[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING THE CHALLENGES FACING FOREST MANAGEMENT, WILDFIRE
SUPPRESSION, AND WILDLAND FIREFIGHTERS AHEAD OF THE 2023
WILDFIRE YEAR
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL LANDS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-28
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
or
Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
52-228 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
BRUCE WESTERMAN, AR, Chairman
DOUG LAMBORN, CO, Vice Chairman
RAUL M. GRIJALVA, AZ, Ranking Member
Doug Lamborn, CO Grace F. Napolitano, CA
Robert J. Wittman, VA Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, CNMI
Tom McClintock, CA Jared Huffman, CA
Paul Gosar, AZ Ruben Gallego, AZ
Garret Graves, LA Joe Neguse, CO
Aumua Amata C. Radewagen, AS Mike Levin, CA
Doug LaMalfa, CA Katie Porter, CA
Daniel Webster, FL Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, PR Melanie A. Stansbury, NM
Russ Fulcher, ID Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
Pete Stauber, MN Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY
John R. Curtis, UT Kevin Mullin, CA
Tom Tiffany, WI Val T. Hoyle, OR
Jerry Carl, AL Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Matt Rosendale, MT Seth Magaziner, RI
Lauren Boebert, CO Nydia M. Velazquez, NY
Cliff Bentz, OR Ed Case, HI
Jen Kiggans, VA Debbie Dingell, MI
Jim Moylan, GU Susie Lee, NV
Wesley P. Hunt, TX
Mike Collins, GA
Anna Paulina Luna, FL
John Duarte, CA
Harriet M. Hageman, WY
Vivian Moeglein, Staff Director
Tom Connally, Chief Counsel
Lora Snyder, Democratic Staff Director
http://naturalresources.house.gov
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL LANDS
TOM TIFFANY, WI, Chairman
JOHN R. CURTIS, UT, Vice Chair
JOE NEGUSE, CO, Ranking Member
Doug Lamborn, CO Katie Porter, CA
Tom McClintock, CA Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Russ Fulcher, ID Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,
Pete Stauber, MN CNMI
John R. Curtis, UT Mike Levin, CA
Cliff Bentz, OR Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Jen Kiggans, VA Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
Jim Moylan, GU Raul M. Grijalva, AZ, ex officio
Bruce Westerman, AR, ex officio
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CONTENTS
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Page
Hearing held on Tuesday, May 16, 2023............................ 1
Statement of Members:
Tiffany, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Wisconsin......................................... 1
Neguse, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Colorado................................................ 19
Westerman, Hon. Bruce, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Arkansas.......................................... 21
Statement of Witnesses:
Panel I:
Hall-Rivera, Jaelith, Deputy Chief, State and Private
Forestry, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Washington, DC................................ 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Questions submitted for the record....................... 8
Rupert, Jeffery, Director, Office of Wildland Fire, U.S.
Department of the Interior, Washington, DC................. 11
Prepared statement of.................................... 13
Questions submitted for the record....................... 18
Panel II:
.............................................................
Dias, Matt, President, California Forestry Association,
Sacramento, California..................................... 43
Prepared statement of.................................... 44
McNair, Ranotta, Board Member, National Association of Forest
Service Retirees, Bend, Oregon............................. 49
Prepared statement of.................................... 50
Schultz, Courtney, Associate Professor of Forest and Natural
Resource Policy, Colorado State University, Fort Collins,
Colorado................................................... 54
Prepared statement of.................................... 55
Bolin, Hon. Greg, Mayor, Paradise, California................ 60
Prepared statement of.................................... 63
Additional Materials Submitted for the Record:
Submissions for the Record by Representative Bentz
The National Wildfire Suppression Association, Letter
dated May 18, 2023..................................... 74
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON EXAMINING THE CHALLENGES FACING FOREST MANAGEMENT,
WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION, AND WILDLAND FIREFIGHTERS AHEAD OF THE 2023
WILDFIRE YEAR
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Tuesday, May 16, 2023
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Federal Lands
Committee on Natural Resources
Washington, DC
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The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:20 p.m. in
Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Tom Tiffany
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Tiffany, McClintock, Fulcher,
Stauber, Curtis, Bentz, Westerman; Neguse, Porter, and
Kamlager-Dove.
Also present: Representatives Duarte and LaMalfa.
Mr. Tiffany. The Subcommittee on Federal Lands will come to
order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the Committee at any time.
This Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the
challenges facing forest management, wildfire suppression, and
wildland firefighters ahead of the 2023 wildfire year.
I ask unanimous consent that the gentlemen from California,
Mr. LaMalfa and Mr. Duarte, be allowed to participate in
today's hearing from the dais.
Without objection, so ordered.
Under Committee Rule 4(f), any oral opening statements at
hearings are limited to the Chairman and Ranking Minority
Member. I therefore ask unanimous consent that all other
Members' opening statements be made part of the hearing record
if they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 3(o).
Without objection, so ordered.
I will now recognize myself for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. TOM TIFFANY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN
Mr. Tiffany. The topic of today's hearing is the 2023
wildfire year. What used to be called fire seasons has now
morphed into fire years, as wildfires blaze year-round. In the
last 5 years alone, we have lost over 38 million acres of land
to wildfire, a total area that is nearly as large as my home
state of Wisconsin.
Until recently, our country had never lost more than 10
million acres in a year. But we have now hit that ominous mark
three times in less than a decade. Behind these statistics are
lives tragically lost, homes and entire communities destroyed,
wildlife habitat turned into moonscapes, and untold levels of
air and water degradation.
It is important that we recognize the immense suffering
this crisis is inflicting upon Americans year after year. The
people and communities on the front lines of these fires are
not just statistics. Today, we will hear a personal account of
that devastation from Mayor Greg Bolin, whose town of Paradise,
California endured the deadliest and most destructive fire in
California history in 2018. Eighty-five lives were tragically
lost during the Camp Fire, and over 18,000 structures were
destroyed.
[Slide.]
Mr. Tiffany. The posters behind me show the sobering
devastation that this unprecedented crisis has caused, and will
cause again unless we drastically change course.
We must also recognize the human impact this crisis is
having on our nation's wildland firefighters. We must stop
putting our brave wildland firefighters into unwinnable
situations year after year as they are asked to fight
increasingly severe fires. The mental, physical, and emotional
toll these longer and hotter fire assignments are having on
wildland firefighters must be addressed. Too many of our
firefighters are getting severely injured or dying as a result
of dangerous conditions on the ground.
We know that proper fuels treatments provide the conditions
necessary to contain wildfires, and that is an important piece.
It is also paramount that we provide the best tools and
strategies needed to quickly and aggressively fight wildfires.
Finally, we must ensure that the brave men and women
serving in this important profession are equitably compensated
and provided with resources and benefits they deserve.
Encouragingly, we are no longer debating the cause of this
crisis in this Committee. There is growing consensus that
active forest management must be restored to the overgrown and
unhealthy forests fueling our catastrophic wildfire crisis. And
I am encouraged to see that all of the witnesses before us
today appear to agree with that important premise.
However, I must caution that much work needs to be done to
address the systemic hurdles blocking the type of paradigm
shift needed to truly confront this issue. My Democratic
friends have consistently argued that increased funding for
hazardous fuels treatments and wildfire suppression is all that
is needed to confront the crisis. I would like to encourage my
friends to recognize the reality that the influx of funds
provided to our forest management agencies have thus far failed
to deliver the increase in pace and scale of fuels treatment
that is truly needed.
Onerous environmental regulations and frivolous litigation
from extreme environmental groups remain the primary obstacles
blocking the type of forest management necessary to truly turn
the tide against this crisis. The fact that it takes over 3
years to begin a mechanical treatment and over 4 years to
conduct a prescribed burn on Federal lands should demonstrate
to all that our system is clearly broken, and funding alone
will never overcome this. It is incumbent on us in Congress to
provide the tools necessary to overcome the blockades that have
unquestionably led us into this present predicament.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here today.
I look forward to this important discussion as we examine where
we have been, what we can expect in the present, and where we
need to go to truly confront this historic wildfire crisis.
I will recognize the Ranking Member when he arrives. Now, I
guess I would like to turn to the witnesses.
Let me remind the witnesses that, under Committee Rules,
you must limit your oral statement to 5 minutes, but your
entire statement will appear in the hearing record.
To begin your testimony, press the ``on'' button on the
microphone.
We use timing lights. When you begin, the light will turn
green. At the end of 5 minutes, the light will turn red, and I
will ask you to please complete your statement.
I would now like to introduce Ms. Jaelith Hall-Rivera, who
is the Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry for the U.S.
Forest Service.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JAELITH HALL-RIVERA, DEPUTY CHIEF, STATE AND
PRIVATE FORESTRY, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Thank you. Chairman Tiffany, Ranking
Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
this opportunity to testify on the upcoming 2023 fire year, the
ongoing wildfire crisis, and how we are working to improve
forest health and protect communities.
I have seen firsthand the destruction that wildfires have
on our communities, infrastructure, and our natural resources.
Wildfire risk has reached crisis proportions and wildfires are
having more and more impacts each year.
I want to personally thank our partners who answer our call
for assistance to bolster our capabilities. We are grateful for
all of our partners around the country and around the world who
continue to pitch in to help our nation through each difficult
fire year.
As the size and severity of fires has grown, so too has our
need for fire personnel. As we approach the busiest part of the
2023 fire year, the Forest Service aspires to hire 11,300
wildland firefighters nationwide. As of May 6, we have hired
9,319 firefighters, about 82 percent of our goal. While we are
cautiously optimistic we will reach our hiring goals, we know
that that is still not enough. That is why the President's 2024
budget proposes to hire 970 additional firefighters in the
Forest Service.
In addition, for the 2023 fire year the Forest Service will
have up to 24 next-generation air tankers, more than 200
helicopters, and more than 900 engines available to manage
wildfires.
Wildland firefighters are the backbone of our ability to
protect communities and vital infrastructure from wildfires.
The only way we are going to attract people to this challenging
and hazardous work is to pay them fairly. Federal wages for
firefighters have not kept pace with wages offered by state,
local, and private entities. The workforce reforms proposed in
the President's 2024 budget request and supporting legislation
will increase Federal and tribal firefighters' pay, invest more
in their mental and physical health and well-being, improve
their housing options, and expand the number of permanent
wildland firefighters.
These reforms build on the temporary pay increase that was
provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. And
thanks to that legislation, more than 12,000 Forest Service
firefighters received a temporary pay increase. However, the
funding for that pay supplement will be spent by the end of
September 2023, unless Congress intervenes to avert a pay
cliff.
To ensure pay continuity in the 2024 budget, we are
proposing a permanent pay increase for all firefighters. Our
budget proposal includes a request for $180 million in support
of a special base rate salary table for firefighters and
incident standby pay for all responders that are mobilized to a
fire assignment. This new pay table was calculated to increase
the total annual compensation to a level commensurate with
state and private-sector wildland firefighters. For example, an
entry-level Forest Service firefighter would receive
approximately a 34 percent increase in pay under the new pay
table.
And unlike the temporary increase in BIL, a permanent base
pay increase is an investment in our firefighters' future, as
an increase in basic pay leads to an increase in retirement
benefits. We will need Congress to pass special legislation
that authorizes the new pay table, and I look forward to
working with this Subcommittee on that.
We are working hard to make a difference and improve the
lives of our firefighters. Together, we can make a difference
in the quality of life for our firefighters that protect our
own quality of life.
In addition to paying firefighters fairly, we must support
their mental and physical health. The 2024 budget proposal
calls for an increase of $10 million to enhance support for
firefighters' mental and physical health and well-being.
The budget also proposes a $50 million investment in
housing. We recognize that addressing the housing crisis must
happen now, as it impacts our ability to recruit and retain our
workforce.
Together, these efforts would help address long-standing
recruitment and retention challenges. These investments,
totaling $569 million, will ensure the Forest Service can
continue meeting evolving mission demands as both the frequency
and intensity of catastrophic wildfires are expected to
increase.
Long term, we must address work on the ground to ultimately
address the wildfire crisis. Over the last two decades, we have
witnessed what has become a now familiar pattern: bigger and
more destructive wildfires that are extremely costly and
challenging to suppress. This growing wildfire crisis created
the need for a new land management strategy. We, in the Forest
Service, are in our second year of carrying out our wildfire
crisis strategy, which increases science-based fuels treatments
by up to four times previous treatment levels, calling for
treating up to 20 million additional acres of national forest
system lands and 30 million additional acres on other
landownerships.
The Forest Service is very grateful to Congress for
providing the resources through the BIL and Inflation Reduction
Act to seed our initial work in the wildfire crisis strategy.
In closing, I want to reiterate the agency's commitment to
keeping our communities and firefighters safe as fire seasons
grow longer and more severe. The dedication, bravery, and
professional integrity of our firefighters and support
personnel is second to none. We greatly appreciate the
significant resources Congress has provided to help us take
initial steps to address the wildfire crisis, and we look
forward to working with this Subcommittee to continue providing
world-class suppression response and reducing the severity of
wildfires in our country. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Hall-Rivera follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jaelith Hall-Rivera, Deputy Chief, United States
Department of Agriculture--Forest Service
Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
to discuss wildfire management and the 2023 Fire Year. Wildfires
threaten urban and rural communities, Tribal Nations and their
interests, farm and ranchland, municipal water supplies, timber,
recreation sites, and important wildlife habitat.
The Forest Service has a continuing need and responsibility to
partner with all communities to prepare for wildfires. The Forest
Service does not work alone in managing wildfires across the nation--
wildfire requires an all-of-government response, including major
contributions from our Federal Partners, the Departments of the
Interior and Defense, and the States, Tribes, and local governments,
contractors, and volunteer organizations. These partnerships have
evolved over many years, creating a robust interagency capability to
support wildfire suppression across the country.
Over the past 20 years, wildfires have become larger, last longer,
exhibit more extreme fire behavior, and are more challenging to contain
than ever before as a result of accumulating fuels, a warming climate,
and expanding development in the wildland-urban interface. Wildfire
risk has reached crisis proportions. This increased frequency of fire
in the wildland-urban interface continues to severely impact lives,
communities, infrastructure, and cultural and natural resources.
Although drought conditions continue for nearly half the country, it is
too early to predict with any certainty the fire activity for the 2023
fire year. Long-term relationships with our federal, state, Tribal, and
local governments and our contracted partners ensure we have a strong
workforce and the necessary resources to provide a safe and effective
wildfire response.
I want to personally thank our partners who answer our call for
assistance to bolster our capabilities. States also provide significant
assistance with their National Guard units. We are grateful for all of
our partners around the country and around the world who continue to
pitch in to help our nation through each difficult fire year.
2023 Fire Year
There is always the potential for significant wildfire events and
growth throughout the nation depending on local conditions. The
National Interagency Fire Center's Predictive Services provides an
updated four-month National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook
on the first day of each month. The current May-August 2023 outlook
indicates drought will continue on much of the southern and central
High Plains. However, drought improvement is likely across the rest of
the Plains, in the Mid-Atlantic, and on the Florida Peninsula. Above
normal fire potential is forecasted across portions of the Upper
Midwest and western Great Lakes in June, with above normal potential
across portions of northern Nevada, southwest Idaho, eastern Oregon,
and central Washington for July and August. Below normal fire potential
is forecasted along the southern California coast and much of northern
New Mexico and Arizona into the southern Great Basin. In June, below
normal potential is expected to expand into most mountains in
California, the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, and the New Mexico central
mountain chain, but a small area of east-central Nevada and west-
central Utah will return to normal. For July, below normal potential
will continue in the Sierra and northwest California mountains, but
normal potential will return to the rest of California, Southwest, and
southern Great Basin. Below normal significant fire potential will
continue across the southern Sierra into August.
Taking Care of Firefighters
Wildland firefighters are the backbone of our ability to protect
communities and vital infrastructure from wildfires. As the size and
severity of fires has grown, so too has our need for fire personnel.
In 2022, we set a goal of hiring 11,300 firefighters and we were
able to reach 97% of our target. As we approach the busiest part of the
2023 fire year, the Forest Service again aspires to hire 11,300
wildland firefighters nationwide. We do not yet have final numbers at
this time, but the Agency is updating hiring numbers bi-weekly and by
region on our public facing website. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2024
President's budget requested funding for an additional 970 wildland
firefighters. With the President's budget proposals, we are confident
in our ability to increase Wildland Fire System capacity for a total of
12,270 operational firefighters in 2024. In addition, for the 2023 fire
year, the Forest Service will have up to 24 next generation airtankers,
more than 200 helicopters, and more than 900 engines available to
manage wildfires.
Wildland fire forecasts are consistently predicting fire seasons
that start sooner, end later, and are more severe throughout the
nation. With this change in condition, it is imperative to ensure a
robust year-round workforce available to respond at any time and also
be available to undertake preventive actions like hazardous fuels
management treatments during periods of low fire activity. These men
and women need to be supported and equitably compensated, equipped with
the latest technologies, and have a better work-life balance. As the
complexity of the firefighting environment grows exponentially, our
recruitment and retention of firefighters has been further complicated
by our inability to offer a competitive wage for permanent and seasonal
employees. Federal wages for firefighters have not kept pace with wages
offered by state, local and private entities in some areas of the
United States. Firefighters must be fairly paid for the grueling work
they are willing to take on.
The workforce reforms proposed in the President's FY 2024 budget
request and supporting legislation will increase federal and tribal
firefighters' pay, invest more in their mental and physical health and
wellbeing, improve their housing options, and expand the number of
permanent firefighters. These reforms build on the temporary pay
increase provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also
known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Thanks to BIL, more
than 12,000 firefighters received a temporary pay increase of $20,000
or 50% of base pay (whichever is less). Notably, the funding for that
pay supplement will be nearly exhausted by the end of September 2023,
unless Congress intervenes to avert a pay cliff. In the FY 2024 budget,
we are proposing a permanent base pay increase for all firefighters.
Unlike the temporary increase in BIL a permanent base pay increase is
an investment in our firefighters' future, as an increase in basic pay
leads to an increase in retirement benefits. Additionally, a permanent
base pay increase offers a host of benefits to the U.S. Government,
such as reduced turnover and lower hiring and training costs. The
proposal includes a request for $180 million in support of a special
base rate salary table and incident standby pay for all responders that
are mobilized to a fire assignment. We will also need Congress to pass
special legislation that authorizes the new pay table.
The FY 2024 budget proposal also increases the size of the
workforce at USDA and the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI),
supports additional mental and physical health services, and increases
funding to house firefighters and support personnel. We recognize that
addressing the housing crisis must happen now as it impacts our ability
to recruit and retain our workforce. To this end, the budget proposes a
$50 million investment in housing. The USDA has convened a national
working group that has identified key recommendations and is exploring
innovative solutions for providing safe, affordable and sustainable
housing for employees. The proposed budget also calls for an increase
of $10 million each for USDA and DOI to establish a Joint Wildland
Firefighter Behavioral Health Program.
We must take better care of the people serving on the frontlines to
confront our nation's wildfire crisis. Together, these efforts would
help address long-standing recruitment and retention challenges. These
investments, totaling $569 million, would build on the historic reforms
in the BIL and ensure the Forest Service receives the support it needs
to continue meeting evolving mission demands, as both the frequency and
intensity of catastrophic wildfires are expected to continue to
increase.
It is time for a significant change in our federal wildland fire
system that invests in the women and men that we rely on to protect
communities, critical infrastructure, and our natural resources. We
look forward to working with Congress to support, retain, and modernize
the federal wildland fire fighter workforce. For Congressional
consideration, the USDA, DOI, and the Office of Personnel Management
developed a comprehensive legislative proposal that would provide
solutions to these challenges. We remain committed to working with
congressional leaders on this crucial proposal.
The Risks to Forests
Long-term, we must address work on the ground to ultimately address
the wildfire crisis. Nearly a quarter of the contiguous U.S. is
currently in a high to moderate wildfire condition. Over the last two
decades, we have witnessed what has become a now familiar pattern:
bigger and more destructive wildfires that are extremely challenging
and costly to suppress. We have experienced catastrophic fire seasons
devastating communities and destroying resources in their wake. They
threaten human health, water quality, homes, jobs, local economies,
communities, and infrastructure. They also threaten key ecological
services, including carbon storage, species habitat, soil stability and
watershed function: in some cases, even resulting in long-term
deforestation.
Vast areas of the West and across the country are at risk from huge
wildfires that can quickly spread 10 to 30 miles or more, burning
through multiple landownerships, forest types, and communities.
Conditions are only expected to worsen as our climate continues to
change, and development in the wildland urban interface continues
unabated.
This growing wildfire crisis created the need for a new land
management strategy--one designed to support strategic management and
restoration of millions of acres of land in high-risk areas to protect
forest health, watershed function, and human infrastructure. The need
for increased pace and scale of restoration necessitates a holistic
response in partnership with multiple agencies, State and Tribal
governments, communities, industries, organizations, and private
landowners.
This collaborative response needs to be a paradigm shift from
small-scale, independently managed treatments to strategic, science-
based landscape scale treatments that cross boundaries and meet the
scale of the problem, starting initially with those places critically
at risk.
The Wildfire Crisis Strategy
The Forest Service is entering our second year of carrying out our
10-year strategy for confronting the wildfire crisis in the West. Our
Wildfire Crisis Strategy aims to increase science-based fuels
treatments by up to four times the previous treatment levels,
especially in those areas most at risk. Fuels treatments by the Forest
Service, together with partners, have made a difference over the years.
However, the scale of treatments is outmatched by the rapid increase in
the scale and severity of wildfires as climate change accelerates. This
strategy calls for treating up to 20 million additional acres of
National Forest System lands over the coming decade, and working with
partners, including colleagues at Interior, to treat up to 30 million
additional acres on adjoining lands of multiple ownerships, while
building a long-term maintenance plan. The intent for these treatments
is to reduce the wildfire risk to communities, critical infrastructure,
municipal water sources, and natural resources, and to restore and
maintain fire-adapted landscapes so they are more resilient.
Within BIL, Congress provided a $1.6 billion down payment that
greatly assists in putting our Wildfire Crisis Strategy into action
with investments on ten landscapes in eight Western States (Arizona,
California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, and
Washington). Through work on these landscapes and others, we completed
treatments on 3.2 million acres nationally in 2022. We also
accomplished these treatments, both mechanical treatments and
prescribed fire, in 118 of the 250 high-priority priority firesheds
identified in the Wildfire Crisis Strategy. This work was accomplished
despite numerous barriers including internal staffing capacity, lack of
markets for small-diameter wood, and high post-fire workloads from
previous seasons. The work on these acres directly reduced risk to
communities, infrastructure, and critical watersheds.
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding provides the Forest Service
an additional $1.8 billion for hazardous fuels funding in the wildland-
urban interface. With IRA funding, we recently selected 11 additional
landscapes for treatment in seven Western States (Arizona, California,
Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington). Combined with the initial
investment landscapes in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana,
New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, our actions will span 134 of the
250 high-risk fire sheds in the western U.S., with the investment we
announced in January 2023 of $930 million on 21 landscapes. These
investments will help reduce the risk of wildfire to at-risk
communities, Tribal lands, critical infrastructure, utility corridors,
and public water sources. We listened to our partners, the public we
serve, Tribes and many others regarding what mattered most to them,
where opportunity is, and where challenges remain. Their feedback and
our experience on these landscapes helped us identify both challenges
to implementation and enabling conditions for future success. This work
will mitigate risks to approximately 200 communities within these
landscapes.
The Wildfire Crisis Strategy builds on current work and leverages
congressional authorities such as those from the 2018 Farm Bill,
including the Insect and Disease Categorical Exclusion, Good Neighbor
Authority, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program,
Tribal Forestry Protection Act, and Cross Boundary Hazardous Fuels;
congressional authorities from BIL, including, Community Wildfire
Defense Grants, the fuel break categorical exclusion and emergency
actions to protect public health and safety, critical infrastructure
and natural resources on National Forest System lands; along with other
programs and authorities such as stewardship contracting and the Joint
Chiefs Landscape Restoration Program, all which have proven invaluable
in our work. The Wildfire Crisis Strategy strengthens partnerships to
support our work to mitigate wildfire risk and restore forest health
and resiliency over the next decade.
The Forest Service is very grateful to Congress for providing the
resources through BIL and the IRA to seed our initial work and put the
Wildfire Crisis Strategy in motion. It is important to note that fully
executing the strategy to treat 50 million acres across jurisdictions
will take continued federal investment, coupled with funding and
capacity delivered from States and all of our partners in this work.
The FY 2024 President's budget provides $323 million to complement
$1.6 billion provided in the BIL and $1.8 billion provided in the IRA
to support ongoing implementation of the 10-year Wildfire Crisis
Strategy. These resources would increase the scale of hazardous fuel
reduction and restoration treatments within high-risk firesheds as part
of the Administration's comprehensive, nationwide response to the
threat of catastrophic wildfire to natural resources, communities, and
infrastructure.
Conclusion
The USDA Forest Service is committed to keeping our communities and
firefighters safe as fire seasons grow longer and more severe. The
dedication, bravery, and professional integrity of our firefighters and
support personnel is second to none. As we work with our many partners
to assist communities impacted by wildfires, we are committed, through
shared stewardship, to change this trend in the coming years.
We greatly appreciate the significant resources Congress has
provided through the BIL and the IRA that will allow the Forest
Service, with our many partners, to take the initial steps to address
the wildfire crisis. This work will result in resilient landscapes that
have ecologic integrity, provide essential ecosystem services including
carbon storage and habitat for wildlife, and boundless opportunities
for American citizens to recreate.
The Forest Service looks forward to working with this Subcommittee
to continue providing world class suppression response and reducing the
severity of wildfires in our country.
______
Questions Submitted for the Record to Jaelith Hall-Rivera, Deputy
Chief, State and Private Forestry, United States Forest Service
Questions Submitted by Representative Westerman
Question 1. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided
$600 million to increase base firefighter pay. Those funds were
supposed to last until Fiscal Year 2026, yet in your testimony you
share that those funds will be nearly exhausted by the end of
September. How do you explain the funds being exhausted after only 2
years?
