[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


      CONSERVATION IN A CROWN JEWEL: A DISCUSSION ABOUT WILDFIRES
                         AND FOREST MANAGEMENT

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

                        OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

     Friday, August 11, 2023, in Yosemite National Park, California
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-56
                               __________

       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
                    
53-143 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2024   

          
                     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
                                 ------                                

                                CONTENTS

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Hearing held on Friday, August 11, 2023..........................     1

Statement of Members:

    Westerman, Hon. Bruce, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arkansas..........................................     2

    McClintock, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of California........................................     4

Statement of Witnesses:

    Menetrey, Miles, Supervisor, Mariposa County, California.....     6
        Prepared statement of....................................     8

    Turnboo, Hon. George, Supervisor, District II, El Dorado 
      County, California.........................................    10
        Prepared statement of....................................    12

    Daley, Dave, California Cattlemen's Association, Butte 
      County, California.........................................    36
        Prepared statement of....................................    38

    White, Johnnie, Board Member, California Farm Bureau, 
      Sebastopol, California.....................................    52
        Prepared statement of....................................    54

    Bloom, Matthew, Owner, Kennedy Meadows Resort and Pack 
      Station, Pinecrest, California.............................    61
        Prepared statement of....................................    64

    Tripp, Bill, Director of Natural Resources and Environmental 
      Policy, Karuk Tribe, Orleans, California...................    66
        Prepared statement of....................................    68
                                     


 
       OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING ON CONSERVATION IN A CROWN JEWEL:
           A DISCUSSION ABOUT WILDFIRES AND FOREST MANAGEMENT

                              ----------                              


                        Friday, August 11, 2023

                     U.S. House of Representatives

                     Committee on Natural Resources

                   Yosemite National Park, California

                              ----------                              

    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:56 a.m. 
Pacific Daylight Time, in Curry Village Amphitheatre, Yosemite 
National Park, Yosemite, California, Hon. Bruce Westerman 
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Westerman, McClintock, Tiffany, 
and Duarte.
    Also present: Representatives Newhouse and Valadao.

    Ranger Gediman. We would like to welcome you all here to 
Yosemite National Park this morning.
    We are very pleased that you all came, and very pleased 
that the Committee came, and we are looking forward to hearing 
what you have to say.
    Welcome to the park and enjoy your day. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Scott.
    The Committee on Natural Resources will come to order.
    I would like to welcome everybody to Curry Village here in 
the heart of Yosemite National Park for an official Natural 
Resources Committee oversight hearing titled ``Conservation in 
a Crown Jewel: A Discussion About Wildfires and Forest 
Management.''
    The Committee is meeting today to discuss the real-world 
consequences of failed forest management policies and 
catastrophic wildfires.
    Before we begin our official business, we will begin this 
hearing with the presentation of the colors by the Mariposa 
County Sheriff's Office Honor Guard.
    [Presentation of colors.]
    The Chairman. We will now be led in the Pledge of 
Allegiance by Bobby Macaulay, Supervisor for Madera County.
    Mr. Macaulay. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.
    I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of 
America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, 
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
    The Chairman. Be seated.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the Committee at any time.
    I ask unanimous consent that the following Members be 
allowed to participate in today's hearing from the dais: the 
gentleman from Washington and the Chairman of the Congressional 
Western Caucus, Mr. Newhouse, and the gentleman from 
California, Mr. Valadao.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    Under Committee Rule 4(f), any oral opening statements at 
hearings are limited to the Chairman and the 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.
    Today, the House Committee on Natural Resources has the 
great privilege of convening this hearing in the heart of one 
of our nation's crown jewels, Yosemite National Park.
    Before I begin my remarks, I would like to acknowledge our 
hosts today, the National Park Service and Aramark, and thank 
them for all the hard work they put in behind the scenes to 
make this event happen.
    I would also like to thank Congressman Tom McClintock, a 
senior member of the Committee, for hosting us in his district. 
And I also acknowledge the Chairman of the Western Caucus, 
Congressman Dan Newhouse, for joining us today.
    I now recognize myself for opening remarks.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRUCE WESTERMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

    The Chairman. May 15, 1903, a train from Oakland pulls into 
the small town of Raymond just south of here where John Muir 
and Teddy Roosevelt headed to the Mariposa Grove for quite 
possibly the most significant 3-day camping trip in history.
    After evading the press, the President sent his troops and 
others in the entourage to the Wawona Hotel so that he and Muir 
could spend time uninterrupted in Yosemite.
    While recounting the trip in 1915, Roosevelt wrote: ``He 
met me with a couple of pack mules, as well as with riding 
mules for himself and myself.''
    Roosevelt then continued: ``The first night we camped in a 
grove of giant sequoias. It was clear weather, and we lay in 
the open, the enormous cinnamon-colored trunks rising about us 
like the columns of a vaster and more beautiful cathedral than 
was ever conceived by any human architect.''
    Further on, in describing Muir's work in Yosemite, 
Roosevelt penned: ``Great natural phenomena--wonderful canyons, 
giant trees, slopes of flower-spangled hillsides--which make 
California a veritable Garden of the Lord.''
    I agree with Roosevelt. This is a genuine garden of the 
Lord. But I also believe that, if Roosevelt could see the 
condition of the garden today, he would agree with me that the 
garden needs tending.
    And not only this magnificent, iconic garden of the 
Yosemite, but the many gardens of our beloved public lands that 
are be being denuded by new kinds of timber barons--insects, 
disease, and ultimately catastrophic wildfires--that we have 
invited into the gardens through unintended actions of 
mismanagement.
    In a sense, we are loving our forests to death.
    In light of the evidence and the challenges before us, we 
must embrace a new conservation ethos. It is up to us to 
correct the mistakes we have made and begin anew to conserve 
our nation's bountiful lands and resources by striking the 
right balance among corrective actions, our current needs, and 
our obligations to future generations to leave this garden of 
the Lord better than we found it.
    We have fallen far short of truly conserving our public 
lands, including Yosemite. Over a century of fire suppression 
and mismanagement have transitioned our Federal forests from 
garden-like sanctuaries to overstocked, overstressed thickets 
that are incinerating at a rapid pace.
    Historically, California had roughly 64 trees per acre. Now 
that number is over 300 trees per acre. These overstocked 
forests become more susceptible to insects, disease, and 
ultimately stand-replacing fire as trees are forced to compete 
for the limited resources they need to survive: water, 
nutrients, and sunlight.
    The results speak for themselves. In the last decade, 
wildfires have torched over 72 million acres in an area roughly 
the size of the entire state of Arizona.
    California has been at the epicenter of this crisis. During 
the last 5 years, wildfires in the state have burned 8.7 
million acres, which is an astonishing 22 percent of the total 
acreage burned across the nation.
    Behind these wildfires are lost lives, communities 
destroyed, ecosystems and wildlife habitat irreparably damaged, 
access and opportunities for outdoor recreation taken away, air 
and water dangerously polluted, billions of dollars in economic 
losses year after year, and millions more tons of carbon 
gasified and needlessly jettisoned into the global atmosphere.
    This self-inflicted devastation is widespread. But perhaps 
nothing exemplifies our wildfire crisis more than the loss of 
20 percent of the world's giant sequoias in just 2 short years.
    Just last year, the Mariposa Grove, which we toured 
yesterday, was threatened by fire. Firefighters and land 
managers alike both credited prior fuels-reduction treatments, 
such as mechanical thinning and prescribed burning, as saving 
the grove.
    We know these treatments work, and I commend the good 
people in the Park Service who are dedicated to managing 
correctly, like Cicely Muldoon, Garrett Dickman, Athena 
Demetry, Dan Buckley, and the crew we visited with yesterday.
    Our Federal land managers, not the ones in DC but the ones 
doing the work in the field, have had their hands tied by 
bureaucratic tape and frivolous lawsuits. They have had to 
follow the litigation, not any legitimate scientific findings.
    In fact, less than 2 hours from this very hearing, the 
Nelder Grove in Sierra National Forest is being litigated for 
taking emergency actions to save giant sequoias, the very 
emergency actions that protected the Mariposa Grove last year.
    In an op-ed, The Sacramento Bee said this of the 
environmental organization currently suing to stop the 
protection of giant sequoias, ``By weaponizing Federal 
protections--such as the National Environmental Policy Act and 
the Endangered Species Act--to obstruct or outright kill 
various wildfire prevention projects, environmentalists imperil 
the very ecosystems they wish to protect.''
    Finally, there exists an outcry in today's world for 
Congress to take climate action. I hear it quite often and 
repeatedly get asked about it by a shortsighted press.
    C.S. Lewis said: ``Put first things first, and we get 
second things thrown in. Put second things first, and we lose 
both first and second things.''
    We are losing today because we are putting second things 
first. The hitch pin of a healthy environment is a healthy 
forest. Healthy forest equals cleaner air, cleaner water, more 
plant and animal biodiversity, more wildlife, better outdoor 
recreational and sportsman opportunities, and, yes, less 
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
    If we can't take the simple, common-sense, science-based, 
and empirically proven steps to partner together to restore 
Yosemite and our other beloved Federal lands to the veritable 
gardens of the Lord that Roosevelt described, then I contend 
that, as stewards of the gardens, we have grossly misplaced our 
priorities and have forgotten how to put first things first.
    But we are better than that. And it is in our heritage, in 
our American DNA, to do better than that.
    In his letter to Muir requesting the famous camping trip 2 
months before Roosevelt arrived in Yosemite, he wrote, ``I do 
not want anyone with me but you, and I want to drop politics 
absolutely for 4 days and just be out in the open with you.''
    When it comes to our forests and our Federal lands, let's 
drop the politics long enough to put first things first and do 
the right thing. Who knows, we might learn something from being 
good stewards of our forests that will make us better stewards 
of our country.
    With that, I yield back my time.
    I will now recognize Congressman Tom McClintock, who 
represents this district, for any openings statement that he 
may wish to make.

   STATEMENT OF THE HON. TOM McCLINTOCK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
             CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

    Mr. McClintock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank 
the Committee for holding this hearing today in Yosemite 
National Park and welcome all of you to the hearing as well.
    The Yosemite Grant of 1864 was the first time that Federal 
land was set aside for the enjoyment of the American people. In 
the words of the Act, this was done, ``upon the express 
conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, 
resort, and recreation; [and] Shall be inalienable for all 
time.''
    This set in motion the events that ultimately led to the 
creation of the National Park Service, again, with the express 
purpose to, ``conserve the scenery and the natural and 
historical objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for 
the enjoyment of the same.''
    And I want to recognize the National Park rangers who have 
ever since welcomed and encouraged succeeding generations of 
Americans who come to visit and enjoy their public lands.
    I might also add that this park is absolutely vital to the 
communities that surround it, whose economies depend upon the 
tourism that it generates, and that rely on the Federal 
Government to be a good neighbor in preserving, maintaining, 
and managing these lands.
    As we look at the fire-scarred landscape of the past 
decade, it is becoming obvious we are not meeting our 
responsibility to properly manage these lands.
    An untended forest is no different than an untended garden. 
It is going to grow and grow until it chokes itself to death, 
and then it will succumb to disease, pestilence, drought, and, 
ultimately, catastrophic fire. This is how nature gardens, and 
she is a lousy gardener. You doubt that, just leave your garden 
alone for 50 years and see what happens.
    Excess timber will come out of the forest, and it comes out 
in only two ways: Either we will carry it out or nature will 
burn it out. Nature doesn't care that it takes centuries for a 
forest to return. We mortals do. That is why we set up these 
land agencies to remove excess timber before it could choke off 
the forest or be consumed by fire.
    Every year, foresters would mark off surplus timber. We 
would auction it off to logging companies who then paid us to 
remove it. Twenty-five percent of those revenues from Federal 
timber auctions went to local communities like Mariposa, and 
the other 75 percent went back into our forests.
    For a century, we enjoyed healthy, fire-resistant, and 
resilient national forests and thriving local economies, as 
well.
    But then, in the 1970s, we passed laws like NEPA and ESA 
that have made the act of management of our forests endlessly 
time consuming and ultimately cost prohibitive. A simple forest 
management plan now takes an average of 4\1/2\ years to 
complete. The environmental studies now exceed 800 pages, they 
cost millions of dollars, more than the value of the timber to 
be harvested.
    Though it shouldn't surprise us, in those years timber 
harvested off the Federal lands have dropped 80 percent. And 
with the Federal timber supply cut off, the number of mills has 
shrunk from 149 in 1981 to just 39 today.
    So, nature has returned to remove the excess timber by 
burning it out. The acreage destroyed by catastrophic fire in 
California has exploded from a quarter million acres a year 
throughout the 20th century to 4 million acres last year.
    Now, these laws were imposed with the promise that they 
would improve the forest environment. I think after 50 years we 
are entitled to ask how the forest environment is doing.
    We were able to get a categorical exclusion from NEPA for 
forest-thinning projects in the Tahoe Basin. In the 7 years 
since its enactment, it has reduced the study time from 4\1/2\ 
years to just 4 months. It has reduced the environmental 
reports from more than 800 pages to just a few dozen.
    Timber harvested has increased from roughly a million board 
feet a year in Tahoe to 9 million board feet on average. The 
treated acreage in the Tahoe Basin has tripled. And the forests 
are returning to fire resiliency. This saved the city of South 
Lake Tahoe from the Caldor Fire just 2 years ago.
    The Save Our Sequoias bill would employ the same reform to 
protect our sequoia stands. My bill, H.R. 188, would extend 
this proven reform throughout the Federal lands. Both have been 
marked up by this Committee, but they still await a vote on the 
House Floor.
    I agree, this should not be a partisan issue. The question 
is between policies that are proven to work and policies that 
have proven to fail.
    John Muir once said that when people visit Yosemite they 
may arrive as tourists but they leave as evangelists. I want to 
thank you, Mr. Chairman, for coming to Yosemite today. Let us 
all go forth from this hearing determined to evangelize to save 
our forests.

    The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
    Let me remind the witnesses that under Committee Rules, you 
must limit your oral statements to 5 minutes, but your entire 
statement will appear in the hearing record.
    We don't have on and off buttons; the microphones are hot. 
We do use timing lights. When you begin, the light will turn 
green. At the end of 5 minutes, the light will turn red. You 
can see the clock right here in front of us. I will ask you to 
please complete your statement if you haven't completed it in 5 
minutes.
    I will now recognize the first witness, the Honorable Miles 
Menetrey, the Supervisor for Mariposa County.
    Supervisor Menetrey, you have 5 minutes.

