[Senate Hearing 117-128]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                      S. Hrg. 117-128

                   THE ROLE OF REFORESTATION, ACTIVE
                     FOREST MANAGEMENT, AND CARBON
                    STORAGE IN FOSTERING RESILIENCY

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                      ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                              MAY 20, 2021

                               __________


[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                       Printed for the use of the
               Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                              __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
44-734                      WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------     
  
              COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

                JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia, Chairman
RON WYDEN, Oregon                    JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington           JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont             MIKE LEE, Utah
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          STEVE DAINES, Montana
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine            JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada       JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
MARK KELLY, Arizona                  BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana
JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado       CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
                                     ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas

                      Renae Black, Staff Director
                      Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
             Bryan Petit, Senior Professional Staff Member
             Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
              Matthew H. Leggett, Republican Chief Counsel
                   James Willson, Republican Counsel
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Manchin III, Hon. Joe, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from West 
  Virginia.......................................................     1
Barrasso, Hon. John, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from 
  Wyoming........................................................     2

                               WITNESSES

Mitsos, Mary, President and CEO, National Forest Foundation......     4
Crowther, Dr. Thomas W., Scientific Advisor, United Nations 
  Trillion Trees Initiative......................................    13
Cover, Jennifer, President and CEO, Woodworks--Wood Products 
  Council........................................................    19
Wudtke, Ben, Executive Director, Intermountain Forest Association    26
Irving, Jim, Co-Chief Executive Officer, J.D. Irving, Limited....    52

          ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

Barrasso, Hon. John:
    Opening Statement............................................     2
Cover, Jennifer:
    Opening Statement............................................    19
    Written Testimony............................................    21
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................    92
Crowther, Dr. Thomas W.:
    Opening Statement............................................    13
    Written Testimony............................................    15
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................    90
Federal Forest Resource Coalition et al.:
    Letter to the Director of the USDA Office of Energy and 
      Policy, dated April 27, 2021...............................    35
Irving, Jim:
    Opening Statement............................................    52
    Written Testimony............................................    54
Kelly, Hon. Mark:
    Wildfire Hazard Potential Map................................    85
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
    Opening Statement............................................     1
Mitsos, Mary:
    Opening Statement............................................     4
    Written Testimony............................................     6
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................    89
Our Children's Trust:
    Materials for the Record.....................................    99
Sustainable Forestry Initiative:
    Statement for the Record.....................................   167
Wudtke, Ben:
    Opening Statement............................................    26
    Written Testimony............................................    28
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................    94

 
                   THE ROLE OF REFORESTATION, ACTIVE
                     FOREST MANAGEMENT, AND CARBON
                    STORAGE IN FOSTERING RESILIENCY

                              ----------                              


                         THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2021

                                       U.S. Senate,
                 Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m. in 
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joe Manchin 
III, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III, U.S. SENATOR FROM 
                         WEST VIRGINIA

    The Chairman. The meeting will come to order. I want to 
thank everyone for being here this morning for our first-ever 
hearing to examine how forest and wood products absorb and 
store carbon emissions and the role that forest management can 
play in addressing climate change. For years now, I have 
advocated for Congress to focus on climate solutions, 
particularly solutions that bring people together rather than 
drive us apart. We need solutions that both parties can rally 
behind, and I believe this morning's topic is unique because 
the solutions that we will be discussing not only enable all of 
us to do that, but they can also make a tremendous impact on 
our nation's carbon efforts. Today, I look forward to breaking 
through the rhetoric to hear what the science is telling us. 
For example, each of us saw the wildfires last year that burned 
over four million acres--four million acres--in California. 
That is a lot. Aside from the catastrophic loss of life and 
property, those fires alone generated 25 percent more carbon 
emissions than all of California's man-made carbon emissions 
combined.
    It is critical that we include forest and wildfires in our 
conversations about carbon emissions. Our Committee has talked 
at length about how many of our country's forests are unhealthy 
and in need of restoration. But when you look at the problem 
through a carbon lens, things really come into focus. For 
example, beginning just in the last couple of years, the 
forests of many western states now emit more carbon, because of 
insect outbreaks and wildfires, than they absorb. Let me say 
this another way--according to the latest Forest Service data, 
the forests of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and 
yes, our beloved Wyoming, used to be carbon sinks, but are now 
carbon sources. However, scientists are telling us that if we 
proactively manage our forests, we cannot only prevent 
emissions from wildfires, but we can also increase the amount 
of carbon we are sequestering and storing. Tree planting is a 
classic example of the type of activity that can result in more 
carbon being sequestered and stored than if land was simply 
left alone. In West Virginia, we do not do much tree planting 
because most forest managers are able to regenerate their 
forests naturally, but there are currently 81 million acres of 
productive forest land across the U.S. that lack adequate trees 
and are in need of reforestation.
    I also want to briefly touch on the new technologies that 
we now have at hand with regards to forest products. We are now 
able to use wood products in a manner today that is different 
than ever before, and with technologies like cross-laminated 
timber (CLT), we can now store orders-of-magnitude more carbon 
in the construction materials used to frame our buildings. 
Additionally, I am told that aside from storing more carbon, 
total global emissions could be cut by 15 to 20 percent if 
these technologies were used in construction. I am proud to say 
that my home State of West Virginia is a national leader in the 
use of cross-laminated timber. Franklin Elementary School in 
Pendleton County, West Virginia, was the first school in the 
country to be entirely built using cross-laminated timber. Town 
leaders set out to build a school that would last and be 
economical, and ended up building a state-of-the-art school 
with tremendous carbon benefits. While our witnesses will 
undoubtedly speak to the possibility of construction projects 
like this nationwide, I also want to stress the opportunities 
that this technology can bring to rural areas in the way of 
local manufacturing.
    This morning, we are looking to discuss common-sense 
solutions based on science that both sides of the aisle can get 
behind. We would like to establish a consensus of facts that we 
can use to guide our Committee's work this Congress as we 
review and take up bills related to forests and to climate 
change. We have a great panel assembled this morning. Each of 
these experts is known for being an innovative, solution-
oriented leader in their field.
    And with that, I will turn it over to my friend, Ranking 
Member John Barrasso, for his opening statement.

           OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM WYOMING

    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman, for 
your leadership on this and for holding today's very important 
hearing.
    Our forests do play, as you just said, a vital role on so 
many fronts. Healthy forests provide habitat for wildlife. They 
also improve soil and water quality, and of course, they yield 
timber that is fundamental to our economy and our way of life. 
Healthy forests also sequester significant amounts of carbon 
from the atmosphere. At the same time, our forests have become, 
as you said, a significant source of fuel for wildfires. The 
lack of active forest management has turned many of our 
nation's forests into tinderboxes. It has created a perfect 
storm for widespread, catastrophic wildfires. Last summer was a 
devastating wildfire season all across America. In Wyoming, we 
had one of the largest wildfires on record. The Mullen Fire 
wreaked havoc through Carbon and Albany Counties. It was 
estimated to span 25 miles north to south, 23 miles east to 
west, and burned over 175,000 acres, and forced numerous 
evacuations. It destroyed dozens of homes and buildings, and it 
left a price tag of almost $33 million.
    In addition to endangering lives, damaging property, and 
destroying habitat, the increased intensity and frequency of 
catastrophic megafires has disrupted many of the ecological 
benefits we gain from our forests. These megafires have 
resulted in increased carbon emissions and reduced air quality. 
A Bloomberg story published in January reported that 
California's 2020 wildfire emissions were equal to the 
greenhouse emissions of over 24 million passenger cars. So if 
people are concerned, rightly so, about climate change, carbon 
emissions, and clean air, they should be very concerned about 
our burning forests.
    Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen recently testified 
that her agency must accelerate its active forest management 
efforts and that a paradigm shift is needed now. I agree 
completely. According to the Forest Service, 63 million acres 
of our national forests are at high or very high risk of being 
consumed in a catastrophic fire. In addition, sawmills, which 
carry out hazardous fuels reduction projects, are struggling. 
The Forest Service sells well below the allowable sale quantity 
of timber called for in its forest plans. Continuing this 
practice is going to lead to more timber mills closing down, 
and this is going to hurt local economies, as well as leave our 
forests vulnerable to ongoing problems with fire and with 
disease. In recent years, the Black Hills National Forest, 
which spans Wyoming and South Dakota, has failed to meet its 
timber targets, and since our local sawmills rely on the 
national forest for most of their timber supplies, this failure 
has led directly to the closure of a sawmill in South Dakota. 
Worse, some within the Forest Service are recommending further 
and permanent reductions in harvest levels on the Black Hills. 
This would devastate our local mills and make it very difficult 
to manage timber in and around the forest going forward. That 
is why in March, I, along with members of the Wyoming and South 
Dakota Congressional Delegations, sent a letter to the Forest 
Service. The letter outlines our concerns with the recommended 
timber for harvest reduction and it encourages better 
cooperation between the Forest Service and the local officials 
and stakeholders.
    In addition to reducing emissions through active forest 
management, we should also be mindful of ways we can sequester 
carbon by planting more trees and vegetation. We should also 
look for more ways to permanently store carbon in harvested 
wood products. While I was Chairman of the Environment and 
Public Works Committee, my bill, the USE IT Act, was signed 
into law by President Trump. This law supports groundbreaking 
innovation to address climate change through carbon capture and 
utilization technologies. I believe there is ample room for 
increased carbon sequestration efforts in the forestry space as 
well.
    So I look forward to exploring that topic here at the 
Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Thanks again, Mr. 
Chairman. I look forward to today's hearing and testimony.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Barrasso.
    And let me now welcome our panel of witnesses, and we are 
very pleased to have such an expert panel.
    Ms. Mary Mitsos, of the National Forest Foundation, who is 
with us in person.
    Dr. Tom Crowther, who I understand is the chief architect 
behind the United Nations Trillion Trees Campaign.
    Ms. Jennifer Cover, President and CEO of WoodWorks.
    Mr. Ben Wudtke, Executive Director of the Intermountain 
Forest Association.
    And finally, Mr. Jim Irving, CEO of J.D. Irving, Limited.
    So Ms. Mitsos, we will begin with your opening remarks.

