain untreated
    today due to the effects of delays, appeals, and litigation.
    After almost 4 years, less than 3 percent of the total Biscuit
    Fire area has been restored in any way. Federal courts have
    ultimately dismissed all lawsuits on the Biscuit. However,
    after almost 4 years much of the value of the dead trees is
    lost, so there is little incentive or money to undertake
    further restoration activities.
        These posters are aerial shots of the Biscuit Fire from a
    helicopter trip I took last September. Just 2 weeks ago coming
    back from a raft trip, I drove through the Biscuit Fire area
    and it looks much the same--miles and miles of dead standing
    timber.
        Another vivid picture can be witnessed at Mount St.
    Helen's, which I visited in June of this year, where private
    lands were restored and Federal lands were not. Weyerhauser's
    private industrial land was salvaged and replanted following
    the 1980 eruption and harvesting and thinning of those trees is
    now taking place. Federal land is still a moonscape with a few
    flowering bushes.
        While we have practical experience in reforestation and
    some research, we still need further research to continue to
    improve our success with restoration. FERRA has a research
    component that will do just that by providing guaranteed
    funding for ongoing research and monitoring from proceeds from
    harvesting this valuable resource. The restoration of forests
    issue should not be controversial. Oregonians understand and
    support restoration, as shown by two polls completed in Oregon
    in 2005. 76 percent of the people believe forests should be
    restored, including clearing dead trees and replanting
    seedlings.
        While CHF supports FERRA and believes that it is a good
    piece of legislation, today's hearing in the Senate provides an
    opportunity to begin incorporating provisions from other
    legislative proposals that have been introduced in this body
    dealing with forest restoration.
        I would like to thank Chairman Mike Crapo and members of
    the Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural
    Revitalization for holding this important hearing and starting
    these discussions on this critical issue. I believe you have a
    unique opportunity to build upon FERRA by developing and
    passing bipartisan common sense legislation here in the 109th
    Congress.
        I appreciate this opportunity to testify and would answer
    any questions you have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Kupillas can be found on
    page 70 in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much, Ms. Kupillas.
        Mr. Crouch.

     STATEMENT OF JIM CROUCH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OUACHITA TIMBER
                PURCHASERS GROUP, RUSSELLVILLE, ARKANSAS

        Mr. Crouch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Lincoln,
    Senator Salazar. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.
    My testimony is on behalf of the Ouachita Timber Purchasers
    Group, the Ozark-St. Francis Renewable Resource Council, and
    the Lake States Federal Timber Purchasers Committee. These
    folks buy wood from the national forests to feed their mills.
    Their operations range in size from mom and pop to global
    operations with thousands of employees.
        Today national forest managers are faced with almost
    insurmountable challenges from unhealthy forests, catastrophic
    events, a hostile stakeholder minority that opposes active
    forest management, and budgets that are woefully inadequate.
    FERRA will help break this gridlock for catastrophic events.
        The spectacular forest fires and insect and disease
    outbreaks that we see on the evening news are symptoms of
    deeper underlying problems in the forests. These events are
    rooted in the near-custodial management that the agency has
    practiced in recent decades. Without aggressive active
    management, nature ultimately harvests the forests. I strongly
    support active management as the first critical step in
    achieving health forests.
        Let me share with you an example of what happens when the
    agency relies on custodial management. You know the typical
    sequence. Over several decades, the forests become too dense,
    trees become too old, and during an extended drought period the
    bugs multiply rapidly and destroy the forest or either fire
    burns it.
        In the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri, the red
    oak borer, a one inch long beetle, has destroyed more than $1
    billion worth of red oak since 1999. These borers have actually
    killed 50 million trees on 300,000 acres of the Ozark National
    Forest. Gone are the magnificent oak forests that provided an
    abundance of oak lumber, crossties, and pallets, along with
    huge acorn crops that fed bear, deer, turkey, and squirrels.
    Thousands of tons of hardwood fuel remains to feed the
    catastrophic fires of tomorrow. The scary thing about this
    situation is it is not just a problem in Arkansas; it is a
    problem in most States with national forests.
        In a move to improve forest health and reduce the impacts
    from catastrophic events, Congress passed the Healthy Forest
    Restoration Act and the administration launched the Healthy
    Forest Initiative. Most people support these efforts, but a
    handful of folks who are opposed to active forest management
    continue to appeal and litigate the agency's decisions. The
    delays usually mean the usable wood will ruin and recovery
    plans will stall. Sadly, since 2003 when HFRA was signed into
    law the Federal Government has accomplished only a little over
    77,000 acres out of the 20 million acres that they were
    authorized.
        Here is an example of what happens without FERRA. The
    Missionary Ridge Fire in southern Colorado burned about 70,000
    acres. The Forest Service spent a year and thousands of dollars
    doing an EIS to salvage 3 percent of the burned area. They were
    stopped in court over surveys for the Abert squirrel
    population. The Abert squirrel is a game species that is
    routinely hunted by hunters in Colorado. Due to the length and
    time required to prepare the bulletproof EIS and the delay
    caused by appeals and litigation, the timber became basically
    worthless and the project was abandoned. The snags and downed
    timber was left for the next fire to burn.
        In the Lake States and the South, where private, State, and
    national forests are intermingled, we support the FERRA Title 2
    language that encourages the Forest Service, communities, and
    the State foresters to cooperatively develop landscape
    assessments and to work together on recovery projects.
        I have several suggestions that I believe could improve
    FERRA. The first one is I believe the term ``burned area
    emergency response'' needs change to ``area emergency
    response.'' The definition of ``catastrophic events'' includes
    not only fires, but insects and disease, storms and so forth.
        I believe the requirement in section 101 for peer reviewed
    research protocols is probably an overkill. I support the use
    of effectiveness monitoring and adaptive management. One must
    remember the Forest Service restored lands nobody wanted to the
    condition that groups hammer on your doors asking you to
    designate old cotton fields in the South as virgin wilderness.
        In closing, I urge you to pass FERRA with the changes as
    soon as possible and I would appreciate it if you would put
    both the written and oral testimony in the record, and I would
    be glad to answer any questions at the appropriate time. Thank
    you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Crouch can be found on page
    48 in the appendix.]
        Senator Lincoln [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Crouch.
    Certainly your written and oral testimony from all of you will
    be included in the record.
        The chairman excused himself for a few moments, so, Mr.
    Ringo, if you will proceed, we will get to questioning.

     STATEMENT OF CHARLIE RINGO, OREGON STATE SENATOR, BEAVERTON,
                                 OREGON

        Mr. Ringo. Thank you very much. My name is Charlie Ringo. I
    am a State Senator from Oregon. I represent the Portland,
    Washington County area. It is a pleasure to be here this
    morning, and I am going to strike a little bit of a different
    note from the testimony you have heard so far.
        About a month ago I had the pleasure of loading my kids in
    the car and driving to Yellowstone National Park, and we got
    there and we looked at the geysers and we looked at the buffalo
    and we looked at the forest that had burned in 1988. There are
    signs along the road in Yellowstone indicating where the great
    conflagration had occurred. If you will remember, at the time
    there were pictures similar to these you have seen today with
    just amazing sheets of flames going up to the sky and the
    devastation that looked like this. At the time a number of
    scientists said: Look at this, this is devastated for
    centuries; we have done this to our national park.
        Now you go there--1988, not too long ago--and you see the
    that trees are already recovering and it is very good habitat
    and the ecology is rebounding, without any active management,
    without any recovery efforts, without any rehabilitation plans.
    The point is that all this testimony we have heard saying it is
    absolutely necessary--it may be necessary in some cases, but it
    certainly is not necessary in a lot of cases. We have to look
    very carefully at the science to see what does the best science
    say as to when active management is or is not called for. It is
    not automatically called for. It certainly was not necessary in
    Yellowstone National Park.
