[Senate Hearing 117-467]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                                                        S. Hrg. 117-467

                 THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET REQUEST FOR THE  
                U.S. FOREST SERVICE FOR FISCAL YEAR 2023

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                      ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                              JUNE 9, 2022
                               __________ 
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
               [GRAPHIC(S) 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        
        
48-125                     WASHINGTON : 2024 













               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

                                WITNESS

Moore, Randy, Chief, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of 
  Agriculture....................................................     4

          ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

Barrasso, Hon. John:
    Opening Statement............................................     2
Daines, Hon. Steve:
    Chart depicting delays in Montana forest treatment projects..    28
    Bill language relating to the National Forest System Land and 
      Resource Management Plan:..................................    30
    Map entitled ``Montana Forest Action Plan Priority Area''....    32
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
    Opening Statement............................................     1
Moore, Randy:
    Opening Statement............................................     4
    Written Testimony............................................     6
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................    45

 
                  THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET REQUEST FOR  
                   THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE FOR FISCAL  
                   YEAR 2023

                              ----------                              

                         THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2022

                                       U.S. Senate,
                 Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 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 Committee will come to order. I am 
pleased to welcome the Chief of the Forest Service to the 
Committee to discuss President Biden's Fiscal Year 2023 budget 
request for the Forest Service. Chief Moore, as this is your 
first time testifying before the Committee, I wanted to 
publicly congratulate you on your appointment to the position 
as Chief of the Forest Service as well as thank you for joining 
us this morning. I know that we have a lot to discuss today--
from the billions of dollars provided by the Great American 
Outdoors Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law over the 
last two years, to the historic wildfire burning right now in 
New Mexico. But first, I would like to express my appreciation 
for the emphasis placed on outdoor recreation in this year's 
budget request. I am glad to see that the President is making 
outdoor recreation a policy priority for the land management 
agencies, including the Forest Service. Last month, our 
Committee unanimously voted to report America's Outdoor 
Recreation Act of 2022, our large outdoor recreation package 
that illustrates the important role that the outdoors play in 
the hearts and minds of Americans everywhere.
    The last time outdoor recreation legislation of this size 
and scale was enacted was in 1963. So I am very proud of this 
package and the good I believe it is going to do for all of us. 
The overwhelming support that we have received for this package 
shows us that the enthusiasm surrounding our public lands and 
outdoor recreation is strong and still growing. To keep up with 
increased visitation, the package provides innovative 
approaches that are needed to make our public lands more 
accessible, improve our recreation infrastructure, and make it 
easier for businesses located in rural areas to thrive.
    Now, turning to the primary purpose of today's hearing--the 
President's budget. Rural communities across the country depend 
on our national forests. They provide opportunities for 
recreation as well as timber resources, and thereby support 
jobs in local communities. But despite a more than a quarter of 
a billion-dollar increase last year in your annual 
appropriations, and an additional $5.5 billion made available 
through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, I understand that 
the President's budget requests a further billion-dollar 
increase for Forest Service programs above the record high that 
Congress appropriated last year. I look forward to learning why 
these increases are needed and for what specific purposes this 
money would be used. As I mentioned, the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law provided the Forest Service $5.5 billion for 
implementing a variety of wildfire and ecological restoration 
initiatives. But the main thing included in the Wildfire 
Management section--this is right at the beginning--was 
direction to your agency to lower the fire risk on 10 million 
acres of the country's most dangerous 20 million acres. The law 
requires the Forest Service to use this unprecedented level of 
funding, as well as other funding that Congress is continuing 
to provide to significantly lower the fuel load in national 
forests where both communities are nearby and wildfires will be 
extremely difficult to control.
    The law also required the Forest Service to publish a plan 
detailing how you will treat these acres. This plan was due by 
last March. But the Forest Service has yet to release it. I 
would like to know how many of these acres you are protecting 
and projecting to change the conditions of this year, and I 
intend to ask you and your staff about your progress in meeting 
this requirement at each hearing going forward. In the 
Infrastructure Funding Spending Plan that you included with 
your budget request, I saw over and over--the biggest challenge 
you are facing to spending this money are shortages of 
acquisition and procurement staff, grants and agreement staff, 
and the national forest program staff responsible for the 
implementation of the activities outlined. I am sure that we 
will discuss this morning how long you believe it will take for 
you to ramp up your capacity to spend this money, but I hope it 
is soon. The fire season is well underway out West, and the 
government must carry out these important treatments as soon as 
possible.
    In closing, it is no secret that I have serious concerns 
about our national debt. And as such, I take my role as both an 
authorizer and appropriator very seriously. I fully believe 
that we can get our fiscal house in order while supporting 
American priorities. So I look forward to hearing from you, 
Chief Moore, this morning, on how we can do just that.
    With that, I am going to turn to our Ranking Member, 
Senator Barrasso.

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

    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman, for 
holding this important hearing, and Chief Moore, I want to 
welcome you here for your first appearance in front of the 
Committee. Congratulations, again, on your appointment as the 
Forest Service Chief. I look forward to working with you and 
hearing your vision of the agency. We have had a chance to meet 
previously and discuss these key issues, and as we both agree, 
our forests play a vital role--a number of vital roles. They 
provide habitat for wildlife, improve water and soil quality. 
They yield timber and provide recreational opportunities, both 
essential components of the West's economy and our way of life, 
and they can act as carbon sinks by sequestering large amounts 
of carbon from the atmosphere. The forests cannot play any of 
these roles if they burn to the ground, and we have discussed 
that.
    Last year, we had another devastating wildfire season. 
Wildfires burned over seven million acres nationwide. Well over 
half of this destruction occurred on U.S. Forest Service lands. 
The fires destroyed lives and livelihoods, wiped out wildlife 
and habitat, increased carbon emissions, and reduced air 
quality. Of the 6,000 structures destroyed by the wildfires 
last year, 60 percent were family homes or residences. So 
unfortunately, this year seems to be shaping up to be another 
difficult fire season. Severe drought and a lack of proactive 
management have turned many of our landscapes into tinderboxes. 
New Mexico has already been hit with multiple megafires, 
including the largest fire in the state's history. This 
destructive fire originated from controlled burns, and has 
raised questions around when and where agencies should utilize 
this tool. So I hope today we can get some answers of who is 
accountable for this situation. We also need to know what steps 
the Forest Service will take to ensure that such catastrophes 
do not happen again.
    The Forest Service budget request for Fiscal Year 2023 is 
$9 billion. I am interested to know how the Forest Service 
intends to make these dollars go as far as possible in order to 
proactively manage our forests. According to the Agency's 
budget, 63 million acres--nearly one-third of our national 
forests--are at high or very high risk to catastrophic 
wildfires. The Agency simply must accelerate its treatment of 
these acres. This includes dramatically reducing hazardous 
fuels, including through logging and thinning projects and 
livestock grazing. Well-planned and executed prescribed-fire 
treatments can also be used, especially when acres have already 
been thinned.
    I am also interested to know whether the Forest Service 
plans to protect sawmills. Sawmills in the West include the 
Black Hills National Forest, and they are struggling to survive 
on or near our National Forests. After 120 years of successful 
partnership with industries, recent actions by the Forest 
Service have jeopardized the survival of the timber business in 
Wyoming and South Dakota. If industry partners like those in 
the Black Hills are forced to close, it will make hazardous 
fuels reduction projects even more expensive and less 
efficient. Such closures will invariably endanger our forests 
and those who live near them. Any successful plan to tackle our 
nation's wildfire crisis must involve maintaining and utilizing 
our sawmill infrastructure.
    Finally, I would like to hear what steps the Agency is 
taking to avoid critical staffing shortages in the wildland 
firefighting workforce. Years of low pay and a host of other 
issues have significantly depleted the federal firefighting 
workforce. As the wildfire season becomes longer and more 
intense by the year, we simply cannot afford to do without 
these brave defenders of our forests and surrounding 
communities.
    So again, welcome to the Committee, and thank you, Mr. 
Chairman, I look forward to hearing the testimony.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we are going to welcome the witness today, Chief Moore, 
and we look forward to your statement, Chief.

     STATEMENT OF RANDY MOORE, CHIEF, U.S. FOREST SERVICE,
      U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; ACCOMPANIED BY AN- 
      DRIA WEEKS, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 
      AGRICULTURE