              STATEMENT OF MARY MITSOS, PRESIDENT 
              AND CEO, NATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION

    Ms. Mitsos. Thank you, Chairman Manchin and Ranking Member 
Barrasso, for this opportunity.
    The National Forest Foundation (NFF) is a Congressionally 
chartered, non-advocacy nonprofit that works on behalf of the 
American public to ensure the health and resilience of our 
national forests and to inspire personal and meaningful 
connections to them. Working closely with the Forest Service, 
we create public-private partnerships to lead forest 
conservation efforts and promote responsible recreation. Each 
year, the NFF facilitates common ground, restores fish and 
wildlife habitat, reduces wildfire risk, plants trees, and 
improves recreational opportunities. Our nation's forests are 
an incredible resource. They provide jobs, fiber, clean air and 
water, hunting, fishing, and more. They also sequester hundreds 
of millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year, up to 15 
percent of this country's annual emissions.
    National forests can and should be part of the solution to 
mitigating and adapting to climate change. However, as 
mentioned earlier, increasing wildfire threatens to shift 
millions of acres from a carbon sink into a carbon source. 
Forest restoration can reverse this trend. Healthy, fire-
resistent forests help maintain and increase long-term carbon 
storage capacity. While every forest requires tailored 
treatments, tools like forest thinning and prescribed fire can 
reduce fire risk and help retain forest cover. In places 
already affected by fire, tree planting helps ensure forests 
persist. The science of forest restoration is well-established 
and widely practiced. What impedes this work is the cost at the 
scale needed. The Forest Service estimates around 80 million 
acres in the system require restoration. At an average cost of 
about $1,000 per acre, that cost exceeds $80 billion today.
    Addressing this will require every tool available, 
including greater utilization of low-value wood products from 
restoration treatments, funding, and policies that unlock 
private investment for carbon offsets generated on National 
Forest System (NFS) lands. The NFF works daily with the private 
sector on investments in our public lands. The interest is huge 
and growing. We create innovative solutions to match private 
funding with forest needs. For example, we are combining a 
multitude of partners, local governments, utilities, major 
corporations, philanthropy, and more to support forest 
restoration in places like Arizona, California, and Colorado. 
One of the most common questions we get from our corporate 
partners is, ``can we get carbon offsets for this project?'' 
While we have the ability to track and calculate the carbon 
benefits, we do not currently have the authority to issue 
carbon offsets from projects on NFS lands. Voluntary carbon 
offsets from projects are a common part of corporate goals to 
address their ESG. We currently lack the means to turn private-
sector interest in carbon offsets into significant investments 
to improve our public forests. If we could offer those offsets, 
it would be a game-changer for restoring our forests. The NFF 
has piloted similar work in the past, and we have experience 
and relationships to work closely with the Forest Service. We 
are currently developing a first-of-its-kind methodology for 
generating offsets from restoration projects in higher-fire-
frequency forests.
    National Forest System lands offer an unparalleled 
opportunity for natural climate solutions, healthier 
communities, and resilient forests. This work creates common 
ground with shared benefits for local contractors, rural and 
regional economies, corporate partners pursuing climate goals, 
and the long-term health of our nation's forests. Thank you for 
this opportunity to share the National Forest Foundation's 
mission and our work. In closing, forest restoration, tree 
planting, and wood products are three great ways to store 
carbon.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Mitsos follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Mitsos.
    Next, we are going to go to Dr. Crowther for his opening 
remarks.
    Dr. Crowther.

STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS W. CROWTHER, SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR, UNITED 
               NATIONS TRILLION TREES INITIATIVE

    Dr. Crowther. Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, 
thank you for the opportunity.
    I am an ecologist living in Zurich, in Switzerland, where 
there is an online coffee shop that I use, that I really like. 
They, like many shops, get their beans from Ethiopia, but the 
shop is a bit different because they get their beans from trees 
that are planted in an agroforestry plantation. These trees are 
planted in sunny patches within a beautiful tropical forest. If 
you flew over the area with a plane, you wouldn't see a 
plantation, you would see a flourishing forest. And because the 
surrounding ecosystems trap water and nutrients, the coffee 
grows really well without irrigation or fertilizers. So 
business is booming and that obviously benefits the local 
community. Even schools in the area are now starting to protect 
patches of nearby forest, setting up their own agroforestry 
plantations within.
    We have obviously all got stories about the value of nature 
and how integral it is to human well-being and happiness and 
the quality of life, and there is an ever-growing scientific 
body of literature showing this strong correlation between 
ecosystem health and the stability of local economies and human 
well-being. But the value of nature is obviously important 
globally as well because they store huge amounts of carbon. We 
are obviously beginning to learn the full extent of this 
potential. By building a new generation of models, we have been 
able to see that the Earth is home to about three trillion 
trees, which is about half of what originally was here; and we 
lose about 10 billion trees each year, which is contributing to 
our annual emissions. However, our maps also reveal that 
outside of the urban and agricultural land, there's about 2.2 
billion acres of degraded lands where forests could naturally 
regrow. If we could protect and revitalize such areas around 
the world, we realize there's room for just over a trillion new 
trees. And if those trees can be supported in the long term and 
grow to maturity, those ecosystems could capture up to 30 
percent of the excess carbon that's in the atmosphere right now 
as a result of human activity.
    This revealed a massive potential, but honestly, it's not a 
new idea. Scientists have known that forests have this huge 
potential for a long time. So, why have we failed to act until 
now? Well, first, the maps are useful for guiding 
decisionmaking, but much more importantly, it's because there 
are huge risks that come with the process, and many scientists 
still have massive concerns about the potential for large-scale 
restoration because these concerns come from the idea that tree 
planting is an easy way out, and nothing could be further from 
the truth. First, it's clear that this is not a silver bullet. 
We can't just plant a few trees and ignore emissions cuts, 
which are so vital. But second, restoration is far from easy, 
and it is not just about planting trees. This idea is so 
tempting, but it encourages people to invest in mass 
plantations of fast-growing trees that are maybe good for rapid 
carbon offsets, but those plantations are often comprised of a 
single species that lacks the thousands of interacting species 
of plants, animals, and microorganisms that are necessary to 
maintain clean air, clean water, and soil fertility for local 
people.
    It is estimated that almost half of restored projects 
around the world are massive monocultures like this. Now, many 
can be important for sustainable timber production, and when 
managed well, they can contribute to economic sustainability. 
But when planted just for carbon offsetting, they can often 
lead to the degradation of forests, grasslands, and other 
wetlands that are equally important for life on Earth. 
Restoration is not just about trapping carbon. Even if climate 
change stopped right now, the protection and revitalization of 
Earth's nature would be a top priority because it underpins all 
life on Earth and protects us against all other global threats. 
That is why a recent Pew poll suggested that nine out of ten 
Americans do support the idea of a ``trillion tree'' movement, 
but this idea is not just about planting one trillion trees. 
The trillion tree idea is about creating the conditions--the 
economic and the ecological conditions--where ecosystems can be 
protected and a trillion trees can regrow, either naturally or 
with human assistance, for the benefit of local communities 
everywhere. And that is the single most important key to 
successful restoration.
    Restoration cannot come at the expense of local people's 
land use. In fact, it works only when we find the innovations 
that make biodiversity an economically viable option for local 
people. That is what the coffee farm in Ethiopia had figured 
out, and there are examples like this in every region across 
the world, ranging from sustainable harvesting of timber, to 
the protection of forests to improve soil fertility, to the 
sale of carbon credits from naturally regenerating forests. The 
restoration of nature is not inherently a global challenge, it 
is a local one for the local biodiversity and the people that 
depend on it, and as the network of collective action grows, it 
benefits all of us.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Crowther follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Crowther.
    Now we have Ms. Cover.

STATEMENT OF MS. JENNIFER COVER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, WOODWORKS--
                     WOOD PRODUCTS COUNCIL

    Ms. Cover. Good morning Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member 
Barrasso, and members of the Committee. Thank you for the 
opportunity to support and submit testimony to you today about 
the role of innovative wood products and carbon storage. My 
name is Jennifer Cover and I serve as the President and CEO of 
WoodWorks. WoodWorks is a nonprofit program staffed with 
engineers and architects committed to a more sustainable built 
environment. We help our peers gain the technical design skills 
needed to successfully build wood structures that are up to 18 
stories. Last year alone, we directly supported 400 building 
projects that resulted in an impact of over one billion board 
feet of incremental wood product demand.
    The use of wood products from sustainably managed forests, 
particularly mass timber products like cross-laminated timber, 
or CLT, is an incredible proactive climate mitigation tool. As 
a tree grows, it absorbs carbon dioxide from the air like a 
huge sponge and locks it away in its cellular structure. When 
that tree is harvested and converted into a wood building 
product, that carbon remains stored in the wood fiber. Wood is 
about 50 percent carbon by dry weight. I'm sure everyone here 
has picked up a two-by-four for a home project. Think about 
that weight. Almost half is carbon that was pulled from our 
atmosphere and physically stored in the wood. When wood is used 
to construct buildings, those buildings become giant carbon 
sinks, while a new tree is replanted beginning the cycle of 
carbon sequestration again.
    The building industry is responsible for 40 percent of 
global carbon dioxide emissions, with 11 percent of that coming 
from embodied carbon of the building materials. With mass 
timber, wood solutions can now play a sizable role in 
alleviating U.S. carbon emissions. Not only does wood sequester 
its stored carbon, but the manufacturing process to produce 
wood products uses far less 
fossil-fuel-based energy than other building material, and is 
100 percent renewable. Mass timber, such as CLT, are large, 
structural panel products. A typical panel might be 30 feet 
long, constructed from built-up pieces of smaller lumber or 
veneers. They're revolutionary because their strength allows 
them to be used as the main structural material in high-rise 
apartments, offices, schools, and warehouses. Building codes 
have evolved to recognize these capabilities. The most current 
code provides guidance on how to safely build mass timber 
buildings up to 18 stories. These tall wood code provisions 
have already been adopted by several jurisdictions, including 
Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, California, and Denver, 
Colorado, and many others are in the process of adoption.
    Builders are choosing mass timber to improve the carbon 
footprint of their projects. One example is a five-story office 
building in Denver. The engineer wanted to understand the 
impact of using mass timber, so they undertook a comparative 
life-cycle assessment of the same building designed in wood as 
well as more traditional materials. All three of the designs 
had a very similar cost impact, but the carbon footprint of the 
wood building was less than one-third of the other two. The 
overall potential carbon impact of having chosen to go with CLT 
was equivalent to taking 630 cars off the road for an entire 
year, and that is just one building. There are 17,000 buildings 
built in this country every year that could, under the building 
code, be built with wood solutions, but they currently are not. 
Mass timber is good for the environment and good for rural 
communities. Increased demand for these products will create 
high-quality jobs in these communities. There are six mass 
timber plants producing building-grade material operating in 
the U.S. so far, with three more about to start up. There are 
about 1,000 mass timber projects in the U.S. that are either 
built or are in design. The momentum is clearly there, but 
we're still at the beginning of this building revolution and 
support is needed from government leadership.
    Here in the U.S., we have been playing catch-up with the 
rest of the world on the concept of embodied carbon. Europe and 
the United Kingdom have a number of policies focused on 
reducing embodied carbon in buildings. That is why it is really 
exciting to see the interest on this topic from leaders like 
yourselves. WoodWorks is a small program, and having the 
support of the Softwood Lumber Board, an agricultural check-off 
program, and the U.S. Forest Service is critical to our 
success. Under Chief Christiansen's leadership, the Forest 
Service has been a strong supporter of the WoodWorks program. 
Supporting mass timber means supporting an innovative building 
solution that turns our cities into carbon sinks and brings 
increased jobs to rural communities.
    Thank you again for supporting innovation and job creation 
in the forest and construction sectors. I hope you will 
consider encouraging government entities in your states to 
utilize mass timber for their buildings, and if they need help, 
WoodWorks is available to provide that support. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Cover follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Cover.
    Now we have Mr. Wudtke.