   STATEMENT OF MILES MENETREY, SUPERVISOR, MARIPOSA COUNTY, 
                           CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Menetrey. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Chairman and members of the Full Committee, thank you 
for holding this hearing to discuss wildfire and forest 
management. Welcome to Mariposa County.
    My name is Miles Menetrey, and I have been a member of the 
Mariposa County Board of Supervisors since 2017. I serve on the 
board of the National Association of Counties and on NACo's 
Public Lands Steering Committee. I offer my testimony today on 
behalf of NACo.
    Mariposa County is the gateway to two national forests and 
Yosemite. Life here is tied to public lands. Approximately half 
our county is federally owned. More than one-third of all 
employers in Mariposa County are directly tied to tourism and 
recreation and are responsible for more than 60 percent of our 
local taxes.
    The management decisions made by Federal agencies impact 
our quality of life. Federal agency decisions have left our 
forests overcrowded, unhealthy, and fire prone.
    Reducing fuel loads will re-establish healthy landscapes, 
watersheds, and communities. Healthy forests, as the Chairman 
said, purify air and water, increase biodiversity, are less 
susceptible to catastrophic fire, and grow local economies.
    Increased timber harvests where appropriate, greater use of 
mechanical thinning, controlled burns, and expedited NEPA 
process will enhance forest health, spur economic activity, and 
improve our visitor experience.
    Catastrophic fires have disproportionate effect on the 
West. Wildland fires no longer speak in terms of fire season 
but, instead, refer to the fire year.
    So far this year, over 1.3 million acres have burned 
nationwide. Since 2017, more than 325 square miles have burned 
here in Mariposa County, one-quarter of our land area. If you 
arranged it in a straight line, 1 mile wide, it would extend 
from this park to Los Angeles.
    In 2018, the Ferguson Fire burned 97,000 acres of Federal 
land, resulted in two firefighter deaths, and cost nearly $300 
million in damages and suppression. We have lost more than 200 
homes to wildfire, including 127 burned last year in our Oak 
Fire, which incinerated an additional 20,000 acres.
    Wildfires also have a detrimental effect on public health. 
After our Oak Fire, 55 percent reported worsening depression or 
anxiety. Some of those who lose everything in a wildfire 
experience thoughts of suicide.
    While the causes of wildfire are complex, inaction 
exacerbates a dangerous situation. Counties work to build 
consensus and implement projects with our Federal partners. 
Projects developed through consensus-based, collaborative 
process should be approved expeditiously. By engaging counties 
early and often, Federal agencies will find willing and eager 
partners.
    We and our nonprofit partners are implementing our award-
winning Community Wildfire Protection Plan by constructing fuel 
breaks, seeking grants to support fire-mitigation projects, and 
providing grants for fuel-reduction projects. We recently 
purchased nearly 300 acres of land adjacent to the town of 
Mariposa to build fuel breaks.

    Congress should help improve forest management in several 
ways:

    First, Congress should treat counties and tribes as genuine 
partners under a good neighbor agreement. States can reinvest 
25 percent of revenues generated from the GNA projects and 
further forest restoration work. We ask Congress to give 
counties and tribes the same ability to reinvest GNA project 
revenues.
    Congress should also update NEPA to require the costs and 
benefits of a project to be weighed against the consequences of 
doing nothing.
    The choice not to manage our forests is a management 
decision that has led to catastrophic results. Federal agencies 
should actively attack wildfires at the ignition source. The 
initial reaction to a new ignition should be to develop a 
suppression plan rather than taking the default action of 
monitoring to determine if it meets objectives.
    Finally, the Federal Government needs to focus on 
infrastructure and workforce development. Federal forests often 
lack the infrastructure to profitably remove fuel loads and 
small-diameter trees.
    We also need a well-trained Federal workforce and ask 
Federal agencies to ensure staff are not frequently moved to 
new communities.
    Agencies must also create innovative intergovernmental 
partnerships for affordable housing to attract and retain 
quality personnel.
    Thank you for your invitation to testify. I look forward to 
your questions.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Menetrey follows:]
    Prepared Statement of the Honorable Miles Menetrey, Supervisor, 
                      Mariposa County, California
    Chairman Westerman and members of the U.S. House Committee on 
Natural Resources, thank you for holding this hearing to discussion 
wildfires and forest management in one of the crown jewels of our 
nation's conservation legacy.
    My name is Miles Menetrey, and I have been a member of the Mariposa 
County, California Board of Supervisors since 2017. I am a native 
Californian and have lived in Mariposa County since being displaced by 
the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. I operated my own construction 
business here in Mariposa County until I was sworn in as a County 
Supervisor. I currently serve as a Board Member for the National 
Association of Counties' (NACo) and on NACo's Public Lands Steering 
Committee. I offer my testimony today on behalf of NACo.
    Mariposa County has a population of 17,000 people and serves as a 
gateway to the Sierra and Stanislaus National Forests, and of course, 
Yosemite National Park. Life in Mariposa County is tied to our 
federally owned lands. More than one-third of all employers in Mariposa 
County are directly related to tourism and recreation. These businesses 
are responsible for more than 60 percent of the local property, sales, 
and transient occupancy taxes.
    Mariposa County is directly and significantly impacted by the 
federal lands in our county. Over half our county is federally owned 
and therefore exempt from taxes and the development that could generate 
revenue to support the services provided for these areas. We are caught 
in limbo when it comes to financing essential county government 
services because the Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program is 
substantially less than our local property taxes would require and 
subject to the annual discretionary appropriations process. The Secure 
Rural Schools (SRS) program will expire in September, forcing counties 
to consider making cuts to critical services like search and rescue 
operations. We are excited to see the inclusion of one year of full 
funding of PILT in both the House and Senate Interior Appropriations 
bills, as well as the introduction of three-year SRS reauthorization 
legislation in both chambers. We respectfully request that Congress act 
on both vital programs to ensure continuity in public lands county 
budgets. Without these commitments, the County will not be able to 
deliver essential services to the people in our community.
    In addition to the budgetary constraints caused by federal 
landownership, the management decisions made by federal lands agencies 
directly impact Mariposa County's environment, economy and quality of 
life. While counties work closely with federal agencies to manage our 
natural resources, we are constrained in our ability to influence 
outcomes. Unfortunately, policies determined in Washington have left 
our forests overcrowded, unhealthy and fire prone.
    Active forest management will reduce the threat of wildfire in the 
West. Reducing fuel loads on federal lands will reestablish healthy, 
thriving landscapes, watersheds and communities. Healthy forests 
managed through practical, scientific practices purify air and water, 
increase biodiversity, are less susceptible to catastrophic fire and 
support economic growth. Increasing commercial timber harvests where 
appropriate, expanding the use of mechanical thinning and controlled 
burns in coordination with state and local governments, and reducing 
red tape to get through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) 
process will ameliorate forest health, spur economic activity in rural 
communities and improve the experience of those public lands visitors 
on which our county relies.
Impacts of Fires in Mariposa County

    Landscape-scale catastrophic wildfires have a disproportionate 
effect on our environment and communities in Western states. Wildland 
fire managers no longer talk in terms of ``fire season'' but instead 
refer to the ``fire year.'' Increased wildfire suppression costs in 
money and man hours rob our federal lands agencies of necessary 
personnel for approving land management projects, deprive federal and 
state agencies of funds that could be used to improve landscapes and 
the visitor experience, and redirect county efforts from the services 
our community needs and expects to supporting federal emergency 
response and mitigating impacts for evacuees and others who have been 
unnecessarily impacted.
    So far this year, over 1.3 million acres have burned nationwide. 
While precipitation levels broke records last winter, the current hot, 
dry summer, combined with decades worth of fuel buildup leaves us 
vulnerable to a catastrophic conflagration at any moment. Since 2017, 
more than 325 square miles have burned in Mariposa County. This is 
about a quarter of the total land area of our county. If the burned 
area could be arranged in a straight line a mile wide, it would extend 
from Yosemite to Los Angeles.
    The 2018 Ferguson Fire, which burned 97,000 acres entirely on 
federal land, resulted in the death of two firefighters and cost nearly 
$300 million in damages and suppression efforts.\1\ In the middle of a 
housing crisis, we have lost more than 200 homes to wildfire, including 
127 burned during last year's Oak Fire which also incinerated 20,000 
acres of mostly federal lands. Most of those who lose homes are 
uninsured or underinsured and private insurance companies have canceled 
thousands of policies in zip codes where fires may occur, regardless of 
individual home hardening or property maintenance.
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    \1\ https://cpaw.headwaterseconomics.org/project/mariposa-county-
california/
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    Wildfires also have a detrimental effect on local public health. In 
2017, Mariposa County, which has very limited private therapy or mental 
health service options, experienced a 300 percent increase in requests 
for counseling and mental health support, including 500 new requests 
from children in local schools. In the wake of the Oak Fire, 55 percent 
of our population reported worsening depression or anxiety. Some of 
those who lose everything in a wildfire experience thoughts of suicide.
    As smoke billows into the air, everyone breathing that air is 
impacted--especially children, those with pre-existing medical 
conditions, and the elderly. Warm daytime air lifts smoke into the 
atmosphere, but when cooler weather sets in at night, the smoke 
descends back into our communities, workplaces, and homes. The charred 
post-fire landscapes leave hazardous trees and the threat of potential 
mudslides which can cause further damage to our environment, water 
sources, lives, and our private property.
Addressing Wildfire Threats

    While the causes of catastrophic wildfires are complex, inaction 
exacerbates a dangerous situation. This problem can be solved if 
federal agencies forge strong partnerships with states, counties, 
tribes, industry, residents and conservationists.
    Counties across the United States are ready to engage in 
collaborative efforts to address the forest health crisis. Counties 
have a long track record of working in good faith to build consensus 
and implementing effective and collaborative projects with our federal 
partners. Projects developed through consensus-based collaborative 
processes should be approved expeditiously to increase the number of 
acres treated. Furthermore, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of 
Land Management are legally required to coordinate forest or resource 
management plans with county land management plans to reduce conflicts. 
By engaging counties early and often, federal agencies will find 
willing, eager partners to reduce the catastrophic fire threat.
    Mariposa County and our government and nonprofit partners are 
implementing our award-winning Community Wildfire Protection Plan by 
constructing fuel breaks, seeking grants to support fire mitigation 
projects, and providing grants for fuel reduction projects. We have 
recently purchased nearly 300 acres adjacent to the town of Mariposa to 
build mosaic fuel breaks and prevent catastrophic wildfire loss.

    It is not enough. There is so much more to do.

    Congress can help improve forest management in several ways. First, 
Congress should treat counties and tribes as genuine partners under a 
Good Neighbor Agreement (GNA), which allows the U.S. Forest Service to 
enter into agreements with other governmental entities to conduct 
necessary restoration work on our national forests. States can reinvest 
25 percent of revenues generated from GNA projects in further forest 
restoration work. We ask Congress to give counties and tribes the same 
ability to reinvest 25 percent of GNA project revenues by passing the 
Treating Tribes and Counties as Good Neighbors Act. We applaud 
bipartisan leaders in both chambers for sponsoring this legislation.
    Similarly, stewardship contracting proves that a market-driven 
approach to forest management projects can work to achieve both 
environmental goals and increased forest production. Counties support 
and are active partners in stewardship contracting initiatives across 
the United States, but again, cannot benefit from the revenues they 
generate. Counties support expanding stewardship contract receipt 
sharing to allow counties and tribes the same authority as states to 
reinvest receipts in management projects.
    NEPA should be reformed by requiring the costs and benefits of a 
proposed forest management project to be weighed against the 
consequences of doing nothing to address wildfire threats, disease and 
insect infestation, and potential impacts to local water supplies, air 
quality and wildlife habitat. The choice not to manage our national 
forests is a management decision that will continue to lead to 
catastrophic results.
    Federal agencies should also more actively attack wildfires at the 
ignition source. We encourage reform to the Wildland Fire Decision 
Support System for more aggressive wildfire management suppression and 
project management through evaluation of economic and environmental 
impacts to communities and other jurisdictions. The initial reaction to 
a new ignition should be to develop a suppression plan if it poses a 
threat to communities, landscapes or watersheds, rather than taking the 
default action of monitoring a new fire to determine if it meets 
management objectives.
    Finally, the federal government needs to focus extensively on 
infrastructure and workforce development improvements in public lands 
counties. Oftentimes private industries, which can be some of our 
strongest partners in forest management, find that federal forests lack 
the necessary infrastructure to profitably remove fuel loads and take 
small diameter trees to processing facilities. The federal government 
must also invest in a strong, well-trained workforce that can 
expeditiously conduct NEPA analyses for specific projects and develop 
resource management plans. Federal agencies should also ensure staff 
are not frequently moved to different positions in new communities, 
which will allow for better relationship building between the federal 
government and local officials. Agencies must also create innovative 
intergovernmental partnerships for affordable housing to attract and 
retain quality personnel.
Conclusion

    Chairman Westerman and members of the Committee, thank you for the 
invitation to testify. Counties urge Congress to enact policies to 
reduce the threat of catastrophic fire to our forests, communities, 
public health and rural economies. I appreciate the opportunity to tell 
our story and offer some ideas for improving the quality of federal 
public lands.