    Mr. Moore. Great, thank you, Chair Manchin, Ranking Member 
Barrasso, and also members of the Committee. Thank you for this 
opportunity to testify while I discuss how we are making good 
on investments to steward the nation's forests and serve 
America. I will also first focus on three topics that I believe 
are top-of-mind for all of us here. One is our progress to 
support wildfire management and build the capacity of our 
firefighting workforce. Two, our readiness to face another 
tough fire year. And three, our progress to improve forest 
conditions as we reduce fire risk and protect communities.
    We are nearing the most intense part of another tough fire 
year. In preparation for it, we have worked to build and retain 
our firefighting workforce. That starts with our progress to 
provide the pay and the benefits that they deserve. As of June, 
we have hired more than 10,500 firefighters. That is roughly 90 
percent of 11,300 that we had targeted for this year. Thanks to 
Congress, we expect to complete work in the coming days to 
increase pay for firefighters and add a new job series that 
recognizes the specialized work they do on the nation's behalf. 
We have worked hard to cover as many firefighters and pay as 
much as we can. We will pay all firefighters at least $15 an 
hour, fund an additional 350 Hotshots, and support resilience 
and mental health programs. Despite this progress though, 
critical firefighter vacancies still exist. We must seek 
solutions that permanently raise firefighter pay and we must 
also make other system changes that attract and retain our 
talented workforce for the long term. And I want to work with 
you on that.
    We are already confronting a difficult fire year and expect 
activity to increase. In the Southwest, as you mentioned, this 
spring, extreme fire conditions escalated rapidly. They hit 
Preparedness Level 4 earlier than at any time in recorded 
history. The number of acres burned so far has surpassed our 
10-year average. We fully expect active and extreme fire 
conditions to continue across the West and into the fall. We 
are working closely with our partners at state, tribal, and 
federal levels to fully respond to these conditions. We know, 
however, that the long-term work to shift these extreme fire 
conditions rests in our ability to reduce fuels and create 
resilient forests. Our progress to implement our 10-year 
strategy will help us do just that. We are working to 
dramatically increase the fuels and forest health treatments up 
to four times the current treatment levels in the West. We will 
focus on those areas where the wildfire risk to homes and 
communities is highest.
    We thank the Congress for investments in the Infrastructure 
Investment and Jobs Act. These funds help us restore the long-
term health and resilience of the nation's forests and 
grasslands. Working with our partners, we will improve the 
resilience of landscapes and watersheds across boundaries. Just 
last month, we issued $131 million in BIL funding to begin work 
within the ten priority landscapes in the eight western states. 
The Forest Service is also building a workforce to accomplish 
the remaining work. Prescribed fire is an essential tool in the 
aim to reduce fire risk. We have successfully conducted these 
burns in nearly all cases across the country. In rare cases, 
conditions change and prescribed burns move outside planned 
project areas and become wildfires. This happened recently, and 
as a result, I called for a 90-day pause in the use of 
prescribed fire. We are convening a national team from the 
Weyburn fire and Research Community to conduct a review. These 
review results will help us ensure future use of this tool. 
This pause impacts a small portion of planned fuels work 
because we have already completed about 90 percent of the work 
that we had planned to complete for the year.
    The Forest Service is committed to doing our job to sustain 
healthy, resilient landscape for current and future 
generations. We know these lands are essential to America's 
health, economy, and way of life. They are the source of 
drinking water for more than 60 million people living in 3,400 
communities across 36 states. In 2020, the National Forest 
System alone supported more than 370,000 jobs and contributed 
more than $35 billion to the GDP. We know what is at stake if 
we do not act now. To improve the conditions of these forests, 
the Forest Service is committed to action. We will work 
together with states, neighbors, tribes, and partners to meet 
the challenges before us and we will do this with sound science 
as our guide.
    Thank you for your investment and engagement in this work. 
I personally look forward to working with each of you as the 
year goes forward. I look forward to any questions that you 
might have.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Moore follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]  
    