Answer. Section 40803(d)(4)(B) of the IIJA provides a supplemental
salary increase of $20,000 per year, or 50% of base salary (whichever
is less), for wildland firefighters employed by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture Forest Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior
(DOI). The supplemental salary increase is payable upon a determination
by the Secretary of each Department, in coordination with the Office of
Personnel Management (OPM), that the wildland firefighter is located in
an area where it is difficult to recruit or retain wildland
firefighters.
A study on the recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters
was carried out jointly by the DOI and Forest Service. The study
analyzed the rate of employment, promotion, and resignation of
firefighting positions from the agencies. This study demonstrated that
recruitment and retention issues were universal to all geographic
regions, which meant that a broad application of the pay supplement
provided through IIJA should be applied. The DOI and Forest Service
determined that the pay supplement should be paid to all firefighting
positions covered under fire retirement in all geographic areas. For
the Forest Service, more than 14,000 firefighters have or are receiving
the pay supplement. The Forest Service and the DOI will exhaust
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for the firefighter pay
supplement around the end of Fiscal Year 2023.
Question 2. Last year, the House debated a Wildfire Response
package on the floor that purported to boost wildland firefighter pay
to $20 per hour but did not actually provide any funding to meet that
pay standard. If we fail to properly fund any new pay tables, what
would be the consequences? Would there be layoffs of wildland
firefighters?
Answer. If new pay requirements were to be established without
funding to support those requirements, impacts would occur to the size
of our wildland firefighter workforce. Efforts would be made to ensure
the permanent federal workforce receives the new pay rates to the full
extent possible, while hiring of temporary seasonal employees would
likely need to decrease. Annual temporary seasonal hiring is a critical
pipeline to building the current and future wildland firefighting
workforce.
Question 3. Can you provide the amount of standing sawtimber on
unreserved National Forest System lands in the lower 48 states, as
identified by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program databases?
Answer. The numbers below are an estimate of standing sawtimber
volume on unreserved National Forest System lands. Reserved lands are
defined as National Forest System lands that are permanently prohibited
from being managed to produce wood products through statute or agency
mandate, such that the prohibition cannot be changed through a decision
by the land manager. However, it is important to understand that
standing sawtimber on unreserved land is not an indicator of the amount
available or accessible for harvest. A variety of factors influence
what is available and accessible, for example:
Land Management Plans and the Management Areas, desired
conditions, goals, standards and guidelines defined within
them can restrict the availability of material through, for
example, designations of suitable/unsuitable areas for
timber harvest.
Market factors determine what is economically accessible.
Areas may be unsuitable due to site-specific conditions
such as steep slopes, erosive soils, being too wet, etc.
Threatened and Endangered Species and Critical Habitat
designations can restrict miles of open or closed roads,
impacting accessibility of an area.
Please be aware that these and other factors affect the
availability of standing sawtimber volume for utilization.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Question 4. How much standing sawtimber is located on lands
designated as ``insect and disease treatment areas'' under the Healthy
Forests Restoration Act?
Answer. Estimates of sawtimber volume within insect and disease
areas designated under sections 602 and 603 of the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act (HFRA) were generated using Forest Inventory and
Analysis plots located within HFRA areas designated on a spatial layer
from the Forest Service Enterprise Data Warehouse.
Sawtimber volume on non-reserved National Forest System lands
within areas designated under sections 602 and 603 of the HFRA
(million) estimate: 108,335 cubic feet (1,300,072 board feet).
Question 5. One of the things the Forest Service is required to do
under the National Forest Management Act is to develop Forest Plans.
Among other things, these plans must include the amount of timber that
could be sustainably harvested from each National Forest System unit
over the 10-year life of the Forest Plan. Can the Forest Service
accurately tally the current Allowable Sale Quantity, or Permissible
Timber Sale Quantity, found in current National Forest Plans, by
National Forest, and aggregated both for each Forest Service Region and
Nationally? Please ensure that these ASQ's/PTSQ's factor in site
specific or forest specific plan amendments, whether required by court
order or created by the agency.
Answer. We do not corporately track Allowable Sale Quantity (ASQ)
or Permissible Timber Sale Quantity (PTSQ). These are not considered
land allocations or designations. Rather, they provide a ceiling of how
much volume may be cut from a particular unit per its Land Management
Plan. Plans promulgated under the old 1982 Planning Rule have an ASQ
calculation and PTSQ is what is calculated under the 2012 Planning
Rule. ASQ and PTSQ are located within the Land Management Plans for
individual National Forests and to obtain those values for each forest
is not feasible in the timeline required for this response.
Question 6. Can you provide information about the number of total
permits issued by the Forest Service on an annual basis? Can you also
breakdown this information to include the category/type of permit these
all fall under?
Answer. The Forest Service issues and administers tens of thousands
of permits every year for a wide range of uses using about 150
different types of forms. For example, the agency issues about 33,000
recreation special use permits each year. In addition, the agency
issued 66,000 permits and small contracts for timber removal, and over
21,000 permits for forest products other than timber. The agency also
administers about 6,000 grazing permits associated with nearly 7,200
allotments across 28 states. We would be happy to follow up with any
questions you might have on permits of interest.
Questions Submitted by Representative Bentz
Question 1. What role does the Professional Private Wildland Fire
industry play in helping the U.S. Forest Service address the lack of
resources regarding catastrophic wildfires?
Answer. The Forest Service is just one participant in the national
wildland fire system that also includes our partners in the Department
of the Interior, state and local governments, Tribes, and private
industry. The capability brought to bear by private industry through
contractual agreements with the Forest Service is essential for
successful response operations across the country. The agency contracts
for most of the aviation resources, many hand crews, engines, pieces of
heavy equipment, and logistical services like fire camp caterers and
shower services. Without these essential services and response
resources, the ability to provide for a national response effort in a
safe and effective manner would be significantly impacted.
Question 2. It is my understanding that the Professional Private
Wildland Fire industry provides over 25,000 pieces of equipment and
potentially over 20,000 trained firefighters nationally that respond to
wildfires. Is this assessment accurate?
Answer. The Forest Service contracts a significant number of
resources and services with private industry and is not the only entity
within the wildland fire system doing so. The Department of the
Interior, state, and local governments, as well as some private
utilities companies and potentially other private entities, are also
contracting for wildland fire support services.
All wildland firefighters that operate within the interagency
wildland fire system must be qualified for the role that they perform,
and those qualifications are verified before an individual can be
ordered for fire response operations. The Forest Service currently
estimates approximately 11,000 private contract firefighters are active
nationally and approximately 17,000 pieces of equipment are available
through contracts for response operations.
Question 3. The U.S. Forest Service indicated that they utilize the
``closest forces'' method for responding to wildfires, however several
of the contracts for private wildland fire response DO NOT utilize this
method such as a Type 2 Crew Contract. Can USFS describe what process
is used in dispatching private resources under contract to a fire for
both initial attack and extended attack?
Answer. Type 2 contract crews are not considered initial attack
resources. All Type 2 contract crews are dispatched by the National
Interagency Coordination Center using an established mathematical
formula that considers hourly rate, mileage, and standard assignment
duration. All Type 2 contract crew orders are filled with the lowest
cost, available resource able to meet a reasonable date and time needed
as determined by the National Interagency Coordination Center.
Federal, state and local government work collaboratively to
establish an agreed upon pre-planned dispatch protocol for ordering
resources to ensure a quick response. This information is loaded into
the Computer Aided Dispatch system or identified on ``run cards.''
During initial attack, the pre-identified agency Federal, state and
local government, and Tribal resources are dispatched through the
Computer Aided Dispatch system containing the ``pre-planned dispatch''
for a particular area. The ordering process is different for extended
attack. Resource requests come into the local dispatch centers who will
fill the order based on skills required and availability of resources
needed. Agency resources are prioritized, but contracted resources are
also considered.
Question 4. Does USFS order the closest forces to the fires?
Answer. As a rule, closest forces mobilization is the most
effective and cost efficient and the Forest Service seeks to use that
concept for mobilization. There are exceptions. Resource mobilization
is situationally based and dependent on the type of fire such as
initial attack, extended attack, large fire support, or long duration
fire support. For large fire and long duration fire support, agency
resources may be mobilized from geographic areas further away that have
low risk of fire occurrence rather than closer geographic areas
experiencing higher risk and higher resource needs. Using this method,
resources are moved based on the highest need and keeps local resources
available in areas with fire activity to help cover local initial and
extended attack fire suppression needs.
Question 5. Does USFS prioritize Service-operated resources from a
greater distance over contracted resources closer to fires? What is the
formula for determining least expensive versus fastest available
private wildfire response units?
Answer. As a rule, closest forces mobilization is the most
effective and cost efficient and the Forest Service seeks to use that
concept for mobilization. There are exceptions. Resource mobilization
is situationally based and dependent on the type of fire such as
initial attack, extended attack, large fire support, or long duration
fire support. For large fire and long duration fire support, agency
resources may be mobilized from geographic areas further away that have
low risk of fire occurrence rather than closer geographic areas
experiencing higher risk and higher resource needs. Using this method,
resources are moved based on the highest need and keeps local resources
available in areas with fire activity to help cover local initial and
extended attack fire suppression needs.
During an ongoing fire, the Incident Commander is responsible for
developing the overall strategy and tactics for the fire, and for
ordering resources accordingly. There are many factors that are
considered in this process including the type, quantity, experience,
and qualifications of resources necessary to achieve the identified
management objectives. Current and anticipated fire behavior and the
values at risk will also influence the type of resources ordered. The
capability brought to bear by private industry through contractual
agreements with the Forest Service is essential for successful response
operations across the country.
______
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Hall-Rivera.
Next, we have Mr. Jeff Rupert, the Director of the Office
of Wildland Fire for the Department of the Interior.
Mr. Rupert, you have 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JEFFERY RUPERT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF WILDLAND FIRE,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Rupert. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Tiffany,
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank
you for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon to
provide testimony on the challenges that the Department of the
Interior faces in wildland fire management ahead of the 2023
wildfire year.
The discussion today will convey Interior's most pressing
wildland fire management issues and the steps we are taking to
improve compensation and support for our wildland firefighting
workforce, to reduce wildfire risk, and to effectively manage
wildfire response now and into the future.
Climate change continues to play an impactful role in the
extreme weather that we are experiencing across the nation. A
drier and hotter climate results in low fuel moisture that
frequently leads to extreme conditions that produce larger and
more intense wildfires. Significant precipitation over the past
several months has reduced drought conditions across much of
the western United States. However, drought still remains a
concern in portions of Oregon and Washington, and it has
expanded in much of Texas and the southern central plains.
Again, as we have seen, drought can lead to increased and
more intense wildfire activity. The areas of greatest
uncertainty are in places like the northern Great Basin, where
heavy rain has caused vegetation growth that could fuel intense
wildfires with summer heat, lightning, and wind.
We are tackling this climate crisis and working to improve
the wildland fire resiliency of our nation's lands with the
help of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Interior received
nearly $1.5 billion in BIL funding over 5 years. That support
is being used collaboratively with our partners to increase the
pace and scale of fuels management treatments, to rehabilitate
lands damaged by wildfires, and to increase wildland
firefighter pay, as well as fund wildland fire research-related
needs.
To date, Interior has allocated more than $450 million in
BIL funding, and will allocate additional BIL funds this year.
Over the 5 years of BIL, we will have $878 million available in
fuels management funding to address wildfire risk in high-
priority areas across the nation. Overall, coupled with annual
appropriations, Interior accomplished a total of 1.9 million
acres of priority wildland fire risk reduction treatment in
2022, an increase of approximately 20 percent over the prior
year.
Interior's treatment goal for this year is 2 million acres.
Longer, more intense fire years and the need to actively manage
and reduce fuels across vast, increasingly flammable landscapes
has increased the demand and pressure on our wildland fire
workforce. Recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters
very much continues to be an issue, and it is widely recognized
that a new model is needed to provide employees with better
pay, career stability, upward mobility, and a much better work-
life balance.
In Fiscal Year 2021, the Administration increased pay to
ensure that no wildland firefighter makes less than $15 per
hour. With the passage of BIL in 2022, Interior and the Forest
Service implemented temporary pay supplements for all Federal
wildland firefighters. And to continue to advance permanent
wildland firefighter pay reforms and improve recruitment and
retention, the President's 2024 budget request includes an
increase of $72 million to raise the base pay of Interior and
tribal wildland firefighters.
To implement this pay reform, the Administration also
proposes legislation to Congress that establishes a new base
rate salary table for all Federal wildland firefighters,
creates a new premium pay category, and proposes a new annual
pay cap.
The budget also includes funding to hire an additional 370
Interior and 55 tribal wildland firefighting personnel.
Without the additional funding and pay reforms, we are
facing a firefighter pay cliff as BIL funding runs out,
currently estimated to occur at the end of this Fiscal Year.
This could have a devastating effect on firefighter morale, and
would certainly impact Interior's ability to recruit and retain
wildland firefighters.
Interior is also working jointly with the Forest Service to
provide much-needed wildland firefighter mental health support.
We are following the research that is showing that firefighters
are at elevated risk. This past April, both Interior and Forest
Service held a behavioral health and well-being summit in
Boise, Idaho. The summit's results are informing the
development of a joint program to provide year-round
prevention, mental health support and training, provide post-
traumatic stress care, enhance capacity for acute response, and
create a system of trauma support services with emphasis on
early intervention.
Finally, we know that the Wildland Fire Mitigation
Management Commission is working hard to complete its report to
Congress later this year. We look forward to seeing the
Commission's recommendations, and working with partners to make
overall improvements to wildland fire management.
While we recognize no single entity can solve the nation's
wildfire crisis alone, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council's
recently updated National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management
Strategy reinforces the need for collaboration to meet today's
wildland fire management challenges. And we appreciate
Congress' willingness to support these efforts and help
Interior effectively address the wildfire crisis so that we can
work in concert with our Federal, tribal, state, and local
partners to effectively protect communities, people, and
resources from increasing wildfire risks.
Thank you. I am happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rupert follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jeffery Rupert, Director, Office of Wildland
Fire, U.S. Department of the Interior
Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on the
challenges that the Department of the Interior (Interior) faces in
wildland fire management, including wildfire suppression and the
wildland firefighting workforce ahead of the 2023 wildfire year.
Interior appreciates the opportunity to share with the Subcommittee its
ongoing proactive steps to improve compensation and support for its
wildland firefighting workforce, reduce wildfire risk, and effectively
manage wildfire response. We appreciate the Subcommittee's interest in
these areas, and we look forward to working with you in addressing
priority wildland fire management issues.
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) provided a once-in-a-
generation investment in wildland fire management that is helping to
combat the climate crisis and improve the wildfire resiliency of our
nation's lands. Interior is receiving nearly $1.5 billion in BIL
funding over five years for wildland fire management programs. BIL
funding supports Interior's core Wildland Fire Management program.
Interior's Five-Year Monitoring, Maintenance, and Treatment Plan,
required by BIL, lays out a roadmap to address wildfire risk and
prepare communities and ecosystems for wildfire threats.
As you will see in our testimony, Interior bureaus--Bureau of
Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey--are using
BIL funding collaboratively with our partners to increase the pace and
scale of fuels management treatments, rehabilitate lands damaged by
wildfires, and fund research into priority wildland fire management
issues, including the impacts of climate change on wildfire, fuels
management, and firefighter mental health. . Through BIL, we are also
increasing workforce capacity and wildland firefighter pay and
supporting wildland firefighters' mental health and wellbeing. To date,
Interior has allocated more than $450 million in BIL funding and will
allocate additional funds this year. We appreciate Congress'
willingness to support these efforts and help Interior effectively
address the wildfire crisis so that we can work in concert with our
Federal, Tribal, state, and local partners to effectively protect
communities, people, and resources from the increasing risks of
wildfire.
2022 Fire Year
Climate change continues to play an oversized role in the extreme
fire weather that we are experiencing across the nation. Drier and
hotter weather results in low fuel moisture that frequently leads to
extreme conditions that produce larger and more intense wildfires. In
recent years, nearly every western state has experienced prolonged
periods of high to extreme fire danger over substantial areas affecting
hundreds of millions of acres of land. Many of these areas are in the
wildland urban interface where communities in the West are increasingly
exposed to wildfire.
In 2022, 68,988 wildfires burned more than 7.5 million acres
nationally. The reported number of wildfires nationwide was noticeably
higher than the 10-year average of 61,285, and the number of acres
burned was slightly more than the 10-year average of 7.4 million acres.
A total of 2,717 structures were reported destroyed by wildfires in
2022, and sadly, 25 members of the wildland firefighting community lost
their lives in wildfire incidents or wildland fire management related
activities across the country.
What we observed in 2022 was a more gradual movement of wildfire
that started in April in Alaska and the Southwest and progressed to the
Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies in August and September, as is
the more typical pattern. Additionally, significant wildfires in
California occurred in succession rather than concurrently. This
allowed the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group, tasked with
national-level strategic coordination, to position and concentrate
wildland firefighting resources throughout the year in those geographic
areas that needed them the most.
2023 Fire Year Outlook
While drought conditions across much of the western U.S. have
greatly improved since last year, drought did intensify slightly in
portions of central Oregon. Drought also expanded, intensified, or
continues in much of Texas, central Florida, western Oklahoma, southern
and western Kansas, and in portions of Nebraska. Drought can lead to
increased and more intense fire activity if weather and fuels factors
align with human and natural wildfire ignitions.
Above normal wildfire potential is expected in far west Texas in
May before returning to normal in June. Above normal potential is also
forecast across portions of the Upper Midwest and western Great Lakes
in June, with above normal potential across portions of northern
Nevada, southwest Idaho, eastern Oregon, and central Washington in July
and August. Normal or below normal significant fire potential is
expected across the rest of the country, throughout May, June, July,
and August. This does not mean that there will be no large wildfires,
but rather that wildfire potential will be typical for each geographic
region.
The ``fire season'' has become extended in many parts of the
country, and what was once limited to certain months of the year now
encompasses an entire ``fire year.'' While each fire year is different
due to varied weather and fuel moisture factors, currently, the outlook
for 2023 points to less fire activity from April through July compared
to the above normal activity encountered over the same months last
year. Managing a year-long season is increasingly challenging to
Interior and the entire wildland fire management community.
The NMAC establishes Preparedness Levels throughout the calendar
year to ensure suppression resource availability for emerging incidents
across the country. The five Preparedness Levels range from the lowest
(1) to the highest (5). Currently, the nation is at Preparedness Level
(PL) 2, which is characterized by large wildfires occurring in several
geographic areas--Eastern, Southern, Southwest, and Northern Rockies
Areas--but no shortage in the availability of resources. At this time,
we are supporting our firefighting partners in Canada as that nation is
at PL5 with large wildfire activity occurring in British Columbia and
Alberta. Through an existing bilateral arrangement, DOI has mobilized
approximately 250 wildland fire personnel to Canada where they will
support ongoing wildfire suppression efforts in the western half of the
country.
Interior Wildland Firefighting Preparedness
As always, the success of our wildland fire management program is
predicated on the unparalleled coordination with our interagency,
Tribal, and state partners. These partnerships are vital to the
Interior's success in carrying out its stewardship responsibilities,
particularly fuels management work and essential restoration efforts;
they are also integral to the interoperable approach that is the
hallmark of the nation's response to wildfires.
Currently, Interior is in a ready-state and all preparations are in
place for the fire year, though as is typical some wildland fire
management hiring will continue into June, due to the seasonal nature
of hiring, training, and preparedness. This year, Interior plans to
have 5,800 federal and 500 Tribal wildland firefighting and support
personnel available for response efforts. This includes 162
smokejumpers, 20 interagency hotshot crews, and four Tribal hotshot
crews. In combination with our partners in the Department of
Agriculture Forest Service (USFS), approximately 17,000 Federal and
Tribal wildland fire personnel will be ready for fire suppression
activities in 2023. Additionally, we have a surge capacity of up to
32,000 personnel, which includes Administratively Determined emergency
hires and other non-wildland fire management DOI and USFS employees who
maintain wildland fire qualifications.
Interior will have over 870 pieces of specialized equipment
available for wildfire suppression, including engines, water tenders,
dozers, and other equipment. Aviation assets play a critical role in
efforts to manage wildfires, including single engine air tankers, water
scoopers, Type 1, 2, and 3 helicopters, and other contracted aviation
resources. These assets complement other Federal, Tribal, state, and
local resources, as well as those specifically made available by rural
fire districts. Together, these assets form the foundation of an
interoperable, collaborative approach to joint wildland firefighting.
Challenges Facing Wildland Fire Management
Interior faces unique wildland fire management challenges. Most
Interior-managed public lands are comprised of non-forested shrub and
grass ecosystems. Over the past two decades, 54 percent of wildfire
acres burned in the continental U.S. occurred on shrublands and
grasslands. On Interior-managed lands, more than 70 percent of wildfire
acres occurred on non-forested vegetation types. More than 7 million
acres of land administered by Interior are identified as having a very
high or high likelihood of exposure to wildfire, according to the USFS
wildfire hazard potential data.
Nevertheless, Interior manages large tracts of forest lands,
particularly in western Oregon and some other western states. Many of
these lands are of cultural importance to Tribes, so it is important
that we address wildfire risk in these areas to benefit and support
Tribal communities. Some of these forested lands include the iconic
giant sequoias--which wildfires devastated in 2020 and 2021, killing
more than 10 percent of giant sequoias larger than four feet in
diameter on lands managed by the National Park Service and the Tule
River Tribe.
Invasive plants, which can make landscapes more flammable, are
present in many of these ecosystems. Cycles of invasion are
intensifying wildfire occurrence and result in increasing invasive
plants that are impacting vast areas of the western U.S. Because of the
fire and invasives cycle, many western ecosystems are experiencing too
much wildfire compared to historical fire regimes. Suppressing
wildfires in these ecosystems is costly, and these fast-moving fires
put communities, people, and wildland firefighters at risk. Interior is
working to conserve ecosystems that are currently not impacted by
invasive plants while restoring ecological balance in ecosystems where
invasive plants are changing the landscape and increasing wildfire
risk.
Fuels Management & Post Wildfire Recovery
BIL funding totaling $878 million over five years along with base
Fuels Management program funding has supported Interior's efforts to
address wildfire risk across the nation in high priority areas.
Interior is focused on managing landscapes to reduce wildfire risk,
improve wildfire resiliency, and promote fire-adapted communities.
Overall, Interior achieved a total of 1.9 million acres of priority
wildfire risk reduction treatments in 2022, an increase of
approximately 20 percent from 2021. Our treatment goal for this year is
a combined 2 million acres of treatments.
By increasing fuels treatments, Interior is working to mitigate its
wildfire management challenges and advance wildfire resiliency, improve
firefighter and public safety, protect communities, and boost local
economies. To address these challenges, Interior conducts a wide
variety of fuels management projects, including mechanical, chemical,
biological, and prescribed fire treatments. Fuels treatment options can
often be limited in desert and rangeland landscapes where invasive
plants are contributing to an increasing threat and more frequent
wildfire.
BIL funding is also supporting Interior's advancement of cross-
boundary collaboration with the USFS, Tribes, states, and private
landowners. Interior is funding work that reduces wildfire risk on non-
Federal lands while also restoring habitats by providing $23.7 million
to support fuels treatments through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
Partners for Fish and Wildlife and Coastal programs. This funding will
enable 24 fuels management projects in 13 states, including Arizona,
California, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico,
Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Additionally, Interior is
expanding support for Reserved Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) projects. By
treaty, Tribes retain ancestral rights for religious and cultural
hunting, fishing, and gathering activities on these lands although they
are commonly managed by Federal agencies. Through the RTRL program,
Interior is providing additional BIL funding to conduct fuels
management on these lands in support of Tribal cultural activities.
Interior is also using BIL investments to expand post-fire
restoration activities in high priority areas working with partners
across boundaries. This involves investing in critical infrastructure,
post-fire monitoring and evaluation, and storing plant materials
essential to restore native vegetation. Interior is also increasing
post-fire debris flow emergency assessments. In 2022, Interior
completed more than 360,000 acres of post-fire emergency stabilization
and priority burned area rehabilitation actions using BIL funding,
disaster relief funding, and regular appropriations. This includes more
than 75,000 acres of emergency stabilization and 285,000 acres of
burned area rehabilitation, including more than 169,000 acres to
control invasive species and accelerate the recovery of forests and
rangelands after a wildfire.
Wildland Firefighter Workforce Reforms
Longer, more intense fire years, and the need to actively manage
and reduce fuels across a vast, more flammable landscape, have
increased pressure on the wildland fire workforce. In the past,
Interior has relied more heavily on a temporary workforce. Currently,
wildland fire suppression and fuels management work require
significantly more permanent employees to address the year-round nature
of wildfire and the on-going need to increase the pace and scale of
fuels treatments. This increasingly complex wildland fire environment
requires a professional workforce that is positioned to meet these
needs year-round.
The demands on the wildland fire workforce continue to grow as the
complexity and need for more active management increases. Many wildland
firefighters are currently challenged to take time off for family
events and other life occurrences because the current workforce lacks
enough qualified individuals to fill behind them. Concurrently, federal
and Tribal wildland fire wages have not kept pace with some industry
competitors, such as California Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection or CAL FIRE. In many communities, entry to mid-level fire
position wages at the federal, Tribal, and state levels are not
competitive with private-sector opportunities. Housing costs have also
risen rapidly across the West; in certain geographic areas many
wildland fire personnel may find it difficult to afford rent or home
purchases on their current wages. These issues are compounding wildland
fire workforce challenges, including the ability to recruit new
employees and retain qualified wildland fire personnel.
It is widely recognized in the wildland fire community and
elsewhere that a new model is needed to provide employees with career
stability and upward mobility, support a better work-life balance, and
promote long-term wildland fire or resource management careers.
In FY 2021, the Administration implemented temporary pay
supplements to ensure that no wildland firefighter makes less than $15
per hour. With the passage of BIL in 2022, Interior and the USFS
implemented temporary special pay supplements for federal wildland
firefighters. These payments have had a significant positive impact on
firefighters' morale and their abilities to achieve a reasonable wage
for the arduous work that they perform. To continue to advance wildland
firefighter pay reforms, and improve recruitment and retention rates,
the President's FY 2024 Budget request includes an increase of $72
million to raise the base pay of DOI and Tribal wildland firefighters.
To implement the pay reform, the Administration transmitted legislation
to Congress that:
Establishes a special base rate salary table for all
Federal wildland firefighters that will permanently
increase their pay.