                                 ______
                                 

    The Chairman. Thank you, Supervisor Menetrey.
    I now recognize the Honorable George Turnboo, Supervisor of 
El Dorado----
    Mr. Turnboo. Dorado.
    The Chairman. I have an El Dorado in my state, but I know 
you say it different here.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. GEORGE TURNBOO, SUPERVISOR, DISTRICT II, 
                  EL DORADO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Turnboo. Thank you for having me, the House Committee 
on Natural Resources. I am glad to be here to testify on the 
people in Grizzly Flats and the Caldor Fire.
    I am George Turnboo, a District II Supervisor and eighth-
generation resident in the county of El Dorado.
    I have never witnessed destruction as such as the great 
magnitude of the Caldor Fire of 2021. The massive wildfire 
destroyed the community of Grizzly Flats, California, and left 
most people homeless with the loss of sense of community, whose 
destruction included the only school, post office, church, 
water infrastructure, the Grizzly Flats water agency, and 
hundreds of homes.
    Compounding these losses, Grizzly Flats has a higher-than-
average percentage of seniors and, with that, pre-disaster 
unemployment rate four times higher than the national average. 
In addition, many of those who lost their homes live on limited 
incomes and face the prospect of relocating or rebuilding 
without Federal assistance or adequate insurance coverage.
    The Caldor Fire tragically burned Grizzly Flats and 
surrounding wildland habitats across many acres of private and 
public lands. Once the Caldor Fire reached catastrophic size, 
the scope of damage caused by the fire was beyond anything 
residents of El Dorado County could have ever imagined. The 
Caldor Fire was a nightmare that had tremendous mental and 
physical impact on our county and will be remembered for 
generations to come.
    Residents like disabled veteran R.W. MacNeil provide 
stories about leaving their pets behind during the urgency of 
sudden evacuation in expectation that the fire would be kept 
under control.
    In Grizzly Flats, few residents had warning to gather 
belongings before they were told to evacuate immediately. As a 
result, many residents were not able to gather very important 
paperwork or belongings and in some cases were forced to leave 
livestock and pets behind.
    One large family reported fitting nearly a dozen people in 
a single vehicle and driving away as their home was engulfed in 
flames. Many residents continue to live in small trailers and 
RVs on their properties.
    Forest management was reduced over the decades in the 
Sierra Nevada region due to a regulated decrease in logging 
activity. We should have continued to manage our forests like 
we manage our gardens.
    The Trestle Project was early on identified by the U.S. 
Forest Service as a potential wildfire threat in the community 
of Grizzly Flats. The Trestle Project was a fuel-reduction 
effort started in 2014 and was supposed to be completed by 
2021. Though a proposed critical fire break, only 14 percent of 
the 20,450-acre Trestle Project was ever completed, which could 
have saved the town of Grizzly Flats.
    The Caldor Fire is currently California's 15th-largest 
recorded wildfire and burned hundreds of homes across 221,835 
acres, causing $81 million in damage for Grizzly Flats alone, 
including Grizzly Flats' CSD utility infrastructure and lost 
revenue. Areas like the Tahoe Basin, Pollock Pines, or along 
Highway 50 were spared greater destruction by the Caldor Fire 
thanks to good forest management.
    The survivors of Grizzly Flats impacted by the Caldor Fire 
look back on the devastation as a horrific event that changed 
their way of life. The natural beauty of this region that was 
impacted by the Caldor Fire is a loss for decades.
    The county of El Dorado continues to do everything within 
its power to recover from the Caldor Fire, including helping 
communities and wildland habitats. We continue to rebuild 
Grizzly Flats, including residential housing, infrastructure 
repairs, roads, water, and basic services. The El Dorado County 
government is grateful and appreciates any assistance that may 
be offered to the residents of Grizzly Flats.
    I have a fire map behind me. If you look at this map, you 
can see the last three fires. We have the King Fire, then the 
Caldor Fire, and the Mosquito Fire. The Mosquito Fire had a 
project that was called the Volcan Project and that was never 
completed, but they are working on it now after the fire went 
through and destroyed some homes in Volcanoville.
    If you look at all the green dots here, this dates back to 
1915. Back then they put these fires out. It was residents, 
volunteers, people that worked at the mills. Loggers put these 
fires out. It is a great thing is what it is.
    We need to get back to that. We need to have more logging 
and good forest management.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Turnboo follows:]
 Prepared Statement of George Turnboo, Supervisor, District II, County 
                   of El Dorado Board of Supervisors

    Greetings,

    I, George Turnboo, as District 2 Supervisor and 8th generation 
resident in the County of El Dorado, have never witnessed destruction 
at such a great magnitude as the Caldor Fire of 2021. The massive 
wildfire destroyed the community of Grizzly Flats, CA, and left most 
people homeless with a lost sense of community whose destruction 
included the only school, post office, church, water infrastructure and 
hundreds of homes. Compounding these losses, Grizzly Flats has a 
higher-than-average percentage of seniors, and with pre-disaster 
unemployment rate four times higher than the national rate. In 
addition, many of those who lost their homes live on limited incomes 
and face the prospect of relocating or rebuilding without Federal 
assistance or adequate insurance coverage. The Caldor Fire tragically 
burned Grizzly Flats and surrounding wildland habitats, across many 
acres of private and public lands. Once the Caldor Fire had reached 
catastrophic size, the scope of damage caused by the fire was beyond 
anything residents of El Dorado County could have ever imagined. The 
Caldor Fire was a nightmare that had a tremendous mental and physical 
impact on our County and will be remembered for generations to come.
    Residents like disabled veteran R.W. MacNeil provide stories about 
leaving their pets behind due to the urgency of sudden evacuation and 
the expectation that the fire would be kept under control. In Grizzly 
Flats, few residents had warning to gather belongings before they were 
told to evacuate immediately. As a result, many residents were not able 
to gather very important paperwork or belongings, and in some cases 
were forced to leave livestock and pets behind. One large family 
reported fitting nearly a dozen people into a single vehicle and 
driving away as their home was engulfed in flames. Many residents 
continue to live in small trailers or RVs on their properties.
    Forest management was reduced over the decades in the Sierra Nevada 
region, due to a regulated decrease in logging activity. We should have 
and continue to manage our forest like we manage our gardens. The 
Trestle Project was early on identified by the US Forest Service as a 
potential wildfire threat to the community of Grizzly Flats. The 
Trestle Project was a fuel reduction effort started in 2014 and was 
supposed to be completed by 2021. Though a proposed critical fire 
break, only 14% of the 20,453-acre Trestle Project was ever completed, 
which could have saved Grizzly Flats. The Caldor Fire is currently 
California's 15th largest recorded wildfire and burned hundreds of 
homes across 221,835 acres causing $81,846,798 in damage for Grizzly 
Flats alone, including Grizzly Flats CSD utility infrastructure and 
lost revenue. Areas like the Tahoe Basin, Pollock Pines or along 
Highway 50 were spared greater destruction by the Caldor Fire thanks to 
good forest management.
    The survivors of Grizzly Flats, impacted by the Caldor Fire, look 
back on the devastation as a horrific event that changed their way of 
life. The natural beauty of the region that was impacted by the Caldor 
Fire is lost for decades. The County of El Dorado continues to do 
everything within its power to recover from the Caldor Fire, including 
helping communities and wildland habitats. We continue to rebuild 
Grizzly Flats including residential housing, infrastructure repairs, 
roads, water, and basic services. El Dorado County Government is 
grateful and appreciates any assistance that may be offered to the 
Grizzly Flats residents.

                                 *****

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    The Chairman. Thank you, Supervisor Turnboo.
    I now recognize Dr. Dave Daley, a fifth-generation rancher 
from Butte County, California, who is also with the California 
Cattlemen's Association.
    Dr. Daley, you have 5 minutes.

 STATEMENT OF DAVE DALEY, CALIFORNIA CATTLEMEN'S ASSOCIATION, 
                    BUTTE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

    Dr. Daley. Thank you, Chairman Westerman, thank you, 
members of the Committee, for having me here today and this 
opportunity to address this.
    It is somewhat bittersweet to do so and you can't do this 
or live through a catastrophic fire--and I understand your 
emotion--without it becoming part of your soul. It is part of 
who you become. And I can't do this today without thinking 
about the people in Maui today and the number of people who 
lost their lives. If you haven't been part of a catastrophic 
wildfire, it is almost hard to fathom and grasp.
    I am from Butte County, roughly 250 miles north of here. We 
were home to the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of 
Paradise and killed about a hundred people. A couple of years, 
later the fire that destroyed my herd and my family legacy was 
the North Complex, or the Bear Fire, which destroyed the town 
of Berry Creek, killed 14 more people, and basically burnt 
everything I have known for my entire life.
    It is somewhat bittersweet to sit here. We didn't have the 
grandeur of the cliffs. But this is what I saw, this is what I 
grew up with in our national forest. We grazed Forest Service 
land, mixed with Sierra Pacific, 50 percent private, 50 percent 
Federal. And it is a moonscape.
    As we sit here, I think wouldn't it be interesting to have 
this hearing in that place, not here, to actually see the 
impacts to the land, the community, and the people.
    Here it is easy to not understand. In Washington, DC it is 
even further and harder. And I appreciate the Natural Resources 
Committee being willing to travel and see this land. I am glad 
you got to see some of it last year.
    But because of the fuel loads that we now have, nothing can 
stop even the controlled wildfire that we would like to have in 
place. We are at a point now that it is going to be extremely 
difficult to get the genie back in the bottle, and I am not 
sure how we will do so.
    I testified on behalf of the California Cattlemen's 
Association, past president of that group. But it is not only 
my personal experience, state and national levels. I have been 
chair of the Federal Lands Committee for the National 
Cattlemen's Association. I am Chair of the Ecosystem and 
Environment Committee currently for the Public Lands Council. 
We work with these issues.
    You folks, the Forest Service, half of California belongs 
to the Federal Government. It is easy in California to say, 
well, it must be Sacramento causing the issues. Not in this 
case. The lands, the fires are starting on Federal lands and 
moving into private landscapes. It is a challenge for all of 
us.
    I testified at this Committee in 2021. It was guided by 
those wounds that I experienced. And, frankly, they come back 
every time I come to the forest.
    I try to go up there now. We were able to take our cattle 
back this year after a couple of years hiatus thanks to the 
Forest Service personnel who work with us. It is something my 
granddaughter will never see in her lifetime, if it recovers, 
because we have lost that forever.
    The Bear Fire is not unique. I think Mr. Turnboo already 
addressed the amount of acreage that we have lost in the West. 
That will continue.
    What got us here, part of my frustration, very honestly, 
and this is personal, we spend a lot of time worrying about 
what got us here rather than what to do next. And we spend a 
lot of time worrying about, was it climate change, was it 
management?
    But it is irrelevant to those of us who were in it because 
we aren't correcting it, and I would like more efforts spent on 
solutions than worrying about whose fault it is. It is 
everybody's fault. We are there. So, now what are we going to 
do about it? And I am not sure we have a solution of what we 
want to do about it at this point.
    And, unfortunately, that is difficult to do from 3,000 
miles away, and it is difficult to do to achieve consensus with 
people who have not lived at the firescape and the hellscape 
that some of us have gone through.
    It is error. It is fear of poor outcomes. It is litigation. 
It is policy development that doesn't work. All of those things 
have impacted both Federal agencies and Congress. It gets in 
the way of common sense, and we know it gets in the way of 
common sense.
    So, what we can't do is step in and make corrective 
actions. I would be hopeful and probably unrealistic to say 
that the Forest Service within each forest will be given some 
autonomy to do the right thing, but they aren't because they 
are governed by Federal policies that are unworkable for most 
of us.
    So, what could we do? Here are a few quick suggestions. And 
I am talking too long, so I will speak quickly.
    Build on successful efforts that replicate those across the 
landscape. There are many of those that we could do at a larger 
scale.
    Direct agencies to use all available tools that are at 
their disposal. I am pleased with the Save Our Sequoias Act. It 
is a small step.
    Right now, Yosemite is threatened by fire. If it started 
this year with a big wind, this would be gone the way my world 
was destroyed.
    We are making some progress in California--and I will wrap 
this up quickly--but if we can do it here, we have our Air 
Resources Board recognizing grassland management strategies. 
Prescribed grazing will support soil carbon sequestration, 
biodiversity, other ecological improvements.
    California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot 
recently remarked: ``Grazing is one of the single best things 
we can do for wildfire resilience.'' And that is from 
Sacramento. So, we need to think about that and where that 
fits.
    Unfortunately, I have lots of ideas and not much time, but 
they are in the testimony.
    The time is now to actually do something. So far, we have 
had a low fire year. Bipartisan support. The public now is 
engaged. They know this is not just about forestry. It is about 
their communities.
    I am happy to answer any questions you may have. Thanks for 
inviting me.