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Chief Moore. We will start with 
our questions now. I will begin.
    In 2019, the Forest Service's deferred maintenance backlog 
was $5.2 billion. In 2021, the number increased to $5.9 
billion. And now, the Forest Service estimates that the backlog 
is at $6.3 billion. In spite of all this, the budget proposed 
to reduce your annual funding for maintaining your facilities, 
roads, and your trails by 12 percent. Two years ago, we enacted 
the Great American Outdoors Act, providing you with $285 
million annually for five years to address your deferred 
maintenance backlog. So Chief Moore, I just have a hard time 
understanding why you are reducing the budget for this after we 
identified a backlog and we worked hard to give you the money 
to pay for it. You are proposing to reduce the budget like it 
is all done and the money is no longer needed because there is 
no more backlog. Can you explain?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, Senator, there still is a backlog, and 
deferred maintenance, by the way, is a still a priority of 
ours. In FY22, to give an example, Congress funded about 13 
percent of our overall maintenance needs. With the GAOA added, 
we covered about 37 percent of the need. And then, when we look 
at what the bill is able to provide on top of that, we are 
covering about 44 percent of those needs. Now, given the high 
priority needs that we have, and particularly as it focuses on 
the wildfire crisis, the President's budget really reflects 
delivering that goal--that protecting our communities, while 
recognizing at the same time that we have needs in many other 
areas, and particularly in facilities.
    The Chairman. Hold on. This budget proposal that came, I 
would assume that you all worked on it. It came from you. It 
increased almost every other Forest Service program. And 
deferred maintenance is the one area that we showed the 
greatest backlog in, and it is what we basically provided 
funding for. It just does not make sense why you picked this 
one, deferred maintenance, for your sacrifice program.
    Mr. Moore. Are we talking about the deferred maintenance 
backlog?
    The Chairman. Yes, yes, I mean, you have gone--it was 5.2, 
5.9, 6.3. We gave you money--$285 million annually for five 
years to try to offset some of that deferred maintenance, and 
it keeps increasing, but then you propose to cut the budget by 
12 percent in that area.
    Mr. Moore. Well, I am looking at it in terms of the overall 
picture that we have to do out on the landscape. And I will say 
that GAOA gave us a tremendous lift in our ability to do that 
for five years. And so when you look at what needs to happen 
out on that landscape, we certainly need to do this. GAOA has 
certainly been a big help to us, but when you look at the 
appropriated funds, the GAOA funds, and then you look at what 
the bill is allowing us to do, we are really at about 44 
percent of those needs.
    So you know, this bill is really trying to, you know, we 
are trying to----
    The Chairman. My time is limited, that is the only thing. 
We are going to have to get into this more, and you and I will 
probably extend this conversation, okay, after this meeting. 
But there is a problem somewhere.
    I understand that some of the Forest Service pile burning 
led to what is now the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. 
Because of this, on May 20th, you instituted a 90-day pause on 
all controlled burns across the National Forest System lands. 
In my national forest in West Virginia, the Monongahela 
National Forest, earlier in May they were burning, and I do not 
know if they are planning to burn more or are now waiting and 
seeing what the impact of your 90-day pause is going to be. So 
what, specifically, is the Forest Service going to be 
evaluating during this 90-day pause and what will be different 
when the pause is over?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, so let me provide a little context. When we 
looked at prescribed burning, 99.84 percent of the time, 
prescribed burning occurs without a problem. What we are 
beginning to see on the landscape is really concerning, and I 
am not as sure as I want to be, nor am I as sure as I need to 
be, that we should not be taking another look at our models 
that we are using for prescribed burning. And a part of it is 
because what we see happening a little bit more frequently--and 
it is not just what is happening down in New Mexico, it is also 
what is happening across the West and other areas. To give you 
an example, Senator, we are seeing, and we believe that it is 
due to climate change and drought conditions--all of that is 
contributing to this unexpected and historical behavior.
    When you look at what is happening to our climate, it is 
really exacerbating the problem. And let me give you an example 
of what we are seeing in New Mexico right now. If you were to 
go to a lumber store and if you were to buy kiln-dried wood, 
that wood would have about 12 percent moisture in it. The 
conditions that we are seeing out in New Mexico, the field 
moisture there is about seven percent. And so, when you look at 
drought conditions, when you look at the rise in temperature, a 
lot of times when those fires hit those kinds of conditions, it 
is really exploding into catastrophic fire.
    The Chairman. Let me finish up on one quick question, 
because my time is running out. I am understanding, and you 
tell me if this is accurate or not, that basically, these large 
land companies that do timbering, they are not allowed to fight 
a fire on Forest Service land. A recently spotted wildfire has 
to be called in and a response has to be Federal Government-
approved. The companies cannot go out and try to stop a fire 
before it gets out of hand. Is that accurate?
    Mr. Moore. I am not sure in what context you may have 
received that information, but----
    The Chairman. I received it from the largest land companies 
that basically are harvesting on forest lands adjacent to 
national forests and on your forests, and they are saying when 
they see a lightning strike, they have to call it in. In the 
mining industry--I come from the coal mining communities around 
my State of West Virginia--every mine has a rescue team.
    Mr. Moore. Right.
    The Chairman. That rescue team is the first responder. They 
respond first. And then they get all the help coming in later 
that is going to be needed, depending on the conditions they 
are facing, to fight that. It makes sense to me. I know we all 
keep talking about how we do not have enough firefighters. 
While we should be supporting our firefighters, our first 
responders are the people already in the woods. They are there 
and can work until the firefighters can come help.
    Mr. Moore. Yes, Senator, if you would, imagine us okaying 
just anyone to go out and fight fires.
    The Chairman. I am not saying anyone. We are saying, 
basically, we have got contracts with companies that are in 
there managing already. They are harvesting the timber. And one 
of the conditions should be that they have a first-responding 
firefighting team.
    Mr. Moore. Well, as of now, we do not know if they are 
qualified to be out fighting fires. And as I mentioned----
    The Chairman. They sure think they could do it a lot better 
than what is being done.
    Mr. Moore. Well, I mean, that is their opinion.
    The Chairman. I know.
    Mr. Moore. But, you know, are they really qualified and 
trained to do that work, particularly in conditions that we are 
seeing out on the landscape? I would hate to be okay with that 
if something happened.
    The Chairman. They are saying that they are seeing a fire 
that could be stopped earlier when there are so many. These 
people have much more expertise than I do, and I am just 
telling you, it does not make common sense. They tell me when 
they see a lightning strike and a fire starts, they are not 
allowed to go and try to stop that fire from spreading. It does 
not take rocket scientists to figure you have got professional 
people willing to help. That is their livelihood, and they are 
watching it burn up. They have a lot of reasons to be out there 
helping you, especially because they can still call it in 
immediately. No different than how we handle rescues as far as 
in mines.
    With that, my time is up. I am so sorry. We will continue 
this, Chief Moore. I do appreciate you being here.
    With that, Senator Barrasso.
    Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
    Chief Moore, the partnership between the Forest Service and 
the forest products industry is critical for the health of the 
Black Hills National Forest, also vital to preserve the 
economic lifeblood of many of the communities surrounding that 
in Wyoming and in South Dakota. The first time we met it was to 
discuss the situation in the Black Hills. At that meeting you 
said your agency would do everything in its power to retain 
industry-driven sawmill infrastructure on the forest. So can 
you update me on what the next steps are to retaining these 
crucial assets?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, Senator Barrasso. I have said from the very 
beginning and I will say it to my death, that without industry, 
we will not be able to manage the forests and the conditions we 
have out there on the landscape. In particular, to the 
situation that you are referring to on the Black Hills, we have 
agreed to try and do all we can to look to see what are some of 
the options for us to keep that facility open because, as I 
said, we need that facility. We have worked out a lot of the 
technical issues surrounding shipping material to other 
locations. Now, it is really just the logistics of how we do 
that. And so we are currently working with our partners, 
particularly within the industry, but in elsewhere, on the 
logistics of making that actually happen, but the technical 
issues we have resolved.
    Senator Barrasso. So will you again commit to ensuring the 
viability of the timber program and your industry partners on 
the Black Hills?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, it is in everyone's best interest that that 
industry continues to grow, not be decreased.
    Senator Barrasso. Moving to another topic, Lower Valley 
Energy is a rural electric cooperative in my home State of 
Wyoming. Lower Valley seeks to increase the safety and decrease 
the cost of natural gas supply for customers near Afton, 
Wyoming. I was there last week. In February 2018, Lower Valley 
applied to construct an eight-inch diameter natural gas 
pipeline. The pipeline would occupy about 119 acres of federal 
land along a distance of a less than 50 miles. The Forest 
Service issued a record of decision approving the project in 
November 2019. But earlier this year--in 2022--two and a half 
years after the approval had come, the Forest Service turned 
around and withdrew that record of decision.
    According to the Forest Service, they did not have the 
authority to approve it in the first place two and a half years 
ago on this small segment of land overseen by the Bureau of 
Land Management. Do you know what the status is of the efforts 
to adjust the route of the pipeline and reissue a record of 
decision?
    Mr. Moore. Senator, I just became aware of that issue last 
night. So I will be happy to get a response and get back with 
you sometime this week.
    Senator Barrasso. We appreciate that.
     What we want is something we have also discussed--the Good 
Neighbor Authority, which allows states and counties and tribes 
to perform restoration and reduction of hazardous fuels on 
federal forests and rangelands. This critically important tool 
leverages nonfederal efforts when the Forest Service is unable 
to do the work alone. So since Good Neighbor projects are 
already being carried out by states, by counties, and by 
tribes, they are poised to shoulder the overhead and the 
administrative burdens themselves. However, we have heard 
concerns from our state partners that the Forest Service 
intends to spend a significant portion of its funding on Forest 
Service overhead and administrative expenses.
    So can you explain how much of that $160 million in the 
budget allocated to these efforts is actually going go to 
projects on the ground?
    Mr. Moore. I am not sure of the information you have, but 
generally, you know, when we look at this, we have--this is 
what we are planning to do because we do not really know how 
much it is going take to do that work. I have also heard rumors 
that we are limited to two percent of those funds for GNA. I 
have not been able to find that anywhere in our direction in 
terms of a limit on how much we spend, but we are well aware 
and we do not want a majority of that to go to Forest Service 
salary. You know, that money is really working with partners 
and bringing partners in to do the work to protect those 
communities. And so I will commit to you that we will take a 
good, hard look at how much we are using for administrative 
purposes or even for salary and expenses, but we understand 
that that is not the intended purpose, even though, some is 
required.
    Senator Barrasso. And as we have seen in recent weeks, 
while prescribed burn fire treatments clearly do have benefits, 
there can be risks as well. And we have seen that. It is my 
understanding that these risks can often be lessened and 
additional wildfire mitigation benefits gained through 
activities like thinning, mechanical thinning. Chief Moore, can 
you elaborate on when it makes sense to carry out thinning 
projects prior to prescribed burns? And I do not know if you 
have any idea of how much of the acreage should be thinned 
before the prescribed fire treatments can be used in a safe and 
effective manner.
    Mr. Moore. So let me provide a context, again. Particularly 
in Ponderosa pine and mixed conifer ecosystems, if you were to 
mimic historical conditions, they had about 40 to 60 trees per 
acre in those conditions. What we have now is upwards of 600 or 
more trees per acre. And so to put a prescribed burn in those 
conditions would not be wise. And so what we have to do is go 
in and thin that area first and then we run a prescribed burn 
through there. And we have great evidence that some of the 
fires we have had in the last year or so--the Bootleg Fire in 
southern Oregon was a perfect example of that, where we had 
three different types of treatments. One was no treatment, and 
it looked like it was new. It burned very hot. One area was 
where we only did thinning, and while it was so much better, 
there was still scorching in those landscapes. But where we had 
the best results was where we went in and did thinning first 
and then we ran a prescribed burn underneath that. And when 
that fire moved across the landscape, it behaved as expected.
    So we know what to do. Now, based on and thanks to Congress 
again, based on the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation, we 
are able to use those types of treatments on landscape levels 
rather than isolated parcels because we know that if we are 
going to make a difference on the landscape, the size of the 
treatments has to match the size of the fires.
    Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Wyden.
    Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Chief, welcome, 
and Chief, I have appreciated our conversations and thank you 
also, Chief, for your help in the eastern Oregon situation with 
our mills.
    Chief, Oregonians were telling me last week, everywhere I 
went, that the shortage of wildland fire positions, if not 
addressed, is on its way to becoming a four-alarmer. Already in 
Oregon there is a 20-percent vacancy rate in these positions, 
and western states are actually trying to borrow firefighters 
from each other. Chief, that is a recipe for trouble. What is 
the most important response? Better pay, decent benefits for 
these courageous firefighters so they can pay their rent and 
buy groceries? That is not the case today according to 
firefighters talking to me. I was told last week, if a 
firefighter in Oregon has a small family and a modest-sized 
roof over their head, it takes four paychecks to make a month's 
worth of rent. And we already see these help-wanted signs 
offering, you know, much better pay in various other positions.
    Given the billions of dollars that Congress provided in the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, particularly for forestry, to 
me, the question from Oregonians is obvious. How is the 
Department going to use that money to fix this shortage of 
permanent wildland fire positions?
    Mr. Moore. Thank you for that question. You know, Senator, 
if I had the ability to set pay for my firefighters, I would 
certainly do that. I am left with trying to implement direction 