        Now, I want to acknowledge that there is another important
    objective in this bill besides forest recovery and that is
    getting the benefit, the economic benefit out of the forest--
    money for timber communities, jobs. Those are important
    objectives and we have got to put that right on the table and
    say that is something we have got to consider. You just cannot
    ignore that.
        But the other objective that is often set forth is this is
    absolutely essential for forest recovery and for forest health.
    Essentially it is saying you have got to cut the forest in
    order to save the forest. I suggest to you that that is not
    supported by the science.
        Now, I have some exhibits that I would like to make
    available to the committee members and talk a little bit about,
    well, what is the best science concerning forest recovery. In
    Oregon we have got Oregon State University. I grew up in that
    college town of Cravallis. I am very fond of OSU. We had the
    scandal earlier this year where there was a paper that was
    accepted for publication in Science magazine by several grad
    students. The lead author was Daniel Donato. The Donato paper
    says that post-fire logging may impair the natural regeneration
    of the forest. It is just one study. You need to look at it in
    the context of lots of other studies and the entire body of
    science. But that was a study nonetheless that would not
    support this bill, at least the objective of this bill of
    recovering forests.
        The reaction by the leadership of the College of Forestry
    was very instructive. Rather than giving a claim to these grad
    students for such an achievement of being published in a
    prestigious journal, the leadership of OSU College of Forestry
    attempted to interfere with its publication because it was not
    convenient for the timber industry that helps fund the college
    and because it might pose a threat to the legislation that is
    on the table today.
        Now, I obtained a number of emails from the College of
    Forestry leadership that--the first one, the one that is right
    on top, Senator, is from an Oregon State University vice
    president to Dean Hal Salwasser, saying: ``Heads up. This issue
    is coming. I am sure you will hear from your industry partners
    and any nemesis we have in sustainability,'' essentially
    imposing a judgment value of opposition to sustainability.
        I do not want to go through all of these emails, but it
    shows a very close coordination with industry representatives
    and with government officials to put the right spin on this so
    that it would not have an inconvenient impact for this
    legislation.
        So where does that leave us? As a State Senator in Oregon,
    I am a policymaker. You are policymakers. We have got to look
    at our objectives. As I said earlier, one of the objectives
    certainly is getting the economic benefit out of the forest.
        The other objective that is often talked about is the, we
    have got to do this for forest recovery. I suggest to you that
    that is not supported by the science. There is some suggestion
    that that is accomplished. There is many scientific
    publications that say otherwise.
        I want to just mention one thing. There are some examples
    given and Ms. Kupillas referenced the Tillamook State Forest as
    a wonderful example of active management, now we are enjoying
    the benefits today. The Tillamook State Forest is a jewel in
    Oregon. It is 350, 400,000 acres. Unfortunately, it has got
    Swiss needle cast because it was replanted incorrectly. The
    seedlings used were actually not from the Coast Range, and I
    could go into a lot more detail about that.
        The upshot and I guess the final message that I want to
    leave with the committee is that the objective of recovering
    our forests for ecological purposes must be science-based. It
    must be science-based, and the science that is behind this bill
    in that regard I believe is not credible and you have got to
    look at it a lot closer.
        Thank you very much and I would be interested in answering
    any questions.
        Senator Crapo [presiding]. Thank you very much.
        We will proceed with the questions at this point. My first
    question, Ms. Kupillas, is to you. You indicated that in the
    litigation that you referred to in your testimony, that
    virtually all of the litigation was ultimately dismissed by the
    Federal courts; is that correct?
        Ms. Kupillas. That is correct, and that is on the Biscuit
    Fire.
        Senator Crapo. On the Biscuit Fire.
        Ms. Kupillas. Right.
        Senator Crapo. But the litigation took approximately 4
    years and during that time the value of the wood on the forest
    was degraded?
        Ms. Kupillas. I believe it was around 3 years, but yes,
    there was significant degradation of the wood out there over a
    3-year period.
        Senator Crapo. Mr. Thompson, you compared post-fire
    situations on State and private forests versus the national
    forest land. I would like to tell you, I had a similar
    experience as I first began learning more and more about
    forests as I served on this committee and served in the Senate
    and the House. I had an occasion once when we were doing a tour
    of one of the forests in Idaho and touring a forest fire. The
    fire burned right up to a certain line and then stopped
    burning.
        As we flew in the helicopter over that line, there was a
    road there. I mentioned to the foresters that were with me, I
    said: I did not realize that one road would stop a fire of that
    size. They said: Oh, it was not the road that stopped the fire;
    that road is the boundary line and the forest on the other side
    of the road is State land, or it was either State or private
    land, and it was managed differently and it did not--the fire
    was not able to continue burning because the forest was in a
    better condition.
        So I have observed that myself.
        Could you compare the difference between the approaches
    that we are talking about here on State and private land versus
    Federal land management and what we need to seek to achieve at
    the Federal level that we are not able to achieve at this
    point?
        Mr. Thompson. The Sula State Forest exists in Ravalli
    County. As you know, that is State trust land, and because of
    the fires that came through in 2000 that land burned the same
    as the Federal land. The fire did not stop at that boundary. As
    you know, oftentimes fires create their own intensity, their
    own winds, and so forth. So it came through and burned that
    land also.
        Immediately, State foresters came in, did a quick
    environmental assessment on the damage that had been done, and
    in the winter of 2000-2001, January and February, they were
    able to harvest 60 million board-feet of timber off of that
    land over the snow. No degradation of any property took place
    at that time. The difference, at this time there is a stark
    difference between what transpired. They were able to plant
    vegetation, plant trees, put straw wattles in to stop the silt
    from coming into our fisheries, stop some mudslides, etcetera.
    Federal land did not.
        Vast difference in the way that they look at the moment.
    Mr. Ringo's comment saying that the science does not show that
    FERRA would be beneficial, I would dispute that by saying come
    out, walk the ground, look at the difference of getting in
    immediately, harvesting, salvaging the dead and dying timber,
    doing the restoration work that needs to be done, versus
    letting it set, go through the court process, and what Ms.
    Kupillas has talked about is exactly what happened in our
    county. After all the lawsuits were finally done, we were able
    to go in and do some work. Now all of that timber can possibly
    be used for firewood.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Mr. Ringo, I agree with you that our forest management
    should be based on good sound science. Is it your testimony
    that the weight of the science in this case is against the kind
    of forest management that is contemplated in this legislation?
        Mr. Ringo. Senator Crapo, I believe that the weight of the
    science indicates that post-fire logging operations will often
    inhibit natural regeneration. One of the earlier witnesses said
    you do need to look at it on a case by case basis and I think
    that is right.
        One of the things I mentioned--I think you had stepped out
    of the room--was I drove across the upper part of your State to
    go to Yellowstone Park this summer and we saw the regeneration
    that has occurred in Yellowstone without any active management
    at all. I think it is a remarkable example of natural recovery.
    It is not always going to happen, but I think you have got to
    look at the science very carefully, and there is a large body
    of science that does indicate that natural regeneration is
    actually preferable and will yield better results than active
    management.
        Senator Crapo. Mr. Rey in his testimony, I think he is the
    one you may have referred to who earlier said that there are
    some cases where active management is not the right technique.
    If I am reporting his testimony or paraphrasing it correctly,
    he said there are many cases where it is. Do you agree with
    that or are you saying that in all cases active management is
    not appropriate?
        Mr. Ringo. No, I would not say that. And I would also
    acknowledge that there is other objectives. I do think it is an
    important objective to consider the economic benefit of quick
    action. You cannot ignore the impact on the local treatment
    communities and on jobs. You just cannot say those are not
    relevant. Clearly they are.
        My message to the committee, though, is that I believe the
    public wants balanced management, and that is part of the
    management. The other part that needs to be considered is what
    is the real environmental impact, what is the real ecological
    impact, and what does the science say about that.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Mr. Crouch, could you comment on the same general set of
    issues? What does the science say in your opinion? Where is the
    weight of the evidence here, if you will?