Creates a new premium pay category that provides all
incident responders with additional compensation for all
hours they are mobilized on an incident.
Proposes a new annual pay cap with additional authority
for a Secretarial waiver if specific criteria are met in
any given year.
Allows periods of paid rest and recuperation leave
following the completion of service during certain wildland
fire activities.
The budget also includes funding to hire an additional 370 federal
and 55 Tribal wildland firefighting personnel, which builds on a $29
million increase that Interior received in FY 2021 to support
Interior's Workforce Transformation Initiative. Since then, Interior
has added more than 250 permanent wildland fire positions and continues
to increase its firefighting workforce. Without the additional funding
for firefighter pay that is requested in FY 2024 and the accompanying
legislative proposals, we are facing a firefighter pay cliff as the BIL
supplemental pay funding is estimated to run out at the end of this FY.
We look forward to working with Congress on these proposals.
Additionally, the President's FY 2024 Budget requests an increase
of $22 million in the Facilities program to provide housing for
wildland fire personnel. This increase will go to repair, renovate, and
construct new housing for wildland fire personnel as they continue to
encounter limited or unaffordable housing options in certain geographic
locations.
Wildland Firefighter Mental Health and Wellbeing
Research indicates that firefighters are at an elevated risk for
negative mental health impacts due to their work environment and the
increased, year-round wildfire management and risk-reduction needs.
Interior is committed to supporting our wildland firefighters, who work
in arduous, stressful environments.
Using BIL funding, Interior and the USFS have initiated work to
establish a program to address mental health needs, including post-
traumatic stress disorder care, for permanent, temporary, seasonal, and
year-round wildland firefighters. By streamlining and expanding
existing mental health programs, Interior is working to better support
firefighter resilience, improve mental preparedness, and address the
effects from cumulative stress. This initiative will create a bridge
between existing programs, consider additional prevention and training
program needs, enhance Critical Incident Stress Management capacity,
and further develop early intervention trauma support services.
In April, Interior and the USFS held a wildland firefighter mental
health and wellbeing summit in Boise, Idaho. Currently, both agencies
are assessing the needs and recommendations that were discussed at the
summit to develop a mental health and wellbeing program framework. Work
will continue with stakeholders, mental health professionals, and a
variety of partners to further expand our mental health program and
build an environment that focuses on wildland fire professionals'
wellbeing.
The President's FY 2024 Budget request also includes an increase of
$10 million each for Interior and the USFS to establish a Joint
Wildland Firefighter Behavioral Health Program. The program will
further support firefighters by establishing year-round prevention and
mental health support training, providing post-traumatic stress care,
enhancing capacity for acute response, and creating a system of trauma
support services with an emphasis on early intervention.
Conclusion
Thank you for this opportunity to share Interior's latest wildland
fire management efforts with the Subcommittee. Wildland fire management
is changing rapidly as a result of climate change, increased fire
activity, and vast landscape transformations. Interior continues to
adapt to this changing environment. We appreciate the Congress'
continued support and look forward to working with you as we address
these critical program and workforce issues.
This concludes my statement. I welcome any questions you may have.
______
Questions Submitted for the Record to Jeff Rupert, Director, Office of
Wildland Fire, Department of the Interior
Mr. Rupert did not submit responses to the Committee by the appropriate
deadline for inclusion in the printed record.
Questions Submitted by Representative Westerman
Question 1. Director Rupert, I think that one of the biggest
components of addressing this wildfire crisis is transparency in the
amount of fuels reduction treatments actually being accomplished.
Despite the fact that DOI is statutorily obligated to report its annual
hazardous fuels reduction treatments to Congress annually, your agency
has failed to do so and has not publicly posted this information
anywhere. Attempts to get this information have gone unanswered for
months.
1a) Why is DOI failing to properly report its hazardous fuels
reduction treatments to Congress despite being statutorily obligated to
do so?
1b) When does the agency plan to come into compliance with the law?
1c) How many acres of land did DOI treat last year to reduce
hazardous fuels?
Question 2. Does the Bureau of Land Management's ``Conservation and
Landscape Health'' rule recognize that active forest management is
conservation?
Question 3. In briefings between Committee staff and BLM staff, it
has been made clear that there is a difference in the way BLM is
defining conservation broadly versus how it is defining conservation
for the purposes of conservation leases. Can you please explain the
discrepancy between these definitions?
Question 4. The Committee has heard concerns that Tribal
firefighters operating under ``638'' contracts have not been considered
federal firefighters and have not received the same pay raises federal
firefighters received under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. What is
the Department of the Interior doing to address this pay parity issue?
Question 5. Can you provide information about the number of total
permits issued by DOI on an annual basis? Can you also breakdown this
information to include the category/type of permit these all fall
under?
Question 6. What effects do prior fuels reduction treatments have
on wildland firefighting strategy?
Question 7. Are areas that received prior fuels reduction
treatments considered more safe or less safe compared to untreated
areas when evaluating where to send wildland firefighters battling a
wildfire?
Question 8. DOI's testimony states that the agency plans to employ
5,800 federal and 500 Tribal wildland firefighting personnel this year.
8a) Of this total, how many federal and Tribal firefighting
personnel has the agency hired as of May 16, 2023?
8b) What hiring events does the agency plan to conduct for the
remainder of the year to hire additional firefighting personnel?
8c) What effect, if any, is DOI seeing on the expiration of bonuses
provided under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law on firefighter
retention and recruitment?
Question 9. What role does the use of aerial fire retardant play in
DOI's fire suppression operations?
Question 10. What would be the agency's projections on the upcoming
fire year if the agency could no longer use aerial fire retardant?
Question 11. In light of the new inventory of mature and old-growth
forests, can you please provide information about how many acres of BLM
land that meet your new mature and old-growth definition framework have
burned in wildfires in the last 10 years?
Question 12. Why was the inventory of mature and old-growth forests
limited to Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service forests, and
not to the other federal agencies that manage forests like the National
Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service?
Question 13. How much BLM and DOI staff time was used to develop
the mature and old-growth inventory?
Question 14. Why is it important to manage forests to have a
diversity of age classes?
Question 15. Can you please explain the importance of early
successional forests?
Question 16. Is the term ``mature forest'' a recognized term in the
scientific practice of forestry?
Question 17. In the BLM and Forest Service's report on old growth,
the report states that ``narrative frameworks'' are going to inform the
``policy and practice of forest management'' for old growth. The report
also includes the following quote: ``The role of place attachment or
identity, meaning ``the symbolic importance of a place as a repository
for emotions and relationships that give meaning and purpose to life''
may also be particularly relevant in our understanding of how people
relate to and value old-growth forests.''
Is the BLM planning to manage old growth forests based on vague
concepts like ``place identity'' instead of scientific forest
management practices?
Question 18. How much of the direct work at the BLM unit level is
planning and assessment to include the preparation of environmental
review documents under NEPA?
Question 19. How much did DOI spend last year on planning or
environmental review costs for meeting the requirements of applicable
laws generally?
Question 20. How many staff hours did DOI spend last year on
planning or environmental review costs for meeting the requirements of
applicable laws?
Question 21. The Forest Service has provided regular, public
updates regarding the implementation of its 10-year strategy and the
investments made under such strategy. DOI has not made similar
information available. When does DOI plan to publish a status update
regarding its 5-year strategy?
Question 22. How many communities are adjacent to DOI lands that
are at risk of experiencing a wildfire that would destroy structures
were it to spread from DOI lands to the nearby community?
Question 23. How has DOI utilized direct hire authority for
wildland firefighters? Has this been a helpful tool for the agency?
Question 24. What is the average amount of time it takes DOI to
hire a wildland firefighter without direct hire authority?
Question 25. What is the average amount of time it takes DOI to
hire a wildland firefighter with direct hire authority?
Question 26. What is the process for federal wildland firefighters
who wish to switch their employment from DOI to the Forest Service, or
vice versa?
Question 27. Has DOI conducted an inventory on any underutilized
buildings on DOI lands that could be converted into housing for
wildland firefighters if the necessary deferred maintenance is
addressed?
Question 28. Are there any restrictions on using Great American
Outdoors Act funding to address deferred maintenance on underutilized
buildings on DOI lands that could be converted into housing for
wildland firefighters?
______
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Rupert.
I will now recognize the Ranking Minority Member, Mr.
Neguse.
Mr. Neguse, you have 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE NEGUSE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO
Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate
the courtesy, my apologies for the delay.
I am glad to be here today to discuss an issue that is
critically important to my district and to my state, the state
of Colorado, and certainly to many of my colleagues' districts
here on this Committee, and I appreciate the testimony from
both of our witnesses.
As many of you know, I represent the 2nd District in
Colorado, and I am honored to represent a beautiful
congressional district filled with public lands such as Rocky
Mountain National Park, Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests,
and the Routt National Forest. My district also, unfortunately,
has suffered three of the largest and most destructive
wildfires in the history of Colorado just in the span of 2
years.
We know firsthand in Colorado the impacts of these
devastating disasters on our communities, many that are still
working to recover. Just by way of example, the Marshall Fire,
which took place in Boulder County, was the most destructive
fire in the history of Colorado. It happened in December 2021,
New Year's Day, or New Year's Eve, I should say. Over 1,000
structures burned, and we tragically lost the lives of two
members of our communities.
I know that we also have the Mayor of Paradise, California
here with us today, who will be testifying on the second panel,
I believe, and I want to thank the Mayor for joining us to
share their experience and that of their community during and
after the Camp Fire.
Wildfire has become a major focus for many of us here in
Congress, myself included, and certainly has been the focus of
this Subcommittee in the prior Congress. I was proud to start
and co-found the bipartisan Wildfire Caucus with my good
colleague, Representative Curtis from Utah. I didn't recognize
him today with his new goatee there, but nonetheless, I am
grateful to co-chair the effort with him. I see he has left,
but you will see him when he gets back.
We made great strides in the 117th Congress in that caucus,
as well as working with the U.S. Forest Service and the
Department of the Interior with the funding and resources that
they need to address the wildfire crisis. We held several
Subcommittee hearings on wildfire suppression and mitigation,
workforce capacity, and promoting community resilience. And I
am grateful to the Chairman for hosting a hearing in that vein
today.
It is important for us to contextually remember some of the
investments that were made. And, of course, both of our
witnesses testified to some of these. For example, we provided
$28 billion to the Department of the Interior and $5.5 billion
to the Forest Service in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to
address drought, wildland fire management, and preparing for
extreme weather events. This included authorizing the Joint
Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership Program, which I was
proud to champion, a program that reduces wildfire risk and
supports communities.
As was mentioned, we also secured a pay raise, a long-
awaited and long-overdue pay raise for Federal wildland
firefighters as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We
built on these investments through the Inflation Reduction Act,
which provided funding for wildfire management and workforce
needs, ecosystem restoration, and invested in our nation's
Conservation Corps workforce. These investments made by House
Democrats in the 117th Congress are key to supporting the
important work of Federal agencies and local communities to
reduce wildfire risk and address the critical workforce and
staff capacity that USFS and DOI have frequently identified as
major barriers.
Finally, on the legislative front, it bears mentioning that
just last week, I introduced my bicameral bill, Tim's Act,
which builds on the investments we secured in the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law. It would increase firefighter pay benefits
to provide these public servants with the benefits they work so
hard to earn on behalf of the American people, the many
sacrifices they make, and address the firefighter pay cliff,
that was referenced earlier during your testimony. That bill
was bipartisan, I should say, in the last Congress. Liz Cheney,
a Congresswoman and my neighbor to the north from the state of
Wyoming, was our co-lead. I hope that I can convince one of my
Republican colleagues here on the other side of the aisle to
support us on this legislation again, which is common sense and
would honor wildland firefighters across the country, and I
look forward to talking more about that this afternoon.
Finally, in closing, let me just say that wildfires
continue to increase in severity and intensity throughout the
United States. As has been repeated often in this Committee, we
no longer have fire seasons, we have fire years in the Rocky
Mountain West. The scale of the challenge of the crisis that
faces the Rocky Mountain West and, more broadly, the western
United States necessitates a whole-of-government approach,
which is why I am looking forward to the conversation today to
improve our wildfire preparedness and support the firefighting
workforce.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you to the Ranking Member.
I will now recognize the Full Committee Chairman, Mr.
Westerman, for his opening statement.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRUCE WESTERMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS
Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, and thank you
to the witnesses for being here today.
This hearing covers a very important topic, and I hope
everybody in the House and the Senate on both sides of the
aisle can come together this Congress so we can enact real
change, so that we can do something different than what we have
done in the past.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about forestry,
when we talk about management, is that there is not any
management. And I have always said we have always been
managing. Because when you are talking about a dynamic, living
organism like a forest, no management is management. We can't
run from it. The decisions we make affect the forest, whether
we say it is going to be hands off or whether we say we are
going to follow the science and do something proactive.
And we also, I think, in Congress look at problems
backwards sometimes. We should be looking at what is causing
these fires, not just how do we spend more money to pay
firefighters, to buy more equipment, to increase budgets. Why
don't we look at what causes the fires on the front end, and
maybe we will have more money to pay the firefighters that we
need and spend our money wisely in prevention, instead of
having to spend so much money putting fires out, saving lives,
things that are very worthwhile and needed, but if we would do
better planning on the front end, I think we could save a lot
more money, and a lot more lives, and a lot more assets on the
back end. So, that is why hearings like this are important.
The Forest Service has identified thousands of communities
across the West at being of risk of experiencing fires at the
same level as the Camp Fire, which we all know leveled the town
of Paradise. How many more of these Paradise, California-style
fires must occur before we actually do the right thing and
start taking preventative measures?
I have a friend, Joe Fox, he is a state forester back in
Arkansas, and he has this saying that trees are the answer;
now, what is your question? And I really like the way Joe puts
that, because this shouldn't be a partisan issue. If you care
about clean air and clean water, you should care about forest
management. If you care about the climate and carbon, you
should support forest management. If you care about wildlife
habitat or protecting endangered species, then you should care
about forest management. If you care about affordable and
environmentally-friendly housing and commercial construction,
you should support forest management. If you support new
technologies for carbon sink positive energy and innovative
products that can greatly benefit everything from food
production to advanced manufacturing, then you should care
about forest management.
In short, trees are the answer to many of the questions
that we are asking ourselves today. And the reality is, if we
just followed the science, our forests would be in much better
condition than they are now. We have over-regulated our public
forests so much to the point where Federal land managers can't
follow the science anymore.
There is a huge disconnect between what people on the
ground tell us when we go out into the field and the
conversations that we have back here in DC. Where land managers
in the field tell us they need streamlined and simple
authorities, folks who haven't spent much time in the forest
say it is unnecessary.
That is part of the reason why I am leading a bipartisan
trip this week to the Yale Forest. This forest, which is
probably the oldest managed forest in the country, the same
forest where Gifford Pinchot started the forestry school there,
it has been managed for over 120 years, and it has never had a
NEPA analysis on it. But I hope we all get to go there and look
at it, and people can look at the results on the ground and
tell me why that can't work on our Federal lands.
I am hoping that this hearing today, the trip to Yale, and
other field trips and conversations can help us talk about the
interconnected issues between forest management, wildland fire
suppression, and ultimately, wildland firefighter well-being.
We owe it to our forests, we owe it to our communities like
Paradise, and the brave men and women serving as wildland
firefighters to try to find solutions that will rise to the
occasion of truly confronting our wildfire crisis.
I believe this is a man-made crisis. You can talk about
warming temperatures and a drier environment, but we still can
manage for that.
It is also important to carefully examine potential
solutions through the regular order process, which is why I am
grateful that we are having this hearing today. We can see the
effects of not having bipartisan hearings, which has already
been mentioned. We are facing the pay cliff that was set up by
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding that was
supposed to pay for firefighters is set to expire after only 2
years.
That was the largest infrastructure bill in the history of
the world, $1.2 trillion of infrastructure spending. It never
went through a single Committee hearing in the House, not one.
I am on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. We
never had a hearing on that bill. That is why it is important
to go through regular order to have true bipartisan
conversations and to address these challenges.
And with the testimony that we have to hear today and,
hopefully, the work that we do going forward, we will make
meaningful progress in these areas. Again, thank you, and I
yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. Yes, thank you, Chairman Westerman. And I
suspect there is still space for the Yale trip at the end of
the week, if anyone wants to join you. Is that accurate?
Mr. Westerman. More than welcome.
Mr. Tiffany. Next, we are going to turn to Members'
questions, and we will start with the gentleman from
California, Mr. McClintock.
Mr. McClintock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, a few years ago I toured the footprint of
the King Fire. You could literally tell the boundaries between
the private and public lands just by looking at the condition
of the forests on each side of the boundary line. The private
lands had been completely salvaged 5 years later, completely
replanted, and a young, green, growing young forest was
thriving. Right next to it, on the public lands, there had been
no salvage. The landscape was littered with fire-killed timber,
much of it falling on 8 feet of brush that had grown up, making
a perfect fire stack for a second-generation fire. And, in
fact, when the Caldor Fire hit a portion of the public
footprint last year, it completely exploded out of control,
according to the firefighters that were battling it. Why is
that?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Thank you, Congressman, for that question,
and you are absolutely right that in many areas we haven't been
able to get to that post-fire work or get to the fuels
treatments that we need to be doing.
Mr. McClintock. You haven't been able to, but SPI, the
private landowner, did. Why is that?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, sir, I would say that in the past it
was primarily a result of capacity challenges that we have and
funding challenges.
Mr. McClintock. SPI is one of the biggest land, in fact, it
is the biggest landholder in the United States next to the
Federal Government. So, why is it they can do simple tasks of
replanting and restoring a forest that seems to be beyond the
capacity of the Federal Government?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, we are certainly looking to scale up
those kinds of fuel treatments and post-fire work with the
investments that we are making.
Mr. McClintock. But why is it? Why the difference? We used
to be able to, we used to salvage the lands and replant them
after a fire. We used to do exactly what the private landowners
do. Why aren't we doing that anymore?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, sir, we do salvage sales in some
places, but we do have different challenges than private
landowners.
Mr. McClintock. Only on hazard trees. And you know
perfectly well it now takes 2 years under NEPA and the other
environmental laws on a fast track to approve timber salvage.
And by then, the fire-killed trees have lost all their
commercial value. That is why you can't auction them. And it is
not because of some act of God, it is because of acts of
government. It is specifically because of these laws that we
passed and refuse to modify.
So, tell me, why is it, again, that these forest owners can
maintain their tracks in a healthy condition and they make
money, a lot of money, doing that, and yet the Federal
Government loses money managing the very same lands.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, that is accurate, sir. Many times
that is the case. And like I said, that is why we are making
the investments in fuels treatments in our wildfire crisis
strategy, using all the funding and all the tools that we have
received from Congress. And we are happy to work with you on
any more of those tools.
Mr. McClintock. Yes, I know you are putting a lot more
money into fighting fires, because you have allowed the Federal
forests to become morbidly, catastrophically overgrown, and now
they are doing what a forest does when it chokes itself to
death. They are succumbing to disease, pestilence, drought, and
ultimately to catastrophic wildfire. Am I missing anything?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, like I said, sir, we are focused on
taking the funding that we do have and the tools that we do
have, and using that to focus and accelerate fuels treatments
wherever we can and cooperate with our partners in doing that.
Mr. McClintock. But you are missing the point, I think. I
am trying to drive this home to you. Private landowners not
only manage their lands properly, salvage their lands after a
fire, and make a great deal of money doing it, while the
Federal Government abandons its lands after a fire and loses
money on any timber-thinning project that it undertakes today.
We used to make money doing that, didn't we?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, we did.
Mr. McClintock. Didn't we used to send foresters out into
the forest, mark off excess timber, then auction it to logging
companies that would remove that excess timber and pay us for
it?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. We still do that, sir.
Mr. McClintock. But it now costs us money.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. In some places, yes.
Mr. McClintock. That is the difference. It now costs us
money because the cost of these studies exceeds the value of
the timber. And in those days, when we were efficiently
managing the forests, before we put these idiotic laws in
place, a quarter of the revenues from the timber auctions went
to the communities that were directly impacted, and the other
75 percent went back to the Forest Service to reinvest in our
lands.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to go back to the policies that
worked, instead of continuing to defend the policies that
don't?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, we absolutely agree with you that
active management is a critical part of our work to do to
reduce the wildfire crisis strategy.
Mr. McClintock. Well, my suggestion is maybe you ought to
start doing it.
I will yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I recognize the
gentlewoman from California, Ms. Porter.
Ms. Porter. Thank you very much.
In recent years, California has seen some of the biggest
wildfires in state history. Fortunately, we have some of the
best wildland firefighters in the world at CAL FIRE, the U.S.
Forest Service, and the Department of the Interior. We owe our
wildland firefighters a debt of gratitude. They put their lives
on the line to keep our communities safe. But the lack of
support that they are given has left agencies scrambling to
find and retain workers, all without the benefits and financial
support that they need.
I have continuously sounded this alarm in hearings, in
interviews, in press conferences, through the support of
legislation including my co-leadership of Tim's Act, that
Congress needs to do its part to give our firefighters what
they need.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, can you name a few barriers to the
recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. Thank you for that, Congresswoman,
and thank you for your work on behalf of our wildland
firefighters.
I would say our biggest barriers to recruiting and
retaining firefighters has been a lack of pay parity or,
essentially, the low pay that they receive for doing this
grueling and hazardous work. The BIL supplement has been
helpful. It is a bridge. But what we need is to permanently
enact a pay increase so that we can give certainty not only to
our current wildland firefighters, but those that we are trying
to attract into this profession, that they can make a living
wage and support their families doing this work.
Ms. Porter. I really appreciate that strong answer. You
would agree that the pay bump that you mentioned under the
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has been helpful in retaining our
firefighters?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, Congresswoman, I would agree, and I
have heard that directly from firefighters, that it has been
helpful. But once again, we need a permanent solution.
Ms. Porter. When is that funding expected to expire?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. For the Forest Service, we are expected to
spend all of that money by the end of this Fiscal Year,
September 2023.
Ms. Porter. So, September 2023. And, of course, we don't
have a wildfire season, we have year-round wildfires. We heard
about firefighters and fires, terrible fires, Marshal Fire and
others that are in the fall and into the winter. We are inching
closer to a pay cliff, so we need to permanently raise wildland
firefighter base pay if we are going to maintain this
consistent workforce.
You mentioned in your testimony, Ms. Hall-Rivera, that
Congress will need to pass special legislation that supports a
special base rate salary table and incident standby pay for all
responders. If Congress fails to do that and address this
inadequate pay situation, what is going to happen at the end of
Fiscal Year 2023 in September?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, Congresswoman, what I am very
concerned about is that we will lose our firefighters. They
will leave for other higher-paying jobs. We are hearing from
our union even now that 30 to 50 percent of our firefighters in
the Forest Service could leave if we go over that pay cliff,
and that would certainly be of great concern to all of us and
all of you, I know, who depend on these firefighters to help
protect communities in your state and do the critical forest
management work that we need, as well.
Ms. Porter. And as we have seen in the last several budget
years, if we have a continuing resolution, Federal employees
cannot receive a raise in base pay across the board during a
continuing resolution. So, it is urgent that we address this.
As you know, we are about to default if we don't pass
legislation to address our current debt limit. And we are only
now beginning to mark up appropriations packages that
Republicans have said will cut domestic funding. Can you please
tell this Committee why Congress should not let politics get in
the way of stabilizing the wildland firefighter workforce?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, Congresswoman, I think we can all
agree that it is critical that we continue to pay our
firefighters and pay them what they are worth, and that is not
a partisan issue.
Ms. Porter. And how many Forest Service firefighters are
currently hired for this year?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. We have a little over 9,000 firefighters
on board right now.
Ms. Porter. And how many do you need?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. We aspire to have 11,300 firefighters.
That is not what we need. We need more than that, and that is
why the 2024 budget requests funding for an additional 970
firefighters.
Ms. Porter. How long is it going to take you to get from
the 9,000 you have as of today to the 11,300 which is the
maximum that you can support under the funding that you have?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. If we meet that goal, which we are, I
would say, cautiously optimistic we will get to, that time of
year is usually late June or early July when we have all of our
firefighters on board.
Ms. Porter. Can we count on there not being a fire until
late June or early July?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Absolutely not, Congresswoman. That is why
we have the 9,000 that we have on board now. We also depend on
other employees in the Forest Service who are red-carded, or
who have fire qualifications.
Ms. Porter. Thank you. The last thing I want to flag in my
remaining time is you mentioned these numbers are available on
your website.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes.
Ms. Porter. And I was able to eventually find them. But the
link, www.fs.fed.us/wildlandfire, doesn't work.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. OK, we will get that fixed, Congresswoman.
Ms. Porter. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentlewoman yields. I now recognize the
gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Stauber, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Stauber. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, thank you for joining us today. Tomorrow,
on this Committee we are going to mark up my good friend Mr.
Rosendale's Forest Information Reform Act, which fixes the
Cottonwood decision. When Deputy Director French was before
this Subcommittee not too long ago, he discussed how the
expiration of the temporary fix to the misguided Cottonwood
decision could lead to lengthy ESA reconsultation on numerous
forest plans. As you know, Mr. Rosendale's H.R. 200 would fix
this issue.
But before the President signs that bill into law, as we
enter this horrible wildfire season, can you discuss how this
onerous process could impact needed forestry projects that
mitigate fuel on our forest floors?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, thank you for that question,
Congressman. And we want to work with you on the solution to
Cottonwood. I know our Chief and Deputy Chiefs have testified
on that many times. As I understand it, we have 87 land
management plans that could be impacted if the fix is not
enacted.
Mr. Stauber. And then can we expect any other further
delays?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. I am sorry, sir. Delays in what?
Mr. Stauber. In the forest plans being implemented.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. This is not my area of expertise in the
agency, but I would expect that if we had to re-consult on
plans, there would be a delay. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stauber. Yes. Can you give us an idea of how long of a
delay?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, I believe I have heard our Deputy
Chief for the National Forest System say 1 to 2 years, in some
cases, could be the delay.