  STATEMENT OF BEN WUDTKE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERMOUNTAIN 
                       FOREST ASSOCIATION

    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 
Barrasso. My name is Ben Wudtke, and I am the Executive 
Director of the Intermountain Forest Association. Our members 
are 
primarily forest product companies, many of which are 
multigenerational family businesses, who rely heavily on 
national forest lands in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, and 
Nebraska to meet their timber needs. I appreciate the 
opportunity to provide testimony on this important topic today.
    Our national forests are not currently meeting their full 
potential to sequester and store carbon. Large-scale mortality 
caused by insect epidemics and catastrophic wildfires is 
producing carbon emissions while limiting further carbon 
sequestration. Forest management is necessary on our national 
forests and must be both proactive and reactive--implementing 
forest management actions to reduce wildfire hazards and risk 
of insect epidemics before they occur and also aiding recovery 
from similar disturbances. Proactive management on national 
forest lands that are not otherwise withdrawn from timber 
harvest is vital to the health of our forested watersheds, to 
the protection of communities and meeting societal needs for 
forest products, and reducing the likelihood of future carbon 
emissions.
    The need for active management on the millions of acres of 
national forests at risk of wildfire and disease has been 
acknowledged by successive Forest Service Chiefs, Committee 
Chairs, Secretaries of Agriculture, and Presidents for over 20 
years. Although the Hazardous Fuels Reduction account at the 
Forest Service has been steadily increasing, and there is some 
good work being accomplished through those funds, the Forest 
Service is only able to treat a fraction of the acres needed to 
effectively reduce fire danger and assure long-term forest 
health. Reforestation on our national forests is essential to 
their long-term sustainability. It is critically important for 
the Committee to understand that deforestation by wildfire is 
the leading cause of the growing reforestation backlog in the 
national forests. The unprecedented 2020 fire season 
exacerbated the reforestation needs on our national forests. 
Conservation groups such as American Forests and the Nature 
Conservancy estimate that national forests have over seven 
million acres requiring reforestation. Successfully reforesting 
these acres could sequester an additional nine million tons of 
carbon from the atmosphere each year.
    But time is of the essence for reforestation efforts. 
Research is increasingly finding that burned forests are 
regenerating to non-forest ecotypes. If forested lands are 
type-converted, reestablishing green and growing forests 
becomes exponentially more difficult to accomplish due to 
competition among seedlings and other vegetation, and a poses 
significant hazard for reburns. Prompt timber salvage can 
improve reforestation success and should be part of an overall 
reforestation and restoration strategy whenever possible. 
Increasing the use of salvage as a tool can also help generate 
revenues for reforestation efforts.
    As the Committee knows, trees are natural carbon sinks. 
They remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in 
wood fiber and roots. Young trees remove carbon quickly, and 
large trees can store considerable amounts of carbon. 
Unfortunately, as each fire season illustrates, forests do not 
store carbon indefinitely. Looking only at California, the 
wildfires in 2020 released an estimated 110 million metric tons 
of carbon into the atmosphere, the carbon equivalent of more 
than 24 million cars.
    Wood products also store carbon, and they can do so for 
long periods of time. By putting wood products into service, 
the carbon is effectively locked up for the duration that 
product is in use. Advanced wood products such as CLT and 
glulam can also have a solid carbon return on investment 
because they can substitute for high-carbon-intensity materials 
such as concrete and steel, and should complement traditional 
forest products that are already successful in sequestering 
carbon. Much of the work that I am discussing and that others 
are discussing today isn't possible without forest product 
companies. In parts of the U.S., the Forest Service is using 
longer-term contracts and other mechanisms to entice new 
companies to areas where previous forest companies have been 
forced to close. Throughout Region 2 and other regions of the 
Forest Service, forest product companies depend on the Forest 
Service to sell timber, just as the Forest Service depends on 
those companies to perform the prescribed work. In the Black 
Hills, the forest industry has been operating sawmills for over 
a century, historically at much higher volumes of timber sold, 
and has been a critical part of the care and management of the 
national forests. Forest product companies in the Black Hills 
rely on the Forest Service for approximately 80 percent of 
their timber, and although we are fortunate to still have some 
of those companies remaining, their future is at risk.
    Currently, there is a tremendous demand for forest 
products, and the markets are reflecting that. Companies that 
operate on national forest lands can help the Forest Service 
treat more acres and also bring needed lumber to consumers. I 
thank you for the opportunity to speak today regarding the 
health and resilience of our national forests and the role they 
should play in sequestering carbon. Our national forests 
deliver numerous goods and services, and efforts to improve 
carbon sequestration and storage on national forests should 
focus on sequestering more carbon through active management and 
storing carbon in wood products. As the nation confronts the 
need to sequester more carbon while producing needed lumber to 
meet our needs, the national forests can continue to meet these 
diverse requirements if we craft policies carefully and 
realistically.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Wudtke follows:]
   [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    And now we have Mr. Irving.