that is given through legislation. And you take the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure legislation as an example. We are going to use 
every tool within that legislation to pay our firefighters more 
because they are very deserving of it. It is dirty, nasty, hard 
work and they do deserve better pay. They deserve better 
benefits. They deserve better care in terms of mental and 
physical health conditions out there. And so we are 
implementing the direction that is in the BIL legislation and 
we are doing it with vigor, to be honest with you because we 
know it is needed and we just so appreciate Congress's ability 
to pass that Bipartisan Infrastructure package.
    Senator Wyden. What I would say, Chief, and I am interested 
in working with you, you saw the letter that I sent yesterday. 
We are going to really need, I believe, within two weeks, 
answers to those questions because they go specifically to the 
sections of the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill that let us 
attack this issue. And so is that acceptable to get an answer 
within two weeks?
    Mr. Moore. Absolutely.
    Senator Wyden. Great.
    Next question, Chief, is millions of acres of dead and 
dying material is piling up on the forest floor, and is this 
material a magnet for fire? And as you and I have talked about, 
these fires today are not your grandfather's fires. They are 
bigger. They are hotter. They are more powerful. We have to 
reduce the management backlog. Here is your opportunity to talk 
to the people of Oregon, and I think Senator Heinrich and my 
colleagues, Senator Cortez Masto, all of us in the West are 
seeing the same thing.
    What is the plan for significantly reducing this enormous 
backlog of dead and dying material? What is striking--the 
Chairman, my friend from West Virginia, you know, talked about 
deferred maintenance as particularly as it relates to quality 
of life and recreation and all kinds of very important issues. 
I am now talking about what we have to do to reduce fire risk, 
because that dead and dying material is a magnet for fire. So 
tell America what we are doing to reduce the backlog.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you. So in response to the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law, we created this 10-year strategy to get at 
this problem with vegetation on the landscape. And in this 10-
year strategy, it has three objectives. One, that we are going 
to treat about 20 million acres of National Forest System-
managed lands. We are going to treat an additional 30 million 
acres of other federal, tribal, and private lands. And then, 
the third one is that we are going to have a maintenance 
program so that we can go back in, and it depends on the fire 
interval return, but between 10 to 15 years, to treat the areas 
that we have made this investment in, trying to create those 
conditions.
    Now, let's talk about how we should be preparing our 
community of people to really help us in this vein. One is that 
we need to do it with partners. We cannot do it without 
partners. So we are all in this together. The other thing is 
that if we look at how fires are taking place on the landscape, 
they do not really care about jurisdictional boundaries. And so 
what we have to do is make our treatments at the right scale 
and at the right pace and actually in the right locations. And 
so we are looking at landscape-level treatments, because we 
know that if we treat the land at a landscape level, it is 
going to match the scale of the fires that are taking place 
there.
    So our plan is to look at 50 million acres within this time 
frame to treat in order to make a difference on how the fire is 
behaving across the, particularly, the West.
    Senator Wyden. In the letter I sent you yesterday, as we 
talked, the two big areas are the shortage of firefighters and 
treatment of the backlog. If we can get at those two in a 
meaningful way, we can send a message to the West this year 
that we are really getting tangible progress with respect to 
fire risk, but we have got to do it. I look forward to your 
response within those two weeks. Again, thank you for working 
with me, and I look forward to doing it frequently.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Lee.
    Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chief Moore, before I begin, I want to recognize some 
individuals--the individuals at the Forest Service--for their 
hard work and their dedication. The ranks of the Forest Service 
are filled with people that fight forest fires, who protect 
livestock from predation, facilitate timber harvesting, and 
responsibly conserve public lands for future generations. I am 
thankful to these people and for the work that they do for my 
home State of Utah.
    On an administrative level, I have some concerns that I 
need to express. This Administration claims to support 
infrastructure. It claims that it supports domestic mining. But 
in all truthfulness, when constituents come to me, all I hear 
about is delays--delays in permitting, unanswered calls, and 
regulatory uncertainty, especially when it comes to the Forest 
Service. Take the Resolution Copper Mine in Arizona, for 
example. Copper is a scarce resource and a very valuable, 
important one. It is critical to the deployment of our nation's 
infrastructure, not to mention, in the clean energy future 
President Biden wants to pursue. But the Resolution Copper mine 
started permitting in 2013--2013--and still does not have the 
authorization necessary to start operations. The project was 
moving forward, but President Biden blocked it in March 2021 
after years of regulatory work on the part of the project 
applicant. And more recently, a critical infrastructure project 
in my own state has come up against the Forest Service's 
stalling tactics. Again, the President claims that he is doing 
all that he can, and he is claiming also that he is doing 
nothing to block investment in domestic oil and gas, but I have 
to say his actions seem to tell a very different story.
    Now, I am sure you are aware of the Uinta Basin Railway 
project. This is a proposed railroad that would boost the 
economies on a tribal reservation and in other disadvantaged 
communities by helping to transport isolated petroleum and 
other products. Now, the project itself is self-funded. The Ute 
Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation are partners 
and profit participants in the project. This is a project that 
is supported by the AFL-CIO. The other collaborating agencies 
support it, including the Surface Transportation Board, the 
Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers.
    Now, in the Forest Service's own words, the project, ``Can 
be constructed and operated with minimal adverse impacts of 
concern to environmental resources.'' But for months now, the 
Forest Service has hemmed, hawed, and refused to sign the 
record of decision--the last element in the approval process, 
one that should be perfunctory at this point, given the other 
materials that have been assembled and the other approvals 
granted. I grew frustrated with the lack of movement and so I 
asked to speak to your boss, the Secretary of Agriculture. It 
took over a month--a month, for him to find 15 minutes to call 
me back to talk about the status of the project. Now, when we 
finally did talk, it was cordial. We had a productive exchange 
and we talked about some specific actionable items and he said 
he would check in on some of those items and get back to me. 
That was a couple months ago, and he still has not, neither has 
his staff. And I have to tell you, I am tired of waiting and so 
are the people of Utah and the people of this country who are 
being harmed as a result of this.
    People need to know, it isn't just oil and gas leasing that 
the Biden Administration is blocking, it is also related 
critical infrastructure like the Uinta Basin Railway. And in 
this instance, it is a project for which there is no legitimate 
objection. The necessary predicate approvals have been 
obtained, it is just that the final record of decision has not 
been signed. There is no legitimate reason to withhold 
signature on that. The Biden Administration hopes, perhaps, 
that it can just postpone these projects to death. Projects 
like these are being blocked across the nation and Americans 
are suffering as a result.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. Moore. Chairman, may I respond?
    The Chairman. Yes, very quickly please.
    Mr. Moore. Okay, so a couple things here, Senator. You can 
always call me and I will give you a response right away, at 
least the one that I have. In terms of this project, we do 
recognize this is important to a lot of stakeholders. Where we 
are now is that this EIS that the Surface Transportation Board 
is putting together is under litigation. And so we are 
currently trying to work with our Department of Justice people 
to figure out what is the posture within this litigation, but 
even saying that, I am optimistic that we will have resolution 
with some discussions sometime this month. And so I do not 
think we are far away, but I would point out that it is 
currently under litigation and that has been the holdup.
    The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
    Senator Lee. I would be elated if that were the case. Thank 
you very much.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Chief, I appreciate you being here today. 
You and I have discussed the Forest Service's direct 
responsibility for the Hermit's Peak and Calf Canyon Fire. I am 
not arguing for taking prescribed fire out of our tool box, but 
hundreds of people lost their homes, and we owe it to those 
folks who have lost their homes to understand exactly what went 
wrong. And in talking to people on the ground, and particularly 
researchers in New Mexico, one of the things that I have 
learned in the course of the last couple months is that our 
fires are behaving radically differently right now.
    You mentioned how dry standing timber is, and that is one 
of the things that historically has buffered our fire behavior, 
is the amount of moisture that is in that standing timber, and 
it is in a different place than it has ever been before. One of 
the other things that used to buffer our fire behavior is the 
soil moisture itself. We are putting data into models right now 
that is not capturing the changes in those things. So I want to 
ask you to specifically outline how the Forest Service is doing 
this review so that we know when we plug things into a model, 
they are actually going to behave the way we expect and not get 
out of control. And two, update us on the specific status of 
the Hermit's Peak Fire investigation.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you, Senator.
    Let me start by saying, you know, it literally breaks my 
heart when these fires take place across the country and you 
see the devastation that they have on communities. Just so you 
know, we live in these same communities and we are doing 
everything we can to be responsive to the types of fires that 
we are seeing out there. Some of the behavior that you talked 
about is what we are finding out so far, is that one of those 
fires that started had snow on it, two to three different 
times. Normally, you would think that that should be enough to 
put it out, only to have the conditions change within our 
climate and it reignite outside of the containment lines. That 
is not the only place this happened. This happened across other 
places in the West.
    So we--that was one of the reasons I called a pause. There 
are things happening now that have never happened before. And 
we think that because of the increase in heat--the root system 
is retaining heat, and then as conditions happen, it is moving 
laterally across and reigniting elsewhere. We want to be sure 
of that though. That is an assumption that we think is 
happening. And so that is why I called a pause or timeout to 
get a team of people looking at the different aspects of what 
is going on, including models that we are using to make sure 
that they are still current.
    So the team that I have pulled together, it is a team--not 
just Forest Service. Firefighters from the wildfire community, 
states, research, and Forest Service looking at having 
different perspectives, different opinions about what is 
happening and then how we might want to zero in on the 
specifics of some of the models that are guiding our decisions.
    Senator Heinrich. One of the things that made fighting 
these fires this spring so challenging is we have been 
experiencing wind events that are different than what we have 
had historically. Multiple red flag days in a row. It is hard 
for people to understand why a prescribed fire would be used on 
a red flag day, and that was the beginning of Hermit's Peak. 
Where are we with determining whether that was consistent with 
the guidelines that normally would govern whether to ignite or 
not on any given day?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, you know, the reason we wanted to--well, 
first of all, I have a team that is looking at that particular 
incident reporting back to me on June 21st. And so we will find 
out what happened. We know going into this, the team felt like 
they were within prescription, but then, we need to look at the 
nuances of that and some of the specifics to see what really 
happened out there. And so I will have the results of that 
review around June 21st, and then we will take a look at that 
and do a little sense-making out of it, and then report back on 
what we see.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Hirono.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    It is good to see you again, and I want to thank you in 
another capacity. You came to Hawaii for a field hearing that I 
conducted relating to water security in Hawaii. So I know that 
you are aware that our native forests continue to be attacked 
by invasive species, climate change, human population demands, 
increasing scale and intensity of wildfire, et cetera, and of 
course, water security is therefore impacted by all of those 
aspects. And I am hopeful that the Senate will pass my bill, S. 
554, which would require the Forest Service to study the 
possibility of designating a national forest in Hawaii. We do 
not have that yet, but that does not mean that we are not 
working with you, and in fact, the Forest Service is now a 
partner with us. Two years ago, the Forest Service's Pacific 
Southwest Region, under your leadership, along with the Natural 
Resources Conservation Services, signed an MOU with the Hawaii 
Department of Land and Natural Resources on shared stewardship 
of Hawaii's forests and watersheds. And the purpose of the MOU 
is to maintain and restore healthy, sustainable forests and 
watersheds in Hawaii that continue to provide benefits for all 
of our people.
    So, as we are already halfway through the five-year MOU, I 
hope you can discuss a little bit about the progress made to 
date with the shared stewardship MOU as well as the various 
parties that have been engaged, and then provide additional 
details to my staff following this meeting.
    Mr. Moore. Senator Hirono, yes, first of all, I enjoyed my 
time in the Pacific Southwest Region and particularly going to 
Hawaii and meeting with you and a lot of your constituents.
    Senator Hirono. Who wouldn't?
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Hirono. You are welcome back anytime.
    Mr. Moore. In terms of the possibilities of establishing a 
national forest there, you know, one of the discussions we had 
a few years back was that, you know, we did not want to be the 
government coming in saying we want to establish a national 
forest. We really felt that that needs to be a grassroots 
effort coming from the ground up, requesting that we do a 
study. And so we were requested to take a look at that and that 
is what we are currently doing now. But we want to be very 
careful because the culture, as you know, of Hawaii is not the 
same culture that we have in other parts. And so how do we be 
respectful of the culture, and yet talk about creating 
something that we feel would be beneficial to all of the 
citizens there?
    I would love to have the opportunity to meet with you to go 
over some of the specifics of where we are with that study and 
with that agreement.
    Senator Hirono. Well, thank you for that sensitivity toward 
our Native Hawaiian culture and their practices, and I would 
say that probably you would be welcome to develop a program 
that would actually protect our native forests and flora and 
fauna.
    At one of the budget hearings that we had last year, then-
Chief Christiansen mentioned a 2018 research article reviewing 
that racial ethnic minorities utilize our national forests at 