    [The prepared statement of Dr. Daley follows:]
     Prepared Statement of Dr. Dave Daley, California Cattlemen's 
                              Association
    Good morning, Chairman Westerman and members of the Committee. 
Welcome to California. I am Dr. Dave Daley, a native Californian and 
fifth-generation cattle producer from Butte County just 250 miles from 
where we sit today.
    I appreciate the opportunity to testify today as the Committee 
contemplates conservation of our nation's vast natural resources in the 
face of growing challenges like catastrophic wildfire and how to 
address the conditions that precipitate the worst fire outcomes.
    My family has spent five generations living, working, and caring 
for the lands, waters, and wildlife that inhabit this area. We've done 
this through careful management of our livestock, engagement in our 
local community, leadership with elected officials, and investment in 
academic work that guides cutting edge management strategies.
    I am a long-time member and past president of the California 
Cattlemen's Association. The discussion we have today will likely 
mirror conversations that we've been having here in California for 
several decades, as California has grappled with continued changes to 
our ecosystems and how to keep pace with demands on our landscapes. The 
perspective I share today was shaped from my long experience managing 
resources here in California, but also through my leadership in the 
National Cattlemen's Beef Association where I served as Federal Lands 
Policy Committee Chairman, the national Public Lands Council where I 
serve as Ecosystem & Environment Committee Chairman, and immediate past 
Chair and current member of the Executive Committee for the California 
Cattle Council.
    Professionally, I spent more than 30 years working with the next 
generation of farmers, ranchers, range scientists, lab technicians, and 
agriculture specialists in my role as professor and administrator in 
the College of Agriculture at California State University, Chico.
    I appreciate the Committee's focus on conservation, rather than 
preservation, of Western ecosystems. Over the last several decades, 
quibbles over what counts as true ``conservation'' has become as 
divisive as any other issue in the public lands space. The word itself 
has become a litmus test for whether someone ``cares enough'' about the 
landscape, and the result is federal policy that has allowed groups to 
retreat into their own corners, each alleging that the other side 
doesn't care enough about the place in question. The real-world result 
is an unworkable structure that has prioritized planning over 
implementation, oversight over action, and has left millions of acres 
in jeopardy.
    To me, conservation requires a holistic view of land management. 
This Committee must discuss conservation with an eye toward promoting 
landscape resiliency in the face of multifaceted threats. Conservation 
and resiliency don't mean that we protect the landscapes, only that we 
facilitate their ability to adapt, change, and continue to be 
productive as conditions on and around them change. These changes are 
innumerable: wildfire, flood, invasive species encroachment, and more 
can threaten landscape resiliency. In many places, including right here 
in Yosemite, perhaps the biggest threat to conservation outcomes is 
people themselves. Inherent to the concept of conservation is that we 
put the ecosystems in the best possible position to recover from 
significant events, or that we mitigate the severity of these events, 
not that we prevent these events outright.
    While I'll spend a good portion of today talking about this 
holistic view, particularly mitigating the threat of catastrophic 
wildfire through tools like livestock grazing, there is a bit of irony 
that we're having this conversation in Yosemite National Park. Despite 
the objective of this park--to set aside this landscape and preserve it 
into the future--the Park and its resources continue to face threats 
like catastrophic wildfire and over-visitation. Often, when the federal 
government sets land aside through designations, management and 
conservation of these landscapes becomes much more difficult. The 
National Park System faces a deferred maintenance backlog in excess of 
$22 billion, while Congress and the White House continue to add units 
to the system. While many of these landscapes or locations may warrant 
additional provisions under law, I urge the Committee to refrain from 
thinking this is the only model that ensures conservation outcomes. 
Even with the additional designation as a national park, Yosemite faces 
fire danger from inside the park and ecosystems around it as a result 
of poorly balanced management.
    In April 2021, I testified before the Subcommittee on National 
Parks, Forests, and Public Lands oversight hearing on ``Wildfire in a 
Warming World: Opportunities to Improve Community Collaboration, 
Climate Resilience, and Workforce Capacity.'' \1\ My testimony followed 
an incredibly difficultfor me, and for California, in 2020. The Bear 
Fire that became part of the North Complex Fire burned my grazing 
allotments and killed 80% of my cattle. My family and I, like so many 
others, spent weeks dealing with the aftermath of the fire. There were 
immediate concerns to address with livestock my family has raised and 
the lands we have managed for generations. Then there were the next set 
of challenges when we had a moment to stop, look around, and fully 
appreciate the profound damage on the landscape. Entire hillsides and 
valleys, charred black. Streambeds destroyed and washing out 
immediately after the fire. Generations of wildlife wiped out in an 
instant. This was not an isolated incident. The Camp Fire in 2018 
killed nearly 100 people and destroyed the town of Paradise. It was the 
most destructive fire in California history, both in terms of human 
lives and numbers of structures lost. These fires continue to grow in 
size and intensity each year without action to mitigate danger.
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    \1\ https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/20210429/112540/HHRG-
117-II10-Wstate-DaleyD-20210429.pdf
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    Decades of mismanagement have brought us to this point. Largely, 
this mismanagement occurs on the millions of acres of federal or state 
land that comprise much of the West. Error, fear of poor outcomes, 
litigation, and poor policy development--both by federal agencies and 
Congress--have resulted in decreased timber harvest, reduced use of 
valuable tools like ``good fire'' and livestock grazing, and 
diminishing landscape health. Federal strategy now concentrates solely 
on suppression and post-fire restoration rather than mitigation before 
a catastrophic fire happens.
    The stakes have never been higher: Over the last 5 years, more than 
38 million acres have burned across the country. So far in 2023 (as of 
June 1), 18,300 wildfires have impacted more than 511,000 acres.\2\ The 
last 5 wildfire seasons have been devastating for California. In 
addition to the 2018 fire that destroyed Paradise, hundreds of other 
fires from 2018 through 2022 caused billions of dollars in damage to 
homes, businesses, infrastructure, and ecosystem services. Costs, while 
hard to estimate, continue to mount. Estimates for damage wrought by 
the 2018 fire season range from $148.5 billion to $400 billion; the 
consequences of these fluctuations are felt by homeowners, business 
owners, and landowners who face service interruptions and are unable to 
insure their operations as a result of the mounting risk.
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    \2\ https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/
IF10244#::text=In%202022%2C%2068%2C 
988%20wildfires%20burned,over%20511%2C000%20acres%20this%20year
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    The human risk is real, too. Deadly wildfires have killed more than 
150 in California alone over the last 5 years, while hundreds--or 
millions--of others have been negatively impacted. Earlier this year, 
Washington, D.C. saw firsthand how far wildfire smoke can travel when 
smoke and ash from fires in Canada darkened the skies for days. In 
2020, the California Air Resources Board estimated that the state's 
fire season emitted approximately 112 million metric tons of carbon 
dioxide, roughly equivalent to more than 24 million cars.\3\ A 2021 
study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego 
concluded that particulate matter emitted as the result of catastrophic 
wildfire (through smoke) could be up to 10 times more harmful to human 
respiration than other kinds of particulate matter in air emissions, 
even from emitters like car traffic.\4\ While Washington, D.C. 
residents dealt with these impacts for a week or two, repeated exposure 
for those of us in the West has become the norm. In 2022, the Air 
Quality Life Index reported that ``California leads the nations [sic] 
as the most polluted state thanks mostly to catastrophic wildfires. . . 
The pollution levels, if sustained, are set to shave nearly a year off 
the life expectancy of residents on average in each of those counties. 
The most polluted county was Mariposa, which experienced a particularly 
bad wildfire season in 2020.'' \5\
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    \3\ https://aboutblaw.com/UU1
    \4\ https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/fine-particulate-matter-wildfire-
smoke-more-harmful-pollution-other-
sources#::text=Researchers%20at%20Scripps%20Institution%20of,sources%20
such% 20as%20car%20exhaust
    \5\ https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/wildfire-ravaged-california-
is-home-to-29-of-the-top-30-most-polluted-counties/
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    While 2023 is shaping up to put both California and the United 
States behind the average acres burned, wildfire season is far from 
over and we expect late season burns when precipitation ends. Increased 
precipitation across much of the western range has prompted a huge 
volume of forage accumulation that will serve as wildfire fuels for 
later this year and early next year if not grazed or otherwise 
mitigated.
    It is clear that a suppression-only strategy is not working, and 
current federal strategies have done little to address the threat of 
ecosystem loss in a meaningful way. The U.S. Forest Service's (USFS) 
recently released updated 10-year wildfire strategy \6\ is the latest 
iteration in a long line of planning efforts that effectively address 
only the wildland-urban interface (WUI), rather than the threat on a 
landscape level. While protecting communities and infrastructure is 
important, these risks to the immediate human environment will continue 
unless more work is done to address risks in the back country where 
fires gain speed and strength.
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    \6\ https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/fs_media/
fs_document/Confronting-the-Wildfire-Crisis.pdf

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    I offer a series of suggestions for the Committee's consideration:

    Build on successful efforts and replicate these across the 
landscape. I appreciate Chairman Westerman and the Committees efforts 
to enact meaningful change through the Save Our Sequoias Act, which 
brings some much-needed simplicity to addressing wildfire risks to 
specific ecosystems. Expedited consideration and expanded use of all 
available tools should not be limited to these ``exceptionally 
special'' places, however. If these strategies are reasonable enough to 
protect areas with the most stringent federal designations, these or 
similar strategies should be freely applied across the landscape.

    Direct agencies to utilize all available tools and integrate tools 
in a collective strategy. This Committee's leadership in developing the 
forestry title of the upcoming Farm Bill is crucial. Direction provided 
by this Committee in land management legislation, and separately by the 
Agriculture Committees through the Farm Bill, often exists in 
isolation. While the Farm Bill directs management of forests for 
commodity development, this Committee should seek to include language 
that would direct federal agencies to consider all effective tools when 
undertaking conservation activities. Tools like livestock grazing, 
prescribed fire, other ``good fire'' strategies, chaining, timber 
thinning, and even salvage logging should be able to be considered by 
the agencies at the same time to help build comprehensive strategies. 
Currently, agencies are limited in the scope of tools they can 
consider, and often the post-fire teams bear the burden of suggesting 
``creative'' tools like livestock grazing for fuels reduction as pilot 
programs.

    As part of this wider scope of tools, federal agencies should be 
able to rely on local and Indigenous knowledge for management of the 
landscape. Historically, Indigenous reliance on prescribed burns 
mitigated hazardous fuel conditions year-to-year. These cultural 
practices are now largely disallowed, allowing fuels to accumulate to 
dangerous levels. Failure to mitigate fine fuel buildups, either 
through fire or livestock grazing, increases the risk of catastrophic 
wildfire. Incorporating grazing in routine fire management strategies 
has been effectively employed across the West; cows can consume 
approximately 5 tons of forage per year, removing these fine fuels from 
becoming fodder for wildfire.\7\ This reduction of fuel material 
results in slower, cooler fires that protects landscapes and makes 
conditions less dangerous for wildland firefighters in the event 
suppression tactics are needed.
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    \7\ https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8517.pdf

    Utilizing livestock for fire fuels management ought not be a 
divisive or polarizing prospect. I ask that policymakers in Washington 
look Sacramento's example on this front. In the wake of historic 
wildfire seasons in recent years, even this state has taken note of the 
value livestock bring to wildfire resilience (and, correspondingly, to 
helping avoid greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous particulate 
emissions from wildfire). California's Department of Fish and Wildlife 
issues grazing permits to manage excess fuels and provide wildlife 
habitat on lands managed by the agency. Our Air Resources Board 
recognizes that ``grassland management strategies, like prescribed 
grazing . . . support soil carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and 
other ecological improvements.'' California's Natural Resources 
Secretary Wade Crowfoot recently remarked that ``grazing is one of the 
. . . single best things we can do for wildfire resilience across the 
state'' and spoke to the importance of an ``increasing amount of 
funding--wildfire resilience funding--getting into sustainable grazing 
to keep those grasses low.'' Wildfire resilience practices such as 
livestock grazing work, and confronted with the very real threat of 
worsening wildfire conditions, there ought to be bipartisan consensus 
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endorsing these effective tools.

    Address the complete failure to conduct post-fire operations. Too 
often, federal agency process hampers any kind of post-fire management. 
This Committee has heard repeatedly about the disparity in post-fire 
remediation when a fire occurs on state or private land and when it 
occurs on federal land. In the vast majority of cases, rehabilitation 
of burns scars should happen as soon as possible. Current federal 
process effectively prohibits immediate response, and often delays 
responses for years. In the case of the North Complex fire that burned 
my allotments in 2020, I saw this disparity firsthand. My grazing 
allotments are spread over USFS land and private land owned by Sierra 
Pacific Industries. In the last three years, Sierra Pacific has 
actively managed the burn scar by removing the charred timber to 
prevent future fire risk and replanting trees. Across the fenceline, 
USFS has taken no action. Brush, some of it invasive, is now growing up 
through the dead and charred timber. Without action, this brush will 
become fuel for another wildfire, compounding the impacts on the 
landscape.

    Over the last decade, negotiations have repeatedly broken down when 
forestry legislation addresses the concept of salvage timber. This has 
been to the detriment of landscapes which face repeated and more severe 
burns because of the failure to remove lingering fuels. In many cases, 
salvage operations could easily be incorporated in post-fire 
remediation and replant scenarios, as has been the case here in 
California. The Committee should direct federal agencies to include 
salvage operations in a more fulsome way in landscape scale analyses so 
that the typical paralysis by analysis does not compound resource 
damage.

    Expedited post-fire operations are not without precedent. As I 
testified in 2021, Governor Newsom has worked with the California 
Cattlemen's Association and with other land management groups to find 
an expedited path to reclaim burned lands and intervene in areas at 
critical risk of fire. If California can expedite environmental 
regulations or incorporate the expectation that post-fire remediation 
will be needed into advance environmental assessments, there is no 
reason this shouldn't be the norm at the federal level.

    Improve federal use of fuel breaks and fuel breaks authorities. 
Both USFS and the Bureau of Land Management have authorities to create 
landscape-level fuel breaks to assist in the return to a more normal 
fire mosaic, yet both agencies either fail to use them or fail to 
defend them when the authorities are challenged. The Committee should 
provide oversight of the BLM's recent decision to withdraw certain 
Categorical Exclusions that would have facilitated the creation of fuel 
breaks and wildfire mitigation in key wildlife habitat.

    Additionally, the Committee should direct the agencies to create 
durable fuel breaks as part of major infrastructure projects on federal 
land. One of the byproducts of a diminished timber harvest were fewer 
maintained roads and increasingly challenging road construction and 
maintenance packages associated with remaining timber sales. When a 
fire breaks out, fairly significant work is usually needed in order to 
make roads passable and safe for firefighters. This work could be done 
ahead of time through more thoughtful retention and maintenance of 
existing fuel breaks. For example, in a fire in Lassen County on USFS 
land, we watched USFS build a fire break along a road. Then, when the 
fire was out, they hired contractors to remove the break with boulders/
barricades to disrupt the existing break. This fuel break would have 
served a purpose when the landscape inevitably burns again--hopefully 
next time with ``good'' fire rather than another emergency.

    Conduct robust oversight of funding allocations that have been 
expended on planning, land acquisition, and other activities in the 
name of ``conservation'' without improving resiliency. Over the last 
several years, Congress has made repeated historic investments in 
natural resources programs, little of which has actually been directed 
at improving landscape resiliency. The Department of the Interior 
repeatedly touts conservation benefits that are limited to increasing 
public access and acquisition of additional parcels--both of which may 
have public value but do nothing to make landscapes less imperiled. 
Comparatively, few investments have been made in improving resiliency, 
particularly related to wildfire. The Committee should examine this 
funding and direct agencies to implement active management projects 
like prescribed fire, prescribed grazing, and other fuels management 
projects to prevent fire with immediate effect using existing National 
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) evaluations. Further direction should 
be provided to the agencies to direct funding to the hundreds of 
thousands of acres in need of immediate post-fire remediation treatment 
that have not been prioritized through state or regional funding 
streams.

    While this is certainly not an exhaustive list, the Committee has 
the opportunity to make meaningful legislative improvements to federal 
strategies for conservation. As we sit here today in Yosemite, 
surrounded by an area that many--including myself--believe is worth 
protecting, I urge the Committee to remember that there is nuance in 
protecting landscapes. Public lands, watersheds, rangelands, and 
federal forests; they're all worth protecting--but protection for 
productive landscapes means that we're protecting their productive 
value, conserving a resource to allow it to continue to produce, 
thrive, and change through time. This Committee, federal agencies, and 
land managers must avoid the allure of creating one catch-all, one-
size-fits-all approach for these landscapes, otherwise we will be 
doomed to repeat the history that brought us the catastrophic fires of 
the last decade.

    As an addendum to my written testimony you will see an account I 
wrote during the midst of the fire--I cry for the mountains and the 
legacy lost: The Bear Fire. In the midst of the Bear Fire, I kept the 
story as a way to cope with some of the most profound emotional 
challenges my neighbors and I had ever encountered. I also included the 
2021 follow-up to my original accounting, both of which I hope inspire 
you to recognize the urgency of this conversation. For me, my 
neighbors, my family, and now for all of you, the threat of a failed 
conservation strategy looms large and burns hot.

    I thank the Committee for the invitation to testify today and for 
the continued focus on these important issues.

                                 *****

                               Appendix A

I cry for the mountains and the legacy lost: The Bear Fire
By Dave Daley, Butte County Rancher & CCA Immediate Past President

    It is almost midnight. We have been pushing hard for 18-20 hours 
every day since the Bear Fire tore through our mountain cattle range on 
September 8th, and there is so much swirling in my head I can't sleep 
anyway. The fire destroyed our cattle range, our cattle, and even worse 
our family legacy. Someone asked my daughter if I had lost our family 
home. She told them ``No, that would be replaceable. This is not!'' I 
would gladly sleep in my truck for the rest of my life to have our 
mountains back.

    I am enveloped by overwhelming sadness and grief, and then anger. 
I'm angry at everyone, and no one. Grieving for things lost that will 
never be the same. I wake myself weeping almost soundlessly. And, it is 
hard to stop.

    I cry for the forest, the trees and streams, and the horrible 
deaths suffered by the wildlife and our cattle. The suffering was 
unimaginable.

    When you find groups of cows and their baby calves tumbled in a 
ravine trying to escape, burned almost beyond recognition, you try not 
to wretch. You only pray death was swift. A fawn and small calf side by 
side as if hoping to protect one another. Worse, in searing memory, 
cows with their hooves, udder and even legs burned off who had to be 
euthanized. A doe laying in the ashes with three fawns, not all hers I 
bet. And you are glad they can stand and move, even with a limp, 
because you really cannot imagine any more death today. Euthanasia is 
not pleasant, but sometimes it's the only option. But you don't want 
more suffering. How many horrible choices have faced us in the past 
three days?