               STATEMENT OF JIM IRVING, CO-CHIEF 
            EXECUTIVE OFFICER, J.D. IRVING, LIMITED

    Mr. Irving. Thank you, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member 
Barrasso, and other Committee members for the opportunity to 
testify on the role of forests in the fight against climate 
change here today.
    Myself, along with my brother Robert--we're co-CEOs of J.D. 
Irving, Limited. We are stationed in New Brunswick, Canada, and 
we are a diverse, family-owned business, and one of our key 
parts of our business is the forest products business. The 
value chain we have today goes from pre-seed to the consumer 
shelf. In our forest products business we have a seed orchard, 
a genetic lab, two nurseries, ten sawmills, a pulp mill, two 
paper mills, and four tissue mills, plus 5.9 million acres of 
timberland under management. We own in Canada fee land that is 
roughly 1.9 million acres; we own in Maine roughly 1.3 million 
acres; and we manage for the Province of New Brunswick 
approximately 2.6 million acres. We're the second largest 
private landowner in North America and the largest private 
landowner in the State of Maine.
    The forests are the foundation of our value chain for our 
forest products business. We have a healthy, vigorous forest as 
a result of a growing wood supply. Since 1957, we've planted 
over one billion trees, and that's a record for a private 
Canadian company. Our forest products business is based on the 
following philosophy, ``Do what's right in the forest to ensure 
it remains healthy, vigorous, and growing. Look after our 
people and our communities. Look after the environment and 
ecosystems, run efficient operations, and treat the resource 
with respect.'' Our philosophy is to continuously add value to 
all of our products that our forest provides. As a result of 
our long-term commitment to forest management, our current 
planted stands will grow four times the volume and sequester 
four times more carbon than a forest regenerates naturally over 
the life of approximately 50 years, which is the typical 
rotation cycle here in the Northeast. Because we maintain a 
healthy, vigorous forest--through stand tending, and with 
treatments like thinning, we have lower occurrences of fire and 
pest outbreaks than the national averages in Canada and the 
U.S. Loss to pests, for example, is 0.001 percent and loss to 
fire is 0.004 percent. Our forest and forest products operate 
at a net carbon sink, absorbing the equivalent of approximately 
350,000 cars per year.
    Trees provide different products, and some of those are of 
higher value, and some are lower value. And forest products 
differ in different mixes of products depending on their age 
and treatment, but to us, a healthy forest is a working forest. 
Removal of mortality and fuels, less risk of fires and pests, 
and higher carbon sequestration rates and lower carbon 
emissions are the result. In addition, to make sure that 
happens, we invest in forest protection against fires and 
pests. We own four fixed-wing aircraft, two helicopters, 37 
fire trucks, and seven privately owned and outfitted air strips 
to make sure we can combat the problem of fire and pests. That 
type of forest management requires markets, sometimes for 
lower-grade products like pulp wood and biomass that are 
generated from pre-commercial operations, and we have to put 
the capital in to make sure that happens.
    However, the forest products industry in North America has 
been, in some segments, declining for a number of years, 
especially for some of those products that use low grade value 
wood. And landowners, to make these kinds of investments, 
require stability of markets and policy to make sure that long-
term investments in silviculture like tree planting and 
thinning are able to be carried out. Forest management--good 
forest management--is dependent on a healthy industry and vice 
versa. It's a virtuous cycle, good for jobs and economy, the 
people in the communities, carbon sequestration, and 
conservation, and we need policymakers to ensure that 
landowners are incentivized to make long-term investments like 
tree planting and thinning. Policymakers should ensure that the 
industry is balanced--with the forest being healthy--and is 
investing in production capacity as well as research on new 
products like cross-laminated timber. It is difficult today to 
make sure we have the right amount of research, and this is 
quite important that it's properly funded both at the 
universities and by industry.
    Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you 
today.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Irving follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Irving.
    And now we will start with our questions.
    Mr. Wudtke, I would like to ask you about salvage logging, 
where land managers try to recover the economic value of dead 
trees that have been killed through fires and other types of 
things before they rot to a point where they lose their 
economic value. Different groups clearly have different views 
on this practice, as people debate where this might be 
appropriate and where it is not appropriate. Lawsuits are often 
filed and as decisions are being sorted out, the trees rot to a 
point where they have no value whatsoever.
    So I believe everyone should be entitled to voicing their 
opinion, but I cannot help but wonder if these discussions 
would be more productive if they took place in advance of the 
trees dying. So my question would be, do you believe that it 
would be possible for land management agencies, like the BLM 
and the Forest Service, to solicit public input to make the 
necessary decisions ahead of a devastating wildfire or an 
insect outbreak so they could not have the time constraints 
they face now and lose that value of the product?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Yes, as you said, there are different viewpoints and, of 
course, salvage logging should be undertaken on a case-by-case 
basis. It makes sense in many areas, certainly makes sense 
following a lot of disturbances. It's not a one-size-fits-all 
tool. But you hit on a key point there, and that's that salvage 
logging, when you're salvaging trees that are already dead, 
your time is limited. And oftentimes we see where agencies get 
hamstrung by a lengthy environmental analysis process, and 
they're not able to actually salvage that material in time. And 
there's----
    The Chairman. Do you know if there is any practice 
whatsoever evaluating beforehand, knowing we are going to have 
fires, we are going to have insect outbreaks--we are going to 
have all this. Is anybody doing this in advance, or do they 
wait until after it happens and then try to catch up, and by 
then it is too late?
    Mr. Wudtke. There are a few examples where they are trying 
to do it in advance, but by and large, it is reactive. Folks 
are doing the analysis, agencies are doing the analysis after a 
disturbance, after a wildfire, after mountain pine beetle 
mortality, after a hurricane.
    The Chairman. Yes.
    Mr. Wudtke. And I do believe that there are opportunities 
to do that in advance, either through forest plan amendments, 
or having large landscape-scale projects already NEPA-cleared 
and when they know what they need to do, following a 
disturbance that they've seen before.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Wudtke.
    Mr. Irving, in your testimony you talked about how J.D. 
Irving thins approximately 10,600 acres annually of its 3.3 
million acres of private timberland. When I compare that to the 
information that Mr. Wudtke provided, it appears that the 
percentage of your land that you thin every year is five times 
more than the percentage that the U.S. Forest Service thins 
annually. We also heard from Ms. Mitsos that the U.S. Forest 
Service spends around $1,000 per acre on its thinning projects. 
So is the primary reason that you have such low mortality rates 
from insects and wildfires due to the amount of thinning that 
your company does each year, and how does the cost compare to 
the Forest Service?
    Mr. Irving. Well sir, I can't compare, I don't have the 
right evidence to compare against the Forest Service. I'm not 
familiar with those operations. All I can tell you about is our 
operations. I would say there's no question about it though, 
thinning is paramount, for a couple of things. One is you have 
to get rid of the low-value 
trees if you're going to let the higher-value trees grow. 
That's fundamental. We have two types of thinning--what we call 
precommercial thinning, where we have approximately 10,000 
stems per acre in a natural forest, and we'll thin that back 
down to about 700 trees per acre. And that will cost us 
anywhere between $250 and $400 an acre at the average age of 15 
years of age and the wages per man is about $20 an hour.
    The Chairman. Then why is it so much----
    Mr. Irving. Then we have commercial thinning.
    The Chairman. Why is that so much more cost----
    Mr. Irving. Excuse me, sir.
    The Chairman. I'm sorry, sir. It is so much more cost-
effective. It is costing the U.S. Forest Service $1,000 per 
acre, and I do not think they are doing what you are doing. Is 
it just government?
    Mr. Irving. Sir, well, I'm not going to criticize the 
government there, Senator Manchin, but I don't know the local 
conditions. But I can tell you our conditions and you know, 
it's the Northeast, it's Maine, particularly if you want to 
take Maine as an example. Those are the facts that we have, and 
I'm not sure the reason why the Forest Service treatments cost 
what they do, but I can tell you, it's like any other business, 
you have to pay careful attention to your costs and work very 
hard at it to make sure you're automated and very efficient.
    In our commercial thinning, which is where we try and take 
the very small commercial trees out of the forest, we'll go 
from about 900 trees per acre to 350 trees per acre--which is 
the second step after we've done the pre-commercial thinning. 
Those are approximate numbers at an age of 20 to 25, and that 
cost is a premium over our normal logging cost of about $150 
per acre, and the operator doing that work would be paid $20 to 
$25 to $30 an hour. That's automated, Scandinavian type of 
machinery, logging equipment, highly productive. We work day 
and night, all the technology with computers and the machines 
to make sure nobody gets hurt or does anything environmentally 
incorrect. And then we retooled our mills to make sure that we 
can handle all this small wood because, as you know, very small 
pieces have to be processed very, very quickly and efficiently.
    So there's a range of things that happen, but there's no 
question--technology and an attitude that you have to treat the 
forest when it's time to treat it. There's no point in thinning 
a forest when it's too old because you waste your money. It's 
inefficient. Thin it at the right time, and you can do it 
efficiently, and you can do the best thing environmentally for 
the forest and for the commercial side of this as well.
    The Chairman. Thank you, sir, very much.
    Senator Barrasso.
    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman, and I 
appreciate the testimony from all of you.
    Mr. Wudtke and also Ms. Mitsos, a question for both of you. 
Let me first ask Mr. Wudtke. I'd like to hear more about some 
of the benefits of mechanical tree thinning, timber harvesting, 
and other hazardous fuel reduction treatments. In your view, is 
the U.S. Forest Service carrying out enough of these projects 
in order to reduce wildfire risk and increase the health of our 
forests?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
    Where the forest service is carrying out treatments, they 
are being proven to be highly effective. As a federal agency, 
they are bottlenecked by certain issues. One is certainly 
staffing and funding. Others are finding efficiencies to help 
them accomplish more with what they have. And I think there are 
some options--they've recently gone through rulemaking 
processes. We've seen a lot of legislation being introduced in 
the last few years that I think would help the agency out. But 
really, when you perform these fuel-reduction activities, you 
are taking carbon off the landscape, you are locking that into 
forest products most often, and you are preventing high-
severity fires that would come through and kill those trees and 
release that carbon on the landscape in the future. Those 
efforts are resoundingly effective. And in places where there 
isn't enough happening, we're seeing the evidence.
    As was mentioned earlier, numerous western states are now 
carbon sources. Their forests are carbon sources and not carbon 
sinks anymore. And when you think about the scale, the scope 
that that must be occurring on the landscape tells you a lot 
about the health of our forests and the need that we must be 
doing more on the landscape.
    Senator Barrasso. So for you and then for Ms. Mitsos. Does 
it make sense to target or incentivize mechanical tree 
thinning, timber harvesting, and other hazardous fuel reduction 
treatments in areas that we really know are high-risk for 
catastrophic wildfires?
    Mr. Wudtke. Absolutely, whether it is incentivizing or 
prioritizing, I think there are a lot of different ways. And 
again, it would vary by where you're talking about doing those 
treatments, but we have to be doing something different than 
we've been doing the last 20 years. We have to be looking at 
landscape scale treatments. We have to be thinking about the 
forest as a whole and not just isolated slices around 
communities because while that may do a lot to protect homes, 
it doesn't do a lot to protect atmospheric carbon sources or 
wildlife or water resources or the forest itself.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
    Ms. Mitsos.
    Ms. Mitsos. Yes, it does make sense to target those 
treatments in high-priority areas. And the Forest Service is 
now on a path to do a national map for those priority areas.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
    Now, Mr. Wudtke, again, as well as Mr. Irving. For both of 
you, from a carbon storage perspective, does it make sense to 
focus active management activities in older tree stands that 
already have diminished or no ability to sequester additional 
carbon and in areas with hazardous levels of fuel?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator. I can start with that. And 
you know, really, it makes sense to target and prioritize our 
efforts where they're going to have the most impact, whether 
that's old stands or modern-age stands, that certainly has to 
be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. But again, it's where you 
have the most impact to prevent future carbon emissions. But I 
will say that there's kind of a belief out there that when you 
cut into a tree it somehow deflates like a balloon, and the 
carbon is released. And that there's a lot of pushback on 
harvesting older trees because they store a lot of carbon, but 
they continue to store that carbon when you put it in forest 
products as well. And that's something that has to really be 
recognized is that if you cut a larger tree or older tree, 
you're not emitting that carbon into the atmosphere in the same 
way that you would when it dies naturally or from insects or 
disease or from wildfire--you're effectively locking that 
carbon up into products.
    Senator Barrasso. Mr. Irving.
    Mr. Irving. Thank you, Senator. I think there's a couple 
things. One is, trees are like people. They get to a certain 
age and they die, eventually. So, you know, depending on the 
species, and where they're located, you want to harvest the 
tree at the right age. Notwithstanding, I know in the Northwest 
there are very grand stands of trees, very old trees, and in my 
world that's a different species, you know, something to be 
greatly respected. But in our part of the world, we know the 
rotation time. Some are around 50 years or so, and then we'll 
have a transition to a new generation of trees.
    So the job is cut those trees--harvest those trees at the 
right time, then replant them right away with the same 
genetics, same species of tree, but an improved tree. So, we'll 
improve the carbon absorption. We can do both. We can get the 
tree, take the tree at the right time at the most economical 
age and replant it so we have no disruption, and we don't let 
any wood die or rot to create fuel that will emit carbon or 
fires. It's like anything else, but you know, you're raising a 
subject about how do we keep management--you know, forestry is 
a long-term business, very long term. The rotation time in 
Brazil is six years. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, maybe 
it's 80 years. In the southeastern United States, maybe 25 
years. In the Northeast, it's about 40 to 50 years.
    So somebody has to be able to say to the Forest Service, I 
would say, and I don't know all the details of the Forest 
Service. But if they're going to encourage the operators to 
make the investment in equipment, in management, in technology, 
they have to know that I have 10 years, and I can go out, and I 
can do a good job, and I can amortize my cost over a certain 