lower rates than that of their white counterparts, and that 
there would therefore be some efforts to conduct outreach to 
minority populations or communities. So how is that going? Are 
you making progress along those lines?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, we are starting to make a number of changes 
in this area. I will give you an example. Now, as we design our 
recreation facilities, we are designing them to be inclusive of 
all Americans, not just some Americans. And so we are looking 
at redesigning some of our recreation facilities. We have also 
created this equity program to make sure that as we make 
decisions, that that decision is inclusive, and that we are 
looking at equity in how we distribute those decisions across 
the landscape. We are doing that now, even with the 10-year 
strategy that, are we awarding projects and are we working in 
areas that would benefit disadvantaged communities? And so we 
are taking a good hard look at the decisions we make and how we 
make those decisions and the impacts that it could have on all 
of our communities.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you. Attention must be paid, because 
this kind of equity does not happen because we think it is a 
good idea, you actually have to focus on it.
    I just want to mention the Forest Legacy Program and Hawaii 
land acquisitions. The President has included partial funding 
for the Maunawili Valley project, and I want to thank you folks 
for the attention that you are paying to some of our forest 
legacy projects, and including them as priority projects. So I 
will continue to work with you and my colleagues to obtain more 
complete funding for these legacy projects.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Senator King.
    Senator King. Senator Daines is next.
    Senator Barrasso. No, he's going after you, Senator King.
    Senator Daines. I am waiting for----
    Senator King. Okay, thank you.
    Chief Moore, I am very frustrated by this hearing, and I am 
not angry at you because you have to deal with things like 
Secretaries of Agriculture and OMB and those other things, but 
there are some points that I think just cry out to be 
discussed.
    Now, before that, I have a suggestion. We have something 
called the National Reconnaissance Office that is in charge of 
satellites. And I just looked on their website, and one of 
their tasks is assessing the impact of natural disasters such 
as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and fires. I hope that you 
are in touch with the National Reconnaissance Office, and if 
you are not, you should be, because they have amazing 
capabilities that I am not going to go into in this setting 
that could be very helpful in terms of dealing with forest 
fires. I hope you will pursue that. Are you in touch? Do you 
work with NRO?
    Mr. Moore. So we are working with DOD's FireGuard, and 
within FireGuard, we can get real-time detection of disasters, 
including wildfires.
    Senator King. Well, I hope you will pursue that even 
further, because I think you will find that NRO has amazing 
capacity. That is one.
    Maintenance--come on, man. The maintenance budget, it goes 
down. There are only two lines in your whole budget that go 
down. We moved heaven and earth to pass the Great American 
Outdoors Act to deal with the maintenance backlog, and you are 
digging the hole deeper. You have to advocate. You have to 
advocate with the OMB or whoever it is. I hope you will come 
back to me for the record with the value of your assets because 
you should be spending, by national standards, two to four 
percent of your asset value every year on maintenance. I 
guarantee the budget that is in here does not meet that 
standard. So I hope, for the record, you will come back and 
give me the value of your assets. But it is just unacceptable 
that we are doing maintenance backlog work, and you are making 
the problem worse. And by the way, you are not the only one. We 
have observed this in other agencies--in the Park Service, the 
maintenance backlog is growing even while we funded it in the 
Great American Outdoors Act. You cannot argue with the numbers. 
There are only two numbers out of your whole budget that go 
down, and one of them is capital improvement and maintenance. 
Okay? Will you advocate for more maintenance funding, please?
    Mr. Moore. Well, Senator, yes. The short answer is yes. And 
I will be the first one to tell you that we have huge needs. It 
is just how----
    Senator King. Well, they are not going to improve if you 
are cutting maintenance.
    Mr. Moore. Well, but, you know, it is a matter of balancing 
all those needs, and so you know, we are not doing as good a 
job as perhaps we need to in some areas.
    Senator King. Well, I don't know about my other colleagues, 
but I am going to have a hard time advocating in Congress for 
two or three years from now to renew the Great American 
Outdoors Act to deal with deferred maintenance when you guys 
are continuing to defer maintenance. Okay, I have made that 
point.
    The next point is about cutting trees. You testified a few 
minutes ago that a typical acre ought to have 40 trees, but has 
400 trees. You need to cut more trees. In the 80s, it was ten 
billion board feet a year or more. Now, this year it is 2.8. 
That is one of the problems. That is one of the problems with 
these forest fires--there is too much waste--low-value wood 
that is laying around on the floor of the forest because it is 
not being cut and removed. And somehow, you have got to deal 
with this issue though. And I know there is litigation and all 
those kinds of things. Come to us and tell us what is holding 
you up. Why are we only cutting 2.8 instead of your goal, which 
was 4.0? And the real number, I do not know where the right 
number is, somewhere between 10 and 2.8, but I believe it is 
significantly higher.
    Mr. Moore. Senator, yes, our goal was 3.2 billion board 
feet and when you look at----
    Senator King. Well, that is not enough. Ten billion in the 
80s. What is the difference? Were we denuding the National 
Forest in the 80s?
    Mr. Moore. So if I could respond to your question, and I 
will comment there, we are at 3.2. The fires that we had last 
year burned up that 400 million board feet of timber that we 
were planning to have to get us to 3.2. So I responded to the 
goal, the 3.2.
    Senator King. Yes, the goal ought to be two or three times 
higher is what I am saying. I am not talking about this year. I 
am talking about a downward trend in harvesting on federal 
lands that I think is inimicable, it has added to the fire 
danger, and it is killing the sawmill industry in the West.
    Mr. Moore. No, Senator, you are right, but you know, our 
numbers have gone up in the last 20 years. They are constantly 
going up. The problem is compounded, and it is a little bit 
more complex than just----
    Senator King. Would you supply that data, please? Because I 
have not seen that data----
    Mr. Moore. Yes.
    Senator King [continuing]. That it is constantly going up.
    Mr. Moore. I would be glad to supply that data.
    Senator King. I would like to see it.
    Mr. Moore. But we are--you see us on a trend up and if you 
look at what we plan----
    Senator King. Well, it is not fast enough.
    My final point is the pay. In November, the President 
signed the bill. The idea was to get the pay into the hands of 
the workers this summer. It has not happened, and I read that 
what is holding it up is the Secretaries have to determine that 
the position is located within a specified geographic region in 
which it is difficult to recruit or retain a federal wildland 
firefighter.
    I will tell you what that geographic area is--the United 
States of America. Tell Tom Vilsack. Everybody in this room can 
tell you, it is the United States of America. It is difficult 
to retain and hire firefighters anywhere, particularly in the 
West, and to go into this fire season without this pay raise 
that we voted on last November--7 months ago--is outrageous. It 
is unfair to these people. It is unfair to the people that are 
victims of these fires. Eisenhower retook Europe in 11 months. 
You cannot do a pay raise in seven months? Come on. This 
dithering around--we have to have the Secretary find, you know, 
the geographic area. That's easy.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Senator King.
    Senator Cortez Masto.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chief, let me follow up on some of the conversation around 
compensation for wildland fire, so I and our firefighters can 
have a better understanding of this. In the Fiscal Year 2023 
budget request, your Agency looks like it has a note to build 
on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to enhance compensation 
for our wildland firefighters. The request also references the 
Agency's wildland fire management workforce framework to 
analyze and adhere to workforce needs, and you do it in phases. 
And let me just go through those phases because I have a 
question at the end of that. Phase 1 is to conduct an 
assessment of the current wildland fire workforce. Phase 2 is 
that a workforce analysis will be completed. Phase 3 is 
recruitment and retention strategies will be identified and an 
implementation action plan will be developed, and Phase 4 will 
consist of monitoring, evaluation, and revision of the action 
plan based on best practices identified.
    So separate for me the compensation issue that we are 
hearing about now. That is not being put on hold so that you 
can do this Phase 4 analysis? I hope that is not the case. And 
then my next question to you is how long is this four phases of 
an analysis. How long is that going to take?
    Mr. Moore. So we are hoping to have that done this year, 
Senator. I cannot tell you specifically when we will have that 
done.
    Senator Cortez Masto. By the end of this year, you hope to 
have at least the analysis on your workforce retention issues 
done?
    Mr. Moore. Yes.
    Senator Cortez Masto. But the compensation that we are 
talking about, that we have already allocated, is not being 
held up because you want to do that analysis?
    Mr. Moore. No, in fact, the compensation piece, we are 
hoping to have that completed within the next couple of weeks.
    Senator Cortez Masto. When you say completed, what does 
that mean? That increases actually go out to the firefighters?
    Mr. Moore. Well, hopefully they will have paychecks in 
their accounts by the end of this month. That is the goal. That 
is what we are shooting for.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Okay. And what would hold that up? 
Why wouldn't it happen?
    Mr. Moore. Well, I do not think it will be held up.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Okay, so it is not hopeful, it is 
going to happen?
    Mr. Moore. Yes.
    Senator Cortez Masto. All right. Thank you. I appreciate 
that because I do think it is important. I hear from my 
firefighters all the time. I was just back home talking with 
them, and there are concerns, not only about the compensation, 
but I look forward to this analysis that you are doing. But I 
hope it does not take too long, and I hope there is follow-up 
with the workforce retention issue because it is a problem that 
we have right now. You have heard from all of us in the West, 
these fires are happening all the time now. And you mentioned 
that, I believe, in your testimony when you talked about the 
fact that changing environmental conditions have lengthened the 
fire seasons into fire years and worsened the wildfires across 
the West.
    You also point out that this has caused bandwidth issues 
for the agency, and that USFS has only been able to focus on 
treatments where it can, rather than locations with the highest 
need. So can you talk to me a little bit about that? That is of 
concern as well.
    Mr. Moore. Yes, well, you know, in the past it is almost 
like spreading peanut butter, and that has been our method of 
how we allocated funds out, you know, everyone gets a little 
bit. And so we are doing a lot of good work, but it is not at 
the scale that we really need to make a difference on what is 
happening on the landscape. And so where we are switching to 
now is that, you know, everyone doesn't get a little bit, 
because that is not creating the conditions that we need out on 
the landscape. So what we have done, and we are using a 10-year 
strategy as an example--we have mapped what we call firesheds 
all across the country, and that is blocks of land of about 
250,000 acres, because as we do the work on those firesheds, we 
know that that is how we are going to stop how that fire 
behaves when it is set out there.
    So now we have identified 10 landscapes that we want to 
focus on with some of the bill's funding, at first. These are 
just the first 10 places across eight different states. And so 
we are in the process now of going in and doing work within 
those firesheds, because as I said earlier, we know that when 
we have treatments at a landscape level, that fire behaves 
differently. And the Bootleg Fire is one of those examples, the 
Caldor Fire in California was another one of those examples, 
how we saw how that fire behaves when it hit large treated 
areas as opposed to our old method where we have small 
treatment areas. The scale of those fires just blow right 
through those areas. And so the 10-year strategy is really to 
give us a much better chance of providing treatments on the 
landscape at scale to match the scale of those fires that we 
see taking place.
    Senator Cortez Masto. So when you talk about bandwidth 
issues, is that an issue that you do not have enough resources, 
you do not have enough personnel? What is the bandwidth issue?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, you know, so you look at the number of 
firefighters that we might need, and it is not just Forest 
Service firefighters, but it is firefighters within the 
wildfire community, and it is the federal firefighters, it is 
the state firefighters, it is those local volunteer and 
department firefighters. And when you look at the firefighting 
community, based on the fires that we are having now, we do not 
have enough firefighters to really successfully stop fires in 
how they are behaving because they are behaving in a 
catastrophic manner. That needs to continue, but we have to 
really also focus on removing the vegetation off the landscape 
because that is going to give us our best chance to change the 
behavior of that fire so that this conversation is not one-
dimensional. Right now it is all about firefighters. It is all 
about having enough firefighters and whether we do not have 
enough firefighters.
    We need to do things like look at--based on the type of 
material we have on the landscape, will our current facilities 
utilize that material? And the answer is, it will utilize a lot 
of it--a lot of it. We need to be looking at new markets. 
Cross-laminated timber is one of those things that we have to 
really look at, torrefied wood. And so wood innovations is a 
piece we need to be focused on because unless we can work with 
industry and others to expand how they do their work, we are 
not going to be able to utilize that material. What you see us 
doing now is pile burning. We get out and we treat those 
landscapes and we pile it up because there is no market for 
that material. And so how do we work with Congress to create 
markets to utilize that material to get it off the landscape? 
And so that is a part of our focus that we want to look at 
within this 10-year strategy because we know that we need to 
keep the existing industry. We need to keep it and expand it, 
but we also need to look at diversifying that industry as well 
to be able to utilize the small-diameter, low-value material 
that we have on the landscape.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you. I know I went over my 
time, Mr. Chairman, thank you. Chief, thank you.
    The Chairman [presiding]. Senator Daines.
    Senator Daines. Chairman Manchin, thank you.
    I want to talk more about that 10-year strategy, Chief 
Moore. You all launched a 10-year strategy to address the 
wildfire crisis. In fact, you were just talking about how there 
are these increasing catastrophic wildfires and one of our 
mitigation tools here certainly is thinning our forests, these 
treatment projects. You have called to increase treatment 
levels four-fold, which I heartily support. However, as you can 
see, based on five recent Montana examples, projects are 
sometimes delayed for over 10 years and require hundreds of 
thousands of pages of analysis for just one project.
    [Chart depicting delays in Montana forest treatment 
projects follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