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    We have taken cattle to the Plumas National Forest since before 
it was designated such. It is a steep and vast land of predominantly 
mixed conifers and a few stringer meadows on the western slope of the 
Sierra Nevada mountains straddling Butte and Plumas Counties. My Great, 
Great Grandfather started moving cattle to the high country sometime 
after he arrived in 1852 to the Oroville area looking for gold. The 
earliest family diary of driving cattle to our range in the mountains 
dates back to 1882. Poor Irish immigrants trying to scratch a living 
from the land.

    The range is between the South Fork and Middle Fork of the Feather 
River, the drainage that fills Lake Oroville. It is 80-inch rainfall 
country from October to May with deep snow at the high end, and then it 
goes completely dry. Three major streams/rivers and hundreds of creeks 
and springs punctuate the land. My friends from the arid west can't 
understand why it is hard to gather--``don't you just go to the 
water?'' Not that simple in this environment. It is difficult country, 
in some ways more suited to sheep because of the browse, but politics 
and predators killed the sheep industry in the country years ago. But 
the cows love the range and do well. Cool days and nights, no flies, 
higher elevations avoiding the hot summers in the valleys. A great 
place to summer cattle. They actually like to go as much as we do!

    For those of you who have never seen this land, this isn't riding a 
horse into a meadow or open ridge where you can see cattle. This is 
literally ``hunting'' through a vast forest of deep canyons, rivers and 
creeks, and the high ridges in between. It is not an easy place to 
gather or even find cattle in the best conditions.

    There are six generations who have loved that land, and my new 
granddaughter, Juni, is the seventh. And I find myself overcome with 
emotion as I think of the things she will never see, but only hear in 
stories told to her by Grandad. We all love the mountains. They are 
part of us and we are part of them. All destroyed in one day. I am 
angry.

    As a child in the early 60s, days ``going to the mountains'' were 
the greatest ever for my family. It was our playground and our quiet 
spot. Sure, we worked, but we learned so much about the world, the 
trees, birds and flowers. And in my family sometimes that may have 
included learning the scientific name or at least the family of the 
plant. There were lessons on botany, forestry, geology, archaeology. We 
didn't even know we were learning but we imbibed it until it became a 
part of our souls.

    And then my kids. For them, the mountains were the best! Rolling 
into a little seat behind Grandma and Grandpa to ``go hunt for cows'' 
as we gathered in the Fall. Hot chocolate from Grandma as soon as we 
got there. On cold, dusty or wet days, it was sometimes discouraging, 
but they loved it and still do. It was their sanctuary where ``no 
matter what happens, this will always be here.'' And now it is gone. It 
is a death and we are still in shock and not sure how to move forward. 
What will my granddaughter know of the truth and grounding that comes 
from nature? Will we gather cows in the mountains while I sing cowboy 
tunes off key and she sips hot chocolate? I am overcome.

    When the news broke of the fire in our cattle range, my son Kyle, 
who ranches with me, and I were sure it could not be as bad as it 
sounded. We had close to 400 cows, most of them calving or close to 
calving in our mountain range, ready to gather and bring home in early 
October. They were the heart of the herd. Old cows, problems, bought 
cows and first calf heifers stayed in the valley. Only the good cows 
who knew the land were there. That first day, we had no access and were 
relying on spotty reporting posted to local news or social media. My 
daughter Kate, a veterinarian, who practices about four hours away, 
``I'm on the way.'' My youngest son, Rob (named for his Grandad) a 
soldier stationed in Louisiana, ``I have a lot of leave and I'm on a 
plane tomorrow.'' All three have been unbelievable and we have all 
needed each other to navigate this heartbreak.

    At first, we couldn't get into the range and were frantic as it was 
completely locked down because of safety. We knew cattle were dying as 
we waited. I received a call from a Pennsylvania number and answered 
before thinking. A wonderfully nice man from the Forest Service was 
calling to tell me about the fire since I had a cattle allotment in the 
Bear Fire area. I had to help him find it on the map! Frustrating. And 
he knew less than me. Later I got a call from San Bernardino (500 miles 
south), another fire resource officer from the Forest Service. I asked 
about access. ``Well,'' he said, ``maybe next week and only if we 
provide an escort. We have to make it safe first.'' He, too, had no 
idea where the allotment was or the challenge that I faced. All the 
cattle would be dead if I waited a week. I politely told him I would 
figure out an alternative--through private timber land and common 
sense!

    I called our County Sheriff who has been a great friend of the 
cattle community. I had to wait one day, but he provided two sergeants 
to navigate the road-blocks until I was in the range. Was it dangerous? 
Yes. Were animals dying? Absolutely. Local solutions are always better. 
Thanks to Sheriff Honea, of Camp Fire and Lake Oroville Dam breech 
fame, and Sergeants Tavelli and Caulkins who got us access. All 
incredible people who get it. Local.

    On our first day, Kyle and I make a fast trip up to reconnoiter. We 
are unprepared for the total destruction of everything we have always 
known. Nothing left and active flames on both sides burning trees and 
stumps. Shocking. Surreal. We make it to our Fall River corral somewhat 
hopeful that there would be green and water to mitigate the disaster. 
Everything is completely gone and we see dead cows as we start down the 
hill. Everywhere. This is our first step in what will be an impossible 
week. We go home hoping against hope that we have seen the worst. 
Little did we realize that it was just the beginning and it could get 
worse.

    It is 3:30 in the morning now and time to start this nightmare 
again. To find the courage to throw some things in the truck, run with 
the kids to check and feed the survivors, and hit repeat. I dread it 
but know we must. And I work to be optimistic because that is who I am. 
Not easy.

    As we make a plan and split up to run 4-wheelers up and down 
logging roads hunting life and death, I think how lucky I am. So many 
people have offered to help. I am grateful but it is difficult to 
explain how challenging it is to gather in almost 90,000 acres of 
incredibly difficult terrain (and that's on a flat map!). Each canyon 
and ridge is dotted with logging spur roads that could be choked with 
down and burning trees. Much of it is unrecognizable, even to me. Only 
those with deep, local knowledge of these mountains can help. 
Fortunately, my family, the Carter boys (Devin and Doyle), Brian 
Jones--all friends of my kids--and now friends of mine, plus my best 
friend Sean Earley all stepped up. They know the mountains well and 
have helped us for years. They just showed up and said, ``We're here. 
We're going. What can we do?'' So, we strap chainsaws and some alfalfa 
on 4-wheelers and set out hoping against hope to find something alive.

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    We split up and my crew takes the Lava Top and Ross Creek 
drainage, while the other half goes towards Twin Bridges and Fall 
River. It is eerie, and as Rob said, ``There is no sound in the Forest, 
just death.'' We are learning. When we traditionally gathered cows, 
they were always towards the ridge top in the morning and down by water 
in the afternoon. Now, we find nothing high up, except the occasional 
dead cow that wasn't fast enough. We just hunt for the deep holes where 
there was a chance for water and life.

    You learn as you ride through the apocalyptic murk. Rob's head goes 
up and I catch the scent at the same time. The scent of death and 
charred flesh mingled with the acrid smoke that burns your eyes. You 
begin looking in the draws hoping it is not cattle. It always is. Eight 
cows and three baby calves in a pile at the bottom of a ravine, rushing 
in terror to escape. A sight you won't soon forget.

    But today, when we meet up, Kyle and Kate had great news. They 
found sixteen head at our Twin Bridges corral! The largest group to 
date. I had baited it with alfalfa last night and there were cattle 
standing in the little corral of temporary panels. Remarkable. Two of 
them are heifers that I gave Kyle and Jordan (my daughter in-law and 
Juni's mom) for their wedding. Kyle branded them with my Dad's original 
brand just to keep them straight. Someone in our crew said Dad gathered 
them for us so we wouldn't miss them. Maybe he did. My Dad was a cow 
whisperer who has been gone over four years after roaming the mountains 
for almost 90. Maybe he is still helping lead us and the cattle home. I 
turn away as I feel emotion begin to rise. Again. For some reason, I am 
more emotional when I find the live cattle than those that died. I 
don't know why? Maybe thinking what they went through and I wasn't 
there to help? And, more frightening, death has become more expected 
than life.

    I completely dread taking my Mom to see this tragedy. She will be 
90 in less than a month and still loves the mountains and gathering 
cows. She is tough but this could break anyone. She worked these 
mountains with my Dad from 1948 when she was 18, he was 21, and they 
had just married. She told me in later years that she had always loved 
the outdoors but really was ``sort of afraid of cows'' since she had 
not ever been around them. She never told Dad though and learned to be 
one of the best trackers and gatherers the mountains have ever seen, 
knowing every plant, tree and road.

    You can learn more from old people. They may not use PowerPoint or 
Zoom. They may not be elegant in politics, but they have life 
experience. We are quickly losing that vital perspective from the land 
before we have allowed them to teach us. Far more valuable than a 
visiting scholar or great consultant. Local knowledge and observation. 
I wish we would listen.

    I am again angry at everyone and no one. Why did this happen? I am 
absolutely tired of politicians and politics, from both the left and 
the right. Shut up. You use tragedies to fuel agendas and raise money 
to feed egos. I am sick of it. And it plays out on social media and 
cable news with distorted and half-truths. ON BOTH SIDES. Washington, 
DC is 3000 miles away and is filled with lobbyists, consultants and 
regulators who wouldn't know a sugar pine from a fir. Sacramento is 100 
miles south and feels even more distant than DC. And to the regulators 
who write the Code of Federal Regulations, the policies and procedures 
and then debate the placement of a comma, you mean well, I know. And I 
am sure you are good people. But you are useless when it comes to doing 
things to help the land. And the ``non-profits'' (yea, right), lawyers 
and academics, this is all too often a game for you to successfully 
navigate your own institution. ``How do I get a grant to study 
something that if I looked closely, generations before already knew?'' 
Nothing happens on the ground to make change. I do understand that most 
folks truly care and start with the best intentions.

    For those of you on the right who want to blame the left and 
California, these are National Forest lands that are ``managed'' by the 
feds. They have failed miserably over the past 50 years. Smokey the 
Bear was the cruelest joke ever played on the western landscape, a 
decades long campaign to prevent forest fires has resulted in megafires 
of a scope we've never seen. Thanks, Smokey.

    The US Forest Service is constantly threatened with litigation from 
extremists who don't want anyone to ``use'' the Forest. It is to be 
``preserved.'' Great job in helping to get us where we are. And I feel 
bad for Forest Service personnel. Most of them are great people who 
work there because they love the land like I do. But they are chained 
to desks to write reports and follow edicts handed down from those who 
don't know. One size fits all regulations are not a solution in diverse 
ecosystems. And, the Forest Service budget is consumed by fire 
suppression and litigation. What funds are left to actually work on the 
land?

    And, for those of you on the left who want to blame it all on 
climate change, the regulations at the state and federal level have 
crippled--no, stopped--any progress towards changing the unmitigated 
disasters facing our landscapes. I wonder how many of you have walked 
the canyons or ridges or seen the wildlife and beauty at a secret 
stream?

    Politicians stage drive by photo-ops to raise money at the fringe. 
None of us really like you. We just are forced to deal with you. Of 
course, there are many exceptions and you know who you are. I hate to 
visit an office to discuss issues when the legislator is far more 
interested in talking than listening. It seems that nobody can be a 
centrist and make sense and win. There is plenty of blame to go around 
on both sides of the aisle.

    And just maybe it's both--horrible forest management and climate 
change. Don't you think months of massive smoke covering the West may 
impact the climate, especially added to our other pollutants? Does it 
matter which came first? Why not invest in solutions rather than using 
soundbites to gin up the base? And locally, we know the solutions. And 
those investments should be locally conceived and locally driven.

    I grew up hearing the stories from my Dad and Grandad of the ``last 
man out'' lighting the forest floor to burn the low undergrowth. Their 
generations knew to reduce the ladder fuels that spread the fire to the 
canopy, to open it up for the wildlife. It was a pact between our 
friends the Native Americans who had managed it this way for 13,000 
years, the loggers, miners and ranchers. They knew ecology and botany 
and wildlife. They worked together because they loved and knew the 
land.

    It was the early 1960s and snow was already on the ground in 
December on our foothill ranch. I would have been about four and 
holding my Grandfather's hand as he lit some piles of brush on fire to 
open the landscape. It was the practice he had learned from generations 
before. And the CDF (now Cal Fire) crew showed up, put out the fire, 
and lectured him for burning. My Grandad was the kindest, gentlest and 
funniest man I have ever known. And he was mad. It was the beginning of 
the end for our forest home. And it has proceeded at an unprecedented 
rate.

    I am angry. Try a control burn in the winter now and watch someone 
cite you because it is not an approved ``burn day,'' you had the wrong 
permit and approval and you might impact air quality. It is beyond 
moronic. How is the choking air quality that has blanketed the west 
this past month, when people can't go outside without a mask, a better 
alternative? Are you kidding me? Bureaucrats and well-intentioned 
regulators who don't know they don't know have tied our hands, and the 
blame is shared at the both the state and federal levels.

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    Lest you think I am a complete rube, I earned my PhD in Animal 
Science 35 years ago at Colorado State. I loved teaching and ranching--
so I did both. But I am a cattleman at heart. And, I have been involved 
in industry activities for many years, serving as Past President of the 
California Cattlemen's Association, current Chair of the California 
Cattle Council, Chair of the Forest Service committee for the Public 
Lands Council and Chair of Federal Lands for the National Cattlemen's 
Beef Association. I have walked the halls of Congress, met with 
legislators in both Sacramento and DC and I am willing to advocate for 
the cattle community to anyone who will listen. I have dined with 
legislators in DC, Chicago and Sacramento at wonderful restaurants 
noted for fine dining. The company, food and conversation were 
enjoyable. And I have had bologna sandwiches and beer in the mountains 
with ranchers and loggers. Somehow, the air seemed cleaner and the food 
was better with the latter. Something about straight forward honesty 
and hard work is appealing.

    I invite any legislator or regulator, state or federal, to come 
with me to this devastation. Leave your photographer behind, put on 
boots and let's go. I will buy the bologna. We have created tragedy 
after tragedy across the West, and we need solutions.

    Look at the mega-fires California has experienced in recent years. 
If you study them closely, almost all of them start on State or 
Federally owned land. Fifty percent of California is owned by the feds 
or state, land that has unmanaged fuel loads because of the 
restrictions to do anything on the land. Right now, the only buffer to 
these disasters are private, well managed, grazed landscapes. They may 
still burn, but the fires are not as catastrophic and can be 
controlled. Butte County alone has recently had the Camp Fire which 
destroyed the town of Paradise, population of 20,000 where almost a 
hundred people died. And now the Bear Fire where Berry Creek, a small 
community of about 1000 residents had at least 14 deaths, an even 
higher percentage.