Mr. Stauber. OK, 1 to 2 years, thank you. And I have asked
similar questions to Chief Moore, as well. But we need to
update the Good Neighbor Authority so counties can retain
receipts for completing contracts on Federal lands, whether it
be in the farm bill or a stand-alone. I think the Good Neighbor
Authority is important, and I think the counties need to be
reimbursed for their efforts.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, I appreciate your reference to Good
Neighbor Authority briefly in your written testimony. Can you
share how allowing counties to retain revenues would benefit
forest health and help to mitigate wildfires?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, sir. Allowing counties and tribes to
share their revenues, we believe, would increase their
participation and make this a tool that has been very
successful even more effective.
Mr. Stauber. Thank you very much. And with my remaining
time, I will yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin for the last
2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. Next, I will recognize
the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Kamlager-Dove.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you both
for attending this hearing today.
Director Rupert, the most recent national climate
assessment predicts increased incidences of wildfires in the
West as temperatures soar and droughts lengthen. You mentioned
the oversized role that climate change continues to play in the
extreme weather we have been experiencing across the country,
including my state of California. As the fire season continues
to extend year round, how is the Office of Wildland Fire
accounting for climate change and ensuring the utilization of
science when developing fire prevention policies?
Mr. Rupert. Thank you for the question. As you stated, the
impact and the role of climate in the occurrence and increasing
intensity frequently of wildfire is pretty well established in
science at this point. How that interacts with land use and
land management and prior fire management, as well as an
expanding interface, people living in that wildland urban
interface, really is, foundationally, the really unacceptable
impact that we are seeing nationally to people and resources.
So, in Interior, with additional support through the
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as well as we have also been on
a trajectory of receiving fuels management and risk reduction
support through the annual appropriation, we have been steadily
increasing our accomplishment of fuels reduction on the ground.
Increasingly, we, along with our partners like Forest Service,
states, tribes, many, many local communities across the West,
although we really need to be able to say all communities
across the West, increasingly are developing multi-
jurisdictional, cross-programmatic, at-scale, so think
watershed scale, landscape-scale risk reduction strategies so
that the fuels management work that we do on Interior-
administered land aligns and is coordinated with the fuels
management work that our partners on adjacent jurisdictions are
implementing with again, that shared vision of at scale, and
the scale piece is really important here, that at scale we have
these shared risk reduction strategies that will make a
difference in future years for those communities'
infrastructure, resource values, the complete sort of
resiliency and sustainability of landscapes and watersheds.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you.
Deputy Chief Hall-Rivera, you mentioned that over the past
20 years wildfires have become larger, lasted longer, and
proved more challenging to contain. We know that healthy
forests help regulate the climate by absorbing greenhouse
gases, facilitating water flows, and supporting diverse
ecosystems. Is it your opinion that older and larger trees are
more resistant to wildfire and the effects of climate change
than smaller, younger ones?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. Thank you for that question,
Congresswoman. I would say it depends on the species, of
course. But many trees that are older and larger are more
resistant to fire, especially low severity fire, if that is
what they are naturally adapted to, yes.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. And how is your office prioritizing
protecting either those kinds of trees or those species?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. I would say we have lots of different ways
that we are doing that, one of the most important being working
with local communities, working with tribes, and working with
others who really have that on-the-ground knowledge, as well as
our own Forest Service personnel, to identify those places on
the forest where those trees or those groves of trees may be,
and designing management strategies around them, again, in
collaboration, in partnership with those folks who know the
area best.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you for that. I did a couple of
forest tours in Northern California looking at private lands
and also Federal lands, and there is a difference in how they
are managed. I think part of it is because private companies
only have to answer to their shareholders and not to the
public. They are not using taxpayer dollars.
I will also say, and I know this might sound strange, that
in my discussions with tribal leaders, the importance of doing
exactly what you said, in making sure that there is a healthy
co-existence of the trees and how we are actually communicating
to them, because they certainly are communicating with one
another about which ones are going to stay and which ones might
succumb if not to human touch or mismanagement, but to fires. I
know that went a little spiritual.
So, with that, I will yield back my time.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady yields. I recognize the
gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Fulcher.
Mr. Fulcher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, my home state of Idaho, about two-thirds
of our land mass, really close to that, is federally
controlled, some 33 million acres. Most of that is Forest
Service. But between Forest Service and BLM, quite frankly,
overwhelmed, don't have the resources to manage.
There has been a lot of mismanagement. And, frankly, when
they do, they get sued into oblivion for every step of the way
by some somebody who calls themselves an environmentalist. And
as a result of that, somewhere between half a million and a
million acres a year gets burned up. And that is just because
of bad management, lack of ability to manage.
In our state, it is the state and the private land that is
our lifeline, because we have some degree of control. We have
some degree of ability to manage that ground.
And I have to admit until today I didn't even know we had a
Federal Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry. And please
don't mistake my comments to be disparaging to you, but I
simply don't know. What is the purpose of your role? What do
you do over state and private?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, thank you for that question,
Congressman. I am happy to talk about our programs that serve
state, private, and tribal landowners.
In addition to the National Forest System, which,
obviously, you are well familiar with, we have a suite of
programs where we work really closely with state foresters in
every state and territory to help deliver technical assistance
and financial assistance to private landowners through our
forest stewardship program. We help private landowners combat
diseases and insects through our forest health program. And
then we also provide training and the ability to do hazardous
fuels treatments on state, private, and other county lands
through our state and volunteer fire assistance programs.
So, we have a really long-standing relationship with our
state forestry agencies, and we work in very close partnership
with them to manage our nation's forests, we have 193 million
acres of national forests, and we have almost 500 million acres
of state, private, tribal, and urban forests.
Mr. Fulcher. Well, if I could just encourage you, that is
not where we need the help. It is the Federal lands where we
need the help. And, again, this is nothing against you
personally, but we are doing OK with the state and the private.
And speaking for the majority of the people in my state, that
is not where we want the help.
But I will segue, because I don't want to make this all
negative about that. What criteria do you use when you are
prioritizing fires, one fire versus another? How do you
prioritize where to put your assets and how to attack?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, that is a great question, and there
is a lot of complexity there depending on what is going on in
the fire season.
But for what we call initial attack, that is really done
locally with our personnel, but usually also with state, maybe
local, county dispatchers, personnel. And essentially, when a
fire starts, it is usually closest forces. If we are closest,
we go. If Interior is closest, they go. If states or counties
are closest, they go.
As we get more fire activity and there is more complexity,
we do have to do more prioritizing, and that is primarily done
at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. And what we
are going to look at, first and foremost, is protecting
communities, life, and property that is at risk. That is where
we are going to prioritize all of the assets that we have any
sort of control or influence over.
Mr. Fulcher. OK. Thank you, Ms. Hall-Rivera, and Mr.
Rupert, as well.
I yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to
recognize the Ranking Member for his questions, Mr. Neguse.
Mr. Neguse. I thank the Chairman. And I see Mr. Curtis is
back, so hopefully he can defend the propriety of that goatee I
was challenging earlier.
It is good to see you.
Sorry, so much discussion about Mr. Curtis. I wanted to
raise a couple of different issues.
First, to the Deputy Chief, I am certainly familiar with
your work, and with your role, and grateful for the work that
you do in partnering with a variety of private forest owners in
my district, as well as, of course, with the state of Colorado
and the State Forestry Department.
We had an opportunity to question Chief Moore a few weeks
ago in this Committee, an extended colloquy around some of the
prioritization decisions with respect to the tranches of
funding that have been allocated and announced by the Forest
Service. I couldn't be more, again, grateful that we were able
to get these investments enacted into law, and that the Forest
Service is now well on its way to working on implementing those
funds in a variety of different national forests across the
country, including in my community, the Arapaho and Roosevelt
National Forests, as I am sure you are familiar with, or
rather, USDA and your department, the Forest Service, recently
announced a tranche of funding going to the Routt National
Forest up in northwestern Colorado up to the Wyoming border.
So, I am grateful that we are able to make those investments.
It is going to make a real difference in terms of the hazardous
fuels reduction that will happen in those parts of my district,
and I suspect many of my colleagues that have projects in their
states, as well.
I wonder if you might talk a bit about how you see
subsequent tranches of funding being allocated. There are many
forests that, of course, were not included, and one in
particular in my state, the White River National Forest, which
happens to be the most highly-visited national forest in the
entire system managed by the USFS, and part of this goes to the
different criteria that are being used to determine which
landscapes merit the investment. So, I just wonder if you might
opine a bit on that.
Obviously, I have my interest in particular on behalf of
Coloradans in making sure that the White River National Forest
is reflected in the next tranche.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that
question. Again, we are extremely grateful for all of the
resources that have been invested in this work through BIL and
IRA.
There is a lot of work to do out there, I think,
Congressman, and you all know that. It can be a challenging
task to prioritize, right? What we have learned, and Mr. Rupert
spoke to this earlier, is you need to invest at a landscape-
scale to make a difference. You have to do work at the scale of
the problem. We have lots of great work going on all over the
country, but a lot of it is not large enough. The treatments
are not large enough to make a difference when a fire impacts
them.
So, what we look at is fire potential, communities. We look
at some aspects around things like wildlife corridors,
infrastructure, tribal lands, tribal interests, and socially
disadvantaged communities. So, it is a complex network of
different factors that we look at.
We will continue to use, I believe, that same type of
prioritization for additional funding that we are going to be
putting out, as well as continuing to invest in those
landscapes that we are currently investing in.
Mr. Neguse. I appreciate that answer and I would encourage
the agency, I think, to be nimble and explore alternative
criterion that can be applied as you determine the best way to
allocate these resources.
In the case of the White River National Forest, a good
example, you mentioned populations. Obviously, most of the
landscapes identified in that first tranche of funding,
including the Arapaho and Roosevelt, happened to be adjacent to
large population centers--a very direct threat, of course, to
citizens and to our communities.
But the White River National Forest, as we know, has been
the site of multiple fires that have created disastrous
economic impacts: the closure of I-70 in the Glenwood Canyon,
just by way of example, 2 years ago that had ramifications
across the country, just because it is such a central artery,
as my colleagues in Utah, Nevada, and other states well
understand in terms of that highway.
Anyway, I would just encourage you to take that approach,
and as you get to this, I believe it is the third tranche of
funding, or perhaps spending or allocating the remaining
funding that isn't spent from the first two tranches, that you
explore some different criteria.
With that, again, I thank you for the work that you are
doing, both of you, and you will certainly have a partner in
our office, in my office, and I suspect many of us in the work
that you are doing.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I recognize the
gentleman from Utah, the Vice Chairman, Mr. Curtis.
Mr. Curtis. Thank you. Let me just start by saying what a
delight it is to work with Congressman Neguse as Co-Chair of
the Wildfire Caucus, and I appreciate your support and
leadership.
I have listened with interest as he has described his
district and my colleague from Idaho has described his
district. It sounds a little bit like one-upmanship about who
has the most trees. I am pretty sure I do.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Curtis. And since I am speaking last, I will take that.
But Congressman Neguse, my last comment would be just to
invite you to join the goatee caucus with me. We could perhaps
Co-Chair that with a little work on your side.
Mr. Neguse. I will rise to that challenge.
Mr. Curtis. Good. Listen, I really am grateful for the
Wildfire Caucus. It does give us an opportunity and a platform
to talk about some of these issues on a really bipartisan
level. It is no secret how much the two of us share in our
districts in importance of forest fires.
Let me talk a little bit about--you talked about
prioritization. Let me talk about just the prioritization of
preventative work over firefighting and treatment. It seems
obvious, but could both of you just address quickly the cost
difference of preventing a fire versus putting one out and
treating a fire?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, I will start, Congressman. That old
adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, is very
true. We find that the investments that we make in fuels
treatments, even though some of them can be quite costly, they
don't compare to what we spend in suppression, and certainly
don't compare to what communities and people suffer in terms of
financial and other hardships as a result of fires.
Mr. Curtis. Yes.
Mr. Rupert?
Mr. Rupert. Yes, I would just real briefly add to that. The
work that I have seen done on that, treating, preventing, a
fraction of the cost of suppression. Part of the challenge of
really nailing that number down is the true cost of wildfire.
And there are reports, and reports, and reports written about
the true cost, and there is still uncertainty that we have not
accurately been able to determine the true cost of wildfire.
So, that efficiency, as we understand and develop that
science, is just going to continue to----
Mr. Curtis. Yes, and add onto that the environmental
impact, the carbon release, the damage to the environmental
ecosystem.
The next obvious question to both of you then is, why
aren't we spending more time on prevention, and how can we make
that a bigger focus?
Mr. Rupert. Well, I am pleased with the trajectory that we
have been on the front side of fire. There has been a dramatic
increase in focus on that. I agree that there is a long way to
go.
For me, I think about that fire response framework, very
robust, very mature framework. We talk about Boise, we talk
about the National Interagency Fire Center, and that
partnership and that community. It is all coordinated,
standard-driven. We don't yet have that in the pre-fire space.
And it is not a cut-and-paste sort of need that we have for a
pre-fire framework, because there are some different interested
parties, more of a land management engagement, for sure.
But to have a coordinated framework that is standard-
driven, science-driven, data-driven, I think, is what we
continue to need to expand and build.
Mr. Curtis. Is it possible that it is a little political,
some of these treatments? And how do we address that? How do we
hit that head on?
Ms. Hall-Rivera, go ahead.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sure. I will take that one, sir.
Yes, certainly we see disagreements about treatments and
what the American public wants from their forest lands. But I
am really heartened to see in the past few years the strength
of the collaborations that we see, just the awareness of fire,
and the need to do treatments in the forest to help prevent
that, I think, has gone up significantly as a result of this
crisis that we are suffering.
So, we have a lot more partners at the table that are
helping us come together and do these treatments and get the
prescribed fire on the landscape, too, which is a significant
need that we have in the West, and we need partners and
traditional ecological knowledge from tribes to help us do that
well.
Mr. Curtis. I can tell you in my district, we are often
criticized after a fire of not having prepared or done enough
to prevent it, and I would love to join my colleague, Mr.
Neguse, in a bipartisan manner to deal with these preventative
issues, and would love any ideas that you could bring forward
that we could work on in the caucus to see if we could advance
some bipartisan solutions.
Mr. Chairman, I am out of time. I yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to
recognize the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Bentz, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bentz. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for this
hearing.
I am, obviously, from Oregon, and I will challenge the tree
numbers that were mentioned by Utah. But the issue of wildfire
is hugely challenging in Oregon and, of course, northern
California. And one of the obvious ways of taking care of this
is treating land. That is why I was so happy to see your 10-
year plan and 20 million acres, and then perhaps 30 million on
top of that or in addition to that from adjacent landowners.
It seemed to me, in the work I have been doing with various
large timber landowners, that there is a concern when it comes
to fighting these fires that private land is not respected,
private land rights are not respected. And we even saw an
example of this in a small, little prescribed burn adjacent to,
actually, one of the grazing permits that my family has in the
Malheur National Forest, and what happened was reflective of
the folks working for the Forest Service not really caring
about private property. And what that does is it makes the
private property owners mad, and angry, and upset, and nothing
good comes from it.
The question I have for both of you, really, is how do we
address this issue of arrogance that we see when backfires are
started? How do we address this issue of we don't care about
fences, we don't care about cattle, we don't care about
neighboring property burning up. How do we address this?
Because we have to work together on this. And that 10-year plan
really does reflect the fact that you are looking at private
landowners for that 30 million acres.
So, can both of you take a shot at explaining how we might
move away from the obvious ``We are the Federal Government, we
can burn anything down we want, we have absolute immunity,''
and all kinds of justifications to more of a ``How can we work
together with you, and the last thing we want to do is burn you
up while we are trying to save our national forests''?
So, take it away.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sure, thank you for that question,
Congressman. Yes, we need to be in partnership, no doubt about
it. Fire is an all-hands issue, and wildland fires don't
respect boundaries, right?
I think it is absolutely our Chief's expectation that our
leaders out in the field are working together with their
partners, their communities, private property owners. We are
doing that work before the fire comes. That is really, really
critical, sitting down together when smoke is not in the air,
having those discussions about where do we engage a fire, what
is the right ridge, learning from our folks like ranchers and
producers that have been out there on the land and know those
features, and can help our folks learn that----
Mr. Bentz. If I may interrupt, what is the accountability
method so that, when someone working for the Forest Service
does make a mistake, and burns way more than should have been
burned? There are all kinds of excuses, but what is the
accountability methodology in place so that, when something
does go wrong and there is no doubt about someone overstepping
their bounds as an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, how do
you address this? Because that is not what happened in this
little prescribed burn. Can you share with us what we look
toward to make sure accountability occurs?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sure. Yes, we are always going to be
accountable for our actions. I know that myself and the Chief
definitely will be accountable.
We are asking our employees to do challenging things. We
are asking our employees to take risks when we put fire on the
ground, and we are going to support them, as well. And we do
try to make right with the private landowners wherever we can.
Mr. Bentz. Here is what I need. I need the rules that
reflect the procedure for imposing accountability. I just don't
want a statement that, yes, we will be--no, that is not good
enough. In the situation that occurred back in the Malheur
National Forest, there were people who did things that were
incorrect, burned up private property, reflected zero care for
that purpose, cut fences, destroyed I don't know how many board
feet of private timber for no good reason, and contrary to the
measurement of the amount of humidity in the air. In fact, it
was phonied up.
Where is the written procedure for holding those people and
the Forest Service accountable? I need a copy of it, if such a
thing exists.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. We can get that to you, Congressman.
Mr. Bentz. Thank you so much. I yield back.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. The gentleman yields. I would like to
recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Duarte, next.
Mr. Duarte. Hello, thank you. Thank you for being here. I
have been through a lot of forestry discussions, several today
even, one over in Doug LaMalfa's Subcommittee on Agriculture
with the Chief, and here with you. And they all start off with
a lot of discussion of climate change. And, yes, the climate is
changing. It has been changing for a while. We don't need to go
into that.
What is really different though, and I hope we can dialogue
honestly about it, is our forest management strategies changed
30 to 40 years ago. They didn't change for the better. In
retrospect, for whatever the motivations or intents were then,
they didn't change for the better. Whether they were old growth
forests or new forests, we quit thinning them, we drove the
loggers out of them in Oregon, in California, in many areas.
Logging communities are on their heels, economically. It is
tough to find a logger in California these days.
And really, it is going to take, I mean, there are 48
million acres of forest land in California alone, Federal
forest land in California alone. So, $1,000 an acre would be
$48 billion. It is not going to happen, right? It is not going
to happen. So, we need those loggers back. We need the sawmills
back. We need the wood products companies researching new
products and finding economic use of our forest products.
We are not going to do this if we leave it to government to
get through the 100 million acres, or 193 million acres of
forest land, it is going to burn. It is going to burn hot, it
is going to burn catastrophically, and it is going to burn and
then regenerate into something that is very different than a
sustainable conifer forest that we hope to get to.
So, please, be honest with us, because right now what is
happening is when one party gets control of the administration
power, we get some forest laws we can live with. When another
party gets in there, we talk climate change and the loggers are
on their heels again, and we don't get the investment and the
long-term business strategies that allow for the rural
communities to actually develop the economy that sustains the
forests.
So, please, if you guys can be honest with us, we can at
least begin the dialogue and the assurance that we are heading
toward a commercially viable--for a sustainability program that
allows logging, grazing, wood products, industries to re-
establish and convince the bank that it is a worthwhile
investment.
So, please, talk about a vision for sustainable forestry
going forward that removes it from the political football it
has been, admits to mistakes which were admitted to when we
went to some more of what we thought were sustainable methods.
Please give us something to hold on to here, because we keep
hearing the same stuff.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, Congressman, I would say our 10-year
wildfire crisis strategy lays out that blueprint and that plan.
We absolutely need to do active forest management on millions
of acres in this country, and we need an industry, a healthy
industry, to help us be partners in that, not only our
traditional sawmill industry, but, as you pointed out, new
forest products as well, new markets, especially for the
smaller diameter trees that put many of our forests most at
risk.
Mr. Rupert. I might just add, from an Interior perspective,
I thank you. I very much appreciate your comments and feedback.
I think, particularly with a bureau like the Bureau of Land
Management, a bureau like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and
really, across the entire Department, there is a recognition
that for some of the lands that we manage, and again, Interior,
we don't want to just talk about forest management, because
actually in Interior we don't manage all that much forest. We
do manage forests, especially in Oregon, but we manage hundreds
of millions of non-forested land, as well. And they are dealing
with fire risk in those areas.
Grazing is a very important tool. The BIA, in particular,
working with tribes with forest programs and active forage
management, there is a very sort of proud, proud legacy and
history there. So, I think much of, at least from my
perspective, in addition to recognizing the impact of climate
and then all of these activities in terms of, OK, so how are we
going to adapt to that for future years that we do need to
have, if we want to use those tools, that we have to have sort
of the foundation. And for many of these uses, that includes
the economic foundation for them to exist.
Mr. Duarte. Thank you.
Mr. Rupert. I appreciate your comments.
Mr. Duarte. You mentioned grazing, so let's talk about
southwestern deserts and grazing. Salt cedar removals are very
necessary. BLM land leases are very, very much a part of,
families' grazing rights are a big deal.
Just recently, the Department of the Interior challenged
grazing rights, and basically offered grazing rights that
families have held adjacent to their deeded acreage for
generations up for public auction to conservation groups, or
whoever will pay the highest price.
These families that need to develop water, they need to
manage habitat, they need to control game on their property,
they need to do salt cedar removal to protect groundwater
resources and habitat value, the same issue, we just inserted a
whole ton of uncertainty into the business model of these
ranching families with a policy that came out of the Bureau of
Land Management, Department of the Interior that hadn't even
been through public comment, hadn't even worked constructively
with the ranchers to talk about what would happen if we put
your grazing rights adjacent to your deeded acreage up for
auction.
So, that is another one of the economically destabilizing--
how does a bank loan against those ranches when public policy
is making ominous, large moves against the most economic
interests?
Thank you, Chairman. I will yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you. The gentleman yields, and I would
like to recognize Mr. Westerman.
Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany. And again,
thank you to the witnesses for being here.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, do you get out much and see the Forest
Service lands across the country?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, Congressman, I don't get to go out
as much as I would like. But yes, I try to get out and see our
forest lands as much as possible.
Mr. Westerman. How does it make you feel when you see these
devastated landscapes? I call them moonscapes.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, it is heart wrenching.
Mr. Westerman. I can just think of a few of them off the
cuff here.
I was out in New Mexico, the Lincoln National Forest, a
fire burned many years ago, and it is still just a moonscape
out there. But you go down the road to the Mescalero Apache
tribal land, it is a beautiful Ponderosa pine forest, lots of
wildlife there. And it is the same climate, same elevation,
same environment, same tree species. It is just different
management tactics.
And the really sad thing is these forests aren't coming
back. So, it seems like, if Forest Service employees went out
and saw that, you would be just like hammering the table
saying, ``We have to do something different. We can't have more
Lincoln National Forest storage of these thousands and
thousands of acres of land that has been decimated.''
Out in California, Mr. McClintock has done some work where
you go look at the restoration out around South Lake Tahoe,
where fires have come through and you still have a vibrant,
healthy forest there, yet you go down the road, and I can't
remember the name of this particular fire, but the Forest
Service said they had tried to replant it, like, 6 times in 12
years, and the trees just wouldn't grow because the organic
matter burned out of the ground.
Should we be more adamant about doing management preventing
these moonscapes, doing things like Mr. McClintock has proposed
that show it works on the ground? What is keeping us from
making these forests healthy like we would all like them to be?
You are representing the U.S. Forest Service. What does the
Forest Service need to make that happen?
If you had an unlimited firefighter budget, that tells me
all we are doing is paying more people to put out the fires we
should be preventing.
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, well, it is a multi-faceted
challenge, for sure. And I know our employees want to get out
on the ground and do that work together with our partners.
We need additional capacity. We are building that capacity
through many of the investments that you all have made in the
Forest Service in the last couple of years. We are also working
with partners to build their capacity.
We need industry. We just were talking about that earlier.
We need a healthy forest products industry, and we need new
markets, again, especially for those trees that right now don't
have all that much value. And we are doing that work in our
research and wood innovations programs, and we are partnering.
We need to learn from our partners. We need to learn from
our tribal partners who have been managing these forests for
millennia.
Mr. Westerman. Yes, I think learning from state and tribal
partners could be a tremendous help. But when I look at it from
an industry perspective, they were basically run out of the
areas because of the lack of management. And it is kind of like
Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. Why would they ever
want to go invest a lot of money trusting that there is going
to be long-term management down the road?
And we tried to give the Forest Service tools like that. We
gave you a 20-year stewardship contract provision. How many 20-
year stewardship contracts has the Forest Service signed since
we gave you that provision in 2018?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. I don't have that number, sir, but it is
small.
Mr. Westerman. I have the number, it is zero. And if we are
not doing the management, if you are not showing industry that
there is reason to come back to a place, there is no incentive
for them to go spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build
infrastructure that simply can't exist without the management.
We have the Save our Sequoias Act, and we have large white
fir and pine trees that need to be taken out of the sequoia
groves, and there is absolutely no market anywhere close for
that material. So, it is kind of the chicken and the egg
scenario.
I think the Forest Service has to create some credibility,
and it has to be long-term commitments like the 20-year
stewardship contract if you ever want to get that industry
back.
And we are facing housing shortages, high construction
prices. And instead of burning all this timber and sending
carbon up in the atmosphere, we could be building houses, we
could be building businesses. But it is really hard to come in
here and talk about increased money for firefighting, when that
is just putting a Band-Aid on the wound instead of going to the
symptom of what is causing the problem.
I yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I recognize another
gentleman from California, Mr. LaMalfa.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for letting me
be in today with your Subcommittee.
Ms. Hall-Rivera, we have noted your goal of working 20
million acres of public land over a 10-year period, as well as
doing things to partner on the state, tribal, and private lands
for another 30 million. My question is, we have seen a history
with Forest Service of over-reporting or even misrepresenting
actual treated acreage, such as counting the same piece of land
maybe up to four times if it has had different treatments in a
short period of time, or maybe it is fire, and then they come
back with thinning, or salvage, et cetera, things like that.
Would you agree that that is an issue with how land is
reported, and for us to make decisions on? What does that look
like to you?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes. Well, thank you for that question,
Congressman.