        Mr. Crouch. Yes, sir. You know, the thing that comes to my
    mind as I sat and listened, there is an awful lot of
    commonality among what is being said and yet there is an awful
    lot of difference when we finally see the actions that
    different interests take.
        I would suggest to you that the Forest Service has a
    tremendous amount of science behind its decisions. I would
    suggest to you that the Forest Service research is as good as
    there is probably in the world when it comes to forestry. So we
    need to be very careful that we do not kind of conclude that
    maybe these activities that you see going on the ground or
    these activities that are laid out in the land management
    plans, the standards and the guides and so forth--they are
    based on an awful lot of science, and I guess I would leave it
    at that.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Senator Lincoln. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Crouch, thanks again for being here, taking time to be
    with us here today. In your prepared statement you had said
    that additional funding may be needed to implement the recovery
    plans. Maybe you might explain a little bit of that or go a
    little further to let us know if you see existing funding
    mechanisms as provided in the FERRA bill as a problem for
    active management of forests that have not experienced as
    frequent catastrophic events?
        Again, in the South we do not necessarily have the volume
    of forest fires and other. We do have tremendous volume of
    insect infestation, ice, tornadoes, different types of natural
    disasters, maybe in a smaller forest, but certainly just as
    catastrophic. You might want to expand on that a little bit.
        Mr. Crouch. The folks, Senator, that I represent very
    strongly support FERRA. The thing that we are kind of looking
    at is, as the Under Secretary said, we believe that FERRA will
    substantially reduce the cost of the NEPA work, reduce the cost
    of litigation, reduce the cost of appeals. We believe it will
    therefore bring an awful lot more opportunity for recovery of
    many of these fires that we have heard talked about, or insect,
    disease problems, or Katrina type stuff, that has not been very
    well restored in the past.
        So what I am really saying is you have got a tremendous
    number of acres that, for example, may need to be reforested
    and those cost tremendous amounts of money. So what I am
    suggesting is that the savings on the one hand from the
    paperwork side, if you will, may not be nearly great enough to
    take care of the additional acres that will be treated. So
    while the mechanisms in this bill are OK, I suggest that they
    probably will not produce adequate dollars.
        Senator Lincoln. Well, that is so important, because that
    is something up here that we deal with constantly, are the
    resources that are needed to do all of the great ideas that we
    try to bring together and balance up here in terms of
    management and legislation that provides the tools out there.
    But if the resources are not there to do it, it just becomes a
    big ball of frustration for everybody, us as legislators and
    certainly those that are out in the field to implement it.
        So I think that is important. Under Secretary Rey did
    mention that he thought that there were considerable savings
    there, but----
        Mr. Crouch. I agree with that.
        Senator Lincoln. Right. But without a doubt, ultimately it
    is whether there is enough savings to be able to do what we
    want to do and would additional resources be necessary, which
    is something we have to consider here.
        What on the ground--again, Mr. Crouch, what on the ground
    benefits resulted from the active recovery on our Ouachita
    National Forest following the ice storm in 2000? That was
    devastating to us in Arkansas in December of 2000, the ice
    storm that was tremendous really across the southern part and
    the western part of the State. Kind of what negative effects
    were there?
        Mr. Crouch. You know, that is a real good question. We had
    an ice storm about Christmas of that year that really destroyed
    the timber on lots of acres. Estimates were there was probably
    200 million board-feet on the ground. The Forest Service made
    the decision to actively salvage as much of that as possible.
    We went to CEQ and was given some alternative arrangements and
    the Forest Service immediately began to expedite it, weighing
    the timber, things that were quite different from what they
    have traditionally done.
        As a result of that, about 100 million board-feet was
    harvested before the bugs began to ruin it. When you look at
    the ground today that was harvested as compared to the grounds
    that were not harvested, you see a much, much different forest.
    The forest is beginning to regenerate. A lot of it, short-leaf
    pine has been planted, as compared to the other acres where you
    have got tremendous tons of fuel still on the ground, it is
    drying out, it is drying up, and the ecosystem is beginning to
    change in a lot of cases.
        Basically, in Arkansas, as you know, we get maple and sweet
    gum, stuff like that, back in catastrophic events. We typically
    do not get back the pines that we look for economically. So we
    do not have any question in our minds on many, many pieces of
    ground that it is much, much better to institute active
    management, salvage it, restore it. There are other cases,
    obviously, steep slopes, things like that, where you should
    not.
        One decision that was made on the Ouachita case was to stay
    out of the streams, stay out of the streamside zones. So there
    was a lot of acres left there that was not touched. Now the
    biologists are saying we have got to go back in there, thin
    that out somehow, so we can get the benefits we need for
    wildlife, and so they are kind of going back and trying to
    adjust.
        Senator Lincoln. Well, I think it is so important that
    first and foremost, that everyone is engaged, and I know
    through our forest initiatives, our landowners and others in
    Arkansas, the best management practices and the other types of
    efforts that are made to include everybody at the table in
    making those decisions, and obviously the Forest Service as
    well, has really been a tremendous benefit to recognizing, back
    to the question that Senator Ringo was bringing up, and that is
    when it is best to have a management plan and when it is not.
    Having lived through that ice storm in 2000 and seeing the kind
    of fuel that was left on the floor and then the repeated
    droughts that we had after that, it was a terrible
    circumstance.
        I know that forest fires create these pictures that are so
    horrific and you look at the results of an ice storm and it is
    almost gorgeous. So it is hard for us in the South and areas
    where we do see these types of situations to really bring about
    the impact of what it has on our economy and on our ecosystems
    in the forests that we enjoy for so many things.
        So I just think really the idea that everybody comes to the
    table and looks at what the circumstances are, what the
    objectives are, in making sure that as we go through those
    detailed plans that we think forward and think carefully about
    the steps that we take, I think that is important.
        Ms. Kupillas, in your testimony you referred to the social
    and the community aspects of more timely forest regeneration.
    Would you like to elaborate on that?
        Ms. Kupillas. Yes, Senator Lincoln. The communities
    surrounding these burned forests, the mills depend on a
    consistent supply of wood. When we have dead standing timber
    that seems available to supply these mills, then it seems
    logical that we should be able to take out the timber and at
    least maintain some of the jobs that are in these rural
    communities.
        I would like to respond also to a couple of statements that
    Senator Ringo said if I could, please. On the Donato report,
    Donato indicated that the regenerating trees were damaged after
    3 years of delay, that the regenerated trees were damaged when
    they went in to do some harvest. I would suggest that the
    Donato research supports FERRA because FERRA says the essence
    is to get in there early, before those little seedlings start
    growing again, get in there early and harvest before that
    happens, and therefore you would not have damage to the
    seedlings.
        I could give you many other examples, and it is in my
    written testimony, of areas that have not been restored side by
    side with areas that have on private or State lands. There are
    many, many circumstances where restoration really should occur
    and does not occur. But I think that there are many social and
    economic effects. As we drive through the Biscuit, there are a
    lot of tourism aspects. Dead standing slopes that are bare and
    eroding now really do not attract the tourists.
        This used to be a sea of green. I have flown over it when
    this was mile after mile after mile of green forest.
        Senator Lincoln. Is the tourism the only ramification? I
    mean, what other--you spoke about the acres that were left
    untreated in the Biscuit Fire, the lack of restoration. It has
    affected the community, the neighboring community, through
    tourism. Perhaps are there other things?
        Ms. Kupillas. Well, the mills that really could put another
    shift or two on should they have had the several billion board-
    feet of timber available to them. There are local mills that
    could have been on that had it been done early enough. But
    after deterioration, after all the lawsuits had been dropped,
    then most of those mills really cannot afford to go in there
    and harvest dead trees that have deteriorated.