period of time and hold me accountable. We call it outcome-
based forestry in the Northeast, where you work with the 
government and the State of Maine, what are the objectives, 
what are we trying to do, what would they like to accomplish? 
And then let us go do it. Come and audit us, manage us, check 
on us, and we have to be held to account for performance. But 
we have flexibility, which is very important in terms of 
keeping the cost and being competitive and getting the outcomes 
everybody wants.
    Thank you.
    Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    And I think it would have helped to actually have a Forest 
Service witness here because that seems to be a perspective 
that we are missing that might have some of the answers to some 
of these issues. And in particular, you know, one of the things 
that has occurred to me is that there is a big difference in 
cost. We see a wide range of treatments between the sort of 
private land treatments and federal forests.
    The Chairman. We reached out to them, Senator Heinrich, and 
they said it would take weeks in advance for them to be 
prepared.
    Senator Heinrich. That's absurd.
    Because there is a big difference in treating an acre of 
relatively flat deciduous forest in a place like Maine or 
eastern Canada versus the cost of treating a steep, mixed 
conifer forest on a 40 percent grade.
    Senator King. Did you say flat in Maine?
    Senator Heinrich. Yes. No, I mean it's all relative, Angus.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Heinrich. Forty percent grade on the side of the 
Rocky Mountains in a very remote area. And so that is part of 
the reason why we see these giant differences in the cost to 
treat an acre. And I guess the lesson there is just like--a 
forest isn't a forest. The local conditions really drive many 
of these differences. And I think we need to get to that.
    One of the challenges I have in New Mexico, and this 
question is really for any of our witnesses who want to chime 
in, is that most of the trees that we need to remove in 
treatments from our forests are not trees that are easily sent 
to market. They are small-diameter, ladder fuels that currently 
do not lend themselves to traditional forest products. And I 
guess I would like to ask folks what progress is being made in 
finding ways to turn those small-diameter trees into value-
added products so that right now it costs a lot to treat those 
acres and then, hopefully, if we had markets for those 
products, that treatment cost could be mitigated or at least 
reduced?
    Mr. Irving. Well----
    Senator Heinrich. Ms. Mitsos, did you----
    Mr. Irving. I'm sorry.
    Senator Heinrich. No, go ahead sir, and then I think Ms. 
Mitsos wants to answer that.
    The Chairman. Mr. Irving, go ahead.
    Mr. Irving. Okay, no, I just say in terms of processing the 
small trees, you raise a good point that you have to be very 
efficient. We've spent millions of dollars on our own sawmills 
processing trees. Sometimes we'll take out just one piece of 
two-by-three or one piece of two-by-four that, you know, it 
will supply to the Home Depot, for example, but we have a 
mindset--we say it's, look, it's just like the butcher. We have 
to sell everything in the pig, including the squeal. So we have 
to make sure we save everything and really be efficient.
    It takes capital to do that, but it can be done, at least 
in our part of the world.
    Senator Heinrich. And I guess the challenge we have is many 
of the trees we need to remove are not big enough for 
dimensional lumber. So what do we do with those?
    Ms. Mitsos, you look like you wanted to answer that.
    Ms. Mitsos. I think there are a number of options. Some 
still need more investment, but biochar is one option. Biomass 
is another. There are promising signs with CLT about the size 
that they can use. We're doing some work in Arizona on Bill 
Williams Mountain, where the small timber that's coming off is 
given for fuel to the Hopi and Navajo Nations.
    Senator Heinrich. Right. Yes.
    So you mentioned biochar. Talk to me more about that. It is 
a product that has enormous potential, but it has been 
difficult to find ways to scale that in these landscapes, 
especially, you know, in landscapes where there are vast 
distances and much of what determines whether something pencils 
out at the end of the day is the distance to market and the 
fuel cost for a product like biochar.
    Ms. Mitsos. Yes, well there are some folks up in Montana 
who have mobile portable facilities that are proving to be 
really useful, and oftentimes the biochar is immediately put 
back into the soil, which also helps the soil retain more 
carbon as well.
    Senator Heinrich. That is very helpful.
    Mr. Wudtke, one more question for you before my time is 
out. Talk to me about the role of prescribed fire in the active 
management of western North American forests, particularly 
those that are evolved for regular fire cycles such as 
ponderosa pine.
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
    Prescribed fire plays a critical role in forest management. 
It should be implemented on more acres. I think federal 
agencies should be looking at prescribed fire as a tool in a 
lot of places. The one caveat to that is that, just in the 
sense that there are forests burning unnaturally during 
wildfire season, those same unnatural conditions make it very 
difficult to implement prescribed fire safely and to meet the 
objectives of those burn plans in a lot of areas. And so it's a 
little bit of the chicken and the egg. You need to really first 
go in and create forest conditions that are conducive to 
promoting prescribed fire use. Oftentimes, looking at historic 
forest conditions and tree spacing and making sure that the 
fuel is removed from the area before putting that needed fire 
back on the landscape, and fire can certainly be used as a 
maintenance tool once those conditions are in place. But it's 
very difficult to just go in and use prescribed fire as the 
first step in any kind of treatment plan.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    And that is exactly what we found in many of these places 
where it may cost $1,000 an acre to treat something. To 
maintain it with prescribed fire is dramatically cheaper. And 
so creating those conditions for healthy maintenance really set 
the stage for decades into the future.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Next, we have, if he is in, Senator Lee on WebEx, if he is 
there.
    If not, we have then Senator Marshall. And I think he is 
coming back, probably.
    And then, we'll go to Senator Daines, and I think he had to 
step out, and we'll go down to Senator Cassidy.
    Senator Cassidy? Senator Daines?
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Is there any Republican that we know on 
WebEx?
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Senator King.
    Senator King. I could make a lot of jokes now, Mr. 
Chairman, believe me.
    The Chairman. I know, it'd be best if you don't.
    Senator King. Best not, yes.
    I also want to mention that I think we need the Forest 
Service on this subject, and here is what I want from the 
Forest Service. I want three things--data, data, and data. And 
I want a comparison of fire rates on Forest Service land versus 
privately managed land. I want output per acre. I want to know 
the kinds of comparisons. I want expense per acre because I 
have a sense, and I am perfectly willing and hopefully will be 
proved wrong that we basically do not manage our lands anywhere 
near adequately, and it is one of the things that contributes 
to wildfires. If you do not do the pre-commercial thinning that 
Mr. Irving was mentioning, you are building up a base for 
wildfires. If you leave a lot of forest products on the floor 
of the forest, you are going to aggravate the forest fire 
problem. Plus, we are not getting the value from our forests 
that the public owns as we should.
    So I hope that we can either do questions for the record or 
inquiry from the Committee to the Forest Service, but I think 
we really need--I feel the need of data to compare public land 
ownership with private land ownership in terms of productivity, 
fires, and all the rest.
    Mr. Irving, I am fascinated by your comments about output-
based forestry which, I think, makes a lot of sense rather than 
prescriptive forest regulation. The problem that I see is how 
do you know the output-based is working without a lot of time 
passing? In other words, if you are assuming that you are going 
to measure the output over a period of years, there could be a 
lot of damage done, not by your company, but by another 
operator that then is--the damage is done. Do you see what I am 
saying? Output-based regulation, to me, is the way to go, but 
the measurement has to be in such a way that you can be sure 
that it is, in fact, reaching outputs that are desired by both 
the public and the private sector.
    Mr. Irving. Well, Senator King, there's a couple of things 
on that, and you raise the right points. In the case of Maine, 
and I know you're very familiar with this, we do an annual 
audit with state employees. They're independent experts who 
come up and look at our operations, and that's fine. That's 
sort of a visual, and they check the numbers. Then every five 
years, we will do a very prescriptive, okay, hard-line 
measurements--did we do what we said we were going to do? And 
then today, with technology, Lidar, for example, we can detect 
progress. We get satellite imagery. We get it every two weeks--
we'll have pictures of our forests, if we want, and somebody 
can compare this year versus last year or whatever you want to 
compare.
    So today, with technology, there's no reason why we should 
have any mystery about what did we say that we were going to do 
because right today we can count every tree with Lidar. It's 
that precise, that good.
    Senator King. I appreciate that. I think that is an 
important point--that we have the technology today to measure 
on an ongoing basis so output-based regulation as opposed to 
prescriptive regulation can work.
    Let me follow up another question involving your company 
and your management. You are a family-owned company. You do not 
have to report quarterly profits to Wall Street. Talk to me 
about the structure of ownership that could affect the type of 
forestry that you are doing. You are obviously doing a lot of 
things right. You are making a lot of investment. You are 
looking at a 40-year time horizon. My concern is that the sort 
of structure of the capital markets in terms of public 
ownership of stock ownership and having to report to Wall 
Street pushes toward shorter-term profits, higher harvests, 
less long-term investments. Talk to me about the difference 
between family ownership and quarterly profit reports.
    Mr. Irving. Sure. And you summed it up right. If we were a 
public company, we'd have probably a very hard time explaining 
to the shareholders that we're doing some of these things, 
taking this long-time horizon, but there's a couple of things 
that might ease that problem a little bit. When it comes to 
tree planting, for example, we advocate, we think and I know 
it's not the purview of this Committee, but things like being 
able to expense your tree planting in your taxes. In Canada, we 
can expense our tree planting in the year we take it.
    So, it's a form of--it's depreciation, if you will. You 
take it up-front. So we diminish the cost this year, but 
there's no question about it, it's a long-term business. It's 
well-suited--better suited for private enterprise. And so the 
transition from one generation to another in terms of 
inheritance or rollover or whatever you want to call it is very 
important because continuity, you know--if you're in Brazil, 
you grow the trees in six years. If you have a potato field, 
you know, the crop in 120 days. But in the Northeast, you know, 
it's 40 years. So you have to have a different mindset. And 
it's tough for the public companies to create high hurdle rates 
to accomplish what you've just described.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, could I follow up on one point?
    Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Please, go right ahead.
    Senator King. On a different subject, Ms. Cover, I am very 
interested in CLT. I think it is a natural. It makes so much 
sense. It is a natural--that is kind of a redundancy, isn't it? 
But what are the obstacles? Are they building codes? Is it 
architect reluctance? Is it just unfamiliarity with the 
technology? How do we really stimulate the growth of CLT usage 
across America?
    And I know, ironically, in Europe where they have much less 
forest than we do, they are ahead of us in the utilization. 
What is the barrier to the expansion of the use of engineered 
wood products for major building projects?
    Ms. Cover. That's a great question, Senator, thank you.
    Yes, and you hit the nail right on the head in terms of the 
main hurdle is education and understanding. It is really 
helping the architectural and engineering community understand 
how to design these projects and also understanding the value 
of working forests. I think helping folks understand what we 
are all discussing here today, the strong markets for wood 
products, which is really under-utilized species and materials, 
you know, there's a lot of research being done even in 
materials that have insect damage that can go into CLTs. So 
this is an opportunity for some of these materials we are 
talking about that are creating hazardous fuels, and the hurdle 
is really understanding that and helping architects and 
engineers have the tool to design with it.
    Senator King. Well, it seems to me one thing would be 
examples of buildings. The Portland Jetport has a beautiful CLT 
ceiling that is a manifestation of how this can work, and maybe 
we need to talk about public buildings. I am sure the Federal 
Government builds thousands of buildings across the United 
States on a five-year basis. We need to show people how this 
can work, including architects and building inspectors.
    Thank you very much. Thanks to all of our witnesses.
    Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Senator King.
    Senator Lee.
    Senator Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Crowther, Mr. Wudtke mentioned in his testimony that 98 
million acres of our national forests--98 million acres--that 
is representing more than half of the total acreage, are in 
restrictive land-use designations, including wilderness or 
inventoried roadless areas. The restrictions in these areas can 
make access really difficult for forest treatments to be 
conducted. In wilderness, even if access could be achieved, 
mechanized tools used to harvest timber are generally 
prohibited. Dr. Crowther, if addressing climate change and 
mitigating wildfires are to be among our nation's top 
priorities in this area, do you think Congress should 
reevaluate the laws prohibiting timber harvest in these areas, 
and can you explain a little bit about that?
    Dr. Crowther. Thank you, Senator, for the question.
    I think wherever possible, timber harvest needs to be a 
part of the process to be considered. Wherever it is physically 
possible, I think, finding economic values from nature is going 
to be a central part of the process. And as everybody has just 
discussed, the greater that we can find the benefits from non-
target species and the more investment we can have in those 
technologies that can improve the utilization of those species, 
the better. You know, the thinning of species is incredibly 
valuable in natural forests as well. It can promote the 
regeneration of nature. It can promote the carbon sequestration 
rates and the long-term sequestration of that carbon as well.
    And it was mentioned earlier about biochar being a 
spectacular opportunity. Obviously, limited by the availability 
or by the accessibility of those products, but again, these 
sort of lower-quality timber products can be so valuable for 
biochar--that then also has a knock-on potential benefit on 
agricultural settings where you can massively improve carbon 
sequestration in soil.
    Senator Lee. Right.
    Dr. Crowther. So, I--sorry.
    Senator Lee. No, just agreeing with you. It sounds like a 
win to me.
    Dr. Crowther. I think the other benefit is it comes with 
the access to tourists. You know, tourism is a huge benefit 
that comes from nature--it comes from forests, it comes from 
regenerating and protecting ecosystems. And so, access to that 
has potential benefits. Obviously, it also has potential 
downsides, as poor management or deforestation rates can 
obviously be associated with increased access. So as an 
ecologist, my own personal motivation is always try and keep as 
much nature as physically possible. But as I mentioned, the key 
to any successful activity is those economic incentives.
    Senator Lee. Yes, I think that is very well said, and the 
point of wilderness, of course, is to keep untrammeled land 
untrammeled. But, from time to time, in order to protect the 
environment and maintain wilderness in a pristine condition, 
sometimes access needs to be granted for reasons related to 