    Our segmented view of the landscape has led us to tragedy after 
tragedy. As a rancher on the Forest, I am required, in the name of 
ecosystem health, to monitor meadow utilization, browse of willows and 
streambank alteration. Fine. I comply. If I hit 41% meadow utilization 
I can get a letter of non-compliance since 40% is considered the 
maximum. The Bear Fire did not leave 60% of the meadow! I wonder if I 
will get a letter of non-compliance? Again, the forest for the trees.

    It is not the Forest Service range conservationist's fault that I 
have to monitor these three factors. It is the guidelines they were 
handed. But they are arbitrary and ineffective measures to ``protect'' 
the environment, and of no use against decades of unmitigated fuel 
growth. Can anybody look up and see the meadows and water disappearing? 
Is the health of the meadow crippled by unchecked understory growth 
that sucks the water out and allows invasion of conifers? It is easier 
to blame the cow. Look up. Watch nature. She will talk to you . . ..

    I think it is as simple as not seeing the forest for the trees. And 
in my academic life, it was the norm. I worked with wonderful faculty, 
staff and students who were committed to research and teaching. 
However, we rarely looked at the big picture because we were encouraged 
to publish in our disciplines without seeking out how our work 
connected with others or how our small piece was part of a larger 
solution. That ``siloed'' thinking plagues most bureaucracies and 
agencies. We only know what we know. And, in most disciplines in the 
academy, most faculty are now several generations removed from a direct 
connection with the land.

    Listen to the generations before. Mega-fires are a recent product 
of lack of use of fire, less grazing and over-regulation. And if you 
look at recent history, almost every mega-fire that I can recall has 
started on state and federal lands. Mismanagement. And those 
catastrophic fires contribute to climate change. Yet the guidelines 
followed by the feds on National Forest and the State on State Parks 
lands are ``one size fits all.'' It is beyond dumb. And no one's fault. 
And everyone's fault. Listen to the Forest. Listen to the locals.

    The fire in Santa Rosa in 2018 was estimated to produce more CO2 
and pollutants in one week than all of the cars in California in one 
year. We have already had six of the largest twenty fires in California 
history in 2020. The Bear Fire has eclipsed 250,000 acres and is still 
burning. To me this is very personal, but this is a much bigger problem 
than my family having our cattle killed.

    I get frustrated with experts and consultants who drive by and 
``know just what to do.'' For 35 years I have attended conferences, 
given presentations and listened. What I have learned is solutions are 
local and specific. What happens in one watershed in Plumas or Butte 
County may be entirely different in the Lassen National Forest just 
next door. But experts of all kinds are glad to tell you how to do it. 
``Let's prescribe graze, use virtual fences, change your timing, change 
your genetics.'' Prescribe graze the forest and canyons? Yea. Right. 
They don't know what they don't know but they will take the honorarium 
anyway and have a great dinner on your dime. Another game where the 
people who live here and the land rarely benefit.

    I have traveled and given presentations nationally and 
internationally for decades as the odd ``academic cowman.'' I learned 
quickly that it is insulting to make suggestions if you don't know the 
land, the people and the culture. I love these canned ``you should do 
this and this'' PowerPoint talks. It is frustrating. My approach has 
always been ``this is what I do and why--it may not fit here so don't 
force it.'' I loved those trips not because of what I taught but of 
what I learned from the locals.

    Cattle, like the wildlife, follow the season in this wildland we 
love. They start at low elevation in June and work east and higher 
until early October. As leaves begin to change, they start west and 
down. How and why would you fence this land? Again, an expert from afar 
who wrote a text or did it in a different ecosystem thought it was a 
great idea. It is exhausting.

    Yesterday was day four of the recovery effort. I now understand 
what first responders mean when they say, ``rescue to recovery.'' I 
hold out little hope for live cattle. We have to get to Hartman Bar 
ridge between the middle fork and south branch of the Feather River. It 
is the furthest north, most breathtaking and the hardest to access. One 
road in and one road out, choked with downed and sometimes burning 
trees. We see a burnt bear cub trying to climb a tree, two miles 
further a mature bear, burnt but staying in the water trying to ease 
the pain. We give them both a chance because they made it this far.

    We don't euthanize even though our brains say we should. Our hearts 
say let them try.

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    We have about six miles of road to make passable to get stock 
trailers through, but we make short work of it. Sometimes you can 
travel a quarter mile and sometimes a hundred feet. But chainsaws and 
strong hands get us there.

    I have passed several streams today and tried to wade across one 
looking for cattle. It strikes me as strange. All the creeks have close 
to double the flow of last week. I see some springs running that 
haven't been active for years. And it hits me. We have released the 
water that the brush was sucking from the land. The Native Americans 
were right again. Observe. Let nature talk.

    We pulled up the grade to Hartman and Whiskey Hill, and there were 
cattle tracks in the burn! Lots of them. I couldn't believe it. The 
fire roared up out of the middle fork so quickly I expected nothing to 
be alive. I had myself prepared. But we found cattle and some in pretty 
good shape. It was slow going. Incredibly steep and rugged with lost, 
hungry cattle. In one pocket we picked up 14 head with nary a scratch. 
Two old cows (12 plus years which is old for a cow) and a bunch of 
young stock. Those old ladies knew where to hide! Wisdom from days gone 
by.

    After a long day, we had 32 alive and loaded. Some may not make it 
but we had to bring them home to give them a chance. They made it this 
far. More jarring, though, was to walk down the drainage by the old 
Mountain House Ridge corral and find 26 dead, spread from top to 
bottom. That fetid smell of death permeated the walk I used to love.

    Even with the dead cattle on Hartman Ridge that we found, why did 
we find over half alive here and nowhere else? If anything, I assumed 
this steep ridge gave them no chance at all. And I realized that there 
had been a much smaller fire here about five years ago. The country was 
more open and the fire moved quickly. Less fuel and more things lived. 
Trees, wildlife, and cows.

    I observed the same phenomenon in the remnants of the town of 
Feather Falls--where only a school and cemetery remain. The school had 
over 80 students less than 50 years ago, until the lumber mill closed 
and the village died. The school was destroyed by fire. The cemetery, 
however, still stands with green stately pines respecting the graves of 
mostly Native American veterans with flags at each grave. The cemetery 
was maintained free of deadfall and litter by family members. All the 
trees lived.
Day five begins.

    We move as fast as we can, opening roads with saws and running 4-
wheelers down every logging spur. We hope against hope for cow tracks 
but there are none. Hartman Ridge is about 10 miles long with the only 
narrow paved Forest Service road in the entire mountains. Nothing new 
but the cow tracks from those we found yesterday. Nothing at Socrates 
Spring, Harry Waite's, the Lower Reservoir, DeJonah, Sheep Tank Meadow, 
Stag Point, Steward Ravine--and a hundred more name places that are 
being lost. Nothing.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Up by Tamarack Flat, I run into five pick-ups belonging to 
timber reps from Sierra Pacific, the private land holder who we lease 
from and who has private property throughout our range. I am walking 
the logging road looking and listening, as I had run out of gas a mile 
or so ago. Too much country to cover! They were no doubt shocked to see 
me in that desolation striding down the road, covered in ash from head 
to foot. I know most of them. Foresters by trade who, like me, love the 
land. ``It is all gone,'' they say. Almost. I told them I could show 
them a few pockets where trees survived. But very few. We are sad and 
angry together.

    By the end of a grueling day, we have 7 head loaded. Five of them 
are cattle we had seen before and were just able to get portable panels 
to and load, 3 of which are badly burned and will get a chance for feed 
and water before they will most likely die or need to be euthanized. We 
know of three more live cattle that we have seen and not loaded. That 
may be it. Over one hundred brought home, so far, but I will be 
surprised if eighty live. Many of those who live will have lost their 
baby calves to fire. There are no words. 20% of the herd we drove to 
the mountains on June 1. Maybe.

    Our crew will be smaller today. Rob flies back to his duty station 
in the army. Kate is back working as a veterinarian. They leave with 
overwhelming sadness and ``we will help any way we can.'' Most of the 
rest of our crew have to get back to their jobs, but ``are a phone call 
away with a stock trailer'' if we find something to load beyond the two 
trailers we will haul ourselves. I doubt we will. Kyle and I will start 
the search, compulsively walking creeks and canyons that we have 
already searched, hoping something straggles in behind. You never know 
and you can't quit. That is not who we are.

    And now we go on. What will happen? This is devastating emotionally 
and financially. And I am not sure of the next steps. I do know this: 
We must change our land management practices if we expect the West to 
survive. It is best done locally, not from DC or Sacramento, but I have 
tilted at windmills before.

    We won't quit. We need to get tougher and stronger. We never have 
quit for 140 years and I won't be the first. Suffer the bureaucratic 
maze and try to make incremental change. And, as always, work with 
nature. I have to. Juni Daley, and the next generation, needs to see 
the mountains the same way we have seen them forever, to have hot 
chocolate on a cold fall morning and gather cows. It can't be just 
stories from her Grandad.

    We found an orphan heifer calf today, about two weeks old. Her 
mother didn't make it. Kyle stumbled on her hiding in one of the few 
living willow patches along a stream. He followed her for over an hour 
straight up from the bottom of a canyon. We caught her and she is now 
on a bottle getting milk replacer. That rescue was good for my heart. 
My Granddaughter Juni's first heifer I decide! They can grow up 
together.

    We saw life at Fall River today. Green grass trying to sprout at a 
spring. Life is resilient. So are we. Next year. And the next 100.
Dave Postscript

    It is day 12 and we still are at the same pace because we have no 
choice. We are finding one or two per day that have lived so it is 
difficult to stop, but that is dwindling so we have to shift our focus 
to those that lived. It is hard to do. We have put 1200 miles on the 4-
wheelers on old logging roads and skid trails in the last few days. I 
quit counting the number of tires we have ruined and how much chainsaw 
work we are doing. Unfortunately, today we had to begin euthanizing 
some of the cattle that we brought home. But they were home, fed and 
watered.

    The fire is still not contained and takes runs depending on the 
wind. I am not sure what next year will bring.

                                 *****

                               Appendix B

Cattle grazing and prescribed burns can help California beat 
        devastating
wildfires

By Dave Daley
Special To The Sacramento Bee
April 24, 2021 06:00 AM

For all the misery that 2020 wrought in California, it also presented 
the state with a precious opportunity--a chance to seriously invest in 
wildfire prevention.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, in his January budget proposal, wisely laid out a 
framework for the California State Legislature to seize that 
opportunity. Because tax revenue, to the surprise of many, remained 
robust, Newsom has proposed an unprecedented, one-time expenditure of 
$1 billion in new wildfire-prevention investments. He is asking 
lawmakers to act quickly, so that about a third of that money can be 
used for early actions this spring.

State and federal officials have long talked of better preparing 
California landscapes to reduce the spread of wildfires but have often 
been overwhelmed by the costs of annually fighting relentless fires.

``This budget does represent somewhat of a paradigm shift,'' Wade 
Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, told 
the San Francisco Chronicle. ``It's really a quantum increase in 
wildfire resilience investment.''

Spent wisely, those funds could support infrastructure and programs to 
reduce and control the wildland fuels that enable fires to burn so 
broadly and rapidly.

The need for action has never been greater. Last year was by far the 
worst fire year in California history, as thousands of fires 
collectively consumed more than 4.2 million acres. Those wildfires 
included six of the 10 largest recorded in state history.

The economic cost to homeowners, businesses, ranchers and government 
agencies was in the tens of billions of dollars.

Policymakers now have both the motivation and resources to take urgent 
action. There are proven strategies to reduce the size, spread and 
severity of catastrophic wildfires.

Among them is one that is decidedly low-tech but unquestionably 
effective: Expand the use of grazing by cattle, sheep and goats to 
reduce wildfire fuel.

Research by UC Cooperative Extension experts has shown that targeted 
grazing is a cost-effective tool for managing vegetation, and one that 
can be employed in areas where other measures are not possible.

California's cattle ranchers, who own or manage much of the state's 38 
million acres of rangeland, were hard hit by last year's unprecedented 
wildfires. Not only did they lose thousands of acres of pasture and 
hundreds of cattle, but ranchers also saw their rural communities 
decimated by fire.

They now need to be part of the solution by deploying livestock to 
reduce the accumulation of fine fuels on private rangeland and on 
public lands. The legislature can promote this proven landscape-
management tool by appropriating funds for infrastructure such as 
fencing, and also authorizing long-term leases that would spur private 
investment for grazing on public lands.

Grazing is one of just two fuel-management methods that actually 
achieve the goal of removing fuel from our landscapes. The other is the 
use of prescribed burns--the practice of burning fuel under favorable 
weather conditions, rather than allowing it to build up only to burst 
into flame during the hottest, driest, windiest days of the year.

Newsom's budget proposal seeks more than $500 million for large-scale 
vegetation projects including prescribed burning. The goal is to 
improve fire resiliency across 500,000 acres every year.

In addition to executing plans and conducting training, an effective 
prescribed burning program must also include policy changes such as 
reducing liability and reassessing air-quality considerations. These 
changes are vital to balance the effects of a limited amount of smoke 
from prescribed burns against the massive harm from the smoke and ash 
that blanketed much of California last year.

California has before it an opportunity to indeed change the wildfire 
paradigm from one of suppression to one of prevention. Lawmakers must 
seize the opportunity and act quickly so that work can begin this 
spring.

The reality of a changing climate is that California has seen a 
succession of monstrous fire seasons, capped by the worst ever in 2020. 
The possibility of what lies ahead is unsettling. The time to begin 
fighting the fires of 2021 is now, long before they start.


                                 ______
                                 

    The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Daley.
    Next, I would like to recognize Mr. Johnnie White, who is a 
sixth-generation farmer from Napa County, California, and a 
Board Member of the California Farm Bureau, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. White, you are now recognized.