We do count every treatment that we do. Many acres need
multiple treatments to get them back to a healthy state. They
need to be mechanically thinned, they might need to have a
timber sale, and they probably need prescribed fire. That is
going to occur over, likely, multiple seasons and multiple
years. So, we account for each one of those entries, because we
need our folks out there doing that work, we need to be paying
them a salary to do that, or we need to be contracting with
folks. So, yes, we account for each one of those.
But to your point, I think the point maybe that you are
making is are we also accounting for the outcomes that we are
having, and I would acknowledge that we can always do a better
job talking about outcomes, in particular when it comes to how
we articulate whether we are reducing risk, risk to
communities, and whether or not those landscapes are healthier
and in a more resilient state when we complete all of those
treatments. So, we need to do that, as well.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, I guess at the same time we need to be
reporting, if it is multi-treatments on the same land, how much
untreated land do we still have.
Let me ask more specifically on what you consider treated.
If a forest has been burned via wildfire, not prescribed, is
that considered treated land?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. In some instances, we do count those acres
as a fuels treatment if they meet a number of criteria, and if
it is an area that, in the forest plan, is designated for that.
It is, I would tell you, a pretty small number of acres each
year.
Mr. LaMalfa. So, you would have an area where an accidental
wildfire caused by nature or what have you, that those lands
could be counted not as being harvested or prescribed, or
thinned, or whatever, you would count them as treated. Like, I
had a million-acre fire in my district 2 years ago. How much
would that be considered treatment by Forest Service when it
was not intended?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Let me characterize that, the numbers
there. We normally treat, overall, around 3 to 3.5 million
acres a year. Acres that are treated by a wildfire that we
count toward that might be 300,000 acres, total. It is a
relatively small number.
Mr. LaMalfa. Because the big problem on the back end of
that is that, and you can fly right over it and look at the
comparison, when you see private land post-fire versus Federal
land post-fire, private land is going right back to work
removing that material and planting trees back. You fly over,
say, 7 years later, you can see green there, and you can see
the land that was that was Federal. It is a checkerboard
pattern, you can tell that it has largely been left the same.
You have snags out there, you have brush growing, all that. So,
we have the same tinderbox situation.
How is the Forest Service doing, since I think it is about
a 2-year-old plan now, on the 20 million acres that it set out
to do? How much progress has been made on that 10-year goal so
far?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. I don't have the figures right at my
fingertips, but I believe we have treated a couple hundred
thousand acres total in our 21 landscapes. Obviously, we have
more to go. A lot of our first year we were getting activated,
getting those projects that were already kind of on the shelf
out in place. And now we have this significant investment here
in the second year, and I expect us to continue to ramp up our
activity in our priority landscapes.
Mr. LaMalfa. Well, it is going to be very difficult to meet
a 10-year mark of 20 million at that rate, and that is the
thing I always am concerned about, is pace and scale of getting
this work done, especially since Forest Service oversees 193
million acres. Twenty million is right at 10 percent of that,
so 2 million per year is 1 percent of the year of its holdings.
That will take forever.
And I understand not all 193 million is such that they
would be treating, but still, we have a significant--and Chief
Moore in a previous hearing says the wood outstrips the work
every year by a lot.
I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields from California. I will
take 5 minutes for questioning at this point.
The Chairman of the Full Committee asked a question in
regards to the 20-year stewardship contract. He said there are
none out there. Are there any being considered?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, I do believe we have one 20-year
stewardship contract under development now. And what I can say
writ large is that we do use stewardship contracting.
The other authority that we have quite frequently, as well
as all of the other tools that we have available to us--Good
Neighbor Authority, Wyden Authority, joint chiefs, many of the
things that we have talked about today.
So, we do use stewardship contracting a lot, just the 20-
year authority we have not used as much.
Mr. Tiffany. Do you not want to use the 20-year stewardship
contract? As the Chairman said, it gives people certainty then,
especially for private industry, which has been run out of the
West. Wouldn't it encourage some of them to come back?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, we do want to use that, Congressman.
This is not my area of expertise, so we can get you some more
details on ones that are being developed, or even some of the
challenges that we have experienced.
Mr. Tiffany. You commented about being accountable under
the questioning of Mr. Bentz from Oregon. How were you
accountable? How was the agency accountable with the Hermits
Peak Fire?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, thank you for that question,
Congressman. And I just want to acknowledge and say again that
we are very sorry for what happened with Hermits Peak. We know
that it had tragic impacts on that community, and the people's
lives and livelihoods there, as well as some of our employees
who live there.
We had to put a lot of funding, post-fire and disaster
funding, into that area. We are working together with the
community and landowners to help them get access to other USDA
programs as well.
Mr. Tiffany. Are state and local entities or private
landowners allowed to sue the Federal Government in a situation
like that?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Sir, I am not an attorney. I don't know
all the details around that. But, yes, I believe there is a lot
of active litigation going on right now.
Mr. Tiffany. Who manages our forests better, local, state,
or Federal?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Well, I would say that working in
partnership is really critical. We all have our own authorities
and our own missions that we work in. And for us, bringing
those partners to the table, learning from them, being
collaborative, and trying to get to a point where we have a lot
of social license to do the work that we need to do is
critically important for us.
Mr. Tiffany. You used the term, the phrase ``social
license.'' What role do lawsuits play in stymieing the Federal
landowners from getting projects done?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. We do have litigation challenges, sir, in
particular in specific regions of the Forest Service. We have
that. It can delay projects, and it can delay us from getting
work done on the ground.
Mr. Tiffany. Would it help to have a loser pays system here
in the United States?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. I am sorry, a what, sir?
Mr. Tiffany. Would it help to have a loser pays system,
where those that are filing the lawsuits, which you oftentimes
win, but then there are no repercussions for those that file
those lawsuits that are oftentimes frivolous?
Ms. Hall-Rivera. Yes, I couldn't say one way or the other.
I haven't really looked into that. That is part of our
democracy. People are going to litigate the decisions that we
make, and what we do is try to build deeper partnerships and
more collaborations so we can help build trust and social
license to do our work.
Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Rupert, you mentioned about climate change
causing this. What has had a greater impact, climate change or
improper management?
I always use the watershed year of 1988, where forest
management became much less active on our Federal lands, and
you see the decline in forest production, and you see the
incline of fires over the last, what would that be, 40 years.
Which one has had a greater impact?
Mr. Rupert. I don't know that I have seen definitive sort
of reporting comparing the two and assigning weight. The most
comprehensive study that I have seen, and analysis really hits
on all three that have been talked about today: (1) climate,
(2) past fire management practices, in particular with very
aggressive suppression over the last century-and-a-half, and
then (3) changes in population, so people moving into that
wildland-urban interface, those three issues combined.
Mr. Tiffany. Do you believe global warming is man-caused?
Mr. Rupert. I am not a global warming expert in terms of
climate change. Everything that I have read and all the
reference to climate and the atmosphere and a variety of
complex factors, including wildfire smoke that interact in it,
and the impact that it has, and I think that clearly sort of
creates that foundation for why we spend so much time talking
about how are we going to adapt to this.
Mr. Tiffany. You may be correct that these wildfires, with
all the smoke that is coming up as a result of improper
management, that may be befouling the environment and helping
cause it.
I am going to ask one real quick final question. We saw the
impact of illegal aliens causing fire on Federal lands down in
southern Arizona. Are you concerned at all with the incredible
crush of people coming across our border as a result of the
actions of the Biden administration, that we may see wildfires
as a result of illegal aliens going through our Federal forest
lands, as has happened previously?
Mr. Rupert. Maybe, I will respond to fire along, in this
case, the southern border.
Certainly, Interior, we administer hundreds of thousands of
acres along the southern border: refuges, parks, BLM land,
tribal trust lands. We have a real focus on risk reduction
fuels management along the southern border, and that has been
the case for many years. And then we also have a real focus on
our sort of preparedness and response resources along the
southern border, as well.
And regardless of how wildfires ignite, I mean, we are
doing everything we can to be prepared to interact with that
and reduce risk from those fires.
Mr. Tiffany. I thank the witnesses for their testimony
today and the Members for their questions. The witnesses on the
first panel are dismissed.
Thank you for your testimony. We will now move on to our
second panel.
While the Clerk resets our witness table, I will remind the
witnesses that, under Committee Rules, they must limit their
oral statements to 5 minutes, but their entire statement will
appear in the hearing record.
I would also like to remind our witnesses of the timing
lights, which will turn red at the end of your 5-minute
statement, and to please remember to turn on your microphone.
As with the first panel, I will allow all witnesses to
testify before Member questioning.
[Pause.]
Mr. Tiffany. I want to thank the witnesses so much for
their patience, what is nearly 2 hours and a little bit of a
delay because of votes that happened at the start of this
Committee hearing. But we greatly appreciate you being here.
First, I am going to recognize Matt Dias.
Am I saying your name correctly?
Mr. Dias. That is correct.
Mr. Tiffany. He is the President of the California Forestry
Association.
I recognize you for your testimony for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MATT DIAS, PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA FORESTRY
ASSOCIATION, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Dias. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany,
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee for the
opportunity to testify today regarding the challenges we are
facing as we approach the 2023 wildfire season. As said, I am
the President and CEO of the California Forestry Association,
otherwise known as Calforests.
Calforests membership includes private industrial forest
owners and managers. Our members are committed to the
sustainable management of our private forest resources, and
cumulatively represent about 3.5 million acres in California.
In addition, I think it is important to note that our
members also share about 6,000 miles of property line with
federally managed lands throughout California.
Despite record precipitation and the largest snowpack in
recent history, forest conditions that have led to severe
wildfire seasons, particularly in our national forests, still
largely exist. The question is how long will it take for
overstock fuel condition and brush-laden fire scars to dry out
and become susceptible to large fires once again?
Certainly, the fine fuels and shrubs in the lower
elevations to mid-elevations of the Sierra Nevada are curing,
essentially drying out, and will likely be the forefront of the
2023 wildfire season.
As temperatures rise and snow melts, it will likely reveal
issues of blocked roads due to fallen trees, poorly maintained
road surfaces, and watercourse crossings that need significant
maintenance to re-establish access. And this issue of access is
so imperative as we wade deeper into the 2023 wildfire season,
because without access, suppression activities are just simply
ineffective.
As such, it is really important that the Forest Service
retain all tools necessary for suppression, including the
ability to deploy fire retardant, fight fires aggressively on a
24/7 schedule, tailor the use of backfires, and work closely
with state firefighting agency partners. In our instance, that
would be CAL FIRE.
In 2020, the United States, the U.S. Forest Service,
entered into an agreement with the state of California noted as
the Agreement for Shared Stewardship of California Forest and
Range Lands. This agreement commits to restoring healthy
forests and rangelands in California through vegetation
treatments, and has a shared responsibility with state and
private partners and Federal partners of commitments of
treating 500,000 acres each annually.
It was reported by the California Wildfire and Forest
Resilient Task Force about a month ago that, over the course of
the last 2 years, on average, in California, the Forest Service
has treated 137,000 acres. And that is a far cry from the
committed 500,000 acres that we are seeking. And I would
suggest that that indicates that pace and scale has to increase
dramatically.
In addition, we have 1.5 million acres that are identified
at high risk of conversion from forest to non-forest vegetation
types as a result from wildfires in 2019 through 2021. During
that same period of time, we have about 8,000 acres that are
being planted annually. There is a very short window of
opportunity after high-severity fire to re-establish forests
when costs are lowest and probability of success is highest,
and we just aren't meeting that mark right now, and this delay
is also setting aside the benefits of carbon sequestration that
healthy and young forests provide.
I want to provide three thoughts as it relates to issues
that we could embrace to deal with this situation at hand.
Maintain and build upon aggressive initial attack. We have
heard a lot of testimony today about the overstocked conditions
of the forested resources in the National Forest System as a
whole. And I would suggest that we need to take a very strong
stance on initial attack because the tried-and-true test of
ameliorating wildfire impacts is putting them out early.
No. 2, reliance upon existing tools and authorities. We
have this Congress, or last Congress, through the
Infrastructure Act, allowed for emergency action and new
categorical exemptions supporting fuel breaks. In addition, we
have alternative opportunities for the Forest Service. And in
California, those have been narrowly relied upon. In fact, I
can only identify 11 projects that have been relied upon for
these efficiency in permitting and process.
The last point I want to make is develop cooperative
partnerships with private entities, and this falls in the space
of not only suppression, but prevention and post-fire recovery,
as well. The private sector in California holds the expertise,
the networks, and the capacity to assist the Forest Service,
and that is what we really want to do, assist the Forest
Service to get to the goals that we all jointly want to see
achieved in the short term here, as it relates to forest health
and resilience.
And lastly, I want to talk about supply agreements. And we
have heard some questions today as it relates to
infrastructure, and the building out of infrastructure for
forest products industries. That would be commercial, that
would be standard sawmills, if you will, innovative wood
products, or low-value wood waste. And to date, that is just
not happening. And I honestly believe that the 20-year
stewardship agreement could be helpful. But obligatory supply
agreements are what is going to unlock the investment to make
that happen.
I appreciate the time, and I am ready for questions being
offered.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dias follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Matt Dias, President/CEO, California Forestry
Association (Calforests), Sacramento, California
Introduction
Thank you, Chairman Tiffany and Ranking Member Neguse and members
of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify regarding
challenges facing forest management, wildfire suppression, and wildland
firefighters ahead of the 2023 wildfire season.
I serve as President/CEO for the California Forestry Association
(Calforests).
Calforests Background
Calforests membership includes private industrial forest owners and
managers, and forest products companies ranging from sawmills, veneer
mills, and several biomass powerplants. Our members are committed to
the sustainable management of our private forest resources and
supporting active forest management of National Forests within
California. Cumulatively our members own and manage more than 3.5
million acres of timberland in California and share thousands of miles
of ownerships boundaries with United States Forest Service (USFS) and
other federal lands.
California Winter and the coming 2023 Fire Season
Just like the many recent wildfire seasons, the winter of 2022-2023
in California has also made national headlines. Despite record
precipitation and the largest snowpack in recent memory, the forest
conditions that have led to severe wildfire seasons, particularly on
our National Forests, still exist. The question, as we look to the
looming fire season for 2023, is how long it will take for overstocked
fuel conditions and brush laden fire scars to dry out and become
susceptible to large fires once again. Certainly, the fine fuels at low
to mid elevation of the Sierra are beginning to cure, and these fuels
will likely become the forefront of the 2023 fire season.
Additionally, with such extraordinary snow loads, there is
significant concern over issues of access. As temperatures rise the
snow melt will likely reveal issue of blocked roads due to fallen trees
and roads surfaces that need significant maintenance to reestablish
access that is critical to engaging in rapid and effective firefighting
when ignitions occur. It is unlikely that the USFS will have the
manpower or contracting efficiency necessary to reestablish the
necessary access prior to the peak of fire season.
This issue of access for firefighting, along with unknowns as it
relates to extended periods of extreme heat or lightening, make it
important that fire protection forces be fully staffed as soon as
possible and that all suppression tools, including the use of aerial
deployed fire retardant, be made available throughout the 2023 fire
season. It is critically important for US Forest Service to fight fires
aggressively during wildfire season--immediate response to suppress,
fighting fire 24-7, tailor the use of backfires, and work closely with
their state firefighting agency partners like CAL FIRE.
In spite of the heavy snow and rain this winter, wildfire will
continue to impact water resources, air quality, recreation, forest
carbon and--for Calforests' members--the timberlands they own and
manage to generate renewable forests products that society depends on.
Wildfire Prevention Activities
On August 12, 2020, the USFS, Pacific Southwest Region, and the
State of California entered into an ``Agreement for Shared Stewardship
of California's Forest and Rangelands.'' \1\
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\1\ https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/8.12.20-CA-
Shared-Stewardship-MOU.pdf (Accessed October 15, 2021).
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The agreement commits to restoring healthy forests and rangelands
in California through actions including vegetation treatments on one
million acres per year by 2025 (500,000 acres USFS and 500,000 acres
state and private lands). Calforests strongly supports this cooperative
effort. The joint targets for treatments are likely the minimum
necessary to meaningfully reduce the devastating impacts from wildfires
across California.
In March of this year, the first reports of tracking were provided,
with the following metric provided:
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
As you can see, USFS Region 5, which is responsible for
management of the greatest proportion of forestlands in California
(15.3 million acres), successfully treated an average of just over
137,000 acres in the last two fiscal years. While this is a laudable
effort, it appears unlikely that the goals of the ``Million Acre
Strategy'' will be met by the established timelines. Meeting this goal
of prevention is a key metric in addressing the wildfire crisis that we
face in California.
The pace and scale of the treatments accomplished must increase
dramatically to not only meet desired targets, but also actively
protect critical habitat, water resources, timber resources, adjacent
communities, and private timberlands.
In contrast to the slow pace of fuels treatment, the acres impacted
by wildfire in California continue to climb drastically, setting new
records for burned acres on an annual basis. Over 10 million acres
(Refer to Appendix 1) of the USFS Region 5 National Forests have
experienced wildfire over the past 20 years.
Post Fire Recovery and Reforestation
From 2019-2021, more than 4.9 million acres of forested land burned
in wildfires across the state. While the greatest proportion of those
acres will likely require some level of recovery-based management, at
least 1.5 million acres are identified as at risk of conversion from
forest to non-forest vegetation types. This forest loss results from
extraordinarily high intensity wildfire over large footprints and the
reburning of previously burned areas that were not subsequently
restored or reforested.
During the same three-year period, a conservative estimate of
50,000 acres were reforested each year in California by Calforests
members, whereas USFS Region 5 reforested approximately 8,000 acres
annually, which represents less than 1% of the public lands that
require post fire recovery and reforestation. There is a short window
of opportunity (about 1-3 years) after high-severity fire to
reestablish forests when costs are lowest and probability of success is
highest. Delays in taking timely action will result in higher costs for
reforestation with a lower probability of success, and will result in a
significant reduction in carbon sequestration, at least in the near
term.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Figure 1: (a) Number of acres planted during the period 2010-
2020 on National Forest System lands. Source: USDA Forest Service FACTS
database. (b) Acres reforested and replanted compared to acres burned
at high severity across two five-year periods on USFS Region 5
Things must change and I am prepared to discuss some of the
necessary steps that must be taken.
Focus Points for this Testimony
1. Maintain and build upon aggressive initial attack to keep fires
small; and
2. Support increased USFS use of the tools and authorities provided
by the Congress;
3. Develop a Cooperative Partnerships with Private Entities to Drive
Suppression, Prevention, and Recovery Efforts.
Maintain and Build Upon Aggressive Initial Attack
Conditions across the forested landscape of California are simply
dangerous during wildfire season. In recent research published by the
USFS, Dr. Malcolm North, indicates that tree density on our Federal
Forests is 6 to 7 times greater than they were a century ago. Dr. North
also indicates that tree size has diminished, and these forested
conditions are not as resilient to the wildfires we are consistently
experiencing today.
There is also a large population of people which have moved into
the Wildland Urban Interface over the last many decades, along with
other resources at risk across all forested lands in California and
beyond. The only tried and true way to manage fires burning in these
conditions during the peak fire season is to extinguish them
immediately. Allowing fires to burn ``for resource benefit'' is a
luxury that California (and much of the rest of the West) cannot
currently afford. With fuel loads this high and the potential to return
to drought always present, any fire can go from ``beneficial'' to
dangerous in a matter of hours--or even minutes.
During peak wildfire season, burning for resource benefit takes
resources that just simply cannot be spared in time of need. Rapidly
changing weather patterns, unpredictability of human caused ignitions,
outrageous fuel loads, and firefighter and civilian safety simply
introduce too many variables into the equation to allow fire to burn
during the height of fire season as a means of vegetation management.
To be clear, Calforests supports all tools in the wildfire
prevention toolbox, including prescribed fire at the right times and
places. We simply are no longer in a situation where we can allow
uncontrolled burns as a substitute for active fire management.
Reliance upon Existing Tools and Authorities
The wildfire crisis in an emergency in California, and across much
of the west. As such, Calforests respectfully urges all forest
management actions, including fire prevention, be treated as an
emergency. The Infrastructure Act created a new Emergency Action
authority for the USFS. To date, the USFS has approved the use of this
Emergency Action authority for one project in California. In times of
crisis, this authorization should be relied upon much more heavily.
The USFS has the authority to execute projects under Alternative
Arrangements (36 CFR 220.4), which the agency has used twice in
California--one for road clearance following the Caldor Fire and one
for protection of sequoia groves in the central Sierra Nevada. This
authority does not bypass the need to conduct environmental review, but
rather allows for simultaneous NEPA analysis while the project is being
executed to achieve resilient forest conditions in times of emergency.
The dire need for increased treatments necessitates greater reliance
upon all these emergency authorities.
Additionally, the Infrastructure Act created a new Categorial
Exclusion for fuel break construction on USFS lands. Again, the option
is narrowly relied upon in California, and the USFS has only approved 9
fuel breaks in California using the Categorical Exclusion provided in
the Infrastructure Act. With an elevated use of the Categorial
Exclusion and Emergency Authority, projects on federal land could be
better coordinated private lands as well to design a system of treated
landscapes that would maximize the benefits of these management
actions.
While the USFS Region 5 has more aggressively used emergency
authorities and Categorical Exclusions than some other regions, we
certainly believe there are far more opportunities to rely upon these
expedited environmental reviews. With a truncated field season due to
winter conditions, it's imperative that the agency use every tool to
expedite required analysis wherever possible.
It is critical to remember that none of these authorities open new
lands to forest management activities. All projects conducted using
Alternative Arrangements, Emergency Actions, or any Categorical
Exclusion must confirm to existing forest plan standards and guides,
and the agency takes steps to ensure that these authorities are not
used where they could potentially impact sensitive resources. None of
them can be use in designated Wilderness areas and their use in
inventoried roadless areas is extremely limited.
With wider use of CE and Emergency Actions Authority, projects on
federal land could be better coordinated with private lands as well to
design a system of treated landscapes that would maximize the benefits
of these management actions.
Develop a Cooperative Partnerships with Private Entities to Drive
Suppression, Prevention and Recovery Efforts
In California, private landowners and forest management timber
operators provide forest management capacity to achieve the forest
health, community protection, and forest management goals discussed
here today. In the case of fire suppression, it is not uncommon to have
fire suppression assets and personal overwhelmed. As an example, in
2020, a weather pattern resulted in over 11,000 lightning strikes
across California in a single day, setting the stage for a disastrous
summer of well over 1 million acres burned, thousands of structures
lost, and multiple civilian and firefighter deaths and injuries.
Conditions were ripe for wildfire, weather conditions were extreme, but
resource drawdown was also rampant. The ability for the fire protection
system to respond to multiple fires burning simultaneously was
overwhelmed. In trying times like this, private resources could be
expeditiously deployed to assist in meeting suppression shortfalls.
The same holds true in both fire prevention and post fire recovery.
The private sector maintains the technical expertise and networks to
engage in management activities focused on both prevention and post
fire recovery and is eager to assist federal partners in achieving
goals of prevention and post fire recovery and reforestation.
This is of particular concern given that the USFS shares thousands
of miles of property lines with other landowners, and in excess of
6,000 miles of shared ownership boundaries with Calforests members. In
addition, many communities are adjacent to federally managed lands.
This issue of adjacency is critical in our era of wildfire crisis, and
expansion, connection, completion and maintenance of fuel breaks and
post fire recovery efforts conducted on private lands near communities,
utilities and water infrastructure and roads onto federally managed
land represents the steps necessary to achieve established fire
protection goals and expectations. The federal partners cannot do this
alone, and it is clear that assistance is required. Again, the private
sector is available to partner, but better pathways to allow these
partnerships to be developed and drive meaningful outcomes must be
developed.
Lastly, the forest products sector is a recognized partner in the
wildfire crisis. While expertise in forest management within the sector
is critical, facility infrastructure is as important. Without market
driven support, the work that desperately needs to be conducted on all
lands will suffer. The required level of public investment will
continue to be extraordinary without outlets that utilize the material
being generated from forest health and postfire recovery projects.
Infrastructure retention and development, in terms of traditional
sawmills, co-generation facilities, low value wood fiber utilization
are all goals in California, but the challenges are real and present.
Of these challenges, one of the prevalent mitigating circumstances is
supply agreements. Federal partners, who again managed the greatest
proportion of all forestlands in California, are able to engage in the
development of obligatory supply agreements for green material. This
would incentivize investment in costly facilities that would provide
additional and meaningful capacity to assist all partners--federal,
state, private, non-industrial, tribal and NGO partners--in meeting our
shared goals.
Thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on this
critical issue.
*****
Appendix 1
Acres Burned on USFS Region 5 lands within California
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mr. Dias.
I will now recognize Ms. Ranotta McNair, who is a Board
Member for the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.
You have 5 minutes, ma'am.
STATEMENT OF RANOTTA McNAIR, BOARD MEMBER, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
OF FOREST SERVICE RETIREES, BEND, OREGON
Ms. McNair. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member
Neguse, and the other members of the Committee also. I am happy
to be here today.
My name is Ranotta McNair, and I am a 33-year retiree with
the Forest Service. I spent much of my working career in our
local field offices. I retired as the Supervisor of the Idaho
Panhandle National Forest. I managed and was responsible for
managing 2.5 million acres of public lands. My forest also
managed and had oversight on an air tanker base and a hotshot
crew.
The South Canyon Fire in 1994, we saw 14 firefighters
perish. That fire continues to haunt me today. As a young
acting deputy forest supervisor, I stood on the tarmac that day
and greeted our firefighters home, and returned them to their
families. Since that time, I have often asked myself, and
continue to ask, why are the firefighters where they are? What
difference will their efforts really make? Could it be worth
their lives? These are a critical set of questions that I think
we all need to be asking ourselves today.
What we are facing is really unprecedented. We are seeing
year-round fire behaviors and a workforce that is struggling to
keep up with the pace. Our forests are just too dense to handle
these wildfires. It is putting people, it is putting
communities, it is putting critical infrastructure, and it is
putting resources at risk.
We are living with fire. We will continue to live with
fire. But there are things we can do. I want to talk to you
today specifically about four areas where I think you can help.
The first, we need to pass H.R. 1585 to allow the fire
retardant, aerial retardant, to continue to be used to protect
infrastructure. We need to protect our water systems, our
roads, our power lines in our homes. But most of all, we need
to protect our firefighters.