    Senator Daines. There are some factors contributing to this 
trend that are outside of your control, and we are trying to 
help you on this, and that is litigation and case law such as 
the Ninth Circuit Cottonwood decision, which I am determined to 
reverse.
    Chief Moore, can you confirm that the bill language that my 
office received on March 3rd is the same bill text that was 
developed through an interagency process and cleared through 
the respective departments?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, Senator, it is.
    Senator Daines. And I wanted just to--my colleagues there 
on the other side of the dais--Chairman, this is the language, 
the bill that the Committee must vote on that was cleared 
through the respective departments that needs to pass without 
changes. That is what we are asking for if we have any hope of 
moving forward here on a four-fold increase in treatment 
projects, which I think we need to do for a lot of reasons.
    [The bill language referred to follows:]
    
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Senator Daines. Chief Moore, some factors contributing to 
the trend shown on the chart behind me are within your control, 
and my question is, will your treatment goals be attainable 
with business as usual or not?
    Mr. Moore. They will certainly not.
    Senator Daines. And what are you doing to improve the NEPA 
process to mitigate some of the litigation risks and hold local 
offices accountable to achieving your new acreage targets?
    Mr. Moore. Well, Senator, respectfully, I think I would 
need your help to do something with NEPA. As we have it now, 
the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation does allow us some 
extra ability to use categorical exclusion as an example, 
particularly as we look at linear rights-of-way. Let me give 
you an example--if we look at trying to treat landscape-level 
treatments, and if you look at power lines as an example, those 
that are linear type CEs that we might be looking at in roads 
as well. When you have the community of people contributing to 
how we rehab that landscape, that gives us a better chance of 
leveraging the funds that Congress has allocated to us, but it 
also gives us a chance to treat the landscape at a much larger 
scale to really make a difference on the landscape.
    So what you will see that is different, that is not 
business as usual, is that we are going to be focused on 
firesheds, particularly where it protects communities, but also 
provide job opportunities for those small rural communities 
where a lot of our national forests are.
    Senator Daines. Yes, and you know, when I was a kid growing 
up, as I have mentioned, I have probably said this line many 
times in this Committee, there were 30 active sawmills in 
Montana when I was growing up. We are down to six. We cannot 
lose that infrastructure for future treatment. We are 
literally--this becomes an existential threat, because if you 
lose that infrastructure, then how do we even get the treatment 
done, assuming we get these litigation issues resolved with 
fixing Cottonwood.
    Last fall, Congress provided the Forest Service with a new 
CE, a new categorical exclusion for fuel breaks in a new 
emergency authority to expedite projects to avert and respond 
to disasters. If fully utilized, these provisions could assist 
the agency in achieving new treatment goals, but unfortunately, 
Region 1, the most litigated region, has yet to use the fuel 
break CE, and headquarters has yet to stand up the emergency 
authority. My question is, why hasn't Region 1 been able to 
utilize the fuel break CE, and when can we expect the new 
emergency tools we put in place, because we have authorized 
that?
    Mr. Moore. Well, you know, I trust that the region is 
looking at what gives them the best opportunity to treat these 
landscapes, but I would certainly, you know, talk to the 
regional forester to kind of ask her, you know, what is her 
response to this question.
    Senator Daines. I would appreciate that, and let us know 
what you find out on it because this is a lost opportunity.
    Montana developed the map shown behind me through a multi-
year collaborative process, which included coordination with 
Region 1 in order to identify our highest priority treatment 
areas.
    [The map referred to follows:]
    