        Senator Lincoln. Right.
        Senator Ringo, you have mentioned, and I agree with Senator
    Crapo, that we definitely want the use of sound science. We
    have consistently said that in this committee. Whether it is
    trade or reforestation or our industry areas, science is
    critical.
        To me, one of the issues that comes up most readily from
    all of you is the timeliness of it. Of course, that issue also
    falls back onto whether or not the resources are there to pull
    the necessary groups together, to have the kind of research and
    science necessary to make timely decisions. If you wait too
    many years, seedlings have come up. Then you have the problem
    of damaged restoration that is occurring naturally when you go
    in too late to make the correct restoration that you would like
    to do from a manual standpoint.
        Do you have any comments? You referenced the Yellowstone an
    awful lot. You might want to--and I do not know if there is a
    different version or maybe you have some insight on why the
    natural restoration in Yellowstone might have been different
    than maybe some of the lack of restoration that has occurred on
    Mount St. Helen's that Ms. Kupillas was referencing.
        Mr. Ringo. Senator, I have gone hiking up on Mount St.
    Helen's and I think there have been all kinds of pictures
    showing remarkable natural restoration on St. Helen's as well.
    Again, it can depend on what your management objective is. If
    you are Weyerhauser, you want a big tree farm that is going to
    grow as fast as possible so you can harvest them as fast as
    possible. That is a different objective than saying you want an
    ecologically balanced area that is good for habitat. It is a
    different objective.
        I think we need areas with both objectives. But the second
    objective, of a balanced environment, a balanced ecological
    system, that will regenerate naturally and it is not
    Weyerhauser's objective. So I do not think it is fair to look
    at what Weyerhauser did in trying to restore a tree farm as
    fast as possible and say, gee, that is the way we want all of
    our forests to be.
        Just as a point on the science, it is difficult. I think
    there is lots of disagreements. A lot of it does depend on what
    part of the country you are looking at. The Yellowstone is
    different than the southern part of the United States, which is
    different than the wet coastal ranges in Oregon.
        Senator Crapo asked me about the weight of the evidence.
    The problem I have with where this bill is going is I believe
    that some of the science does rely on scientists that are
    really working at the behest of the industry. That is
    demonstrated through these emails from the College of Forestry,
    where essentially the industry is spoon-feeding the leadership,
    saying we want you to help us with our political problem,
    please get some professors to come out with a report that says
    this.
        At least the Daniel Donato report was independently peer
    reviewed, which is really the mark of excellence in science.
    This committee has relied on the report of Professor John
    Sessions before with a study that was never independently peer
    reviewed and said, well, that is the good science and that is
    what we are going to rely on. I just suggest to you that the
    studies from Professor Sessions really are done at the behest
    of industry and that is why they should be given less
    credibility. I hope we do not latch onto one scientist we
    believe because we like that conclusion and because it is
    politically expedient.
        Senator Lincoln. Well, I think the objective of the
    committee is to certainly gather a wide variety in our panels
    as well as in our science and the scientists that present it,
    in order to make sure we come up with a balanced approach.
        Just one last question for Mr. Thompson. You compared the
    post-fire situations on State and private forests versus
    national forest lands. Maybe you might go a bit further or in
    more detail about the difference between the approaches and the
    results that were there. That might be helpful to us in the
    committee. You might want to share your views on the role for
    research and certainly monitoring to validate some of the----
        Mr. Thompson. Well, the approach obviously was that State
    lands, being State trust lands, that money is used for
    education. In the State of Montana we are having an education
    crisis at the moment, trying to fund, as I am sure in your
    State and many States are having the same problem.
        Natural resource is one way that we can utilize funds for
    education. When they went into the Sula State lands they were
    able to harvest that timber, bring it off, and although we do
    not have mills in our county to harvest it and utilize it, they
    moved into Missoula County, some of the other counties north of
    us, and were able to see some economic impact there.
        Again, the land--we can talk about science all we want and
    the approach and the way that it looks when you are all done
    with it, but the best example is to come out on the land and
    see the different approaches, look at the private land where
    people have gone in and done the work that needed to be done.
    It can be done in an economically friendly way and that is the
    way the Sula State lands were done. Again, the timber was
    harvested in the winter over the snow, over frozen ground.
    Nothing was damaged.
        The Federal lands again, ugly, straight stalks of black
    trees sticking up, fallen over in some wind-blown areas, and so
    forth.
        I would like to make one comment on Mr. Ringo's last
    comment about Yellowstone. As you are well aware, Yellowstone
    sits partially in Montana, and I have been into that burned
    area many times. Forests when they regenerate and regrow should
    not look like wheat fields, and much of the area that has been
    regenerated in Yellowstone looks like a wheat field. The trees
    are so dense that even small rodents I think are going to have
    a difficult time getting through. Large ungulates are going to
    have a very difficult time in there--bison, elk, deer,
    etcetera.
        Again, we can look at it and say that area without any
    approach by us doing any recovery has recovered itself. But I
    think that we need to look at long-term and not short-term. Let
    us wait a little bit and see what happens to Yellowstone in the
    next few years. There may be another catastrophic event there.
        It may be such that it burns so intense that there are
    areas of the Bitterroot, there are areas of Yellowstone, that
    have hydrophobic soils, that have been damaged down 10 to 12
    inches and nothing is going to grow for a long time. You must
    get in, break that soil up, break that hydrophobic surface up,
    plant trees, do some restoration work. That has been done on
    the Sula State lands, on many of the private lands, and not all
    of the Federal lands.
        Senator Lincoln. Well, we appreciate the panel. I am going
    to turn it back over to the chairman if he has any further
    questions. But just to say that certainly our objective here is
    to look at the balance of all of the things we are trying to
    achieve--without a doubt the conservation of the land, the
    economics that can be used, the timeliness of what we need to
    do in order to achieve those things, and most importantly
    keeping healthy forests in our Nation.
        With twin boys that are 10 years old who are with the
    Scouts right now out in the forests at Scout camp this week, it
    is very much an objective of mine that future generations will
    have the benefit of enjoying the forests like I did in the
    Ouachita and the St. Francis, the wonderful forests I was able
    to grow up in.
        So Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your leadership. I will
    turn it back over to you and assure the panel that we will work
    on a balanced approach.
        Senator Crapo. Well, thank you very much.
        Again, we thank this panel for your attendance and the
    testimony you have provided today. We will excuse you and we
    will call up our third panel. While the third panel is coming
    up, I will introduce them as well. Our third panel consists of:
    Dr. John Helms, who is Professor Emeritus of Forestry at the
    University of California, Berkeley, who will be representing
    the Society of American Foresters; Dr. Jim Karr, an Ecologist
    and Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington; Mr.
    Robert L. Krepps, St. Louis County Land Commissioner; and Leah
    W. MacSwords, Director and State Forester of the Kentucky
    Division of Forestry.
        Senator Crapo. Again, we would like to welcome all of you
    for the time and effort that you have put forward to help this
    committee and to participate in this panel. I again remind each
    of you to try to pay close attention to that clock as we move
    forward.
        Dr. Helms, we will begin with you.

       STATEMENT OF JOHN A. HELMS, PH.D., PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF
    FORESTRY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, ON BEHALF OF THE
                     SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS

        Dr. Helms. Thank you, Chairman Crapo, for the invitation to
    provide testimony at this hearing. As you mentioned, my name is
    John Helms and I am a Professor Emeritus from the University of
    California, Berkeley. But I am here this morning to give
    testimony on behalf of the Society of American Foresters. As I
    am sure you are aware, the society has a membership of about
    15,000 people, who represent a very broad range of expertise,
    including forest managers, researchers of a variety of kinds
    from geneticists through to economists and biologists, and also
    consultants.