Second, we need a permanent fire suppression and prescribed
fire workforce. This requires supporting the current 2024
Administration's budget workforce reforms--it addresses pay, it
addresses housing, and it addresses their care. We need this to
have trained, skilled professionals year-round if we are going
to meet the needs today. This will require legislation.
Third, we do need to sustain funding to treat larger-scale,
larger, more effective fuel treatments across the landscape.
This includes thinning large-scale areas so that we can reduce
stand density, and we can follow it with prescribed fire. We
know that scientists and experts are saying that these are
working, they are helping reduce devastating fire effects on
our landscapes. We also know that we will have to go back and
retreat them because there is long-term maintenance that we
have to do with the fuel treatments today. And we also know
that it will allow us to begin to play a natural fire role back
in our forests.
Fuel treatments are not a one-and-done kind of thing. We
need to move on and think about them time and time again. So,
we will need sustained funding. We will need also a prescribed
fire exemption for EPA's new proposed PM2.5 air quality rule.
The fire standard, as it is written, will negatively affect our
ability to do prescribed fire. It needs a legislative solution.
We need to sustain funding for our agencies, tribes, and states
who are responsible for actions against the wildfire crisis.
And this is not a Federal lands problem only.
And fourth, we need to look at sustaining and building an
infrastructure for our industry. It will require us to look at
the Federal renewable fuel standards to allow fuels that are
coming off of Federal lands to be included in the industry
supply chain as biofuels. We need transportation subsidies. We
need more wood innovation grants from the Forest Service.
And I just want to close by saying that I have a grandson.
I want my grandson to be able to play in the forest that I am
in today. I want him to be able to hike, ski, and mountain bike
with me, and long after I am gone in the forests that I love so
dearly. We need to take actions today, not tomorrow, to make
sure that we can address the wildfire crisis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. McNair follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ranotta McNair, Board Member, National
Association of Forest Service Retirees
Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the
Committee, I appreciate the chance to testify today on the challenges
facing us around forest management and our wildfire crisis. I'm Ranotta
McNair, retired after 33 years of federal service working for the
Forest Service. Much of my career was spent in leadership working on
National Forests in the Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies and
Southern regions. During my 12-year tenure as Forest Supervisor on the
Idaho Panhandle National Forest (IPNF), I was fortunate to have had a
talented and experienced fire organization and a solid bench of
district rangers who had experience in dealing with prescribed and
wildland fire. The IPNF hosted and was responsible for the supervision
and operations of the regional air tanker base and a type 1 Hot Shot
Crew. On the personal side, I also understand after being married for
over 40 years to someone working on the front lines of fire the
personal sacrifices that are made to do that job. I am on the Board of
Directors for the National Association of Forest Service Retirees
(NAFSR). We are an organization dedicated to sustaining the Forest
Service mission and adapting to today's and tomorrow's challenges. Our
principal beliefs and values include protecting and managing diverse
lands and valued resources while providing a wide array of uses and
services to the public. This includes providing for clean water and
quality aquatic and terrestrial habitat. Our values also include
responding professionally and responsibly in support of the Agency's
efforts to protect public interest and ensure public safety.
The challenges we face today have not arisen overnight, and solving
them will require time and bold action. The current situation is a
result of the overall loss of workforce capacity, particularly the
skilled workforce within the Agency, compounded by a century of fire
exclusion, expanding development in the wildland-urban interface, a
changing climate, and accumulating fuels across our landscapes.
Year-round wildfires have become more severe and frequent, posing
grave risks to homes, communities, infrastructure, and natural
resources, particularly in dry-site forests and Western communities.
The level of death and destruction on these landscapes is difficult to
comprehend, with irreplaceable natural resources lost, vital soil
washed away, and untold floods causing further damage to communities
and their water systems. The emotional and psychological trauma to
citizens and firefighters from the loss of loved ones, homes, and
communities is unimaginable.
To address the growing threat to the nation's natural resources and
communities posed by extreme wildfires, we need to take bold and
transformative action to change the trajectory of how we manage, staff
and prepare for wildfire impacts. We must prioritize a paradigm shift
in land management approaches across jurisdictional boundaries to
reduce risk and restore fire-adapted landscapes.
The scale of fuel treatments needs to match the scale of the
problem; for example, an area prone to high-risk large-scale fire
demands large-scale strategically placed fuel treatments. What are
these known effective treatments?--thinning of dense stands followed by
prescribed burning, both on regular repeated treatment intervals. Past
treatments on National Forests rarely matched the scale needed today to
reduce our wildland fire risks. In part this was due to litigation,
uncertain funding, and workforce capacity. Today's wildfire crisis
requires National Forests to increase both the pace and size of its
landscape treatments. With the support of the passage of the
Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, funding and
resources have been committed to a 10-year wildfire crisis strategy.
These historic bills are essentially a down payment on the resources
needed to do fuels work, forest restoration, community preparedness,
and post-fire recovery and reforestation. It mandates that 50 million
acres of at-risk forests be treated over the next 10 years, including
20 million acres of additional fuel treatment on Federal lands and 30
million acres of fuel treatment on state, private, and tribal lands.
Landscape scale treatment of fuels is not solely a federal lands
issue. States, counties, communities, tribes and federal governments
share both the responsibilities and risk for accomplishing this work.
Treating priority landscapes at the necessary scale and pace requires
building a multi-jurisdictional coalition to work across land
management jurisdictions and build broad public and community support
for the work.
The catastrophic wildfire events of 2020 and 2021 exhausted
resources at the height of wildfire season, while climate change
exacerbated their behavior. Unfortunately, this was not an anomaly, but
rather a far more troubling and long-standing trend. Wildfires have
become larger, longer-lasting, more frequent, and more destructive in
terms of lives lost and economic costs over the past two decades. A
2017 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) found that the annual economic burden of wildfires was between
$71 and $348 billion, including local, state, and federal suppression
costs, and that the prevalence of wildfire smoke has increased
substantially since the mid-2000s, accounting for approximately 25
percent of Americans' total exposure to harmful fine particulate
matter.
The science and on-the-ground experience indicate that we need to
increase the pace and strategically pivot to larger scale fuel
treatments. Random placement of fuel treatments along the wildland-
urban interface boundary simply isn't enough. We know that when a fire
moves into a treated area it alters fire behavior and reduces the risks
to firefighters. A recent scientific study by Dr. Jain, Research
Forester at Rocky Mountain Research Station, in collaboration with
other scientists synthesized over 127 existing studies on landscape-
scale fuel treatment effectiveness. The key findings were that
landscape-scale fuel treatments reduce negative outcomes of wildfires
and, in some cases, promote beneficial wildfire outcomes. Treating
multiple fuel layers (canopy, ladder, and surface) reduces fire spread
and severity, and the degree of effectiveness is influenced by the
extent, size, placement, timing, and prescription of fuel treatments.
The case study indicates that the length of time needed before
retreatment depends on site productivity, plant species traits, and
initial fuel removal, which contribute to how a site might reburn in
subsequent wildfires after treatment. Several case studies showed that
as fire moved into treated areas, even if they were burning at high
intensity, fire intensity lowered enough that spot fires were not
common or far reaching from the main fire.
Fire researchers and experienced professionals agree that treating
fuels is highly effective in mitigating the dangers of wildfires. In
fact, scientific evidence shows that treating surface, ladder, and
crown fuels can improve protection capabilities, reduce potential fire
behavior, and increase the likelihood of successful fire suppression
efforts. In a Sacramento Bee interview, fire researcher Scott Stephens
confirmed that at least 99% of fire scientists believe that treated
areas do moderate fire behavior. Furthermore, a 2018 USDA Forest
Service Pacific Northwest Report found that of the 253 treatments
sampled in which a wildfire met a fuel treatment, 153 altered fire
behavior, and 127 assisted with fire control operations.
In his field observations, Joe Stutler, Area Commander of the Area
Command Team--with over 1000 fire assignments--stated that it is urgent
to increase the number and size of forest thinning, mechanical
treatments, and prescribed burning across all landscapes, and in a
geographically explicit and systematic way. He noted that modified fuel
treatments simply work, especially when combined with prescribed fire.
Stutler went on to say ``Of course, there are exceptions that lead to
the myth that fuels treatments don't make any difference, like wind/
wildfire events in Oregon in 2020 is an example that's being used
currently, and the numbers are staggering. Of the 1.2 million acres
burned, 455,000 occurred on some of the most intensively managed
forests in the Northwest. I would offer this personal observation: when
we experience 80 mph winds for 72 hours, the Walmart parking lot may
not be a safe place.'' There is a growing recognition that the impacts
of wildfires on communities have far outpaced the scale at which fuels
have been treated.
To support this effort, it is important to rebuild the
infrastructure necessary to process wood products coming from fuel
reduction projects. The recent administration investment of $34 million
from the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill is a step in the right
direction, but more is needed. The federal government and Congress can
begin by incentivizing use of woody biomass from federal lands in new
markets, as well as removing regulatory barriers, and encouraging
market innovation. In doing so we can support a healthy forest products
industry, create local jobs, reduce cost of treatments, along with
restoring high-risk landscapes in the long run.
All of this is dependent on having skilled, trained wildland
firefighters. The demands and expectations on our fire professionals
and first responders are rapidly increasing while firefighter risks and
suppression costs are reaching unprecedented levels. Many firefighters
are struggling with pay, housing, work/life balance, and mental health
issues. In 2020, for example, some Hot Shot Crews in CA were working
over 1000 hours of overtime just to make a living wage. Other
firefighters could be found living out of their vehicles because they
could not find affordable housing. Others are struggling with mental
health such as PTSD due to prolonged fire assignments and critical
incidents that occurred on fire assignments. To take better care of
these firefighters, we need to provide them with better pay and
benefits, housing, mental and physical health resources, and work-life
balance. Two years ago, legislation was enacted that temporarily raised
firefighter pay for 2 years and added support for mental and psychical
health. That legislation is set to expire; a permanent solution needs
to be enacted.
The fire season, which was once thought to be 4 to 6 months, has
now become year-round. A temporary, seasonal workforce is no longer
sufficient, and we are seeing a shift toward a more permanent workforce
that can increase workforce capacities to conduct year-round wildland
fire management. We need to train this permanent collective workforce
in suppression and prescribed fire management and move from a
``firefighter'' to a fire manager mindset.
The Forest Service once had the ability to stop gap shortages in
fire personnel by using personnel working outside of fire to perform
fire duties. Starting in 2000, after an intense and costly fire season,
that reliance and support from non-fire personnel began to change. By
2019, the number of fire personnel had risen 132 percent since 1992,
while specialists who supported restoring landscape resiliency and fuel
reduction projects decreased by 54 percent. The most dramatic
reductions in personnel occurred in the disciplines of forestry and
engineering. NAFSR in a July 2019 conducted its own workforce study
titled ``Sustaining the Forest Service--Increasing Workforce Capacity
to increase the pace and scale of restoration on national forest system
lands.'' We reached similar findings. This shift in the composition of
a skilled labor force has affected the agency's capacity to fully
support wildland fire and restore landscapes to be more fire resilient.
While the present surge in funding for hazardous fuels treatments
through the IIJA and IRA has been supportive of additional staffing and
progress is being made collectively on increasing workforce capacities,
recruitment and retention of a skilled workforce continues to be an
issue.
But there is some good news:
A comprehensive National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management
Strategy is in place that all firefighting agencies have
agreed to.
Keystone agreements with major partners are in place.
21 High-risk Firesheds have been identified to prioritize
landscape treatments
The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program
(CFLRP), the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership
(Joint Chiefs), the Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) and
initiatives like Shared Stewardship are in place.
And there are problems you can help solve:
Support the proposed workforce reforms in the FY 2024
budget request. These reforms include a permanent pay
increase for federal and tribal firefighters, investment in
their mental and physical health and well-being, improving
their housing options, and expanding the number of
permanent firefighters.
Support the proposed budget increases funding for wildfire
preparedness, hiring additional personnel, and hazardous
fuels reduction treatments.
Authorize legislation to establish a special base rate
salary table for all federal wildland firefighters, create
a new premium pay category, and establish a pay cap with
secretarial waiver authority.
Additional Support:
Support passage of H.R. 1586, Forest Protection and
Wildland Firefighter Safety Act of 2023--allowing for the
continued use of aerial retardant drops in support of
wildland fire suppression efforts.
Future legislation that would create an exception to U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements--should
the proposed rule be finalized for national ambient air
quality standards (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution, also
known as fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. This proposal
as written will reduce the Nation's ability to implement
strategies intended to reduce unwanted wildfire effects on
communities and wildlands, including barriers to increasing
the pace and scale of prescribed burning. Preliminary
research suggests that some areas could see a reduction in
available burn days of 70-80 percent.
Encourage changes to the federal renewable fuel standard
RFS that would allow fuel removals from federal lands to be
considered renewable by wood innovation businesses in their
supply chains.
Recommend that Congress request the Forest Service to
provide technical drafting assistance to amend problematic
provisions within the Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation
Reduction Act. These provisions currently contain language
that significantly hinder the Forest Service's ability to
successfully implement these programs, resulting in
inadequate conservation outcomes as Congress intended.
In summary, the challenges posed by wildland fires are extensive
and complex, but we have the knowledge and experience to address them.
We have already taken meaningful steps toward building fire-resilient
landscapes, but it will require a sustained effort across jurisdictions
and a long-term commitment to see these changes through. Congress has a
critical role to play in providing the necessary resources, funding,
and policy to mitigate the severity of wildfires, enhance community
resilience, and protect our natural resources. We must work together to
address this crisis and ensure a safer and more resilient future for
our communities, firefighters, and forests & grasslands. Let us rise to
this challenge and commit to a future where our landscapes are better
equipped to withstand the threat of wildfire.
Thank you for the opportunity to be part of this hearing today. I
welcome any questions that subcommittee members might have.
______
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Ms. McNair.
I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Neguse for 30
seconds to introduce our next witness.
Mr. Neguse. I thank the Chairman for his courtesy. I wanted
to introduce Dr. Courtney Schultz, Associate Professor of
Forest and Natural Resource Policy at Colorado State University
in Fort Collins.
We are glad to welcome Dr. Schultz to this Committee. She
is a distinguished Professor of Forest and Natural Resource
Policy at CSU, specializing in forest and fire policy, and
directs the university's Public Lands Policy Group, which is
focused on natural resource management and informing policy
decision-making. Dr. Schultz, along with many of her colleagues
at CSU, have produced invaluable research in the wake of a
number of wildfires that we have experienced in Colorado.
We thank you for joining this important hearing, and
certainly look forward to hearing your testimony.
And with that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady is recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF COURTNEY SCHULTZ, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FOREST
AND NATURAL RESOURCE POLICY, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY, FORT
COLLINS, COLORADO
Dr. Schultz. Thank you, good afternoon, Chairman Tiffany,
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank
you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
I am a professor at Colorado State University, and for
almost 20 years, I have led research on NEPA, the National
Forest Management Act, and major forest restoration and fire
policies in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service across
administrations and with funding from the Joint Fire Science
Program and the USDA. Prior to coming to CSU, I worked for the
U.S. Forest Service. My research involves surveying and
interviewing people about how policy is working for them on the
ground.
The most significant finding I can share from my research
is that there are no silver bullets, no simple policy solutions
that define whether we can overcome the tremendous challenges
ahead. Instead, collaboration, leadership, and sufficient
capacity, both internal and external to the agencies, are
necessary preconditions for successful forest management.
If we want to get to the scale needed to make a difference
in fire behavior and forest conditions, we must work across
jurisdictional boundaries, build partnerships to do the work
and communicate with the public, and engage industry at scale
to remove and process the primarily low-to-no-value wood
products that result from restoration and fuel removal.
Today, about 85 percent of projects are done through
categorical exclusions, and this is good for smaller projects
and jump-starting larger efforts. But to really work at the
landscape scale, we need collaboration through the NEPA process
to do the hard work of building partnerships and developing
effective cross-boundary management plans.
Almost everyone agrees we need active management of our
forests, including thinning and using beneficial fire to reduce
future fire risk. A helpful resource to me is the Wildland Fire
Cohesive Strategy, written by a group of leading Federal,
tribal, state, and NGO land managers, and its first tenet is
that we must manage for resilient forests by reducing
unnaturally high fuel loads that have resulted from past
management and now lead to severe fires, particularly with
climate change.
Its second tenet is to promote fire-adapted communities,
where human populations and infrastructure are prepared to
receive, respond to, and recover from wildland fire.
Importantly, the cohesive strategy focuses not on community
protection, but on community resilience through home hardening
and fuel reduction in the home ignition zone.
The final tenant of the cohesive strategy is to promote
safe and effective fire response. Major challenges include
recruiting and retaining the fire response workforce, using
principles of risk management and defining and measuring
effectiveness, given the vast amount of public dollars spent
and the people who risk their lives responding to wildfire. It
is untenable to continue suppressing almost all fires when
conditions are favorable. Fire must be allowed to play its
natural role to reduce future fire risk.
I would like to share a bit more about my research, which
has found that collaborative approaches support larger scale
planning and implementation, innovation, leveraging of non-
Federal capacity, and reduced conflict. According to the Forest
Service, collaborative approaches like the Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Program, commonly known as CFLRP, have
economic benefits keeping mills open, supporting jobs and local
labor income, and contributing to a relatively greater
proportion of accomplishments in timber volume sold and acres
treated.
My work has found that the biggest barriers to success are
inadequate agency capacity for planning, contracting, and
implementation, insufficient industry capacity, and limited
markets for wood products.
In addition, my work has found that we need to do more to
support beneficial fire. We need a year-round, dedicated,
prescribed fire workforce, and it cannot all be Federal. This
will require addressing the liability issues that limit
building this workforce.
To conclude, these are my primary recommendations.
First, work to facilitate community protection on Federal
lands must occur in places where communities are also working
on their resilience to fire.
We must continue to address workforce limitations, and we
need to do more to build external industry capacity and
markets.
Now, especially, we also need effective measurement and
transparency. A recent report by Taxpayers for Common Sense
noted that it is difficult to know what is being planned and
prioritized under the 10-year crisis strategy, how much money
is going to specific programs, or what is being accomplished.
The same is true for wildfire suppression expenditures.
Finally, we need to have honest and transparent
conversations about the future of fire, which is predicted to
only get more frequent and intense. Work on Federal lands can
make a difference for forest conditions, but work within
communities on and around homes is the most important factor
for community resilience. Now that major Federal investments
are in place, we collectively need strategies to create the
enabling conditions, oversight, and transparency to facilitate
effective partnerships and work on the ground.
I look forward to continued work with the Forest Service,
its many partners, and the dedicated members of this Committee
and the Congress to addressing these challenges. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Schultz follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Courtney Schultz, Associate Professor,
Colorado State University
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the
current challenges facing forest management, wildfire suppression, and
firefighters as we move into the most active period of the fire year. I
am a professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at
Colorado State University, specializing in forest and fire policy. I
direct the Public Lands Policy Group, which researches the policy
impacts, challenges, and opportunities on federal public lands.
Over the last 18 years, I have led national policy analyses of many
of the primary forest restoration policies, including the Collaborative
Forest Landscape Restoration Program, the Joint Chiefs Landscape
Restoration Partnership, Implementation of the Shared Stewardship
Strategy, and now post-fire policies, in partnership with the US Forest
Service across administrations and with funding from the Joint Fire
Science Program, National Science Foundation, and USDA. I have also led
research on barriers to prescribed fire, land management planning,
National Environmental Policy Act processes, climate change
vulnerability assessment, and risk-management approaches for improving
fire response. Prior to coming to Colorado State University, I worked
for the U.S. Forest Service on the Four Forests Restoration Initiative
in Arizona. I work closely with the Colorado Forest Restoration
Institute, networks of scientists, and thought leaders working on
forest management issues from rural and community-based forestry
organizations. My research involves listening to people from around the
country about how policies are working for them on the ground. I have
surveyed and interviewed thousands of federal and state agency staff
members, partners, NGO and industry representatives, and individuals
working for Native American Tribes.
The most significant finding I can share with you from my research
is that there are no silver bullets--no simple policy solutions that
will define whether we can overcome the tremendous challenges we face
ahead. Instead, collaboration, leadership, and sufficient capacity,
both internal and external to the agency, are what undergird successful
national forest management. Policies that facilitate communication
among stakeholders and collaboration across jurisdictions, and
strategies that increase capacity to do the necessary work, lead to
success.\1\ If we want to get to the scale needed to make a difference
in fire behavior and forest conditions, we have to work across
jurisdictional boundaries, engage in partnerships to do the work and
communicate its value with the public, and engage industry to remove
and process the low-to-no-value wood products that often result today
from restoration and fuel removal. Today, about 85% of projects are
done through categorical exclusions, and this is good for smaller
projects and jumpstarting larger efforts. But to really work at the
landscape level, we need collaboration, and that means we must do the
hard work of strategizing, planning, and building partnerships, and do
this through the NEPA process and through collaboration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Schultz CA, Moseley C. 2019. Collaborations and capacities to
transform fire management. Science, USA 366(6461):38-40.
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The challenges we face are complex, centuries in the making, and
involve major biophysical processes and natural hazards. Scientists
predict longer and more intense fire seasons because of the warming and
drought associated with climate change.\2\ The wildland-urban interface
is the fastest growing land-use type in the nation and across the
West.\3\ Forest management can both reduce and exacerbate fire hazard,
depending on how, where, and when it is done.\4\,\5\ Lands
managed for timber production, including industrially managed lands,
can often be subject to and propagate higher-severity fire than other
lands, requiring cross-boundary cooperation and science-based
assessment of fire hazard and management options.\6\
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\2\ Abatzoglou JT, Williams AP. 2016. Impact of anthropogenic
climate change on wildfire across western US forests. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, USA 113:11770-11775.
\3\ Radeloff VC, et al. 2018. Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban
interface raises wildfire risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, USA 114:2946-2951.
\4\ Zald HSJ, Dunn CJ. 2018. Severe fire weather and intensive
forest management increase fire severity in a multi-ownership
landscape. Ecological Applications 28: 1068-80.
\5\ Kalies EL, Kent LL. 2016. Tamm Review: Are fuel treatments
effective at achieving ecological and social objectives? A systematic
review. Forest Ecology and Management 375:84-95.
\6\ Levine JI, et al. 2022. Higher incidence of high-severity fire
in and near industrially managed forests. Frontiers in Ecology and the
Environment. Doi:10.1002/fee.2499
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In our frequent-fire forests, past forest management, including
both fire suppression and past approaches to timber harvest, has led to
an accumulation of small trees and fine fuels that contribute to
increased fire hazard. Almost everyone in the scientific and management
community agrees we need active management of our national forests,
including fuel removal through thinning and the increased use of
beneficial fire as a strategy to reduce future fire
risk.\7\,\8\ Restoring fire to our fire-prone ecosystems
through controlled burning, cultural burning by tribes based on their
traditional ecological knowledge, and during wildfire ignitions when
conditions are favorable for good fire all can reduce the risk of more
extreme fire in the future. Timber harvest and tree thinning can be
part of the solution. In some areas, merchantable timber can offset
some of the cost of this work, but in many areas, especially those with
high fire hazard, the small-diameter wood on our forests is of low-to-
no value. We will have to pay to get it out of the woods and create new
markets, for example for biomass, to derive some value from restoration
by-products.
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\7\ Stephens S, et al. 2020. Fire and climate change: Conserving
seasonally dry forests is still possible. Frontiers in Ecology and the
Environment 18(6), 354-360.
\8\ Prichard, SJ, et al. 2021. Adapting western North American
forests to climate change and wildfires: 10 common questions.
Ecological Applications 31(8), e02433.
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Considering the recent updates made by the Wildland Fire Leadership
Council, comprised of leading state, federal, tribal, and NGO forest
and land managers, I want to reference back today to the Wildland Fire
Cohesive Strategy and its primary tenets. First, the Cohesive Strategy
says we must manage for resilient forests by reducing unnaturally high
fuel loads that have resulted from past management and now lead to
uncharacteristically severe fires, particularly under conditions driven
by climate change. Work in our national forests is primarily about
restoring ecological integrity so that forests are resilient in the
face of climate change and climate-driven disturbances. We must reduce
fuels especially in our low-to-mid-elevation forests and restore fire
as a critical ecological process in all fire-prone forests. Doing this
can improve forest ecosystem conditions by reducing extreme fire
behavior and can create conditions that support safe and effective fire
response. This work requires mechanical thinning and the use of
beneficial fire. Desired conditions, achieved through hard work or
wildfire events, must be maintained with maintenance burning.
We now have the benefit of unprecedented federal investment in our
forests, with billions of dollars allocated to fuel reduction near and
in the wildland-urban interface and in high-priority municipal
watersheds under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and
Inflation Reduction Act. Now we must put in place the capacity
throughout the system to make the best use of these funds. In my
research, the primary barriers to accomplishing work in the woods are
lack of both internal agency capacity to plan and administer projects
and contracts, and lack of external capacity, including industry
partners who can cut, remove, and process wood products, and access to
viable markets for those products. Other research has found, like mine,
that the primary barriers are not due to litigation and NEPA.\9\ The
problems are more nuanced, related to hiring, recruitment, and
retention of a workforce to do this work, both inside and outside of
the federal agencies, expediting hiring and grants and agreements
capacity to facilitate that work, engagement of state, tribal, industry
and NGO partners who can add capacity, and undertaking fire management
planning. I have seen numerous creative approaches to large-scale
planning, NEPA analysis, and monitoring the implementation and effects
of treatments under programs like the Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Program, and to working with private landowners through the
Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership. I have seen forests use
their NEPA processes as key opportunities to build partnerships with
other fire agencies, homeowners, and air quality regulators to
implement fuel reduction and prescribed fire projects at a meaningful
scale. Many projects have benefited from improved partnerships with
states to accomplish work, sometimes through the Good Neighbor
Authority and Shared Stewardship, and an increased recognition of the
need for tribal co-stewardship and integration of traditional
ecological knowledge into land management. These factors create the
potential for promoting the first Cohesive Strategy tenet of managing
for resilience forests.
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\9\ Ruple JC, Pleune J, Heiny E. 2022. Evidence-based
recommendations for improving National Environmental Policy Act
implementation. Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 46: 273-350.