protecting the environment.
    Mr. Wudtke, there are a number of constituents in my state 
who would love to be able to harvest timber, but who have been 
reluctant to do so because of administrative, or in some cases, 
structural obstacles. For example, while Forest Service 
stewardship contracts for timber harvesting can extend for 
periods that are up to ten years, timber sale and service 
contracts are commonly offered for much shorter periods of 
time, more typically in the range of three years. With shorter 
work commitments, we tend to see decreased certainty for 
industry partners, and installing the infrastructure to 
facilitate work may not be worth the cost under a three-year 
commitment.
    So Mr. Wudtke, in your opinion, what could Congress or 
federal agencies do in order to increase business certainty and 
thereby foster greater interest in these programs?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
    You know, utilizing stewardship contracts and particularly 
longer-term stewardship contracts and longer-term contracting 
mechanisms, it's something that should be looked at and is 
trying to be utilized in parts of the U.S., particularly in 
areas where you're trying to entice forest products companies 
into the area. You give them something that they can invest in 
or you're trying to bolster your current forest products 
infrastructure that you have there to meet other objectives.
    In other parts of the country, you already have forest 
products companies. Some places are very well cross-integrated, 
where some companies use soft timber, some companies use post 
and pole-size material. Other companies use wood chips. And in 
those areas, really what the companies need in order to invest 
is some certainty that the Forest Service or Department of 
Interior is going to be putting up the timber to sustain their 
company year after year. When you already have a forest 
products industry there, you don't need a 20-year contract, and 
in some places that can favor certain companies over others 
when you already have infrastructure in place.
    But I think you're right-on. The companies need some level 
of certainty that they're going to have timber this year and 
next year and 10 years from now because investments into forest 
products infrastructure are on the order of tens to hundreds of 
millions of dollars, not small-scale.
    Senator Lee. Thank you. That is very helpful.
    Mr. Chairman, I see my time is expired. Thank you.
    The Chairman [presiding]. And now we have Senator Cortez 
Masto.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the 
panelists, great conversation.
    Let me talk a little bit about invasive species. I would 
love your input here. Controlling invasive, non-native species 
in our forest ecosystems represents another key component for 
enhancing carbon capture. So my question to the panelists is 
how can we best work with local landowners to reverse the 
negative effects that we see from invasive species and preserve 
our forest ecosystems? And maybe, Mr. Wudtke, we can start with 
you?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you. Certainly, private landowners have 
their own incentives to reduce invasive species. If you're 
talking about forest lands, oftentimes a private landowner may 
intend to utilize grazing in the understory on herbaceous 
vegetation, oftentimes looking at long-term timber harvest 
schedules. Private landowners have a lot of incentive to reduce 
invasive species. Invasive species are certainly playing a 
larger role in the landscape for all ownerships as we're seeing 
increased acres of wildfires. We're even seeing invasive 
species issues following other disturbances, such as insect 
epidemics.
    How we coordinate more with landowners, you know, kind of, 
across the fence, with federal and private--I'm not sure I have 
the answer on that, but I think that it warrants a lot of 
further discussion.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    Mr. Irving, or does anyone else have any input on this? So 
let me give you an example, because we have a lot of rangeland 
fires in Nevada, and cheatgrass is an invasive species, and it 
is, unfortunately, something that needs to be controlled. And 
so there is a role, I think, for the Federal Government and our 
local landowners to work together to address the types of 
invasive species that we are seeing in forests or rangeland, 
wherever that is. I think it is important that we have native 
trees, we have native plants. Those thrive. They are unique to 
the ecosystem there and important to the ecosystem. When we 
introduce a native species, we are seeing really negative 
consequences of that.
    So I am curious what we, at a federal level, should be 
doing to work with our local landowners or others to address 
invasive species. Does anybody have any other comments?
    Mr. Irving. Senator, we would say we've got to be very 
vigilant. As a landowner you have to be on top of your forest. 
Our people in our organization are trained on what to look for 
and deal with it quickly and early. We have things like blue 
lettuce or jewel weed or other things that we didn't have but 
10 or 15 years ago. So in certain cases, where we have certain 
very carefully applied biocide, we treat it and then eradicate 
it quickly. But if we don't, they're very aggressive species, 
as you're aware. They're very aggressive, and they change the 
balance of the biodiversity, not only for the forest, but also 
for the wildlife. And so, we have to be on that one quickly.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Well, absolutely. And because you are 
a private landowner, you have the ability to be very reactive 
and proactive on it quickly, but when it comes to our national 
forests, is there more that we should be doing to address 
invasive species is my question. And if anybody has that, we'd 
be happy to work with you on that in the future.
    But let me jump because I only have so much time. Mr. 
Wudtke, let me ask you this--throughout the West and Southwest, 
research is increasingly describing burn scars as regenerating 
to brush fields. This makes reforestation a time-sensitive 
issue. If lands 
are lost to brush fields, reestablishing green and growing 
forests becomes exponentially more difficult to accomplish. 
Brush outcompetes young trees and poses a significant hazard 
for reburns. This was in your written statement.
    And so, as you know, wildfires are continuing to increase 
in frequency and size. What challenges does this pose for 
ecosystem regeneration?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
    The challenges are abundant, really, and you know, there's 
a lot of research coming out of the Arizona-New Mexico area 
following wildfires. It's been coming out for years now 
actually, where they're seeing long-term eco-type conversions 
from the ponderosa pine forest--predominately in that area--to 
grass and shrub types of ecotypes. And that's largely because 
of the ecology of ponderosa pine forests. They are fire-adapted 
species, fire-adapted forests, but they're adapted to low-
severity fires, not the high-severity fires we're seeing as a 
product of the high fuel loads in the forest. And when the 
ponderosa pine loses their canopy, they can't disperse the seed 
very far, and so that's why you're seeing ecotype conversions 
there.
    But there's new research also in other forests, such as 
lodgepole pine, where they've experienced beetle mortality and 
then experienced fire following that, and although lodgepole 
pine forests in places have evolved with high-severity fire, 
they're seeing some of the same effects that you would see in 
ponderosa pine systems where that seed source is being 
consumed, and you're not getting the regeneration following 
fire in those forested ecosystems. Of course, this presents 
tremendous challenges when you're really turning the natural 
ecology of a forested ecosystem on its head, and then once you 
get that grass, there are other herbaceous vegetation on the 
surface there, that tends to outcompete young trees, young 
seedlings, whether it's natural regeneration or planting. All 
of that vegetation competing for resources on the landscape 
makes it very, very difficult to do replanting in the future.
    There are steps that can help that, but the difficulties 
are there, nonetheless.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    I have further questions. I will submit those for the 
record.
    Thank you, again.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Daines.
    Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    First of all, I want to welcome Mary Mitsos from Missoula, 
who is here. Great to have another Montanan in the room. 
Welcome to DC. Mary, you know firsthand the challenges facing 
our forests in Montana. It is really great to have you here--
appreciate it.
    I also want to highlight that so many of the challenges we 
face in the West, both economic and environmental, can be 
achieved through increasing the scope and the scale of forest 
management. In fact, growing up in Montana, there were 30 
active sawmills that were supporting healthy economies and 
healthy forests, once upon a time. Today, we are down to just 
seven. During that time, our forests were a carbon sink. Now, I 
sadly report, our forests are a carbon source. Wildfire season 
is growing longer and more severe, burning some 300,000 acres 
in Montana just last year. I am hopeful that this year Congress 
will work to enact meaningful forest management reform to 
reverse this trend.
    The initial COVID-related disruptions and demand for lumber 
used in home construction and remodeling far exceeded the 
supply being produced by mills, causing prices to more than 
triple. In the South, there has been a glut of logs coming from 
private lands, which kept log prices low while mills operated 
at full capacity. Due to federal land ownership, the situation 
played very differently in Montana. While the mills were 
generally able to continue operating throughout the year, 
lumber production decreased by 11 percent, and that's not for a 
lack of forests that are in dire need of management. In fact, 
over six million acres are at high risk of wildfire in Montana. 
And just last year, Montana's harvested timber from national 
forests was just over half--half of the allowable sale quantity 
volume called for in our forest plans.
    Our national forests are poised to help with the lumber 
shortage, and we must increase active management to address 
this crisis.
    Mr. Wudtke, despite being blessed with abundant forests, 
our country isn't meeting our domestic demand for wood 
products. What constraints does the timber industry face in its 
ability to invest in processing capacity, infrastructure, and 
technology in order to meet the growing demand for wood 
products from national forests in the West?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
    Well, first I'd say, I doubt it's of any comfort, but 
you're not the only state that now has forests that are carbon 
sources instead of carbon sinks, but I doubt that would be any 
comfort to any of us here today.
    As we're seeing markets respond to lumber demand and the 
supply issue of lumber, there's a lot of discussion and 
questions that I hear from folks about why doesn't a company 
increase what they're doing? Why don't they build another 
sawmill? Why can't we fix this problem? And it comes back to 
some of the discussion earlier in that, you know, to start a 
new forest products company, whether it's a sawmill or a 
biofuels facility, what we're talking about are investments on 
the order of 125 million to hundreds of millions of dollars, 
and that's not an investment you make lightheartedly. An 
investment like that really requires some sense that you're 
going to be able to get a return on it.
    And in the West, where purchasers and sawmills primarily 
rely on federal lands, it's very difficult to get that 
certainty. As you discussed, you know, the allowable sale 
quantity in forest plans is seldom met. We see cycles where one 
year may be good for a forest, the next year may be bad, and 
it's very difficult to do any level of planning for a business 
to be successful when there's just no guarantee of getting the 
materials you need to be profitable to remain running year 
after year.
    Senator Daines. Yes, I spent a lot of time engaged with our 
sawmills across Montana over many, many years, and the reason 
we have gone from 30 active sawmills down to seven, and we are 
now in the constraint, is there is not enough sawmill capacity 
because, just as you pointed out, we have not been able to get 
access to logs. Sometimes you bring in logs, and it is from as 
far away as Colorado, sometimes coming in from Canada, and that 
is why we had to see these mills reduced down to now just seven 
across our state. Wyoming has none. I do not think Colorado has 
any either.
    I want to shift gears here and talk about carbon storage. 
The Biden Administration established a goal of reducing 
emissions by 50 percent by 2050. While forests should assist us 
toward that goal, Montana forests are actually a net positive 
carbon source, largely due to catastrophic wildfires and a 
decrease in wood products coming from our forests. In the 90s, 
when timber volume was much higher, Montana's forests 
sequestered--sequestered--20 million tons of CO2 out 
of the air each year. But by 2010, we have reversed course. In 
fact, our forests in Montana now emit 25 million tons of 
CO2.
    Mr. Wudtke, what would need to happen to reverse this trend 
so Montana forests can once again operate as a carbon sink and 
should be a component in the President's climate agenda?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you for the question, Senator.
    I think it's clear today that what we've been doing the 
last couple decades isn't working. The lack of forest 
management, the lack of reducing fuels and insect risk on the 
landscape is not helping us now. And to the extent that we're 
concerned about atmospheric carbon inputs and the role that 
forests can play, I don't think that anybody would call what's 
happened in our national forests a success. And to be clear, I 
think the answer is relatively simple. Big picture, of course, 
you know, it'll vary place by place, but big picture, we have 
to be more active on the landscape. We have to be salvaging 
material when or where appropriate before it goes up in flames, 
before it decomposes on the landscape. We have to be proactive 
in reducing those risks for further losses to insects and 
wildfires. We have to be doing more on the landscape to have 
our forests become carbon sinks instead of sources again.
    Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Wudtke.
    Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Cantwell.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Senator Manchin and thank you 
to you and Senator Barrasso for holding this important hearing. 
I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. So, I guess this 
would be to our witness from WoodWorks, Ms. Cover. We included 
in the last big lands and wildfire bill, with the fire-
borrowing fix, incentives such that if you are doing CLT-
related thinning projects then contractors could get longer 
lead times and contract terms from the Forest Service. Is that 
correct?
    Ms. Cover. So I'm on the market side of things, so I do 
the----
    Senator Cantwell. Okay.
    Ms. Cover. I work with architects and engineers and help 
grow the markets for wood products.
    Senator Cantwell. Okay.
    Ms. Cover. So I am not familiar with the agreements with 
the Forest Service land.
    Senator Cantwell. So I am pretty sure what we did in the 
last forest bill as it related to CLT is to say to the Forest 
Service to give more predictable terms to people who are going 
to harvest trees and use them to manufacture CLT. So that way, 
a mill could plan, just as our colleagues are discussing here. 
A mill could basically have more predictable terms for the 
future, longer-term stewardship contracts (up to 20 years). 
Now, this is important for us in the Pacific Northwest. We have 
already made major investments in this. We have one of the 
largest CLT facilities in the United States, Katerra, which is 
producing nearly one-third of our mass timber, and Vaagen, 
which is also a long-standing timber company in Northeast 
Washington manufacturing CLT. Just recently, a wood innovation 
center in Darrington, Washington, opened to also manufacture 
CLT products. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure we get this 
clear for the record that the Forest Service can give longer-
term contracts and more predictability to harvest related to 
CLT. This is one of the reasons why we wanted to do it, because 
we wanted to incent this predictability so people would make 
the infrastructure investments.
    And then secondly, I say, especially to Ms. Cover, Oregon 
has really done a pretty good job on this, on the planning and 
the development stage. The university there has some leading 
experts on CLT, and I don't know why it is, but Oregon has 
adopted some of this focus quicker.
    Senator Wyden. We just work with Washington. We get 
brilliant.