        What I would like to do first of all, however, is comment
    that just prior to coming to the hearing, as you mentioned,
    there is a fire occurring in northern California, and this is
    rather significant because it is burning into a fire--an area
    that previously burned in 2001. That area, which was national
    forest land, was not salvaged due to process delays. They
    attempted to sell some logs at about 2, 2-1/2 years after the
    fire and no one bid on the sale.
        Just 2 days ago, fire came over the ridge, into that area,
    and completely eliminated all the standings, dead snags, all
    the downed logs, for the second time damaged the watersheds,
    and for the second time threatening the town of Weaverville. So
    I think it is pertinent to your committee to appreciate that a
    second fire only 5 years after the first can create a
    significant amount of damage.
        I would like to summarize my testimony by just a few
    points. The first is that we are going to continue to have
    catastrophes such as we have had in the past due to wildfire,
    due to insects and disease, due to windstorm, and the question
    is what should we do about these lands. Is the land better
    served to let it proceed under natural conditions or should
    there be active management?
        Resolving this issue really depends on emphasis being
    placed on identifying just what are the needs that are peculiar
    to that particular fire, that particular situation. Undoubtedly
    there will be mixes of responses that are appropriate. Some of
    the areas should be left alone for natural regeneration and
    recovery. Other areas a prudent land manager would want to
    address the possibility of salvage harvesting, and there may be
    other areas that would warrant some other kinds of restorative
    action.
        Now, the areas that would benefit from salvage cutting, I
    want to emphasize that it is essential that prompt action be
    taken. We have abundant past experience. There is abundant peer
    reviewed research since the 1930's that has shown, particularly
    in areas that are relatively dry, that the burned areas rapidly
    become dominated by shrubs. So the importance of promptness is
    to get the slower growing conifers established before the areas
    become covered with shrubs.
        Alternatively, one can, instead of having shrub fields
    there for perhaps 50 or so years, is to adopt some kind of
    action that enables one to return that forest back to pre-burn
    conditions in a much smaller frame of time.
        Therefore we believe it is critically important for
    Congress to establish a process as outlined in FERRA, that
    involves immediate professional assessment, immediate
    consideration of prompt action using best management practices
    within the context of pre-approved plans. Again, I really want
    to emphasize the importance of the promptness to prevent the
    shrubs taking over the land.
        I would like to perhaps illustrate with three posters here.
    The area on the left is national forest land that has not been
    salvaged. This is from a fire in 1992. The area on the right
    shows rehabilitation through planting. The question is does the
    area on the right that has planting enable the landscape to be
    returned to pre-burn conditions quicker than if it was left
    unattached.
        The second poster, which I am afraid, Chairman Crapo, you
    cannot really see, shows an area that has been reforested
    after, 45 years after the burn. The interesting thing about
    that image is that it is a mixed conifer forest. The average
    person would not expect that that was a planted forest. It
    looks very natural.
        The third one, behind you, is again a 45-year old area just
    adjacent to this one that was replanted, which is still a
    permanent brush field.
        So I would like to thank you very much for your giving me
    the opportunity to provide testimony and I will be very pleased
    to address any questions you might have. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Helms can be found on page
    53 in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
        Dr. Karr.

    STATEMENT OF JIM KARR, PH.D., ECOLOGIST AND PROFESSOR EMERITUS,
             UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

        Dr. Karr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to be
    here as you discuss the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research
    Act. As you know, our Nation's forests provide vital natural
    and cultural benefits for all Americans. What you may not know,
    however, is that certain forms of disturbance play a vital role
    in sustaining our forests. Although people see wildland fires,
    wind and ice storms, and insect outbreaks as catastrophes
    affecting Federal and non-Federal lands, over time such events
    have in fact both created and helped sustain the character of
    many regional ecosystems.
        Unfortunately, H.R. 4200 does not acknowledge that these
    disturbances play a constructive role. Rather the act is
    founded on the premise that, quote, ``recovery treatments,''
    end quote, are needed, quote, ``in response to catastrophic
    events affecting lands,'' end quote.
        I am especially dismayed that H.R. 4200 takes this view,
    given that half a century of publicly funded research by
    government and nongovernment scientists from a wide range of
    disciplines has demonstrated the contrary. My remarks today are
    based on my ecological research over 4 decades, particularly on
    research over the past 12 years with a dozen scientists,
    examining what happens when areas affected by natural
    disturbances--notice I did not use the word ``catastrophe'';
    natural disturbances--are left to regenerate on their own or
    when humans intervene.
        The first point I wish to make is that logging after
    natural disturbances is not an ecosystem restoration tool. Such
    logging damages forest landscapes, limiting populations of
    species crucial to the maintenance of these landscapes by
    impeding the natural processes that have long sustained these
    ecosystems. A substantial body of evidence, some dating from
    the early 20th century, demonstrates that post-disturbance
    logging impairs the ability of forest ecosystems to recover
    from natural disturbances.
        Specifically, post-disturbance logging prevents or slows
    natural recovery by slowing the establishment of plant and
    animal populations and degrading streams. For example, the
    dramatic physical changes in forest structure resulting from
    hurricanes and insect infestations in New England do not
    disrupt biogeochemical cycles or degrade water quality, but
    post-disturbance logging increases nitrogen lost from those
    landscapes and does degrade water quality.
        Post-disturbance logging also threatens species listed
    under the Endangered Species Act and places more species at
    risk, making future listings a near certainty. Damage from
    post-disturbance logging may consist of direct effects from
    logging, such as increased mortality of trees and other
    seedlings and damage to soils, or indirect effects of
    activities associated with logging, such as more traffic on
    existing roads, creation of new roads, or the spread of
    invasive species.
        These observations are not mere points in an abstract
    scientific debate. They constitute an accumulation of on-the-
    ground evidence that logging after disturbance harms rather
    than helps the regeneration of forests. As one prominent forest
    ecologist has put it, and I quote; ``Timber salvage is most
    appropriately viewed as a tax on ecological recovery.'' End
    quote.
        The second point I wish to make is that recommendations
    exist for how to avoid damage from post-disturbance treatments
    and how to speed recovery of both terrestrial and aquatic
    systems. Because time is limited, I cannot discuss these
    recommendations in any detail. They are provided in my written
    testimony. They note that maintenance of healthy systems will
    limit the effects of natural disturbances, that post-
    disturbance activity should be limited in many circumstances.
    In the unusual circumstances when they are necessary, they must
    be done within the framework of a carefully formulated,
    scientifically rigorous program. As a tangent here, I would
    like to note that science is not a monolith and the science
    that we have heard people speak about today is not always the
    same thing, although the same word is used.
        This post-disturbance logging should not be done in a rush,
    as happened following a major wind storm where, and I quote a
    person doing the analysis of that, ``action was a substitute
    for thought.'' Because the lessons of science are so clear on
    this subject, more than 500 scientists from diverse
    disciplines, institutions, and geographic areas have
    acknowledged the ecological merits of the recommendations
    outlined in my written testimony. I ask that this letter be put
    into the hearing record with those 540-some signatures.
        Senator Crapo. Without objection.
        Dr. Karr. Yet I suggest that careful reading of H.R. 4200
    reveals assumptions and language in the act that run counter to
    most of these recommendations.
        In closing, may I also suggest that, like all legislation
    involving science, H.R. 4200 should be debated on its
    scientific merits, not its politics. Rather than rush to
    implement emergency treatments and risk undermining the
    public's interest in healthy Federal lands, as H.R. 4200
    appears to do, I respectfully urge this committee to examine
    with great care the act's potentially irreversible
    consequences.
        Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. I
    shall be happy to take any questions you may have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Karr can be found on page 61
    in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you, Dr. Karr.
        Mr. Krepps.