   STATEMENT OF JOHNNIE WHITE, BOARD MEMBER, CALIFORNIA FARM 
                 BUREAU, SEBASTOPOL, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. White. Thank you, Chairman Westerman and members of 
this Committee.
    My name is Johnnie White, and I am a sixth-generation Napa 
County farmer residing in St. Helena, California, as well as a 
partner at Pina Vineyard Management, farming over 1,000 acres 
of premium Napa Valley vineyards. My wife and I own a cattle 
and forage operation, providing grazing for wildfire fuel 
reduction and direct-to-consumer beef sales.
    I am a 20-year veteran of the St. Helena Fire Department, 
serving with the rank of captain. I appreciate the opportunity 
to testify today on behalf of the California Farm Bureau, where 
I currently serve as a Director.
    Wildfires greatly impact California's $50 billion Ag 
industry. In addition to being a significant public safety 
threat, our industry continues to witness damage and 
destruction to our livestock, commodities, farms, ranches, 
wineries, farm homes, employee housing, and equipment.
    Frequent wildfire has also created many residual impacts 
for California's farmers and ranchers. Many farm and ranch 
insurance policies have been terminated due to wildfire risk. 
While a few policies have been retained, they come with much 
higher premiums.
    There have also been recent announcements by insurance 
companies halting coverage in California due to rapid growth of 
catastrophic exposure. While only a few companies have made 
public announcements, we are aware of 22 companies no longer 
writing in California.
    Because farmers and ranchers need insurance options, the 
California Farm Bureau has assembled a committee comprised of 
farmers and ranchers, insurance associations, insurance 
companies, and brokers. Working collaboratively with the 
California Department of Insurance, we intend to advocate and 
advance policies that bring critical insurance tools back to 
our state.
    California producers also continue to face many challenges 
related to wildfire smoke and ash. Fires have covered 
California's premier wine-, fruit-, and vegetable-producing 
regions and extended blankets of smoke and ash, resulting in 
severe smoke taint to wine grapes and ash contamination to 
fruits and vegetables.
    In 2020, following the Glass Fire and LNU Lightning Complex 
Fire, over 25 percent of my operation's wine grapes were 
rejected and left unharvested due to smoke taint.
    Continuous access to energy is also a challenge for 
agriculture producers when fire risk conditions are higher. Due 
to utility infrastructure historically causing catastrophic 
wildfire damage, investor-owned utilities in California are 
required to safeguard their initial infrastructure to prevent 
fire.
    One tool implemented is public safety power shutoffs, which 
simply de-energizes electrical grids when climatic risk, such 
as wind and low humidity, could potentially result in wildfire. 
While implementation of these shutoffs can serve as valuable 
public safety tools, farms, ranches, packing houses, and 
wineries are greatly impacted by the uncertainty de-
energization brings.
    Post-fire, California producers continue to struggle with 
sufficient access to risk management tools and timely access to 
disaster resources. While Congress has an established history 
of providing relief to farmers impacted by natural disasters, 
there is not a permanent, predictable program. This has 
resulted in continuous reauthorizations for emerging disasters 
occurring in calendar years not yet included in disaster 
programs, significant implementation delays, and confusion for 
farmers.
    Because less than a quarter of California's 400 commodities 
are covered by a direct crop insurance program, the expansion 
of risk management tools in the 2023 Farm Bill remains a key 
priority for us.
    We additionally support the continuance of disaster relief 
programs and have been working on initiatives that would 
improve the Emergency Relief Program, the Emergency 
Conservation Program, as well as adjusted gross income barriers 
routinely faced by producers trying to access disaster relief.
    In addition to the numerous economic impacts wildfires 
produce, there are also significant impacts to our natural 
resources, including air quality, forested watersheds, and 
wildlife habitat. While air quality impacts are perhaps the 
most observable to the greatest number of people, forested 
watersheds that serve as headwaters for drinking water supplies 
are also greatly impacted.
    Overstocked forests are resulting in greater competition 
for water and increased evapotranspiration, reducing snow pack 
and increasing strain on water supplies.
    Species and species habitats are also being significantly 
impacted at times, contributing to new endangered species 
listings or the moving of species from threatened to endangered 
status.
    Given the extensive number of wildfire-related impacts 
discussed today, farmers and ranchers have a vested interest in 
the quality and quantity of forest management activities. 
However, with nearly half of the hundred million acres in 
California managed by the Federal Government, private 
landowners are unable to solely increase the pace and scale of 
forest management.
    We must remain committed to finding solutions to change the 
fire behavior and achieve fire-resilient landscapes for the 
sake of our natural resources and our rural economies.
    Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today. I 
am happy to answer questions.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. White follows:]
           Prepared Statement of Johnnie White, Board Member,
                         California Farm Bureau

INTRODUCTION

    Thank you Chairman Westerman, Ranking Member Grijalva, and members 
of the Committee. My name is Johnnie White and I am a sixth generation 
Napa County farmer residing in St. Helena, California as well as a 
partner at Pina Vineyard Management, farming over one thousand acres of 
premium Napa Valley vineyards. My wife Kendall and I also own a small 
cattle and forage operation providing grazing for wildfire fuel 
reduction and direct to consumer beef sales. I am also a twenty-year 
veteran of the St. Helena Fire Department serving with the rank of 
captain. Additionally, I am also the past President of the Napa County 
Farm Bureau and currently serve on the Board of Directors for the 
California Farm Bureau, California's largest farm organization, 
comprised of 53 county Farm Bureaus currently representing nearly 
30,000 members. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today before 
the Committee on behalf of the California Farm Bureau and our members 
across the state of California who unfortunately know the impacts of 
wildfire too well.
    In recent years, with the St. Helena Fire Department, I have fought 
the 2017 Tubbs Fire and the 2020 Glass Fire and LNU Lightning Complex 
fires. Fighting the LNU Lightning Complex fires will always stand out 
to me as it was immediately clear there were not sufficient resources 
to adequately fight the fire given the quantity of fires simultaneously 
burning throughout the state. Because of this, the LNU Lightning 
Complex fire was fought for several days by farmers and ranchers using 
farming equipment with very little to no fire suppression resources. 
Our farming operation mobilized eight bulldozers and two water trucks 
to fight this fire. Because we were located on the most rural and least 
populated side of the fire, we spent three days fighting the fire on 
our own before CAL FIRE reached our side of the fire. CAL FIRE 
subsequently hired us, and our equipment, under an emergency contract 
and we spent the next week working for CAL FIRE ultimately constructing 
the fire break that stopped the forward progression of this fire. 
Unfortunately, the smoke from this fire caused 25% of our winegrapes to 
be rejected and left unharvested.
WILDFIRE IMPACTS ON CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE

    Wildfires have caused numerous direct and indirect impacts on 
California's $50 billion agriculture industry. In addition to being a 
significant public safety threat, many farms, ranches, wineries, 
employee housing, equipment, livestock, and commodities have been 
directly damaged or completely destroyed. For those only partially 
impacted, they are faced with the reality of rebuilding what remains of 
their operation. Because many farmers and ranchers live on their 
farming operation, some have also lost their home simultaneous to 
losing their farm and income.
Wildfire Smoke & Ash
    California agriculture has faced many challenges related to 
wildfire smoke and ash. For example, the 2020 LNU Lightning Complex 
Fires that burned over 360,000 acres, covered much of Northern 
California's wine region in a weeks-long blanket of smoke and ash. The 
Glass Fire, which burned over 65,000 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties 
immediately following, resulted in such severe smoke taint that many 
wineries looking to produce a 2020 vintage were unable to harvest their 
crop. Monterey County, and many of California's central coast counties, 
as well as the winegrape growing regions of the Central and Sacramento 
Valley, also experienced weeks of smoke and ash coverage.
    Wildfire smoke and ash has also affected availability, and at times 
exacerbated shortage, of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) needed by 
farmers and agricultural employees. According to California Division of 
Occupational safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) workplace regulations, 
employers are required to protect outdoor workers with N95 masks or 
respirators when the Air Quality Index is 151 or greater. Particularly 
during the COVID-19 pandemic, our producers were faced with significant 
challenges related to providing our employees with Personal Protective 
Equipment (PPE). Prior to the 2020 wildfires, California Farm Bureau 
and other groups worked with the California Department of Food and 
Agriculture to acquire about 1.5 million respirators that were released 
to county agricultural commissioners from state supplies. But, as the 
wildfires began, people who needed the respirators couldn't get them. 
This prevented even the most usual agricultural activities such as 
harvest, plantings, and cultivation from occurring at a time when 
domestic food production was exceedingly critical.
Insurance Availability and Affordability
    Wildfire has also created many residual impacts for California 
farmers and ranchers in the areas of insurance, energy certainty, and 
livestock safety and evacuation. In addition to homeowners' inability 
to renew policies or affordably insure their homes due to wildfire 
risk, California farmers and ranchers have experienced the same 
challenges. In one instance, a member reported their premium had 
increased from $8000 to $36,000. Meanwhile, many southern California 
counties, as well as Napa, Sonoma, El Dorado, Calaveras, Placer, 
Nevada, Shasta, Trinity, Mendocino, San Benito, Santa Cruz, and San 
Luis Obispo counties, have seen policies terminated entirely due to 
wildfire risk.
    Until California State Senate Bill 11 was signed into law in 2021, 
California farmers and ranchers did not have access to California's 
insurer of last resort, the California Fair Access to Insurance 
Requirements (FAIR) Plan, which provided basic property insurance only 
to homes and commercial properties at highest risk. This left 
commercial agricultural infrastructure, wineries, farm equipment, and 
other components uninsured. SB 11 authorized these operations to access 
the California FAIR Plan for basic property coverage and provided a 
necessary property insurance backstop for agricultural infrastructure. 
Currently, California Farm Bureau is sponsoring California State Senate 
Bill 505 that would allow for commercial insurance policies under the 
FAIR Plan to move back to the admitted commercial market, therefore 
providing opportunities for agricultural producers to move back to the 
competitive market with affordable commercial policies protecting 
farming and ranching operations.
    In recent months, there have been announcements by individual 
insurance companies stating that they would stop selling insurance 
coverage in California due to the rapid growth of catastrophe exposure. 
While only a few individual companies have made public announcements, 
we are aware of 22 companies no longer writing in California. Because 
farmers and ranchers need insurance options to safeguard their ability 
to continue producing the food that America needs, California Farm 
Bureau has assembled a committee comprised of farmers and ranchers, 
insurance-oriented associations, and individual insurance companies and 
brokers to identify and advance policies that could bring insurers back 
into the marketplace. We are hopeful that this group, working 
collaboratively with the California Department of Insurance, will find 
ways to bring critical insurance tools back to our state.
Public Safety Power Shutoffs
    With utility infrastructure in California found to have caused some 
of the most catastrophic damage in California history, the California 
Legislature and California Public Utilities Commission have required 
California's investor-owned utilities to better safeguard their 
infrastructure to prevent those catastrophes. One tool that has been 
implemented is the use of public safety power shutoffs (PSPS). These 
shutoffs simply de-energize electrical grids when certain climatic 
risks, such as wind and low humidity, could potentially result in a 
wildfire should the infrastructure fail or an object come into contact 
with the infrastructure sparking fire. While PSPS implementation can 
serve as a valuable public safety tool, farms and ranches can be 
greatly impacted by these wildfire mitigation efforts as lack of energy 
availability creates added uncertainties for agricultural operations.
Agricultural Protocols During Wildfire Incidents
    Historically, hired vendors working with CALFIRE or the United 
States Forest Service on an active wildfire incident, including water 
tender operators, heavy equipment and dozer operators, crew bus 
drivers, vehicle drivers, mechanics, fallers, swampers, and chain saw 
operators, have been required to complete the Fireline Safety Awareness 
course, a one-day, 8-hour course of instruction. Wanting the same 
opportunity as incident vendors, agriculture organizations supported 
state legislation, Assembly Bill 1103, which established a statewide 
framework for county ``Livestock Pass'' programs to safely provide 
livestock producers access to their ranches during wildfires and other 
emergencies. While prior to the legislation some counties had already 
developed emergency ranch access programs, other counties lacked the 
resources to develop and implement their own programs. AB 1103 required 
CAL FIRE to establish a statewide training program for Livestock Pass 
holders, codified a requirement that law enforcement and emergency 
responders grant ranch access to Livestock Pass holders, and 
established certain minimum standards for administration of the 
programs, facilitating and streamlining adoption of county Livestock 
Pass programs throughout the state.
    While Farm Bureau strongly supports the Livestock Pass program, it 
is critical that crop producers also have the ability to safely and 
responsibly cross into evacuation zones to safeguard crops and farm 
infrastructure during a wildfire incident. While some counties are 
currently working with agricultural producers on ``ag pass'' 
initiatives, California Farm Bureau is supportive of making such 
programs accessible to producers of all commodities.
Ad Hoc Disaster Assistance
    Recent wildfire and other emergency events have resulted in farmers 
and ranchers losing crops, livestock, farm infrastructure, and access 
to livestock feed. While Congress routinely provides relief for farmers 
impacted by natural disasters, there is not a permanent program. This 
has resulted in our organization continuously working on 
reauthorization of programs for disasters in new calendar years. 
Additionally, implementation of reauthorized disaster programs has 
resulted in delays and confusion for farmers. Because of this, a key 
priority for the California Farm Bureau within the 2023 Farm Bill is 
the expansion of risk management tools as currently less than a quarter 
of the 400 commodities produced in California are covered by a direct 
crop insurance program. Because any expansion of increased insurance 
tools will take time to implement, we also support the continued use of 
disaster relief programs and funding to assist producers and have been 
working on initiatives that would improve the Emergency Relief Program, 
the Emergency Conservation Program, as well as adjusted gross income 
barriers that our producers face in accessing agricultural disaster 
assistance.
WILDFIRE IMPACTS ON NATURAL RESOURCES