    Senator Cantwell. Well, I think we need to keep batting 
down some of the misconceptions about wood as a building 
material here. People think that it is more flammable, when in 
reality it is not. I mean, that these buildings, at a high-rise 
level, are being built around the world, and I think they 
should be built in the United States. I think probably one of 
the largest ones, I do not know how many stories it is, but 
definitely 20 to 30 stories, is right across the border in 
Vancouver, British Columbia. There are others in London that 
have been at this height. So, to me, we should be batting down 
these arguments.
    Now, in the Pacific Northwest, we have definitely built 
schools and buildings and you know, facilities. So we do need 
to think about what we need to do to step this up, but Mr. 
Chairman, I think, actually, we just need to marry up the 
science with the contracting because we have pine forests that 
are going to burn down, we know, at least in part because of 
climate. And we have fire breaks that we want installed because 
it is going to help us preserve some of those forests, and we 
have rural communities that could, with predictable 
contracting, produce more cross-laminated timber which, we know 
now, would help us store carbon.
    So we always thought it was a win-win-win situation. Ms. 
Cover, what do you think? What do we need to be doing further 
to help get that message across? Is it that we are just not 
communicating well enough on this, or in places like Washington 
and Oregon it is happening, and we should just continue to let 
it happen at that pace?
    Ms. Cover. I think the leadership in terms of, you know, 
forest-dependent communities really helps, and I think that's 
why you're seeing advancements in areas like Oregon and 
Washington, but it's also across the entire U.S. I mean, there 
is a CLT mass timber building pretty much in almost every state 
in the United States now, and the building codes have opened a 
lot of new opportunities for us. Right here in the U.S., we 
have a 25-story mass timber building going up in Milwaukee. 
There are 107 buildings that are over the original code limits 
that now have been opened up to tall wood. So now mass timber 
can be used up to 18 stories with the new code development. So 
everything is in place, and we are poised, really, to take this 
throughout the entire United States. We're just at the very 
beginning and needing to make sure that people understand how 
to do this and they have the tools at their disposal to be able 
to successfully design these buildings.
    And you're definitely 100 percent correct in terms of the 
research. All the testing has been done to safely design these 
buildings, and I am happy to provide any of that as needed.
    Senator Cantwell. Well, I do not think other sectors should 
feel threatened by this. It is not like it is going to turn 
development on its ear with concrete or other things, but you 
know, we love the historic nature of this, that you can still 
go to Pioneer Square in Seattle and see buildings that were 
built with wood and now we could restore them with wood. And I 
could tell you that the feeling that you get from walking into 
one of these facilities is great. So yes, why should we--why is 
the United States ceding to the U.K.? Nothing against the 
brilliant work done by the U.K. researchers and architects 
there, but they hardly have the land mass or supply that we do 
that would/could be utilized here, particularly because of the 
climate implications. So I think we should continue to work and 
find out what other incentives we ought to consider, if any. It 
sounds like it has already been clarified with regards to the 
building codes or the Forest Service's ability to do longer-
term contracts. I just want to keep batting down the barriers 
on this issue.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Cassidy.
    Senator Cassidy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Crowther, in the 2019 study ``The Global Tree 
Restoration Potential,'' you and your colleagues report that 
approximately 0.9 billion hectares of potential forest plan 
exist for potential restoration, could store 205 gigatons of 
carbon in concluding that ecosystem restoration is one of the 
more effective ways to mitigate climate change. Did you study 
the restoration of riparian forest and marshland?
    Dr. Crowther. Thank you for the question, Senator. It's a 
really important one because one of the main caveats to 
recognize there is that this is a global study, and that means 
there are major uncertainties around all those things. And what 
the model does is, it's trained using millions of data points 
of observations of where forests exist now, and it's trained 
based on the environment and satellite imagery to predict the 
ecosystems that can naturally exist. Now, riparian ecosystems 
are moist, you know, riparian regions can be particularly good 
conditions for supporting trees. And what we actually find in 
continued research is that the impacts of even a small riparian 
zone in lowering the water temperatures in aquatic systems can 
actually be incredibly important for fish production, for the 
survival of macroinvertebrates in the streams and for the 
productivity of those streams for fisheries and extended 
things.
    So, I've sort of extended beyond your question there, but 
yes, we evaluated the potential in all global ecosystems.
    Senator Cassidy. Thank you for saying that. I have been 
told by folks back home at the Water Institute of the Gulf that 
aquatic and wetland plants can store three to five times more 
carbon in flooded soils than terrestrial forests. And so the 
potential is obviously there. I'll make the point that I 
continue to push for development of the Outer Continental Shelf 
oil and gas to provide dollars for Louisiana to restore its 
coastline, and this is one of the many benefits of Louisiana 
using that money to rebuild our coastline and one of the many 
deleterious effects of choosing not to develop a needed 
resource worldwide.
    What has your research shown--well, let me put it 
differently. I understand that in your testimony you mentioned 
that monoculture forest, which will lack diversity, can be 
detrimental toward a healthy ecosystem--diversity directly 
correlated to resiliency. I want to point out one of my 
Louisiana universities, Nicholls State, will take acorns from a 
live oak tree, from an area which periodically is hit by 
hurricanes and salty air, and replant that and the tree grows. 
But if they take a live oak acorn, I am told, from elsewhere, 
which has not been bred, so to speak, to survive in this 
environment, that tree dies. So I guess my question is, does 
that ring true and with your concepts, that we should have 
plants selected for the ability to survive in a certain region 
as we attempt to rebuild those regions?
    Dr. Crowther. Yes. One of the biggest challenges in 
effective restoration is knowing that the right species must be 
in the right place, and that doesn't just include the species 
that can survive in that climate and those soil conditions, but 
it's also the full range of those species because a healthy 
ecosystem does--the stronger and the more diverse the 
interactions among species, the more sustainable the ecosystem 
is and the more carbon is captured.
    We actually did an analysis across the global forest system 
that suggested that if we were to convert the world's 
ecosystems from their diverse state into monocultures of the 
fastest growing species, the impact on the timber industry 
would be a reduction in productivity by about a third. When you 
have mixed stands and mixed species you tend to get a greater 
productivity and a greater carbon sequestration simply because 
they take up different resources. If you're all competing for 
the same resource, you have much less efficient access to those 
resources, like light and nutrients and water, but when you 
have different species with different rooting depths and 
different heights, you tend to make more efficient use of those 
resources, and you support all the other biodiversity that's 
important also for the health of the ecosystem.
    So yes, simply put, we do have to get the right species in 
the right place. Now, the example you gave is an interesting 
one. There's a lot of ecological theory about how you can sort 
of move species. Sometimes when you have a species that's not 
from there, it can be released from a lot of the competitive 
dynamics that it would naturally experience under its parent 
tree. But in many cases what we do see is that, yes, we 
obviously want to minimize the movement, the sort of human-
driven movement in biodiversity because in most cases, seed 
banks have enough biodiversity that they'd be able to 
regenerate a very healthy level of diversity on their own.
    And so planning for that and also thinking about the 
trajectory of those species under a changing climate condition, 
those are some of the biggest challenges in getting restoration 
right.
    Senator Cassidy. Mr. Chairman, I am out of time, but I will 
say that all of us stick up for our own state and all of us 
have pride in our own state. I am giving a shout-out to 
Nicholls State and to the Water Institute of the Gulf, but let 
me also point out that the restoration of Louisiana's wetlands 
does have national significance, not just for this, but also to 
support the energy infrastructure that helps prevent another 
Colonial Pipeline problem, not from cyberattacks, but from 
natural disaster, as well as preventing damage to the port 
infrastructure that allows goods from around the nation to move 
around the world at the lowest carbon intensity imaginable 
because it travels over water.
    With that, I thank you all for your testimony and I yield 
back.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Wyden.
    Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 
you for holding the hearing. Having been the Chair of the 
Committee, I know it is a challenging job. You have your hands 
full and I appreciate working with you.
    Let me go to you, Ms. Mitsos. I know of your good work. In 
our part of the country, it is already very dry, and there is 
tremendous concern that this dryness can really trigger another 
round of infernos--what people have first and foremost, 
particularly in rural Oregon, on their minds in terms of what 
they may have to deal with. We come to this Committee, and so 
much of the time is always devoted to a debate where one side 
wants to cut everything down in the forest and the other side, 
particularly in the West, sometimes says, we do not want to cut 
anything down. And so that just is kind of prescription for 
gridlock. And my view is this year it would be absolute 
malpractice in this country for this Committee and the Congress 
to not take concrete steps to do more to reduce hazardous fuels 
and deal with the fire mitigation threat, especially near homes 
and businesses.
    So today, we Westerners, Senator Cantwell and Senator 
Feinstein, we joined with our colleague, the Chairman from West 
Virginia, to really launch a special effort that is backed by 
good science. It is tested policy that would accomplish that 
objective of really allowing us to do more to reduce hazardous 
fuels and mitigate fire. And what it is all about is increasing 
the pace and scale of prescribed burns, and this effort that we 
are pursuing is backed by a coalition that you do not see every 
single day--Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense Fund 
joining major timber industry leaders, Weyerhaeuser, the 
National Alliance of Forest Owners, Oregon tribes, tribal 
forestry organizations with us as well. So we do not know of 
any major opposition now because, as I say, it is science-
based. It really builds on some of the collaborative ideas to 
basically do a lot more during that season before it is hot and 
dry and before you get to these infernos.
    Would legislation, in your view, for purposes of my initial 
question, my legislation with Senator Cantwell, Senator 
Feinstein, Chairman Manchin--would this prescribed fire bill, 
in your view, reduce wildfire risks and contribute as well to 
healthy forest management practices?
    Ms. Mitsos. Thank you, Senator.
    Prescribed fire is essential on the landscape. We can do 
thinning, and that will help as well, but it needs to be 
followed by prescribed fire. So I don't, unfortunately, know 
the details of your bill, but I know if it focuses on 
increasing pace and scale of prescribed fire and also helps 
build the workforce to do that, it is a necessary bill.
    Senator Wyden. That is what the bill is all about, pace and 
scale, upping our game. We are going to have to really get 
serious and get serious quickly about hazardous fuels 
reduction, fire mitigation, and following the science, and that 
is what our little coalition of members wants to do.
    The second area I want to talk to you about is, along with 
Congressman Joe Neguse, in Colorado, we have introduced the 
21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps, and the idea here is 
to establish a larger forestry workforce for planting trees, 
removing hazardous fuels, and have more healthy forest 
treatments all across the country. The Biden Administration 
basically worked closely with us. They have something which is 
sort of the other side of a coin--a Climate Corps, but they are 
essentially the same kinds of efforts. In your view, does the 
United States currently have a sufficient workforce to 
accomplish the amount of planting and thinning and science-
based forestry practices that you have been talking about, 
because my sense is we need to have some more people and we 
have to do it quickly.
    Your thoughts?
    Ms. Mitsos. We definitely need more people, whether they be 
youth or young adults or people just out of college. The number 
of people who work in forestry in particular, and natural 
resources in general, has been dwindling, and without the 
assistance of building up a new workforce, we're going to 
struggle with finding new stewards of our lands.
    Senator Wyden. Good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am out of 
time. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Next, Senator Risch.
    Senator Risch or Senator Marshall?
    If not, I have a couple questions, and then we will wrap up 
unless we have any other Senators that come in quickly.
    Dr. Crowther, much of what you talked about resonated with 
me because we do not do much tree planting in West Virginia. 
Instead, after timber harvesting, foresters regenerate stands 
of trees using natural regeneration. That said, in West 
Virginia, there are currently over 170,000 acres of 
unreclaimed, abandoned mine lands (AMLs), and one in three West 
Virginians lives within a one-mile radius of an AML site. As 
you discussed, I am very interested in bringing economic 
activity back to these sites, but I also understand that trying 
to reestablish trees on these sites can be especially 
difficult. So do these sites represent the types of areas you 
are considering in your initiative?
    Dr. Crowther. Thank you for the question.
    I actually think it's great that you mentioned that because 
a lot of people do think of tree restoration, and when we talk 
about a trillion trees, they think we're talking about planting 
a trillion trees, and physically that wouldn't really be 
feasible. That would take all of humanity quite a while, but 
natural regeneration presents an unbelievable opportunity for 
regenerating ecosystems, and nature always tends to do it 
better than we do, more diverse, more resilient ecosystems are 
there. But you're right, in some regions, previous human 
activity, like mining, can lead to degradation of those 
ecosystems. And in those places, there have been many, many, 
many examples of how active regeneration can start to tip the 
balance, you know, by either managing soils effectively or by 
integrating the right mixtures of species and giving them a bit 
of a head start. The regenerating ecosystems can start to tip 
the balance and make that a more livable environment in the 
future.
    So yes, degraded lands are absolutely central to this. We 
want there to be as much natural regeneration as physically 
possible, but where there's not possible, assisting that 
process can be incredibly valuable.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much, Doctor.
    And now we have Senator Kelly.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And Ms. Mitsos, I want to start off here by thanking you 
and the National Forest Foundation for your investment in the 
Northern Arizona Forest Fund. Since 2015, NFF has partnered 
with the Salt River Project, which is a water and power utility 
in the State of Arizona, to restore forest lands and plant 
trees along the Verde and the Salt Rivers, both of which are 
very critical water supplies for my state, the State of 
Arizona. We have had a rather early start to the fire season in 
Arizona, and we have already been seeing wildfires and a few 
evacuation orders. Behind me is a Forest Service map of lands 
that are likely to burn in any given year.
    [The map mentioned by Senator Kelly follows:]
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4734.062
    