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Another tenet of the Cohesive Strategy is to promote fire-adapted
communities, where ``human populations and infrastructure are as
prepared as possible to receive, respond to, and recover from wildland
fire.'' I want to emphasize that the Cohesive Strategy focuses on
community resilience to fire, not community protection. What we do on
public lands will not stop fires, nor will it be the primarily factor
in protecting communities. The most destructive fire for homeowners in
my home state was an urban fire where grasses, shrubs, and homes
propagated the flames of the Marshall Fire in December 2021, leading to
the loss of over a thousand homes. Home loss is most related to the
presence of fuels within 150 feet of the home, and other factors that
make home more or less likely to ignite. Most fire starts are not on
public lands and are human-caused.\10\ Under extreme weather
conditions, fires can burn through treated, industrial, and even clear-
cut stands. Communities around the West must take on fuel reduction in
the home ignition zone, communication and evacuation planning,
community-based fire response, and equitably including all community
members in fire-adapted communities. Home hardening and fuel reduction
in the home ignition and community protection zones are imperative.\11\
Work on national forests therefore must be coupled with community-based
fuel reduction and preparedness if the goal is to contribute to
community resilience. Because most land in the wildland-urban interface
is not federal land, this will mean more work on private, municipal,
and state lands to reduce fire hazard. This means getting federal
funding to state and local resources to do this work and making sure
that where the federal government is investing in work to reduce fire
hazard near communities, the nearby communities are doing their part to
promote resilience for the fires that will inevitably come.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Balch JK, et al. 2017. Human-started wildfires expand the fire
niche across the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, USA 114:2946-2951.
\11\ Schoennagel T, et al. 2017. Implementation of National Fire
Plan treatments near the wildland-urban interface in the western United
States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106:1076-
10711.
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The final tenant of the Cohesive Strategy is to promote safe and
effective fire response grounded in risk management principles. The
Wildland Fire Leadership Council recognizes that it is untenable to
continue suppressing almost all fires. When conditions are favorable
fire should be allowed to play its key role as the primary ecological
process that shapes healthy forests in the West and reduces future fire
risk. And in some cases, indirect attack of fires, where firefighters
utilize natural features and fire breaks to stop fires, is the best and
safest strategy for incident response. Here too there is a major
challenge of recruiting and retaining the workforce for safe and
effective response.\12\ And, defining and measuring effectiveness is a
challenge that is as-of-yet unmet and deserves greater attention given
the vast amount of public dollars spent, and the people who risk their
lives, responding to wildfire. I also want to draw attention to the
growing use of PODs, or potential operational delineations, which are a
pre-fire season strategy to promote coordinated action and planning for
wildfires in order to delineate response strategies and priorities and
potential locations for holding fire, and by extension for fuels
treatment to support safe and effective fire response.\13\ Shaded fuel
breaks at key boundaries, for instance, have value for reducing and
managing extreme fires.\14\ Many BLM and national forest units will be
implementing PODs in the next few years. In our research, people said
these activities hold promise for getting more ``good'' fire on the
ground but also to build agreement about fire management approaches in
partnership with state and local fire responders outside of the
emergency management context.\15\ Here, again, collaboration has great
value, this time in the context of planning for fire response.
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\12\ U.S. Government Accountability Office. Wildland Fire: Barrier
to Recruitment and Retention of Federal Wildland Firefighters. GAO-23-
105517, Nov. 17, 2022.
\13\ Thompson MP, et al. 2018. Rethinking the wildland fire
management system. Journal of Forestry 116:382-390.
\14\ Low KE, et al. 2023. Shaded fuel breaks create wildfire-
resilient forest stands: lessons from a long-term study in the Sierra
Nevada. Fire Ecology 19: 29.
\15\ Greiner SM, et al. 2021. Pre-season fire management planning:
the use of Potential Operational Delineations to prepare for wildland
fire events. International Journal of Wildland Fire 30:170-178.
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The recent update to the Cohesive Strategy identifies four factors
that need increased attention: climate change; workforce capacity,
health, and well-being; community resilience; and diversity, equity,
inclusion, and environmental justice (DEISJ). Related to climate
change, scientific research and innovative, forward-thinking planning
grounded in science and traditional ecological knowledge will be needed
to respond effectively in the face of climate change. More work will be
needed to prepare for the cascading effects of multiple disturbance
events, like reburns or post-fire floods, and improving policy to
attend to the multi-jurisdictional effects of fire. For the fire
workforce, more attention is needed to the mental and physical health
of firefighters, interagency and multi-partner training opportunities
to augment the fire workforce, and making sure the pay and benefits of
firefighters are adequate. We also need innovative strategies to
recruit and train a next-generation forest and fire workforce. Sharing
equipment and resources among agencies and partners, and moving money
through agreements needs to be easier. For community resilience,
community readiness can be improved and requires changing building
codes, reducing human-caused ignitions, creating incentives and support
for removing fuels in the home ignition zone, inclusive planning for
during- and post-fire response, and smoke readiness, done in
partnership with public health agencies. Finally, DEISJ can be promoted
through inclusive planning, budgeting, contracting, and training, with
intentional engagement of local communities and incorporating equity
considerations into fuels reduction strategies. These are all new
emphasis areas within the Cohesive Strategy where state and federal
fire managers say we need to pay increased attention.
Before I close, I want to elaborate on some of my key research
findings--primarily the important role of partnerships in fire
management and evidence-based assessment of the barriers to improving
forest and fire management. I have researched the Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) and the Joint Chiefs Landscape
Restoration Partnership, interviewing and surveying hundreds of
partners and agency staff members across all CFLRP projects and most
Joint Chiefs projects.\16\ These approaches support: larger-scale
planning and implementation; monitoring and planning innovations;
leveraging of non-federal capacity; and agreement-building. According
to Forest Service reporting, the CFLRP had economic benefits that
included keeping mills open, supporting jobs, local labor income, and a
greater proportion of accomplishments in timber volume sold and acres
treated compared to the proportion of agency spending.\17\ The biggest
barrier to success inside the agencies were inadequate agency capacity
for planning and implementation. The biggest challenge external to the
agencies for the CFLRP was insufficient forest products industry
capacity and limited markets for wood products that could offset high
treatment costs. These factors persist and need to be addressed to
promote success.
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\16\ Schultz, CA, et al.. 2018. Policy design to support forest
restoration: the value of focused investment and collaboration. Forests
9(9):512. All reports and publications for this project are available
at: https://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/courtneyschultz/forest-
restoration-governance/
\17\ U.S. Forest Service. 2020. Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Program: 10-year report to Congress. Available at: https://
www.fs.fed.us/restoration/documents/cflrp/REF_Report-
CollaborativeForestLandscapeRestoration-508.pdf
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With colleagues, I also conducted a multi-year study across the
West, interviewing federal and state land managers and air quality
regulators to understand barriers to and facilitators of prescribed
fire.\18\ Aside from weather conditions constraining burn windows, we
found that the biggest barriers to progress are lack of funding and
capacity, particularly because qualified fire personnel are
increasingly pulled onto wildfires, but also due to seasonal employment
and a general decrease in staff capacity. We need a year-round
dedicated prescribed fire workforce. It cannot all be federal, and it
will require addressing the liability issues that are attendant to
building this workforce. Resource sharing to leverage capacity across
agencies and partners is essential for success. People also said
incentives to plan and implement prescribed fire are weak. Where
prescribed fire occurs, it is because individual leaders are committed
to making it happen and find creative strategies to overcome these
hurdles. Congress can play an essential role in promoting the value of
beneficial fire and overseeing how prescribed fire is being utilized
with plans and incentives to increase the application of good fire on
priority landscapes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Schultz CA, et al. 2018. Prescribed fire policy barriers and
opportunities: A diversity of challenges and strategies across the
west. Public Lands Policy Group Practitioner Paper #2/Ecosystem
Workforce Program Working Paper #86; Schultz CA, et al. 2019. Available
at: https://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/courtneyschultz/prescribed-
fire/
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On this last note, I want to emphasize that the current EPA
proposals to tighten regulatory standards for PM 2.5 would impede
efforts to reintroduce beneficial fire, which is our most powerful tool
for mitigating against the intense particulate matter exposure that
occurs during wildfires. While efforts to protect human health and air
quality are critical, the EPA must do this in a way that allows the
continued use of beneficial fire. Comment letters on this topic offer
potential paths forward, like easing exceptional events requirements
and considering smoke from beneficial fire as part of background
conditions. I also suggest greater attention to the needs for access to
insurance and indemnification for burners, large-scale fire management
planning to support the effective application of good fire on our
forests, building a workforce with access to training and
qualifications for a variety of partners, and supporting cultural
burning by tribes.
Effective use of IIJA and IRA funds will require addressing these
challenges, and working in places where communities are also working on
their own resilience to fire if community protection is a goal. The
last time I testified before this committee was before the historic
investments of 2022. I noted that augmenting investments could be
beneficial but would require a transparent and science-based process
for identifying priority work at the national level. Investments would
need to be targeted toward places with effective partnerships and
social agreement and attention should be paid to the effects of budget
structures and performance measures to incentivize and account for
priority work. For instance, timber targets drive work to places where
there is valuable product and existing processing infrastructure, which
often do not overlap with fire hazard reduction priorities, and acreage
targets can incentivize staff to pursue so-called ``cheap acres'' and
fail to convey whether fire hazard has been reduced or whether
treatments yield positive benefits when fires burn. I also noted that
leveraging external capacity would require more efficient resource
sharing and a strong external workforce to support restoration and
fuels reduction work. Regarding the forest products industry, the lack
of businesses able to work on restoration projects and with low-value
products, limited markets, and problems with workforce availability all
are barriers to progress. More work is needed to investigate specific
challenges and policy options that would support forest products
industry and other restoration businesses so that the creation of
forest restoration by-products can continue to be a co-benefit of
restoration work where possible. To develop the science on the changing
nature of fire management, I also suggested supporting full funding for
the Joint Fire Science Program.
At this important time, I reiterate these recommendations.
Addressing workforce limitations and supporting increased capacity both
internal to the agencies and through partnerships will be critical to
success. And, now especially, we need effective measurement and
transparency. A recent report by Taxpayer's for Common Sense noted that
it is difficult to know what is being planned and prioritized under the
10-Year Wildfire Crisis Strategy, how much money is going to specific
programs, or what is being accomplished. The same is true for wildfire
expenditures. I would recommend the development of a robust system for
tracking investments, which are supposed to be going to work in the
WUI, priority watersheds, and in part specifically to prescribed fire.
A plan for increasing the use of beneficial fire is needed, along with
new metrics to track acres where fire hazard is mitigated and forest
conditions are restored. The current metrics of acres treated will not
effectively convey the amount or efficacy of work done on the ground
with these funds. I would recommend a transparent process involving
partners in tracking investments over time, with details on spending,
accomplishments, and prioritization and implementation strategies.
Improving measurement of safe and effective fire response is also
needed. Finally, we need to have honest and transparent conversations
about the future of fire, which will only become more intense. Work on
national forests can make a difference for forest conditions, and
likely provide some benefits for communities. However, for community
resilience in the face of the fires that are certainly coming, work
within communities on and around homes is the most important factor.
Now that major federal investments are in place, we collectively need
to put into place strategies to create the enabling conditions,
oversight, and transparency to facilitate effective partnerships and
work on the ground.
______
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Dr. Schultz.
I will now recognize Mr. LaMalfa to introduce our next
witness.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that.
We are honored to have from Paradise, California, my
district, I can see the ridge from my front door at home there,
Mr. Greg Bolin, our Mayor.
Thank you for joining us. Thank you for providing these
handouts here, showing the reality of the Camp Fire that need
not be forgotten from November 2018 by any of us as we deal
with these serious issues and overcome the impediments to doing
better forest management.
So, Mr. Bolin, a pleasure to have you here today. Thank
you.
Mr. Tiffany. Sir. You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. GREG BOLIN, MAYOR, PARADISE, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Bolin. Thank you, Congressman LaMalfa, Chair Tiffany,
Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank
you for the opportunity to share the Town of Paradise's
experience during, before, and after the Camp Fire of 2018.
The Town of Paradise is located in northern California,
approximately 90 miles north of Sacramento. Prior to the Camp
Fire, our population was 26,500, making Paradise the second-
largest community in Butte County, behind the City of Chico,
our neighbor to the southwest. Considered a bedroom community,
most Paradise residents worked in neighboring cities, and chose
to live in Paradise for its forested beauty, cooler
temperatures, as well as affordable housing.
Paradise is seated in the foothills on the ridge between
two canyons, Butte Creek Canyon to the west and Feather River
Canyon to the east. Paradise's location, along with the dense
national forest that surrounds Paradise, and prior to the Camp
Fire dense vegetation that existed within the town limits made
Paradise vulnerable to wildfires.
I moved to Paradise in 1967 at the age of 9 from Los
Angeles. My dad built houses, so we moved frequently. He built,
sold, built again, and so on. I was able to graduate from
Paradise High School, and did the same and followed my father's
footsteps. Out of 24 homes I lived in over that period of time,
only 2 survived the Camp Fire.
In 2012, I was elected to the town council with a goal of
making Paradise more business and builder-friendly. I served as
the mayor three times, and most recently this last December was
elected as mayor. In more than 50 years in Paradise, I have
seen and experienced fires of all types, severity, and
duration.
Fire is nothing new to Paradise, or the hundreds of
foothill communities just like it. There are a number of
factors that have changed to make wildfires more intense and
damaging, which include environmental, situational, policy-
driven factors. In our case, a combination of a historically
long dry period, drought conditions, high wind, overgrown
properties with too little defensible space, dense neighboring
forests, and electrical equipment failure came together on that
fateful day in November 2018 to cause the Camp Fire.
The 2018 Camp Fire ignited on November 8, and became the
most deadly and devastating fire in California history, burning
for 17 days, destroying 154,000 acres of public and private
property, over 14,000 homes, 5,000 businesses, and other
structures. The fire forced evacuations of more than 52,000
residents, injured 17 people including 5 firefighters, and
claimed the lives of 85 people.
November 8, 2018 started like a normal fall day, except the
wind was blowing strong. I loaded up my pup in the back of my
truck, and as I was getting ready to leave, my wife walked out
and said she just heard on the radio there was a fire on
Highway 70 in a place called Pulga. I looked up in the sky in
that direction and saw a plume of smoke. I told her I would get
back to her if I heard anything, and give her the updates.
My typical morning included running my dog in a grass field
behind our church, which is right next to a middle school, and
then visiting my job sites before I went to the office. I am a
general contractor who builds custom homes. I was on the grassy
field about 15 minutes when I saw the plume from a distance
become a dark cloud over our town. I noticed that parents were
lined up to drop off their kids at the charter school, and not
aware of the events that were developing. It was about 7:30
a.m.
I started listening to the scanner on my phone, and then
noticed large ash floating down from the sky. I walked over to
Chris, the principal of the school, and asked if he thought the
kids should be dropped off. Chris was on the phone with the
district office and said there were no plans of canceling
school. About then I heard on the scanner that the fire was in
Concow, one ridge over from Paradise. I communicated this to
Chris and was off to my job sites.
My task was to tell everyone to grab their equipment and go
home if they lived in town, or get out of town if they didn't.
After communicating with my subs, I heard on the scanner that
we had a house on fire in the upper part of Paradise on the
east side. I called my wife to tell her to pack the car, which
she had already started. I called my mom, and it was about 8:30
a.m. I got home without much trouble and started packing the
vehicles.
I walked around the exterior of my house, removing
flammable items and debris. In the fall season, when the wind
is blowing, leaves go everywhere. I went up to my mom's, loaded
her and her belongings in my truck. She lived only a few houses
up from me. I brought her back to my house, and finalized
loading and leave. It was about 9:30 a.m. Both my wife and my
mom asked, ``Why are you leaving? You never leave.'' I had
experienced fires and evacuations over the years. My answer to
them was, ``Something is different. Something tells me we
cannot stay here for this one.''
We drove through the neighborhood and hit various points of
traffic as others were leaving. We saw ash and debris falling.
We heard explosions in the background that turned out to be
propane tanks. About 2 miles into our 13-mile journey to Chico,
we finally arrived on Skyway. Skyway is a main road on the west
side of town, and all north and southbound lanes were heading
south. It was about noon.
By that time, the sunlight was completely gone. The sky was
dark. This was a darkness I had never experienced in my life,
along with the heat. I felt the heat of the flames on my truck
as we drove by them. I had the AC on recirculating, just so I
could keep the smoke out and cool the truck down. As we made
our way south, we saw houses on fire, apartments on fire,
standing power poles in flames. One power pole fell across
Skyway, forcing all traffic to merge south on the northbound
lane.
We saw our son's neighborhood in flames, and the fire
dancing on the road ahead of us. We made it to Chico around
1:30 p.m., and had arranged in advance to meet up with our son.
At this point, we had no plans for housing, except our son did
have a friend he was staying with. We called a friend from our
church and asked if myself, my wife, and my mom could stay
there. They said, ``Absolutely.'' We didn't know at the time
they had already accepted three other couples.
My story is a story of tens of thousands of people who
evacuated that day. In all, over 50,000 people were displaced,
26,500 from Paradise and the rest from areas surrounding
Paradise. Our residents watched their community burn as they
drove through the flames, believing they might perish that way.
Some of our residents did die in the car trying to escape.
There were mothers with newborn babies evacuating the hospital,
forced to escape burning ambulances and walk on foot, still in
their hospital gowns. The events of that day will never leave
the memories of our residents, and it is incumbent upon me as
their mayor to tell their story and help prevent this disaster
like ours from happening again.
Leading up to the Camp Fire, Northern California had
experienced very long periods without rainfall. More than 200
days had elapsed without significant rainfall by November 2018.
This led to extreme, dry, brittle, fuel conditions throughout
the region. The national forest lands that surrounded Paradise,
the Plumas, and Lassen National Forest were extremely dry as
well, and were overgrown.
Inside Paradise limits, private properties contained dense
brush. As a small town with one code enforcement officer,
defensible space was encouraged but difficult to enforce.
Mr. Tiffany. Sir, I have to ask you to wrap up your
testimony.
Mr. Bolin. OK. I will just leave with it was 17 days that
firefighters worked hard and finally got the fire out. And a
lot of it was because of the rain that came and helped them
out.
So, I will leave it with that.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bolin follows:]
Prepared Statement of Greg Bolin, Mayor, Town of Paradise, California
Thank you for the opportunity to share the Town of Paradise's
experiences before during and after the 2018 Camp Fire. The Town of
Paradise is located in northern California approximately 90 miles north
of Sacramento. Prior to the Camp Fire, our population was 26,500,
making Paradise the second largest community in Butte County, behind
the City of Chico our neighbor to the southwest. Considered a bedroom
community, most Paradise residents worked in neighboring cities, and
chose to live in Paradise for its forested beauty and cooler
temperatures, as well as more affordable housing. Paradise is situated
in the foothills on a ridge between two canyons, Butte Creek Canyon to
the West and Feather River Canyon to the East. Paradise's location,
along with the dense national forests that surround Paradise, and prior
to the Camp Fire, dense vegetation that existed within Town limits,
made Paradise vulnerable to wildfire.
I moved to Paradise in 1967 at the age of 9 from Los Angeles. My
dad built houses, so we moved frequently as he built, sold, built again
and so on. I graduated from Paradise High School and did the same as I
followed in his footsteps. Out of 24 homes I've lived in, only 2
survived the Camp Fire. In 2012 I was elected to Town Council with the
goal of making Paradise more business and builder friendly. I have
served as Mayor 3 times, the most recent term as Mayor beginning in
December 2022. In more than 50 years in the Town of Paradise, I have
seen and experienced fires of all types, severity, and duration. Fire
is nothing new to Paradise, or the hundreds of foothill communities
just like it. There are a number of factors that have changed to make
wildfires more intense and damaging, which include environmental,
situational, and policy-driven factors. In our case, a combination of a
historically long dry period, drought conditions, high winds, overgrown
properties with too little defensible space, dense neighboring forests,
and electrical equipment failure came together on one fateful day in
November 2018 to cause the Camp Fire.
The 2018 Camp Fire ignited on November 8, 2018, and became the most
deadly and devastating fire in California history, burning for 17 days,
destroying 154,000 acres of public and private property, over 14,000
homes, and 5,000 businesses and other structures. The fire forced the
evacuation of more than 52,000 residents, injured 17 people including 5
firefighters, and claimed 85 lives.
November 8th 2018 started like a normal Fall day, except the wind
was blowing stronger. I was loading up and putting my pup in his kennel
in the back of my truck when Kathleen, my wife came outside and said
that she had just heard on the radio there was fire on Hwy 70 in Pulga.
I looked in the sky in that direction and could see a plume of smoke. I
told her I would let her know if I received any updates and was off to
start my day.
My typical morning includes running my dog at a grass field behind
our church which is next to a middle school charter and then visiting
my jobsites before heading into the office. I am a general contractor
who builds custom homes. I was on the grass field for about 15 minutes
when I could see that plume off in the distance was now a dark cloud
falling over half our town. I noticed that parents were lined up to
drop there kids off at the charter school and not aware of the events
that were developing. It was about 7:30 am. I started listening to the
scanner on my phone and then noticed large ash was floating down from
the sky. I walked over to Chris, the principal at the school and asked
if he thought the kids should be dropped off? Chris was on the phone
with the district office and being told they had no plans to cancel
school. About then, I heard on the scanner that the fire is in Concow,
one ridge over from Paradise. I communicated that to Chris, and I was
off to my jobsites. My task was to tell everyone to grab their
equipment and go home if they live in town or get out of town if they
didn't.
After communicating with my subcontractors, I heard on the scanner
that we had a house on fire in the upper part of Paradise on the east
side of town. I called my wife to tell her to pack the car, which she
had already started. I called my mom. It was now about 8:30 am. I got
home without too much trouble and started packing the vehicles. I
walked around the exterior of my home removing flammable items and
debris. It was the Fall season and leaves drop quick in high winds. I
went up to help my mom load her and her belongings in my truck. She
lived a few houses from ours. I brought her back to my house to
finalize loading and leave. It was about 9:30 am. Both my wife and mom
asked me ``Why are we leaving, you never want to leave''. I have
experienced other fires and evacuations over the years. My answer to
them both was that ``this is different. Something is telling me that we
can't stay here this time.''
We drove through our neighborhood and hit various points of traffic
as others were leaving. We saw ash and debris falling. We heard
explosions in the background which turned out to be propane tanks.
About 2 miles into our 13-mile journey to Chico we finally arrived on
Skyway. Skyway is the main road on the west side of town and all north
and southbound lanes were heading south. It was about noon. By that
time the sunlight was completely gone, the sky was dark. A darkness
that I had never experienced before along with heat. I felt the heat of
the flames through the truck we drove. I had the AC on recirculating
since the smoke was thick and it was warm in the truck.
As we made our way south, we saw houses on fire, apartments on fire
and standing power poles in flames. One power pole fell across Skyway
forcing all traffic to merge and go south on a north bound lane. We saw
our youngest son's neighborhood in flames and the fire dancing on the
road ahead of us.
We made it to Chico around 1:30 pm and had arranged in advance to
meet up with our son. At this point we had no plan for housing except
my son had friends to stay with. We called a friend from church and
asked if he had room for myself, my wife and my mother. They said
``absolutely''! We didn't know that they already had taken in three
other couples.
My story is the story of tens of thousands of people who evacuated
that day, in all over 50,000 people were displaced--26,500 from
Paradise, and the rest from the areas surrounding Paradise. Our
residents watched their community burn as they drove through flames
believing they might perish that way. Some of our residents did die in
cars trying to escape. There were mothers with newborn babies evacuated
from the hospital, forced to escape burning ambulances, and walk on
foot, still in hospital gowns. The events of that day will never leave
the memories of our residents, and it is incumbent upon me as their
Mayor to tell their story and help prevent a disaster like ours from
happening again.
Leading up to the Camp Fire, northern California had experienced a
very long period without rainfall--more than 200 days had elapsed
without significant rainfall by November 2018. This led to extremely
dry, and brittle fuel conditions throughout the region. The national
forest lands that surround Paradise, the Plumas and Lassen National
forests were extremely dry as well and were overgrown. Inside Paradise
Town limits, private property contained dense brush, and as a small
Town with a single Code Enforcement Officer, defensible space was
encouraged but difficult to enforce. November typically sees high winds
in our region, however the winds on November 8th were particularly
strong. With these conditions in place, the slightest spark could prove
catastrophic, which is exactly what happened when a poorly maintained
and faulty Pacific Gas & Electric transmission line 8 miles away from
Paradise in a community called Pulga failed. This failure caused enough
of a spark to ignite the dry fuel nearby, which was carried at stunning
speed across the 8 miles of dry, dense forest and small mountain
communities to the Town of Paradise within an hour and a half.
The fire burned for 17 days before it was finally put out by our
hard-working firefighters, with help from rains that finally arrived in
the region. While fire retardant was not used in Paradise, winds and
smoke were too much for aircraft to fly safely, it was utilized in the
subsequent weeks once the fire had burned through Paradise. This action
kept the fire from spreading to our neighbors Chico and Oroville.
From my perspective, more needs to be done when it comes to
managing the forests that lie outside the Paradise Town limits. As the
Mayor, I can work with my staff and with the residents of our community
to put into action the steps that protect our community within our
borders. But what I can't do is take any action to protect us from the
wildfires that start in our neighboring forests. Prior to 2016 the
federal government had a ``hands off'' approach to forest management.
Federal forestry officials have said the agency's budget has been tied
up reacting to fires, rather than trying to prevent them. From 1995 to
2015, the Forest Service went from spending 16% to 52% of its budget
fighting fires, according to the Ecological Society of America, a non-
profit.
Since 2017, the federal government has had a renewed focus on
forest management. In the year that ended October 1st, 2018 the federal
government thinned, cut, burned and mulched about 235,000 acres in
California according to Barnie Gyant, the U.S. Forest Service's deputy
regional forester for California and the Pacific. The trend toward
thinning forests needs to continue.
While there were many factors that led to the Camp Fire, addressing
any one of them will help lessen the severity of future fires in my
community and those like it.
Once the fire was out, 17 days after it ignited, our community
began the long recovery process. It took 9 months for fire debris to be
removed from private property, which is much faster than we expected,
to the credit of FEMA and the California Office of Emergency Services
(Cal OES). We also had to address restoring power, water,
communications (phone and internet), as well as removing the thousands
of trees that had fallen into roadways, or across access ways that were
needed for immediate response activities. We issued our first building
permit in February 2019, and since then rebuilding has not slowed down.