     STATEMENT OF ROBERT L. KREPPS, ST. LOUIS COUNTY COMMISSIONER,
                           DULUTH, MINNESOTA

        Mr. Krepps. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee: I am
    pleased to provide testimony today on an important topic of
    forest recovery and reforestation, specifically the Forest
    Emergency Recovery and Research Act. My name is Bob Krepps and
    I currently serve as the Land Commissioner for St. Louis
    County, Minnesota. We manage 890,000 acres of county land,
    including several thousand acres within the Boundary Waters
    Canoe Area within the Superior National Forest.
        I recently moved to Minnesota, having previously served as
    the State forester in Missouri for 6 years, and I have been
    engaged as a professional forester at the Federal, State, and
    now county level for 39 years. Today I am here to relay a need
    for action, action on the Nation's Federal lands after
    catastrophes, natural events, that type thing, where currently
    very little occurs.
        I am not here to say that we need to do something on every
    acre after an event. But if the professional forest managers in
    the field, after public involvement and environmental analysis,
    think some recovery actions are necessary, they should have the
    processes and legal support to act quickly.
        I would like to cite an example that Senator Coleman
    referred to. On July 4, 1999, a very intense wind storm came
    across northeastern Minnesota. It laid down basically 477,000
    acres of forest land, primarily on the Superior National
    Forest, primarily within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, but
    albeit 477,000 acres of forest was blown down and laid on the
    ground, which created a potential for intense burning fires.
        8 years and 10 days later, a lightning storm came across
    the same area in northeastern Minnesota and resulted in two
    fires burning that are currently burning, as Senator Coleman
    referred to, burning about 34,000 acres at a direct cost to
    suppress and manage of $7.6 million as of 2 days ago.
        I am not here to belabor the point of whether action should
    be taken in the wilderness. I am here to talk about early and
    prompt response to these type situations. Within St. Louis
    County, within the county lands, we rapidly did an assessment.
    We began the process of implementing projects and on the 7700
    acres, more or less, of county land that was affected by the
    blowdown, by September we had the first round of projects
    available for implementation and in December we put the rest of
    them up. To date we have recovery under way on nearly 5,000
    acres of forest land that the county manages, and that includes
    the harvest, removal of the fuel, and replanting.
        It is important to note that St. Louis County Lands
    Department manages our county lands to provide optimum returns,
    while also aiming to ensure long-term sustained yields of
    renewable resources and to provide protection for wildlife,
    watersheds, and to provide for a diverse recreation resource.
        St. Louis County also maintains dual certification by both
    the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the International
    Standards Organization. Included in these certifications is a
    requirement to maintain environmental compliance with Federal,
    State, and local laws, regulations, and ordinances, and we are
    audited annually.
        Having worked at the Federal, State, and county levels, I
    would say that the level of environmental consideration at the
    county level is at minimum equal to or exceeds the Federal
    standards and certainly involves less process and allows us to
    be more responsive.
        I have several other examples that I would like to have
    just entered into the record through my written testimony. In
    summary, it is clear to me after witnessing these and other
    forest catastrophes first-hand that Congressional action is
    needed to better enable timely Federal response. When forest
    managers are allowed to move forward with timely recovery and
    reforest activities appropriate for the values and uses
    associated with the forest, the forest can be restored in a
    timely manner, sometimes much quicker than when left alone.
        Congress needs to untie the Federal land managers' hands
    from lengthy process and administrative hurdles to enable
    Federal forest recovery. CEQ enabled this in the Superior
    National Forest with the granting of alternative arrangements.
    FERRA would accomplish similar objectives.
        I strongly urge this committee to take action on FERRA and
    strongly support it. There are other bills that have been
    introduced as well within the Senate with options for
    addressing this problem and I encourage you also to take a look
    at these ideas and consider them as you move forward.
        I guess in closing, Congress has an opportunity to provide
    the support and tools for Federal forest managers to better
    manage Federal forests. It is a tragedy that management of
    these forests, a national treasure, has become a quagmire of
    litigation, burdensome process, and court-driven
    decisionmaking. Forest managers know what needs to be done and
    they have incorporated science into their work through
    evolution over careers. But they are shackled in their ability
    to actually do the work needed.
        I appeal to you here in Congress to clarify the laws,
    streamline the process, and give Federal managers the tools
    they need to bring the Federal forests back to being a national
    treasure. Thank you for this opportunity. I will be happy to
    answer any questions you might have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Krepps can be found on page
    66 in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you, Mr. Krepps.
        Ms. MacSwords.

     STATEMENT OF LEAH W. MacSWORDS, DIRECTOR AND STATE FORESTER,
       KENTUCKY DIVISION OF FORESTRY, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL
                     ASSOCIATION OF STATE FORESTERS

        Ms. MacSwords. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
    subcommittee, for this opportunity to testify today. I
    represent the National Association of State Foresters. NASF
    supports FERRA because it will speed the implementation of
    recovery projects on Federal, State, and private lands and
    authorize needed research. It reflects the landscape scale of
    catastrophic events and recognizes that restoration work is
    more effective when it is coordinated across all ownerships
    through the use of assessments, restoration planning, and on-
    the-ground activities, and it provides funding mechanisms for
    restoration activities for private lands and communities.
        In my written statement, I included examples from Kentucky,
    Minnesota, and the Southeast to show how we must deal with
    forest recovery at the landscape scale if we are to responsibly
    care for the Nation's forest resources. Allow me to share with
    you another example from Kentucky and submit additional
    information for the record to demonstrate the importance of
    this bill to the forests that are east of the Rockies.
        On November 15, 2005, a tornado ripped through western
    Kentucky and greatly impacted the Land Between the Lakes
    National Recreation Area. It came across the northern end of
    the LBL and damaged timber in two areas. In one area cleanup
    efforts have been abandoned by the Forest Service due to
    cultural resources there. Proposed restoration activities on
    the other area, known as Tornado Alley, are under appeal and
    the Forest Service has taken no action.
        In my written statement I described an ice storm that
    occurred in February 2003 which caused severe damage to
    thousands of acres of Federal, State, and private owned forest
    land in central and northeastern Kentucky. We were able to
    harvest the damaged timber on the Tygarts State Forest in less
    than 12 months. We would have finished that harvest sooner, but
    we had a confirmed Indiana bat sighting, which required us to
    obtain an incidental take permit from the U.S. Fish and
    Wildlife Service and delay the harvest until winter to reduce
    any possible impact on the bat.
        Meanwhile, the Forest Service surveyed the damage on the
    nearby Daniel Boone National Forest and determined a
    restoration harvest was needed. They started the long process
    that they have to go through and issued a finding of no
    significant impact in February 1906. The first on-the-ground
    work is finally expected to begin this month, 3-1/2 years after
    the storm. But I understand that a lawsuit may soon be filed to
    challenge the agency's decision. Timber buyers in Kentucky
    doubt that the downed timber on the Daniel Boone will have much
    value to them at this late date.
        I have another example to present for the record. What
    happened in Wisconsin mirrors what happened in Kentucky. A
    severe wind storm swept through two counties in northern
    Wisconsin in July 1999. Extensive areas of public and private
    forest land and a portion of a national forest were impacted.
    State, private, and non-Federal public agencies took quick
    action. They completed most of the salvage as well as training
    of fire personnel within 6 months.
        By contrast, administrative and legal procedures kept the
    Forest Service from awarding contracts for salvage until
    January 1904, 4-1/2 years after the storm. By this time, much
    of the timber value was lost and the fire danger remained
    elevated for several years until the salvage harvest work was
    complete.
        Since the passage of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act,
    the national forest staff have worked vigorously to complete
    other salvage environmental assessments in 9 to 10 months as
    long as there are no objections that can cause delays. Thus,
    even under the best circumstances, with current authorities the
    Forest Service cannot mitigate the summer storm damage until at
    least one fire season has occurred and with continued high fire
    danger and loss of more timber value.
        NASF strongly supports the expedited process in this
    legislation, which still requires Federal agencies to comply
    with applicable land management plans, protect soil, water
    quality, endangered species, and historic values, and provide
    public notice and engagement. If we can act quickly on State
    and other non-Federal lands and still protect the environment,
    then Federal land managers should be able to follow suit.