    Senator Kelly. These fires often occur on Forest Service 
land and release many tons of carbon dioxide into the 
atmosphere. The data is clear on this. We have to get serious 
about ramping up forest restoration and hazardous fuels 
projects immediately.
    So Ms. Mitsos, if the Forest Service established a carbon 
credit program for forest restoration projects, what could that 
mean for utilities that are active in forest restoration?
    Ms. Mitsos. Thank you, Senator Kelly. That's a great 
question.
    I think it goes beyond utilities and to major U.S. 
corporations as well. So many corporations are setting their 
public ESG goals--Environmental, Social and Governance Goals--
and carbon offsets are one of the major goals for them. So 
water utilities, electric utilities, and public corporations 
would all invest in these kind of efforts.
    Senator Kelly. But specifically for forest restoration, 
what could that mean?
    Ms. Mitsos. We are in the process of, right now, of 
developing the first-of-its-kind methodology to account for 
carbon credits from forest restoration in high-fire frequency 
forests, specifically on the far northern forests in Arizona 
because they are some of the highest fire frequency forests. We 
have probably about nine months to go to finish the development 
of that methodology. Once that is accepted, and we can offer 
offsets to corporations, the money is going to flow, I believe.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you, Ms. Mitsos.
    I want to turn to Mr. Wudtke for a minute here in my 
remaining time. Mr. Wudtke, as the Committee's timber industry 
representative for the West, I was in Flagstaff, Arizona 
recently, and I met with Northern Arizona University's 
Ecological Restoration Institute, and ERI has spent years 
studying Forest Service timber policies and identified several 
reforms for forest restoration project planning and 
implementation in our ponderosa pine forests. Our forests are 
similar to those of the Black Hills National Forest, where your 
members operate. What do you see as barriers, but also, what do 
you see as opportunities to accomplishing this work?
    Mr. Wudtke. Thank you, Senator.
    I think one of the first things that we have been hearing 
consistently today is that you have to have a forest products 
infrastructure in place to be able to do those treatments, to 
remove that material from the forest. And Arizona has had some 
unique challenges there. They've been fortunate to have the 
4FRI project in place that aims to treat 2.4 million acres, but 
treatments have been slow, you know, I believe they've been 
averaging about 13,000 acres a year for treatment, where the 
Forest Service is targeting treating 50,000 acres a year. And 
that's not to say that the Forest Service is doing anything 
wrong or the company isn't operating correctly, but I think 
it's indicative of the hurdles and challenges in starting new 
forest products infrastructure in places where it either hasn't 
been or hasn't been for some period of time.
    Of course, there are opportunities to help the Forest 
Service. Some of that is coming online and being used more. ``D 
by P'' (designation by prescription), virtual boundaries where 
it can save some time for the Forest Service to do timber 
cruising and laying out their boundaries, scaling by weight 
where the companies have that ability, instead of doing the 
full timber cruising, you can actually look at exactly what's 
coming across the scales and keep track of making sure that the 
operators are meeting their prescriptions in the forest.
    And so we're seeing some of these opportunities being 
employed more across the nation. There are certainly other ways 
that could be helpful as well, and just trying to provide some 
of those efficiencies for the Forest Service so they get more 
done on a landscape. Sometimes, at the end of the day, it just 
takes more--it takes more staffing, it takes more funding to 
get those activities done, and in places like Arizona, like 
you're seeing, it takes more infrastructure to make that work. 
And I'm hopeful that Arizona and many other parts of the West 
can hurdle some of those challenges here in the future.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wudtke, and thank 
you, Ms. Mitsos, for your testimony today.
    Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. If we have anybody else on WebEx that I might 
have missed, please speak up.
    [No response.]
    The Chairman. If not, I want to thank all of our witnesses 
for joining us this morning for this discussion. It is very 
enlightening. I would like to say this, that I have had really 
the pleasure of visiting Mr. Irving's operations, and I have 
seen proper management compared to so-called ``standard'' 
management, and there was no comparison. And we can do a much 
better job.
    With the permission of the Committee, I am going to reach 
out to the White House and see if we cannot get the Forest 
Service into a different gear to make some practical common-
sense decisions on how we take care of America's forests.
    So members will have until the close of business tomorrow 
to submit additional questions for the record.
    Thank you all. The Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                      APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

                              ----------                              

[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                   [all]