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Senator Daines. Unfortunately, the Forest Service firesheds 
map excludes many of these areas. Could you assure me that the 
Forest Service will continue to prioritize treatment and 
infrastructure funding in areas not designated as a fireshed?
    Mr. Moore. Well, Senator, that is something that we 
probably should have continued dialogue on because we do have 
the ability to make some exceptions, but if you look at, you 
know, these fires and the, you know, just the impact that it 
can have on communities, these firesheds, in many ways, in many 
locations, are protecting the communities. Now, what we are 
trying to do though is, you know, it is hard to make a national 
decision and have it apply appropriately across the whole 
country. And so that is why we are leaving a lot of those 
decisions up at that local level. Our intent is to treat the 
firesheds. Now, how that is carried out at a local level, we 
want local people to be involved in how that decision is made. 
And I will give you an example--where we have collaboratives 
established in some of these communities, they can decide where 
they want to prioritize us to work with them to get this work 
done. And we are seeing that in some locations.
    So the short answer is that I really like local involvement 
in how we carry out leaders' intent at the national level. That 
is my approach.
    Senator Daines. I assure you, what is behind me there was a 
multi-year, collaborative effort. In fact, even working with 
Region 1 folks. And so we need to try to resolve that because 
we have got a disconnect. This is as bottoms-up as it gets. And 
I would appreciate if we could resolve that difference because 
we need to all get on the same page.
    Mr. Moore. Great. I will talk with a regional forester.
    Senator Daines. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Kelly.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And 
Chief Moore and Ms. Weeks, thank you for being here today.
    Chief Moore, in April, both Arizona and Senator Heinrich's 
State of New Mexico were elevated to Preparedness Level 5, 
which is the highest wildfire readiness level for the Forest 
Service. That was in April. That is the earliest PL5 
declaration in both of our states' history. That usually does 
not happen until June. So it was two months early. And 
according to the Forest Service, six out of the top ten high-
risk forests in the Southwest Region are located in Arizona. 
And almost all of those high-risk forests in Arizona are inside 
about a two and a half million-acre area known as the Four 
Forest Restoration Initiative, or 4FRI, as I am sure you are 
well aware of 4FRI. It is understood that if we mechanically 
thin an estimated 560,000 acres in that 4FRI area, wildfire 
severity decreases significantly over that entire 2.4-million-
acre area. And as you realize, we have to start solving this 
problem now, because the longer we wait, this just becomes a 
crisis and kind of a time bomb for a potential fire there.
    So Chief Moore, in January we were out there together, and 
the Forest Service announced an initiative to use some funding 
to start this thinning process. Can you give me an update on 
how that is going?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, so you are absolutely correct. We focused a 
lot around the 4FRI area, Senator, as you know, and we have 
also focused in some areas outside of 4FRI. So we have 
allocated a lot of the monies already for them to begin the 
work in what we call Region 3, the Southwest Region, between 
Arizona and New Mexico. And so they are working on that, but as 
you also know, it takes time to build capacity. And we are in 
the process now of building that capacity. I think one of the 
questions that was asked earlier, you know, that infrastructure 
you need for that capacity like contracting, grants, and 
agreements, that kind of thing--so we are building that now so 
we can add that additional capacity, but we have already 
allocated funding out to the different regions for them to 
begin the work in those firesheds.
    Senator Kelly. Do you feel your budget reflects your 
commitment to accelerating these types of projects in these 
areas like Prescott, Payson, and Williams, Arizona?
    Mr. Moore. I am very thankful to Congress for this 
Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation because it has given us 
the best opportunity that we have had in perhaps a hundred 
years. Now, is it enough? Is it ever enough? I think this $5.5 
or $5.6 billion, it is really a shot in the arm. It is a very 
good beginning. It is not going to fix the problem that we have 
out here on our landscape, but it is sure going to give us a 
good start.
    Senator Kelly. Can you talk a little bit about building the 
capacity? I mean, we are talking about removing millions of 
tons of excess timber and dead parts of trees and, as you know, 
in the law there is a new grant program for investing in 
biomass facilities and wood processing to help remove these 
millions of tons. I understand that there is a 1960s law that 
bans the export of unprocessed timber from Forest Service 
lands. In Asia, there is a market for this biomass. So would 
waiving that ban in these high-risk forests be a revenue 
generator, potentially, for the Treasury or for the Forest 
Service? I know you are going to have to work through this, but 
could you get back to us on that?
    Mr. Moore. Sure, I would be happy to.
    Senator Kelly. Okay. I was surprised with this 1960s law 
that says we basically cannot export this timber that we need 
to remove, and it is millions--millions of tons.
    Mr. Moore. Well, we can actually do an EIS and the 
Secretary can waive that, but you know, there is so much more 
involved and engaged in a decision like that because we do have 
industry here in this country that might want to diversify to 
be able to utilize that material. And when we look at the type 
of material that we might want to ship overseas, do we have the 
ability, by creating a different industry using wood 
innovations, to utilize that material here within the States? 
And the answer, of course, is yes, but how do we do that and 
how do we bring industry into this decision to be part of a 
decision like that?
    Now, we are looking at what that would mean in terms of 
lifting the log export ban, but I would say that, in general, 
if that is agreed upon, industry would probably only agree with 
that as a temporary measure, not as a permanent measure.
    Senator Kelly. All right. The key is building a market for 
this material.
    Mr. Moore. Yes.
    Senator Kelly. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Murkowski, I want to thank you for allowing Senator 
Heinrich to have a follow-up question, because he has to leave 
very quickly, but thank you.
    Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. So Chief, I was recently talking to New 
Mexico State University's Chancellor, Dr. Dan Arvizu, who sits 
on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and 
Technology and one of the things that has become evident to 
that board is that as we pulled people out of fire towers and 
relied more on technology, there was a very linear increase in 
the number of acres burned and the average size of fires. And I 
think many of us assumed that it would be relatively easy to 
replace fire tower personnel with technology that would allow 
us to get on fires fast and attack quickly. And for the 
Chairman's benefit, there are times when the Forest Service 
wants fires to be able to burn for resource benefit, and then 
there are times when we need to go into full suppression, 
depending on what the conditions are.
    I think what we are learning is, during those full 
suppression periods, we are not getting on those small starts 
fast enough to actually extinguish them, and they have to be 
managed as a wildland fire instead of being extinguished. What 
are we doing to make sure that we get on those starts faster, 
and what combination of technology and personnel do we need to 
make sure that we are able to respond in time to actually 
extinguish fires when they need to be in full suppression mode?
    Mr. Moore. So Senator, in terms of the fire towers, we have 
been using some other technology that really replaces a lot of 
what we are doing with the fire towers. To give you an example, 
when I was in California, and looking up in the Lake Tahoe 
area, we used a series of cameras that pan the landscape, that 
can detect any smoke or anything that is going on across the 
landscape. And so we do have the technology and the ability to 
spot fire in even the remote locations where we have the 
technology on board. I mentioned earlier, though the use of 
satellite information also gives us the ability to be able to 
detect a lot of fires out there.
    You know, very seldom are things so easy as I would like 
them to be. I will give you an example--back in 1935, when the 
Chief at the time decided that we are going to put every fire 
out by 10:00 a.m. the next morning. And we were very successful 
at that and very good at that. In fact, we were so good that it 
also has helped to contribute to the problems that we have 
today. And so the question always comes up about managing for 
resource benefits versus full suppression on every fire. And 
there will always be a debate on that, depending on what your 
perspectives are on that issue. And so it is not easy to solve 
or resolve.
    You know, one of the things that we are finding out though, 
is that in these fire-adapted ecosystems, they need fire in 
order to maintain the integrity of that ecosystem. And so the 
question is really not about fire and whether we should use it. 
It is how do we get that land in shape so they can have fire 
across it. And we cannot do that just talking about fire. That 
is why we have to talk about removing the vegetation. We have 
to talk about an industry that can utilize that vegetation. You 
can create jobs, particularly in these small, rural 
communities. And so that discussion has to be multidimensional 
and not only about fire and spotting the fire early because, 
you know, when you look at the facts of what we are doing, we 
are putting out 98 percent of those fires. And this 
conversation that we have in this country is around the two 
percent that we do not get to. How do we manage the two percent 
that get away from us?
    I find that always very interesting, where we do not look 
at the 98 percent. We look at the two percent, and rightfully 
so, because it creates a lot of destruction.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes, the best fires are the ones you 
never read about in the papers because they burn the way we 
expect them to, and I think one of the challenges we have here, 
reflecting the comments from Senator King, in the eighties we 
were pulling 30-inch, 36-inch DBH Ponderosa pine out of these 
forests. People would pay for those. Now, we are pulling eight-
inch, ten-inch DBH trees that we have to pay to be removed. And 
that is a very different dynamic, which is exactly to your 
point of why we need to figure out what to do with that small-
diameter, very flammable fuel, and try to figure out a market 
because right now we are literally having to pay to get that 
out and it is a giant challenge. It is bigger than we seem to 
be capable of accomplishing, at least with the current 
resources.
    Thank you, Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Murkowski.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you to Senator Murkowski for her 
patience.
    Senator Murkowski. No, no, thank you. It is an important 
question because I think we are certainly seeing that in my 
state.
    Chief, good morning. It is good to see you. While we are 
not experiencing fires like New Mexico has seen this year, our 
fire season has begun. Yesterday's paper has three fires up in 
the Southcentral area near Skwentna. One, really concerning, 
out in Southwest, which is what we usually regard as Tundra 
Country, 12 miles from St. Michael. So we are on alert. We have 
had a super, beautiful, fabulous spring and summer. This is an 
Alaska tan that I am sporting. And we love it, but we are 
really afraid right now. The fire alert is so intense and so 
high, the ground is so crackly out in places like Bethel. You 
kind of expect it in places like Fairbanks, but it is not a 
good place right now in terms of fire threat. And so we are all 
on high alert.
    So the question for you this morning is, how can we do a 
better job just in the preparation and mitigation efforts so 
that we can respond effectively when we need to when we are 
called upon? And as you well know, we put $3.3 billion to the 
Forest Service in the Infrastructure bill specifically for the 
mechanical thinning, the controlled burn, the fuel breaks, and 
everything else, to try to address how we can work to reduce 
wildfire risk. Right now, I am hearing that these resources are 
not yet out on the ground. We have not seen them in Alaska. So 
I am wondering if you can tell me if any of the funding from 
the IIJA has been utilized in Alaska, and if not, why is it 
taking so long? The fire is not going to wait for any of us. We 
have the money. We have the authorization. Let's make it 
happen. What more do you need to do in order to get it out on 
the ground?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, so thank you, Senator Murkowski. You know, 
we cannot do business as usual, and what I mean by that is, if 
we just sent the money out, we would do what we have always 
done. And what we are trying to say is we have to have a plan. 
I want to look at what you are proposing to do and then we will 
fund your proposal, particularly where it has community 
support. So that is one thing.
    Senator Murkowski. That could take a long while. When you 
are talking about, you know, taking down people's trees, 
getting that community support, developing those plans, do we 
not have these plans in place?
    Mr. Moore. No, not that component of it, Senator.
    Senator Murkowski. Okay.
    Mr. Moore. Because in a lot of those cases, particularly on 
private lands, we are already having the state fire systems 
type grants and monies. And so when those proposals come in, we 
are already issuing money to states now to work on things like 
that. I was referring to the other piece in terms of looking at 
the whole fireshed, generally, but you know, to talk 
specifically about your location, I would have to look at what 
is really being requested in Alaska.
    Now, in terms of fire where we have the conditions that you 
describe, we do have the ability now to pre-position resources 
when we have a high chance of fire taking place in these 
locations. And so we have those types of abilities now, but in 
terms of helping landowners remove trees from around their 
homes, a lot of times we do that in partnership with the state.
    Senator Murkowski. So let me ask though, again, more 
specifically, we got a lot of money through the Infrastructure 
Act.
    Mr. Moore. Yes.
    Senator Murkowski. That is directed toward building out 
these fuel breaks, and you know, I can assure you that there 
are plans in place for how we can work to do just that, how we 
can do more when it comes to the prescriptive thinning. Quite 
honestly, we have got so much that is dead and still standing 
from spruce bark beetle. You have heard me talk about it. It 
has wiped out the Kenai Peninsula. It is all the way up the 
road system, almost to the Denali area--unprecedented, just 
from last year, how quickly that has spread and migrated 
northward. And it is all just standing there waiting for the 
next lightning strike.
    So there are lots of plans out there. So what I am not 
hearing is your assurance that yes, we are getting these funds 
out the door. We are doing so in a way that meets the urgency 
of the situation, whether you are in Alaska or whether you are 
in other parts of the country. So what is it that you need from 
me, what is it that you need from the State of Alaska, to help 
direct more of these monies more readily?
    Mr. Moore. So as of now, we have sent out about $133 
million, and I cannot tell you what part Alaska got without 
consulting with the staff there. The process also is to have 
proposals come in from the different regions on what they are 
proposing to do, and we are funding those proposals. Some 
regions, and I do not know specifically about Alaska, but I 
will look into it, are trying to create capacity so that they 
can start implementing some of those projects and some of those 