        The Forest Service and BLM must be able to deal with these
    disasters quickly and effectively because these catastrophes do
    not respect boundaries. We must work cooperatively across the
    various levels of government.
        We urge your support for the passage of the bill and I
    thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be happy to
    answer any questions you may have.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. MacSwords can be found on
    page 76 in the appendix.]
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
        Dr. Helms, I think I will start out with you. Do you know
    of, either through the scientific literature or through your
    own personal experience, do you know of ecological benefits
    that come from recovery and reforestation activities? If so,
    could you give us some explanation and further development of
    that?
        Dr. Helms. My response would be my experience in California
    in the 1950's and 60's. At that time California had about one
    million acres of brush field and the Forest Service had a very
    active program or initiated a very active program of what was
    called brush field reclamation. Now, these brush fields were
    probably 50 years old. They had been sequentially burned and
    would remain in brush field.
        So in response I would say one of the big success stories
    in California has been to take what was almost a million acres
    of brush field, some of which of course still is brush because
    it was deemed best kept in that state, but the majority of the
    area is now thriving forest and it looks for all the world like
    natural forest. It is mixed species and mixed habitat and is a
    real asset to the people of the State and the Nation.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you very much.
        Why is it sometimes necessary to actively recover forest
    sites?
        Dr. Helms. I think the two posters you have here illustrate
    that. It depends upon in the public's interest how quickly do
    you want to return the forest back to a pre-burn condition. If
    you take no action, then the area will proceed through plant
    succession in its normal time and this may take decades or even
    50 years. That is perfectly fine, but when you have burns that
    are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of acres,
    particularly on dry sites, is this in the Nation's best
    interest, to have these lands not returned quickly back into
    the kind of form that might provide the variable values and
    benefits that society wants?
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Dr. Karr, is it your testimony that reforestation
    activities are never appropriate, that we should never engage
    in active management in the face of a fire or any of these
    infestations that we have been talking about today?
        Dr. Karr. I think nothing should ever happen always or
    should never happen. I agree with that point completely.
        I think that much of the testimony that I have heard today
    focused on getting the value out of the timber that was damaged
    by the fire, the insect outbreak, storm damage. Value there was
    crafted in the context of salable board-feet of wood. Often the
    value that derives from leaving those pieces of wood on the
    landscape exceeds or at least equals the value to be derived
    from that harvest, because of protection of water quality,
    because it will speed the succession or the redevelopment of a
    complex forest ecosystem there, because it will retain the
    populations of birds that are crucial in controlling
    populations of pest outbreaks in the future.
        If you go in and remove all of that wood, then you do not
    have places for those populations of animals that might feed on
    the pest insects to control their populations in the future.
    There is a whole series of dimensions from water quality to
    soil quality to complexity of plant and animal life that occurs
    on these places, including downstream effects on communities as
    far away as coastal ocean environments, that are influenced by
    the nature of water quality and fish populations that are
    sustained by these headwater streams and forested landscapes.
        Senator Crapo. I noticed you said often that is the case.
    Other witnesses have said that there are occasions when active
    management should not be pursued, but that there are occasions
    when it is the most appropriate approach. Would you agree with
    that, that there are times when it should be done and times
    when it should not? Or are you saying that we should not engage
    in logging activities?
        Dr. Karr. I am saying that the language in the bill
    suggests to me that the framework and context and thinking
    about how this bill will be implemented pretends that the
    scientific information that includes these other dimensions of
    consequences have not been brought to bear on the crafting of
    the language in the bill.
        If that is the case, and I believe it is the case, then it
    is profoundly important that we incorporate the scientific
    results that tell us about things other than board-feet
    harvested as the only context of conservation, to use Mr. Rey's
    term from earlier in the morning.
        Senator Crapo. So if I--I want to be sure I understand you.
    Your perception of what the bill says is that the only standard
    to follow in developing the recovery plans is board-feet of
    timber recovered?
        Dr. Karr. No, my perception is that whenever there is an
    opportunity to have language crafted to suggest that we do not
    know anything or that we have limited knowledge, that
    diminishes, demeans, and in fact ignores or distorts the
    knowledge that we do have. It does not bring the existing
    knowledge to bear in an adequate way to protect the broader
    public interest in the context of our forested landscape.
        So let me give you a specific example. The hemlock woody
    adelgid in New England is an introduced pest that is causing
    problems. It was included in somebody's testimony today. There
    is a paper just published, written by a forest ecologist from
    Harvard University, that explores three alternatives as ways of
    treating lands that are associated with the hemlock woody
    adelgid.
        One alternative is to go in and preemptively harvest
    hemlocks to prevent the insect from contaminating the area.
    Another one is to go in after the hemlock--the bug has gotten
    in there and damaged the trees and removed them. Then the third
    alternative was to do nothing post-disturbance. It turned out
    that the worst thing that could happen in terms of water
    quality effects and nitrogen loss from that landscape was the
    preemptive. The second worst thing that could happen was the
    post-disturbance logging.
        The best thing to prevent degradation in water quality and
    biogeochemical cycle consequences was to not do anything post-
    disturbance. There are numerous examples of that kind of thing,
    and I do not see that kind of major advance in understanding in
    the last 20 years incorporated into the framework and language
    of this bill.
        Senator Crapo. In the letter that you submitted, which was
    signed by the other scientists, one of the phrases in there is
    it says that ``Neither ecological benefits nor economic
    efficiency result from recovery actions.'' If that is the case,
    then how do you explain all of the other examples we have had
    from many other witnesses today and that this committee often
    sees from witnesses of circumstances where the active
    management has resulted in a much more vibrant and thriving
    forest than the inactive management?
        Dr. Karr. As a scientist, I have spent the last 40 years
    trying to go beyond the simple view that my eyes give me by
    exploring the multiple dimensions of various things that humans
    do and the multiple dimensions of the way natural systems are
    organized. I have repeatedly seen circumstances where on the
    surface things look like they are improved by certain kinds of
    actions, but when you develop the kind of analytical framework
    and exploratory and monitoring contexts that I think are
    important in these issues you understand dimensions that are
    not obvious at that first level of sort of broad overview, as
    can be seen and illustrated from the examples of people's
    visions of things today.
        I would submit that that Harvard example of the hemlock
    woody adelgid is an excellent example of that. There are
    nutrient cycling, biogeochemical consequences, and water
    quality consequences that cannot be seen by the sort of
    standard snapshots, pictures of what is going on. We need to be
    more careful in understanding the multiple dimensions of these
    things.
        In my reading of the scientific literature in the last 30
    or 40 years and conversing with lots of people who have a great
    deal more expertise about many of the dimensions of this than I
    have, I see us ignoring lots of insights.
        Senator Crapo. So if I understand--again, I want to be sure
    I do--your major concern is that you do not think that the
    legislation contemplates the thorough review of the entire
    scientific data bank, if you will, in terms of the direction it
    authorizes for the development of recovery plans?
        Dr. Karr. Both what I see in the bill in terms of the
    language and framework of how it will be implemented does not
    give me confidence, and my experience in watching what happened
    on the Biscuit Fire in Oregon leads me to believe that the sort
    of standard operating procedures of the past will continue to
    be used, as opposed to exploring, understanding, and
    incorporating recent scientific advances in this discipline.
        Senator Crapo. All right.
        Mr. Krepps, what are the conditions today on the St. Louis
    County lands that were actively recovered?
        Mr. Krepps. Mr. Chairman, we have reforestation that has
    occurred. Now, you have to recognize much of our land, about
    half of the acres that were affected, were aspen stands. We
    rely upon natural regeneration, sprouting, to go and get that
    back. We have also reduced the fuel loads on those. So those
    are 5 years headed toward recovery. We operate on a 60-year
    rotation. That is what our planning horizon is and so we have
    got that forest started back, where had we not went in and
    reduced the fuel loading we most likely would have been subject
    to wildfire as well.