We have rebuilt 2,300 housing units, including single family homes and
multi-family units, and at any given time we have about 700 homes under
construction.
It is important to note that as we rebuild, our community
recognizes the importance of rebuilding stronger and better than we
were before so we may be resilient to future fires or other disasters.
Paradise has the unique opportunity to rebuild from the ground up and
be at the forefront of resilient building to be a model for other
communities who hopefully will not need to experience the devastation
we did to learn what we learned. Paradise has sought out experts in
resilient methods and technology to make sure we are doing all we can
do. We have incorporated the Institute for Business and Home Safety
(IBHS) Wildfire Prepared Home Standard into our local building codes,
going a step further than the California Building Codes and the
Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) codes. With requirements like Class-A
rated roofs, enclosed eaves, and a 5 foot non-combustible zone around
the home, Paradise's building standards follow science to be as
resilient as we can. We also require strict defensible space standards
on individual properties, keeping weeds and brush low near homes. We
not only encourage this, we require it, and inspect every property
every year to ensure compliance. In addition to individual property
efforts, the Town is working with our Parks District to create buffer
zones in areas along the perimeter of our community to help slow fires
that enter from neighboring forests. The efforts described here have
been studied by Milliman and Core Logic through a Bay Area Council
Report and have been found to reduce wildfire risk by 70%.
Wildfire is a reality for Paradise and thousands of communities
just like it. What has worked in the past, just isn't working anymore
to keep our communities safe. That said, as Paradise has discovered,
there are ways to make living in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and
high fire severity zones possible with some effort on the part of
residents, communities, local and state governments, and federal
policy.
______
Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Mayor Bolin, for your testimony.
I would like to recognize Members now for 5 minutes, and we
will start with Representative LaMalfa.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you for that, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
the special consideration on that.
Mayor Bolin, indeed, a very emotional and moving experience
that you have brought to us here today. We stood beside you in
living it, but there is nothing like what we see here, with the
photos and, indeed, the movies that were made by Ron Howard and
others to depict what it was really, really like. And the only
thing I guess that would be comparable or worse would be an
actual war zone or something, but it felt like that to
everybody. And this was the immediate result.
Now, optimistically, it is great to see how well things are
bouncing back. Your town has done an amazing job of keeping a
positive spirit and cleaning up the debris and hauling off
those burned-out vehicles. And indeed, you have many new home
permits in place. I have been up there for ribbon-cutting on
some of those and the businesses that were able to re-open
again, the restaurants and all that. So, there is indeed a very
fierce spirit of building back there, and we are proud of that
effort and all that your council has done.
We had great help from FEMA on that, California Office of
Emergency Services, all the different agencies, Federal, state,
county, and town. And our neighboring towns, Oroville, Chico,
they have really stepped up to find places for people and
helping with the debris, hauling the concrete and the steel and
the other stuff that had to be hauled off from clearing up
those lots. It took a lot of effort to get all these agencies
aligned, but everybody had a really great spirit of aligning.
FEMA hadn't really handled wildfire. A lot of hurricane and
tornado and such things, but there hadn't been something like
this scale. So, hats off to a lot of people pulling together.
So, I am sure they are completely pinned down, but what did
the firefighting response look like in the immediate time while
you were there, trying to escape down the Skyway and such? Was
it just overwhelming? Were there aircraft? Could you see that
some important avenues were saved? How did that look to you at
the time?
Mr. Bolin. Thank you for the question. The fire was so
quick, all efforts were just to evacuate. There was very little
firefighting that happened those first couple of days. As the
houses burned, the water system was completely depleted, so we
had no water pressure in Paradise, and all water had to come up
from down the valley on trucks. At that point the smoke was so
dense and so bad they couldn't fly and do any good from the
aerial.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, indeed. I heard about the fire early that
morning too. You have dodged several big ones over the years.
You had that one south of town by the airport, which got pretty
close and they always make you nervous, but the wind was
different that day, and the amount of fuel.
Can you speak to the significance, and maybe touch on the
piece up by Magalia there, where Sierra Pacific and your Fire
Safe Council had done a lot of work. Magalia is the next town
up the ridge from Paradise. And we don't want to forget, too,
the towns of Concow and Yankee Hill nearby. Those folks the
next ridge over that suffered so much.
But the thinning projects that had been happening, talk to
us about how those ended up looking for that effort.
Mr. Bolin. Up by our reservoir there was an area in which
they did a significant amount of thinning of that little forest
up in there. And many are convinced that that kept that fire
from going into that upper part of Magalia. It skirted down to
the lower part of Magalia and took out that part. But because
of that thinning, it actually gave it a barrier to stop that
fire from going in the upper part.
And, subsequently, fire retardant was used on the Camp
Fire, it was just afterwards to keep the fire from going. It
was heading to Chico and to Oroville, and they laid down some
lines and saved several housing developments in those cities.
Mr. LaMalfa. And indeed, right now we are contemplating
whether we can keep fire retardant in time for this upcoming
fire season.
The lady from Bend, thank you for your thumbs up on H.R.
1585, and the rest of your testimony. I would give you a
virtual congressional hug, but maybe that is not allowed, on
your great comments there.
But other towns, Mayor Bolin--and I will cut off here--but
Paradise is always worried about the route up the hill out of
Paradise in case of a fire, and you were able to get road work
done after a lot of years. Supervisor Yamaguchi and Supervisor
Teeter, a lot of conversation. Have you had a chance to talk to
other communities around the western states on their evacuation
routes and how they can help if they are in that situation?
Mr. Bolin. I have. I was able to talk to a few different
communities, and they had questions. How did you know how to
evacuate so quickly? We had practiced that, and I encourage
them, practice evacuations. Each of these communities were in a
severity zone where they were eventually going to have some
issues. And I said, ``Come up with a plan, practice it, and try
it. You have to.'' We were prepared, we had tried it, and we
knew what to do. So, hopefully, communities start doing that.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, thank you. My time is up.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields, and I would like to
recognize Ranking Member Neguse for 5 minutes.
Mr. Neguse. I thank the Chairman. Thanks again to all of
the witnesses for their testimony and a very informative and
meaningful panel.
And Mayor, thank you for sharing your story, which is
harrowing and, obviously, underscores the deep, lasting damage
that was done in your community. And hearts and thoughts go out
to you and to Mr. LaMalfa's community as they continue to
recover years later. And we know that well in Colorado, as I
mentioned in my opening statement.
Questions for Dr. Schultz, and then I wanted to ask a
question of the gentleman, Mr. Dias, from the Forestry
Association.
Dr. Schultz, I want to talk a little bit about
collaboration. And again, thank you for joining us today. But
as you referenced in your testimony, much of your research is
focused on the benefits of building collaboration and
consensus. And this is especially true in wildland-urban
interface communities like many of our communities in Colorado,
as you know, where some of the most at-risk acres occur across
a patchwork of ownership and jurisdiction boundaries.
One of the bills that I have introduced this year with
Senator Bennett is a bill to reauthorize the collaborative
Forest Landscape Restoration Program, which I think kind of
models the type of collaboration that you spoke of. I wonder if
you might be able to expound in a little greater detail about
the benefits of collaboration and the challenges as far as the
obstacles that might be getting in the way.
Dr. Schultz. Yes. Thank you for the question, Mr. Neguse.
I think the benefits of collaboration are that it asks
people to get together to work across boundaries and figure out
how they are going to treat fuels across boundaries, and also
to work together to build a workforce, and also potentially to
work together to explain to the public what they are doing. So,
for example, under the CFRP, you will see people sort of forced
into a forest restoration marriage for 10 years, and they
essentially have to commit to working together to make a
difference on that landscape.
And what we see is that sometimes this happens through
large-scale, innovative NEPA processes. They figure out how are
they going to combine capacity from state, local, and Federal
fire agencies to put fire under the ground, to respond
collectively? They engage with industry in a consistent way,
and they are able to explain to the public why they might see a
lot more truck trips in their communities, why they might be
seeing thinning outside their back door. And I think those
collaborative efforts have led to tremendous success.
My research on CFLRP has indicated that it is probably the
best thing that has happened to Forest Service policy in a long
time, and I appreciate your efforts to support it.
Mr. Neguse. Well, thank you, Dr. Schultz. And I couldn't
agree with you more, and a lot more for us to do, so excited to
get the CFLRP reauthorization across the finish line and
continue to build on that work.
Mr. Dias, I have limited time left, so I am going to try to
go through this quickly. I reviewed your written testimony. I
appreciate your oral testimony today. My sense, if I could
condense your testimony, is that you would like to see more of
this landscape work done by the Forest Service, and I certainly
agree with you on that front. But I assume you would concede
that the investments that we made over the course of the last
several years are significantly higher than any investments at
least in the modern era, let's say the last 40 to 50 years of
the Forest Service's work. Is that fair?
Mr. Dias. Yes, I would say that is accurate.
Mr. Neguse. And as I said, I think the challenge now is, of
course, as you said in your written testimony, and I think many
of us agree, is to scale that up, and to have the Forest
Service do more of that.
And I think Dr. Schultz raises a really important salient
point in terms of the reporting that the Forest Service should
do, moving forward, so that we can carefully calibrate how many
acres are actually being treated. I think that is an important
metric, something I suspect we could work on a bipartisan basis
on.
What I wanted to ask you about is there is a lot of
conversation these days, at least here on the dais anyway,
about NEPA, and I am sure you have heard that from many of my
colleagues. You detail pretty extensively in your written
testimony the various authorities that exist within the Forest
Service to do this work. It doesn't seem like the regulatory
obstacles are, let's say, as large as some of my colleagues
would have us believe.
And just to go to your testimony, I mean, you talk about,
for example, the Infrastructure Act creating a new emergency
action authority for the Forest Service. Is that correct?
Mr. Dias. That is correct.
Mr. Neguse. And also the Infrastructure Act creating
rather, or I don't know if this is the Infrastructure Act or if
this is existing law, the ability under alternative
arrangements under Federal regulations to execute projects,
which, obviously, could be very important, particularly as it
relates to fuel breaks. Is that correct?
Mr. Dias. Yes, pre-existing infrastructure, but that is
correct.
Mr. Neguse. So, I think I am out of time here and I am not
going to go through the full list, but I offer that to suggest
that I think the Forest Service has the ability today to do
this work, which is precisely why they have launched their 10-
year landscape project plan. So, we are best positioned, I
think, to encourage the Forest Service to continue on the path
that they are on. That is certainly the approach I am going to
take.
And I appreciate the testimony of all the witnesses here
today.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields, and that is certainly
something we are going to watch very closely, is how many acres
are being treated, and are the agencies going to take those
authorities and actually turn them into acres treated.
I would like to recognize the gentleman from Oregon for 5
minutes.
Mr. Bentz. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank all of you for
your thoughtful testimony and your written testimony. I would
like to start with Ms. McNair.
I am looking at, I think, the last page of your written
testimony. And I really appreciate and I was speaking with
Congressman LaMalfa about your suggestions contained on that
last page. And we would like to work with you in bringing the
type of legislation you suggest about the ambient air quality
standards. That is really an excellent observation on your
part, and I certainly was not aware of it. So, we may be
reaching out to you, if that is acceptable, and finding out
what we can do to move legislation forward in that space.
But because you have been with the Forest Service for so
long, it gives me an opportunity to ask you something that has
been asserted over the years that I have observed the Forest
Service, and it appears that over time the firefighting space
has turned into, because of the huge addition of heavy volumes
of fuel, to more of a fire watching and try to stay out of the
way space. And I don't blame anybody for that. I have been
around those kinds of fires, and they are horribly frightening
and horribly dangerous.
My question to you is this. Do you think that the type of
approach that is being used by the Forest Service now in how it
approaches these fires is the proper approach?
And I will just say this. I have a lot of ranching clients
that I used to have in my law practice who, in the summers now,
they spend their time fighting fire. That is what they do. It
was not the case before. And they come in, and they tell me
about how firefighting works. And the way it works is you get
up in the morning, and you wander into a tent around 10, 11,
and you talk about how everybody is going to stay safe, and
then you decide on a plan, and you coordinate with a bunch of
other folks, and eventually everybody goes out and does
something for a while, and then everybody stops working at the
end and you start out the next day. Is that a correct
reflection of what you have seen in the firefighting space at
least once or twice? I am sure it doesn't happen all the time
that way, at least I hope.
Ms. McNair. That is a good question, Congressman. I will
say this, that our fires are getting more complex, they are
getting larger and more difficult to fight. And let me give you
an example of that.
In 1987, we had the Silver Fire in southern Oregon. It was
100,000 acres, and we thought that was a big fire, an anomaly.
In 2013, we had the Rim Fire in California. It was 2.5 million
acres, or 250,000 acres. We thought, oh my, that is really big.
In 2021, we had the Bootleg Fire in Oregon and we hit a half-a-
million acres.
What we are seeing is every fire is either a controlled, a
controlled and maintained, or a monitored. I don't think we
have ever seen people walk away from a fire. It is really one
of three strategies. It is either direct or indirect attacked.
But I think that, as we see our firefighters approach these
fires, it is always their safety we have in mind and
communities.
Mr. Bentz. And forgive me for interrupting, but I have to
ask Dr. Schultz a question; I am going to be out of time.
Ms. McNair. OK.
Mr. Bentz. But I appreciate what you were going to say, and
the last thing I want to do is put people at risk. But I think
it leads directly into how in the world are we going to reduce
the amount of fuel that is in these spaces? Because once these
things get rolling, you better get out of the road. So, that
brings me to Dr. Schultz.
Dr. Schultz, I really appreciate your written testimony. I
was reviewing it here. And you talk about collaboratives, and
you also say on the first page of your testimony in the last
paragraph, center line, ``If we want to get to the scale needed
to make a difference.'' I have used that phrase a lot, and I
know what scale is. My district is bigger than the state of
Washington, so I get scale. Is that what you meant?
Were you saying, hey, we have, what, 90 million acres of
forest in the western United States? Is that what you talk
about? Is that what you mean when you say scale?
Dr. Schultz. Thanks for the question. I am talking about
planning at a large-enough scale to have an impact on fire
behavior and also on forest conditions.
We often talk about a history of putting in smaller
projects in a less strategic way sometimes really doesn't make
a difference. So, if we really want to go big across the
landscape to reduce fuels enough to affect fire behavior and
have some impact on communities, then we need to be planning
large projects. And that is when collaboration and good
planning come into play. We need to do those things in order to
really scale up and be working at the landscape level.
Mr. Bentz. Right, and we don't have enough time for me to
share my frustrations with collaboration, but I view it also as
perhaps the only device that has any real chance of getting
anything done, short of all-out litigation.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to ask a
couple of questions here, then I want to yield to Mr. LaMalfa.
You talked about obligatory supply agreements, Mr. Dias.
Tell me about obligatory supply agreements.
Mr. Dias. When I use the term ``obligatory,'' I am
suggesting that the shared stewardship, 20-year agreements or
any shared stewardship, doesn't have an obligation or a
triggering mechanism to guarantee delivery of any kind of
material that is going to unlock investment in any kind of
innovative infrastructure or conventional infrastructure.
So, from my perspective, the state of California also has
this on its dashboard: trying to drive investment in new
facilities, if you will, to have capital be a driver in getting
treatment done, but we don't have any obligations, so folks are
just not seemingly ready to invest.
Mr. Tiffany. So, are you saying the state of California
uses obligatory supply agreements?
Mr. Dias. No, I am not saying that. I messed up. That is
not what I am saying. What I am saying is California is very
interested in having drivers to get investment settled in the
state.
The Forest Service, by far and away, is the largest
landowner in the state. So, without supply agreements coming
from the largest landowner in the state, it is very difficult
to have new infrastructure established because existing
infrastructure is already set up based on the landscapes which
it serves.
Mr. Tiffany. Dr. Schultz, will we get to scale? We just had
that conversation about will we get to scale. Will we be able
to do that if the lawsuits continue, if there is not lawsuit
reform?
Dr. Schultz. Thanks for the question, Representative
Tiffany.
I think there is actually quite a lot of NEPA considered
shelf stock. So, on the shelf, millions of acres that are
through the NEPA process and could be treated. Our biggest
problems, and I agree with Mr. Dias, tend to have to do more
with industry and markets to actually bid on those projects
when they are done. We see a lot of projects that go unbid, or
even projects that are bid on and then never get worked on.
I think industry and markets for the low-to-no-value wood
products are our biggest challenge, and I would ask this
Committee to focus on that as a major area where we need
solutions.
Mr. Tiffany. So, how do we get them back? They were there
30, 40 years ago. How do we get them back, Dr. Schultz?
Dr. Schultz. Yes, they are quite a bit different. There is
a long history of the Forest Service doing a lot of intensive,
high grading and timber harvest during the height of the
timber-producing era that took a lot of the large sawlogs. And
those industries that used to treat those sawlogs in some
places no longer are there. There are also the impacts of
globalization on the timber economy.
What we are looking at now is low-to-no-value product. We
have to get a lot cleared through NEPA, and then we need to
incentivize small businesses that can work on biomass and take
that small product to create something of value with it. We
also just have to pay to get it out of the woods, which is part
of what the investments from the Congress are going to be
paying for.
Now we need to make sure that the Forest Service has the
contracting capacity to do that work, to get the contractors on
the ground where they have the NEPA shelf stock in place to
actually get the work done.
And then we have to follow it with prescribed fire, because
if we don't remove those small fuels, we won't actually see the
fire risk reduction.
Mr. Tiffany. I yield to the gentleman from California.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thanks so much again, Mr. Chairman, I
appreciate the time and being in your Subcommittee today. This
is an excellent panel, one of the best panels I have seen in a
long time, with a diversity of experience and thought. So, I
appreciate you all.
I wanted to, quickly with Mayor Bolin, you did not really
have an evacuation system in place at the time, but now you
have sirens and, of course, the practice and such. Is this
something we can use to emphasize to other mountain and
forested communities?
Mr. Bolin. Right after the fire we had a large community
outreach to come up with what are things that would encourage
you to come back, and what are things that would help you feel
comfortable----
Mr. LaMalfa. Right, because we want people to come back----
Mr. Bolin. We want them to come back to town, yes.
Mr. LaMalfa. I was reminded that had this happened in the
middle of the night, after the tinder dried, November in
California is still dry. And the whole summer and the fall of
that, everything was super dry. Had that wind and that fire
started late at night, I imagine the loss of life would have
been just tremendous above what we already saw.
Mr. Bolin. If this would have been 2 or 3 hours earlier
that this happened, we would have lost thousands of people in
our town, because they would have still been in bed.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you. Ms. McNair, you really perked my
ears up with this PM2.5 business here, because as Dr. Schultz
mentioned, too, prescribed fire is going to have to be a big
part of what we do, and it is even more difficult these days.
And we saw one got away, a big one, in New Mexico. Yet, we have
to work even harder to find ways. If this PM2.5 thing is
allowed to stand, what do you see happening there with that?
How far is that a threat, or whatever, from using this
tool?
Ms. McNair. Well, as it is proposed, some of the research
that I have been reading, in some of our communities it will
limit prescribed fire by 80 to 90 percent.
Mr. LaMalfa. Wow.
Ms. McNair. So, we can choose the way we have fire. We will
have fire. We will either have wildfire smoke or we will have
prescribed smoke on our communities. And the effects of
wildfire smoke right now are showing a 25 percent increase
since the mid-2000s that represent hazardous air that our folks
are virtually breathing in our communities. And every time you
hit a wildfire, you are probably having propane tanks, you are
having roofs burned, you are putting toxic things in your air
system. So, it is either you have wood burning, prescribed
fires, for the most part, or you have wildfires. And it is a
choice we can make.
Mr. LaMalfa. Certainly, we can carry the logs out on a
truck or we can burn them out is one of the other common
sayings. And what Mayor Bolin has experienced in Paradise, the
toxics, just on a footprint of a home or a building that have
to be hauled away, as well as Greenville, my other town that
got burned, and Canyon Dam, my other town that got burned, same
thing. The toxics are on the ground.
And you also mentioned the renewable fuels that we should
be putting to work for us in making energy, as well. I just
wish we had so much more time. It has been a great Committee
today.
And Matt, I didn't even get to touch on your good work here
in California from my questions and such. But real fast if you
don't mind, Mr. Chairman, when I see our previous Committee
today, in Ag, I am just so built up with frustration at the
speed with which Forest Service is not doing things. The pace
and scale keeps coming up. I mean, I don't want to go out of
here feeling hopeless, but I just do not see how we are going
to do this without a great sea change in attitude and getting
after having the private sector help us in a much more
aggressive approach. Do you have any comment on that, on
acreage, and on thinning and everything?
Mr. Dias. I will be very quick. I think the Forest Service
is experiencing some symptoms of capacity and technical
expertise to a certain extent, and I think that partnerships
are very, very, very important in today's world. And when we
look at the NEPA process, or we look at the permitting process,
we have partners out there that can do that work on behalf of
the forest, or work with them: Great Basin Institute, Wild
Turkey Federation, so on and so forth.
As we look at other portions of the work that needs to be
done, the practical on-the-ground work, we can turn to other
entities out there that have capacity. And I stand before you
representing the forestry sector in California and say that we
are interested and stand before you wanting to help the Forest
Service get that work done around communities and around shared
property lines so that we are building a more resilient
environment.
And it is that cooperative that is going to have to be
done, but it is not a very fast process, and better tools for
cooperation through contracting and such is something I would
encourage you to look at.
Mr. LaMalfa. Chairman Tiffany, you have been very kind.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields, and I would like to echo
his comments. This is one of the finest panels that we have had
before Federal Lands and the Natural Resources Committee in the
short time that I have been here. We want to thank you so much
for taking the time to come from the western states to join us
here. It is greatly appreciated. I will be talking about your
testimony with other Members. It is greatly appreciated.
Members of the Committee may have some additional questions
for our witnesses today, and we will ask that they respond to
those in writing. Under Committee Rule 3, members of the
Committee must submit questions to the Committee Clerk by 5
p.m. on Friday, May 19, 2023. The hearing record will be held
open for 10 business days for these responses.
If there is no further business, without objection, the
Subcommittee on Federal Lands stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:45 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD]
Submission for the Record by Rep. Bentz
The National Wildfire Suppression Association
Mill City, OR
May 18, 2023
Hon. Tom Tiffany, Chairman
House Natural Resources Committee
Subcommittee on Federal Lands
Washington, DC 20515
Re: ``Examining the Challenges Facing Forest Management, Wildfire
Suppression and Wildland Firefighters Ahead of the 2023
Wildfire Year''
Dear Chairman Tiffany, Vice Chair John Curtis, and members of the
Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands:
Thank you for the opportunity to provide written testimony
regarding the May 16 hearing ``Examining the Challenges Facing Forest
Management, Wildfire Suppression and Wildland Firefighters Ahead of the
2023 Wildfire Year''.
The National Wildfire Suppression Association represents over 348
member companies across twenty-nine states that provide resources to
the agencies under a variety of contracts and agreements for wildfire
suppression response. Our resources are the ``boots on the ground'' and
the scope of resources available from our industry is substantial. We
make up over forty-five percent (45%) of all resources on the ground on
fires, and up to ninety percent (90%) of all ``iron (heavy
equipment)''. Our agreements are of excellent value to the agency and
the taxpayer as we ``call when needed'' resources to supplement the
agency contingency when there is need. We have been providing resources
to the agencies for over 30 years, and many times we still see no
recognition of what we bring to the table in their efforts against
these catastrophic wildfires.
Currently the agency uses a variety of agreements Incident Blanket
Procurement Agreements (IBPA), Emergency Equipment Rental Agreements
and Request for Proposal (RFP) to hire these types of resources. As of
2022 there are over 419 Type 2 Hand Crews, 37 Types 2 Initial Attack
Hand Crews and over 14,000 pieces of equipment including water
handling, heavy equipment, camp support as well many other types of
specialized resources.
Sustain the Workforce:
In all areas of industry, we are struggling to sustain our
workforce, and in an industry such as emergency response with no
guarantee of work that is a challenge we face. They involve long days,
periods of time away from family, and few creature comforts on the job.
We have seen the agency in some rural locations having to stand
down equipment due to lack of staffing, and even in areas where large
signing bonuses are offered (sometimes up to $25,000 signing bonuses
for an engine boss) they are still unable to fill those positions. Due
to the limitation of bid ranges and the nature of ``call when needed''
work we cannot offer those kinds of incentives in private industry.
Fuels Mitigation/Prescribed Burning
We believe in the philosophy of all hands, all lands and the
Professional Private industry and we are proud to be a partner with the
agencies in these efforts. We also have a long history of expertise in
wildland fire, fire rehab, prescribed burning, and fuels mitigation.
We have worked with Chief Moore and Ms. Hall-Rivera about the
opportunity to increase the capacity of the public/private partnership
utilizing the current contract vehicles in place for these fire
resources.
They have the equipment, qualifications, and expertise to
immediately help address the substantial backlog of work which urgently
needs to be addressed, and we look forward to continuing that
collaboration.
Our industry also has some newer technology that currently the
agency does not contract for that could boost productivity if it were
utilized for fuels treatment. Things such as whole tree chippers, track
mulchers, and more that our companies have invested in for work they do
with the states and with private landowners but currently there are
avenues to provide those to the federal agencies.
We are concerned about whether the Emergency Declaration being
utilized fully; in some cases, we have seen a slow response in making
the funding available, which is causing missed opportunities to get
work done.
In Summary:
Private industry has, will and can continue to play a significant
role in providing much needed resources including heavy equipment,
water handling, hand crews and other specialized equipment. We also
have the qualifications and expertise to assist with large landscape
fuel projects to help address those backlogs and reduce wildfire risk
on the landscape. The agency would need to look at some changes to the
current contract vehicles to allow us to have a wider scope of work in
some cases, but the workforce is there and the equipment also. These
companies have invested substantial amounts of dollars in the companies
to be able to provide these resources, and we just want to be sure that
the companies with the ``best value'' to the agency and taxpayer get
the opportunity to provide those resources.
We are happy to answer any questions or provide more information to
the committee upon request.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Deborah Miley,
Executive Director
[all]