programs.
    So we will look and see specifically where Alaska is at 
because I do not know if Dave has sent in any projects just 
yet.
    Senator Murkowski. Okay.
    Mr. Moore. We are handling that through our 10-year 
strategy team, but Senator, I will certainly look into that and 
can get back with you on what Alaska is proposing.
    Senator Murkowski. Well, maybe what we might do is either 
set up a meeting with us or some folks on your team, because I 
not only want to ask a little more specifically about what we 
are doing with the IIJA funds on mitigation, but I also have 
some very specific questions and want to update you with some 
of the permitting issues that we are encountering right now, 
more than a little bit of resistance out of the Chugach 
National Forest when it comes to some of our outfitters there--
specifically, Six Mile Creek capacity. It is just a situation 
where it seems like it is a good example of the Forest Service 
not being a good partner to our concessionaires and to our 
neighbors in the communities.
    So I need to address that and we must, must, must be able 
to sit down and resolve this Chugach land study issue. We have 
been just pointing fingers back and forth between Forest 
Service and BLM, and I want you to be able to commit to me that 
you will sit down with BLM, my staff, and let's finally resolve 
this. It is an easy issue and it commands an easy answer. So I 
will look forward to that. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Senator Hickenlooper.
    Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and Chief, what 
a pleasure to see you again and thanks to both of you for your 
service. Ms. Weeks, you have not gotten to talk as much and 
that is because you have somebody so knowledgeable and in the 
hot seat, as it were, beside you.
    I know you will not have this off the top of your head, and 
I did not put it over to your office earlier, but I know most 
of the governors who have dealt with wildfires on an increasing 
basis are painfully aware of the difficulty to measure success 
when you are fighting fires. In other words, what is the cost 
benefit? Do you measure that only in terms of private property 
that is at risk? And so often, you can get a fire under control 
and then have the wind change and all that work becomes 
meaningless.
    So do you guys have a program, and you can just give a 
quick one-sentence answer, and I will check back with you on 
this. What are the processes in the programs by which you are 
measuring the expenditures versus their benefit?
    Mr. Moore. So we do have some examples on the--Watershed in 
California, we worked with a number of partners looking at the 
avoided cost analysis. And we looked at the ideal of if we made 
an investment in that landscape to prevent or avoid a fire, 
here is the cost that we could avoid. And very conservatively, 
it is almost a ten-to-one type of a cost that we could avoid if 
we invest in improving the health and resilience of that 
landscape.
    Senator Hickenlooper. All right.
    Mr. Moore. So we do have a couple of those studies across 
the country that we have relied on.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Well, I am getting more granular. 
That is the nature of a governor, that we are always getting 
more granular. On the actual process of fighting the fire, how 
much water you use, do you use surfactants, is it--expensive 
aerial attacks are sometimes early in a fire much more 
successful, sometimes less so later on. I am curious about how 
to measure that success.
    Mr. Moore. No, we have not looked at it in that detail. 
Perhaps that is something that we should.
    Senator Hickenlooper. A couple governors have done small 
projects, but the other thing is, we had some success in 
Colorado working with the insurance industry and trying to, 
with that wildland urban interface, the so-called WUI, I am not 
sure who came up with that acronym, but it is paying rich 
dividends to this day. So many of the people that live in that 
wildland urban interface do not take the basic fire prevention, 
the protections, clearing around their homes, making sure you 
do not have wood shakes on your roof, which people do still, 
despite all the wildfires we have seen. And really, we are all 
paying for that. Every single citizen in America is paying for 
that with increased insurance cost.
    Is there some way the Forest Service, do you think, could 
take some of those efforts that have been done in these 
laboratories of democracy around the country and maybe convene 
a national discussion about how does the insurance industry, 
that appears to have a self-interest, there seems to be a very 
likely partner if we are going to try to bring a public-private 
partnership to help the Forest Service, again, diminish losses 
when you do have fires?
    Mr. Moore. Yes, you know, it is interesting that you bring 
that up because I do believe we have one example in 
California--Northern California, around the Tahoe area, where 
the insurance industry is a part of that project. And a part of 
the reason we wanted to engage the insurance agency in this 
work is because we were finding that they were dropping 
homeowners' insurance, particularly if they live in a high fire 
danger area. And so without getting into the nuts and bolts of 
that, you know, we asked, is it possible that if you are taking 
our maps that say high fire danger areas, is it possible that 
if we go in, the community go in and improve that landscape to 
not be as dangerous as before, would you remove that sticker so 
that they would retain insurance?
    So we are experimenting with that now, Senator, and I am 
very interested in what the results say, and I am very 
interested too as we engage the insurance industry, how are 
they viewing that and what kind of progress can we make. We 
know that it is a problem in many areas, particularly these 
wildland urban interface areas, but rather than scaring the 
life out of people removing their insurance, is there a way we 
can work through what their concerns are, but also provide 
protection or some other security for the homeowners.
    Senator Hickenlooper. No, that kind of alignment of self 
interest is where good things happen, and I think you guys 
might be in the right place to bring together those interests 
and see if you can get them to align.
    Anyway, Chief, you are the right person, at the right time. 
I am so grateful that you are in the position you are in. I 
look forward to working together.
    I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Cantwell.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thanks for 
holding this important hearing. I cannot tell you how important 
it is to my state and to many of my Western colleagues.
    Chief Moore, thank you for your leadership and dedication. 
I would say over the last several Congresses, more and more of 
our colleagues have given the Forest Service more and more 
tools to deal with fire. At the same time, we are seeing an 
acceleration of hotter, drier conditions, more fire starts, and 
then the strategies having to be rethought, reconfigured at the 
U.S. Forest Service. One of the issues was to end fire 
borrowing, because that wasn't helping us plan for the 
resources that we needed, and then we gave the firefighting 
workforce the technology tools, increased the drone capacity, 
increased the mapping, now focusing on weather. The Chairman 
mentioned at our last hearing about hasty response and the fact 
that we need to get a more hasty response system that is an 
integrated--we say in the Northwest an integrated county, 
township, community approach to helping put out fires quickly 
in coordination, stopping fires early because we have so many 
more fire starts.
    We just visited with the NOAA facility in Spokane on the 
weather forecasting and the incident command unit from Idaho 
was there. They are the ones that do all the mapping. And we 
are now seeing how weather and smoke forecasting is also very 
critical in all of this, too--in giving people notice. So we 
have given you more resources. I think you have $5 billion out 
of the $8.9 billion. So five of that is dedicated for fighting 
fires. And my colleague from Alaska is asking this question: 
besides better caching, which we are all for better caching and 
putting resources on the ground, I have questions about our air 
capacity and where we are with our air capacity. We previously 
had this discussion with the Forest Service, wanting them to 
have more ready resources. The Forest Service, I think at that 
time, did not want to be in the fleet management business, and 
said they would rather contract. But how is it that we are 
going to get--how are you viewing those air resources now that 
we know we have so many more fire starts, we have so much more 
capacity, and as our colleague, Senator Hickenlooper was 
saying, we want to know that we have that early-phase retardant 
or water to help with the system. How is the Forest Service 
managing that given the huge increase in fire starts?
    Mr. Moore. So as you may know now, we have access to about 
27 VLATs--very large air tankers--and also the large air 
tankers and so far, we are not running across a need for 
additional tankers in this particular case and at this 
particular time. I do not know why the decision was made in the 
past about the aircraft, but we do know that they are very 
expensive to maintain if Forest Service had ownership of them, 
but you know, there are pros and cons about that. And so I will 
not really go into that because I am not familiar with what 
went into that decision many years ago.
    In terms of our aircraft, we certainly need aircraft to 
help us with the fire suppression. We also know that there are 
limitations on aircraft as well, because aircraft do not put 
out fires, it is boots on the ground where the fires are really 
put out. And so that is why our focus has been on trying to 
improve our firefighting capability on the ground, but also 
taking advantage of some possible technology that we are not 
looking at. But we certainly are in support of the aircraft. We 
need it. We just know that aircraft alone will not put the fire 
out.
    Senator Cantwell. Right. What we need from the Forest 
Service is, given the amount of fire season we are going to 
see, how do you believe that that air mobility plays into it? 
And I will give you an example. In our state, when we had the 
Okanogan Complex in the central part of our state, it was so 
bad it consumed all the firefighting resources, and several 
counties literally were left to fend for themselves. Literally, 
the elected officials told me it was whatever volunteers they 
could get. They had communication outages because 
infrastructure had burned down. They could not even communicate 
to people that the fire was spreading. They were on their own. 
They wanted to know where the air support was. That was their 
question to me. Where is the air support?
    So in this case, I am not even sure they were thinking 
about a big tanker, but I do think they were thinking about 
some resources that could help given the number of starts that 
were happening throughout the county. And again, we left a 
small geographic area to their own defenses. I mean, we left 
Americans basically saying, go ahead and fight this fire 
complex on your own. And I just think that we have to have an 
answer from the Forest Service about that level of resources 
needed with the volume across the mapping that NOAA has now 
given us for the weather forecast. What really would be the 
level of air support that we would like to have? So forget for 
a second whether you have contracted it yet, whether you have 
it, whether any proposals are about ownership. We are not even 
proposing that. We are just saying, given this continued 
increase in fire starts and drier conditions and more 
volatility, what would regional air support look like and what 
benefits would it have?
    Then if we say, well here is its limitations, great, but 
for us, because of the Cascades, you know, we have some pretty 
challenging areas, and particularly with our blowout condition 
rules, which are, do not go into these areas when you have 
serious weather events that are going to put firefighters' 
lives at risk, some of the only resources you have, at that 
point, are that air mobility, and so I just want to get that--
we will write it up for the record, and you can give us some 
comments.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    I have one more question, real quick, and I know that 
Senator King has one.
    Mine, very quickly, is this, Chief. Enacted in March 2019, 
the Dingell Act mandated that by March of 2021, the Forest 
Service provide safety gear to its firefighters, including GPS 
locators and real-time maps of wildfires. Fifteen months past 
the deadline in statute, the Forest Service has not equipped 
the firefighters with these pieces of safety gear, despite the 
technology having been commercially available on the shelf for 
many, many years, and despite Congress having appropriated $15 
million for this. So maybe you have an explanation for that, 
sir.
    Mr. Moore. So Senator, no one believes in this more than I 
do.
    The Chairman. We know, sir. Your sincerity comes through, 
and we are very appreciative.
    Mr. Moore. Well, let me say that----
    The Chairman. There is something wrong.
    Mr. Moore. Yes, let me say that we did experiment to see 
how that technology is used, and there is a use for it, a 
valuable use for it. You threw me because you talked about that 
it was funded, and my staff is telling me that it was not----
    The Chairman. No.
    Mr. Moore [continuing]. Funded.
    The Chairman. If there is a difference there, we will get 
together with our staffs, but----
    Mr. Moore. I will certainly follow up on that piece of it, 
Senator. But I will tell you----
    The Chairman. We appropriated $15 million for it, and the 
appropriation was disbursed.
    Mr. Moore. I will look into that.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Mr. Moore. But I will tell you that I do believe and I am 
100 percent supportive of being able to know where our 
firefighters are at any given time----
    The Chairman. Let us put our staffs together to make sure 
we are on the same page and we can help you. Maybe we can help 
each other a little bit here, okay?
    Mr. Moore. That would be great.
    The Chairman. Senator King.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    I want to end our interaction on a more positive note than 
perhaps was apparent in my prior questioning. One of the things 
that has become apparent today is that we have got a different 
forest than we have had in the past, in the sense of the number 
of smaller diameter trees. And I think one of the most 
important things you have said today was that we need to find 
new markets. And I want to commend you for the work in the 
timber innovation area. For example, we have a company in Maine 
that is just starting up in an old paper mill, making 
insulation from wood products, and it is very promising. You 
mentioned cross-laminated timber. I am a huge believer in that.
    So I hope you will continue that. I think one of the most 
fruitful areas of work is research and development in timber 
innovation, which, in turn, will help us to solve these other 
problems of how to create a market for this lower-value wood 
that will help us to manage the forest more efficiently and 
effectively. So I commend you for that work, and any way we can 
be of assistance, please let us know.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator King. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
    And with that, we have concluded, and what we will do is, 
we will wait until the end of the day tomorrow for any 
questions to be submitted.
    Mr. Moore. So Senator, may I correct one of the statements 
there. The number of firefighters, to be specific, it is about 
10,184 firefighters is what we currently have on board.
    The Chairman. Okay. The record is duly recorded.
    With that, I want to thank you very much for being here 
today, and for all your answers, and I look forward to working 
with you, and getting our staffs together here to correct some 
of the concerns we may have.
    With that, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                      APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

                              ----------                              

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 



                                   [all]