        The other half was pine, mixed conifers, and we went in and
    replanted all of those with seed stock that comes from the
    area. It is our seedling stock and it would be native seed or
    native seedlings that grow back. They are on their way to
    recovery.
        We are seeing a lot of benefit. I guess responding a little
    bit to the question to Dr. Karr if I could, a lot of it is
    going to come down to what the objectives of the land
    management agency is. Our objectives are to optimize return to
    the county and to maintain that product coming to industry, as
    well as maintaining a healthy forest for the future. That is
    our objective. Other agencies derive their objectives through
    their line management plans.
        Senator Crapo. Do you think, is it possible to manage
    toward a return, but also achieve the objective of a healthy
    forest?
        Mr. Krepps. Very definitely, very definitely. I think we
    are seeing it. We have had other catastrophic events--natural
    events, I will acknowledge that--that within a short period of
    time we have recovery. I have also seen other areas that no
    action was taken and you have brush fields and less than ideal
    growing conditions.
        So yes, recovery can occur. I have seen it many times in my
    career.
        Senator Crapo. All right, thank you.
        Ms. MacSwords, with the expedited procedures that are in
    this legislation, do you believe that the Federal agencies will
    still be able to protect the environment and recognize the
    science that we have talked about today and assure that we do
    not diminish the viability of our forests?
        Ms. MacSwords. Yes, I believe that they will. State
    agencies have been able to do restoration activities on State
    lands and working with private landowners and protect the
    environment. So I think with the expedited procedures that you
    are going to have in this legislation, Federal land managers
    should be able to follow suit.
        Senator Crapo. That raises me--I will just toss this
    question out to the entire panel. That raises to me a question,
    because we do have experience with management at the State and
    on private lands that has sought to achieve both objectives,
    both a return from the timber as well as environmental
    protection and assurance that we have healthy, strong, vibrant
    forests for ourselves and our posterity.
        I just pass this question out to the panel: Is that, is the
    experience that we have had with the State and private land
    management, evidence that those two objectives can be achieved?
        Ms. MacSwords. Yes, I think you can see that across the
    Nation. In our own case in Kentucky on the Tygarts State Forest
    that I mentioned earlier, what we dealt with was an area that
    we did the restoration harvesting. There was also an area that
    was around a cave area, where we elected not to do restoration
    harvesting. We were able to demonstrate that you would see
    natural regeneration in both areas. You can look now over the
    areas where we did our harvesting and the oaks are coming in.
        So that is an example in my State. But I am aware of other
    State foresters who have faced similar challenges and are
    showing improved environmental benefits on the lands they
    manage and with the private forest landowners that they must
    work with.
        I think one thing that I do not want to get lost in the
    discussion of this legislation is, we focus on what will happen
    on Federal lands, but this is important to private landowners
    and State and local governments as well. Almost 93 percent of
    the forest land in the State of Kentucky is owned by private
    forest landowners. Very little Federal land compared to the
    grand scheme of the amount of forests on the land.
        What happens on private forest lands has the ability to
    impact what happens on the national forest lands and vice
    versa. Insects, diseases, disasters do not stop at the boundary
    line. So it is important that we all be able to work together
    to look at this landscape style management following any kind
    of disaster, whether you call it a catastrophe or an ecological
    burp in the system. You have got to be able to address it on a
    wide-scale level and that is what is important about this piece
    of legislation.
        Senator Crapo. Anybody else want to jump in?
        Dr. Helms. Mr. Chairman, I would encourage the committee to
    take a look at the case examples that are available when you
    look at the way in which different ownerships handle responses
    to these kinds of major disturbances, because you can have
    very, very on the ground case examples of just what different
    approaches, how effective different approaches are.
        I would just add that, in addition to State and private, I
    suggest that the committee also look at tribal lands, because
    in the West the land management objectives of the tribal
    peoples include a high level of sensitivity to environmental
    issues, and it would also be instructive for the committee to
    see how they respond to these kinds of issues in which they
    take active approaches to return the forest back to pre-burn
    conditions in a very successful manner.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Anybody else want to?
        Dr. Karr. Yes, I would just comment. I do not have
    knowledge of many States, but I have watched the process in the
    State of Washington and I am a little dismayed by the extent to
    which forest harvests to funding for schools is over the long
    term compromising the long-term ecological and other benefits
    that can be derived from those State forest lands. We are in a
    situation where the schools are in some sense liquidating the
    natural capital in forest lands at a rate faster than it can be
    sustained over the long term. That will both over the long term
    damage the schools and damage the natural resources of the
    State.
        Senator Crapo. So are the State-owned forests in
    Washington, in the State of Washington--are you saying that
    they are degrading?
        Dr. Karr. I believe that that is a not unreasonable
    conclusion based on some of the land management decisions and
    so forth that are being made in the State of Washington, yes.
    If I could expand on the other point that was made, I strongly
    encourage looking at what counties, States, and various Federal
    agencies are doing in light of these kinds of issues, because
    it is something that has to be done across landscapes where
    there is an interdigitation of ownership and so forth.
        I think it is really very important to go beyond the sort
    of veneer of those things and ask questions in each of those
    cases, what are the goals and what are the consequences in the
    many dimensions that are important in Federal land management
    to protect the broad public interest. It is easy to find things
    being done. It is harder to understand what the consequences in
    their multiple dimensions of those decisions are.
        Senator Crapo. Thank you.
        Mr. Krepps, did you want to have the last word? I will let
    you have the last word if you want it.
        Mr. Krepps. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Many good points made
    across the table. I guess from my perspective looking at the
    objectives, looking at where we need to go, certainly I
    understand the need for additional research, but I will also
    say that the forestry profession, the natural resource
    profession as a whole, has been evolving based on science since
    the beginning of the century, of the last century. Certainly
    there are still unanswered questions. We are always going to be
    looking for that additional research.
        We also have to factor in the social and economic factors
    that we face on a daily basis within our communities and the
    need to utilize a product that is beneficial to society and to
    our economy in this country. As I said, we have a national
    treasure here. Our forest is a treasure that needs to be cared
    for and valued, and I believe we have diverted away from that
    over the last few years and we need to get back to it.
        Thank you.
        Senator Crapo. Dr. Helms, you want the last word?
        Dr. Helms. If I may. Mr. Chairman, I would like to comment
    on the example provided by the Yellowstone burn, if I may.
        Senator Crapo. Sure.
        Dr. Helms. I would like the committee to understand that
    there is considerable variability in the way in which different
    forest types behave to fire. In the case of Yellowstone, the
    predominant species is lodgepole pine and this species is a
    pioneer species which the reproduction is enhanced by fire. In
    fact, it requires fire for the cones to open. So it is no
    surprise to ecologists to see that there is extremely rapid,
    very dense regeneration following the burn from lodgepole pine.
        But I would hesitate to extrapolate that situation into
    other forest types.
        Senator Crapo. Well, thank you.
        There is never a lack of controversy in these kinds of
    issues and these kinds of--this type of legislation. I
    appreciate the time that not only this panel but all of our
    witnesses today have put into helping us as a committee to
    evaluate it. We all know that there are a lot of politics, but
    there is also a lot of science and technological issues that we
    need to address and understand as we move forward on major
    legislation like this.
        I assure you that this panel is going to very carefully
    evaluate the information that you have provided. It is
    possible--we will keep the record open for 5 days and it is
    possible that you will receive questions from other Senators
    who did not have an opportunity to make it to the hearing. We
    encourage you to respond to those promptly. Then we will
    carefully evaluate the information that you witnesses and
    others provide to this committee as we move forward.
        With that, this hearing is adjourned. Thank you very much.
        [Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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                                A P P E N D I X

                                 August 2, 2006

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