    In addition to the numerous economic impacts wildfires produce, 
there is also significant impact on our natural resources including air 
quality, forested watersheds that serve as headwaters for critical 
water supplies, as well as wildlife habitat.
Air Quality
    Wildfire impacts to air quality are perhaps the most observable 
environmental impact to the greatest number of people given the impact 
on personal well-being and the ability for wildfire smoke to travel 
great distances. Most recently, the eastern United States was blanketed 
by wildfire smoke that traveled all the way from Canada. In 2022, a 
UCLA-led study concluded that the 2020 California wildfires put twice 
as much greenhouse gas emissions into the Earth's atmosphere as the 
total reduction in such pollutants in California between 2003-2019.
    To prevent severe impacts to air quality from wildfire, we must 
work to reduce hazardous fuels. One of the most vital components of 
reducing fuels in overgrown forest lands is prescribed fire, a tool 
that has been used for generations to promote culturally important 
vegetation and reduce forest density. Prescribed fire is a crucial 
component in forest resilience efforts, as properly managed burns can 
provide numerous ecosystem benefits including reducing excess brush, 
shrubs and small-diameter trees, encouraging new growth of native 
vegetation, and maintaining plant and animal species whose habitats 
depend on natural, episodic fire. Additionally, when used as part of a 
larger fuels reduction treatment plan, regular, planned use of 
prescribed fire has also been shown to prevent the kinds of 
catastrophic wildfires that can set back particulate matter (PM) 
emissions reductions goals. However, in the past century, due to 
altered fire suppression practices and a hesitance to mechanically thin 
forest stands, our forested landscapes are now subjects to excessive 
fuel accumulation.
    Due to California's tremendous fuels treatment needs, California 
Farm Bureau previously expressed concern with the U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency's (EPA) Reconsideration of the National Ambient Air 
Quality Standards (NAAQS) for Particulate Matter as proposed. The 
proposal seeks to reduce the primary annual average PM2.5 NAAQS from 12 
micrograms per cubic meter of air (ug/m3) to between 8-10 ug/m3. This 
proposed change would significantly limit the number of windows 
available in California for land managers to conduct essential 
prescribed burns to prevent future catastrophic wildfires at a time 
when state and federal land managers, including the Forest Service, are 
acknowledging the dire need to increase prescribed fire on the 
landscape.
    While we understand that EPA considers prescribed burns covered 
under the Exceptional Events Rule, the 2016 regulatory process that 
codified the conditions under which prescribed fires could qualify as 
exceptional events is not sufficient enough to enable a robust 
prescribed fire program. Exceptional Events filings are also resource-
intensive and often denied by local air boards. Without explicit 
regulatory allowances for prescribed fire to cause NAAQS exceedances, 
we fear that the proposal could reduce potential burn windows by as 
much as 80 percent. For this reason, we have written EPA urging them to 
develop regulations that enable greater use of prescribed fire in 
tandem with the NAAQS in order to prevent future emissions from high 
severity wildfires. Should EPA finalize the proposed rule as written, 
we urge Congress to consider legislation that creates an exception to 
EPA's requirements.
Forested Watersheds
    Wildfires greatly impact forested watersheds that serve as 
headwaters to already constrained water resources in California. 
Headwaters, where rivers, streams, and lakes begin, provide flow to 
surface and groundwater supplies across the state. Like most western 
states, two-thirds of California's surface water supply originates in 
these mountainous and typically forested regions. The majority are 
located on public lands, including national forests, and span from the 
Cascade Range through the Sierra Nevada Range, down to the San 
Bernadino mountains and coastal ranges.
    The challenges to restore and improve headwaters remain great as 
decades of fire suppression and lack of management coupled with drier, 
hotter conditions, have resulted in the recent tree mortality epidemic 
and has created unhealthy, highly flammable forests. Additionally, our 
currently overstocked forests are resulting in greater competition for 
water and increased evapotranspiration, reducing snowpack and water and 
increasing strain on water supplies during times of drought.
    Because of the importance of these issues, California Farm Bureau 
was a founding partner of the California Forest Watershed Alliance 
(CAFWA), a nonpartisan, urban-rural coalition representing water 
interests, local governments, the conservation community, agriculture, 
and the forestry sector, created to promote the restoration and 
improvement of California's forested watersheds. CAFWA aims to promote 
healthier, more resilient forests, for the benefit of all Californians 
by working together to seek new ways to promote proactive, science-
based, and ecologically sound forest management practices that will 
reduce the risk of destructive megafires. Our goal is to protect our 
forests, our natural resources, and our local economies by accelerating 
the pace and scale of forest restoration.
Wildlife Habitat
    Catastrophic wildfire across the West is also negatively impacting 
a variety of species and their habitats. In California, we have 
unfortunately witnessed catastrophic fire not only kill species but 
also wipe out species' habitat range. Because fires are also impacting 
threatened or endangered species, wildlife agencies have also 
recommended the listing of species or the moving of species from 
threatened to endangered status as a result. Because of the strict 
nature of endangered species laws, this also impacts the industries and 
rural communities impacted by such listings and/or critical habitat 
designations.
INCREASING FOREST MANAGEMENT CAPACITY

    With the presence of 18 National Forests in California, nearly half 
of the 100 million acres in our state are managed by the federal 
government. Given the extensive number of wildfire-related impacts 
California farmers and ranchers are facing, California Farm Bureau has 
a vested interest in the quality, and quantity, of forest management 
activities. Recognizing the need for robust financial resources, 
California Farm Bureau strongly supported the $1.4 billion included in 
the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), providing the Forest 
Service with implementation resources for the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, 
a 10-year strategy for confronting the western wildfire crisis. Two 
California landscapes, the North Yuba and the Stanislaus, were included 
within the ten initial landscapes. California Farm Bureau also 
supported the additional $1.8 billion in funding provided in Inflation 
Reduction Act (IRA) for hazardous fuels funding in the wildland-urban 
interface. Within the additional eleven landscapes for treatment that 
were identified, three California landscapes were included in the 
second round of investments. These include the Southern California 
Fireshed Risk Reduction Strategy, the Trinity Forest Health and Fire-
Resilient Rural Communities project, and the Plumas Community 
Protection project.
    While recent funding provided by Congress in the IIJA and IRA to 
address fire risk should be celebrated, we remain concerned about the 
expediency, or pace and scale, in which treatments on federally owned 
lands are being performed given the quantity of treatment work that 
needs to be done and the fire threat our state is facing. We also 
remain concerned about whether the necessary financial resources will 
continue to be allocated so that current forest health investments are 
maintained in the longer-term.
    To address management backlog and achieve landscape scale 
management, we must do more to enhance capacity and modernize technical 
expertise. To accomplish this, we must find a way to speed up the 
collaborative process and empower multiple jurisdictions and partners. 
Partnerships that assist the Forest Service with permitting and 
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) processes, as well as on-the-
ground work, should be expanded. Private industry, including foresters 
and ranchers within our own membership, are highly skilled, trained, 
and operate equipment that can assist with vegetative removal as well 
as fire suppression activities. Livestock grazing is also an effective 
management tool for hazardous fuel reduction, improvement of range 
condition, and invasive species control. In many cases, these 
individuals are also personally knowledgeable about the local 
communities and landscapes, bringing additional contributions to a 
project. We strongly believe that by leveraging such partnerships, more 
treatments would be able to be performed on federal land, around rural 
communities, and along shared property lines resulting in a more 
wildfire resilient environment.
    Additionally, both the federal government and the State of 
California have expressed interest in seeking ways to boost investment 
in new facilities where capital investments serve as a driver for 
forest treatments. However, given the significant presence of federally 
owned land, the challenge with this approach is that stewardship 
agreements do not include an obligation that guarantees forest material 
to private industry. Without some level of certainty surrounding supply 
agreements with the Forest Service, it will continue to be very 
difficult to spur new infrastructure investment because existing 
infrastructure is set up based on the landscapes in which they serve. 
In California, industry infrastructure and markets for low to no-value 
wood products is a significant challenge in need of solutions. We must 
work to collectively find ways to complete the NEPA processes for 
forest management and low to no-value wood products, affordably 
transport these materials out of the forest, and incentivize companies 
that can work on biomass or develop new, marketable products out of 
these forest materials.
2023 FARM BILL

    California Farm Bureau strongly believes the 2023 Farm Bill 
presents an opportunity to build upon the successes of the 2014 and 
2018 Farm Bills in a way that better equips federal agencies to manage 
forests, incentivize more public-private partnerships, grow new markets 
for forest products, and support rural communities. The 2023 Farm Bill 
should also encourage the Forest Service to utilize all of its 
authorities, including new authorities provided in the Infrastructure 
Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). As work on the 2023 Farm Bill 
continues, we urge Congress to consider the following:
Good Neighbor Authority

    Consider amendments to the Good Neighbor Authority that will 
leverage more partnerships that increase landscape-scale restoration 
projects.

     Allow States, Counties, and federally recognized Tribes to 
            retain revenues generated through Good Neighbor projects 
            for reinvestment in conservation and management activities.

     Allow for restoration activities to take place on non-
            Federal lands pursuant to conditions specified in Good 
            Neighbor agreements. Direct the Forest Service to update 
            existing Good Neighbor Master Agreements and Project 
            Agreements to use revenue from existing projects for this 
            work.

     Allow for both new road construction and reconstruction 
            under Good Neighbor Authority contracts on a limited basis 
            for the purposes of water quality, vegetation removal, and 
            safe and efficient use.

Market Investments

    The work being done on both federal and private lands to reduce 
catastrophic wildfire risk creates a large amount of low-value woody 
material. Unfortunately, there are not adequate markets and 
infrastructure currently available to remove this material from the 
forest and put into the marketplace. Depending on truck availability 
and infrastructure locations, transporting this material can also be 
very expensive.

     Expand current programs, such as the Wood Innovations 
            Programs and Community Wood Grant Program, to encourage 
            more market development for woody, low-value material.

     Consider cost share mechanisms to assist with transport of 
            low-value woody materials to processing facilities.

Enhance Fuel Break Cross-Boundary Collaboration

    Connected fuel breaks provide multiple benefits, including 
naturally reducing the wildland fire behavior, providing safer 
opportunities for firefighters, and providing tactical advantages for 
aerial deployment of fire retardant. Fuel breaks near roads can also 
improve egress for those evacuating from wildfire and ingress for first 
responders. Although there has been significant federal investment in 
such work, it is essential that similar work conducted on private lands 
is coordinated and connected so that the benefits of these actions is 
maximized for forest health and public safety.

     Authorize and fund wildfire reduction actions to assist 
            private landowners in connecting, completing, and 
            maintaining fuel breaks on their land with priority given 
            to projects that link with fuel breaks on other lands in 
            high-priority areas.

     Authorize and fund the Forest Service to enter into 
            agreement with private sector entities to construct and 
            maintain connected fuel breaks on federal lands in 
            coordination with State and private landowners.

     Provide authorities, including cost share instruments, 
            that enable USDA to partner with adjacent landowners to 
            reduce wildfire risk.

     Seek ways to connect fuel breaks on federal lands with 
            similar activities on state and private lands.

Remove Barriers to Increasing Pace and Scale of Forest Management

    The 2018 Farm Bill added a new ``rural'' requirement to the Forest 
Service's Landscape Scale Restoration Program, greatly restricting the 
ability to conduct hazardous fuels reduction projects in areas with 
populations greater than 50,000, including areas within the Wildland 
Urban Interface.

     Amend the Landscape Scale Restoration Program to remove 
            the rural requirement established in the 2018 Farm Bill.

    The National Association of State Foresters reports that the USDA 
Forest Service has designated approximately 74 million acres nationwide 
as insect and disease treatment areas yet only a fraction of those 
acres has been treated.

     Amend the existing Forest Service Categorical Exclusion to 
            increase the number of acres which can be treated for fuels 
            reduction and pest treatment from 3,000 to 15,000+ acres or 
            larger.

    Each National Forest is governed and guided by a legally binding 
Forest Plan. Plans are developed through a collaborative process with 
many opportunities for public involvement and specifically designate 
which acres within a national forest are suitable for timber 
production. In addition, when a management action is proposed, the 
Forest Service must also initiate a separate National Environmental 
Policy Act process. Currently, there is lack of legal clarity about 
whether individual Forest Plans are an ongoing action under federal 
law.

     Clarify that Forest Plans are not ongoing actions under 
            federal law and that consultation under Endangered Species 
            Act Section 7 is not required at the forest plan level. 
            Additionally, clarify that projects on acres deemed 
            suitable for timber production in individual forest plans, 
            be subjected to reduced analytical requirements.
    Ranchers who graze livestock on federally managed lands serve as a 
primary caretaker of those lands in many ways. Grazing permittees 
should be empowered as partners in conservation and leveraged as a 
landscape management tool to help address buildup of wildfire fuels.

     Recognize grazing as a wildfire management tool in fuels 
            management programs, the Collaborative Forest Landscape 
            Restoration Program, and other collaborative stewardship 
            programs.

    Despite dozens of additional authorities intended to increase the 
pace and scale of restoration, there are still millions of NEPA-ready 
acres waiting for implementation. While significant increases in 
funding should increase implementation, challenges with the Forest 
Service utilizing existing authorities to their fullest extent still 
remain. There should be a path of recourse for stakeholders, or 
Congress, to compel options such as management, long-term stewardship 
contracts, Good Neighbor Authority, and others.

     Create an avenue where stakeholders and Congress can 
            elevate and/or approve specific actions on NEPA-ready 
            projects, especially on lands identified as priority 
            watersheds, high risk firesheds, or identified in a 
            wildfire crisis implementation plan.

Increase Flexibility And Efficiency Of Contracting And Procurement

    Inflexibility in Forest Service contracting, procurement processes, 
and rules continue to be an impediment to forest restoration at the 
pace and scale needed to address the problem. Shorter-term contracts or 
longer contracts that are interruptible, request for proposals (RFPs) 
that have minimum bids, or other conditions that don't reflect current 
realities or the cost of doing business, issues with liability for 
participating agencies, and prohibitions on allowing knowledgeable 
stakeholders having interaction during RFP development are among the 
issues that are commonly slowing progress.

     Direct the Forest Service to revise contracting and 
            procurement policy, guidance, and implementation of 
            existing authorities.

Prioritize Reforestation And Post-Fire Rehabilitation Of Federal Lands

    Millions of acres of forestland have been lost to wildfire. 
According to American Forests, a substantial portion of the over 4 
million acres of potential reforestation needs on national forests 
stems from 2020-2021 wildfires when more than 2.5 million acres burned 
at high severity, adding to the 1.54 million acres of previously 
identified needs. While the recent passage of the REPLANT Act is 
expected to provide significant resources, more will need to be done. 
The current rate of loss is outpacing the nation's public and private 
nursery capacity and seedling supply.

     Prioritize reforestation of federal lands and increase 
            investment for public and private nurseries for the 
            purposes of reforestation.

    In addition to investing in wildfire prevention, post-fire 
reforestation and recovery investments are also critically important 
for the health of our national forests and rural communities. While 
wildfire causes the majority of reforestation needs on national forest 
lands, extreme weather conditions including drought and insect and 
disease infestations also drive reforestation needs.

     Direct agencies to utilize all tools for post-fire 
            rehabilitation, including livestock grazing, and provide 
            funding for prompt post-disturbance forest recovery and 
            restoration activities to prevent the spread of invasive 
            species and protect water quality. Authorize agencies to 
            utilize post-fire recovery funds for rebuilding of 
            operational infrastructure, including federal and non-
            federal facilities, and direct agencies to allow 
            streamlined access, approval, and clearing and removal of 
            wildfire damaged trees impacting the recovery of 
            infrastructure function.
CONCLUSION

    With the presence of eighteen National Forests in California and 
significant landownership from other federal and state entities, 
California's private landowners are unable to solely increase the pace 
and scale of forest management. The reality is we are playing catch-up 
with a situation that has been worsening for decades exacerbated by 
drought, disease, and even climate change. Collectively and 
collaboratively, we must remain committed to finding solutions to 
change fire behavior and achieve fire resilient landscapes for the sake 
of our natural resources and rural economies. Thank you for the 
opportunity to provide testimony on these critical issues. I am pleased 
to respond to questions.

                                 ______
                                 

    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. White.
    Next, I would like to recognize Mr. Matthew Bloom, the 
owner of Kennedy Meadows Resort and Pack Station in Pinecrest, 
California.
    Mr. Bloom, you have 5 minutes.

 STATEMENT OF MATTHEW BLOOM, OWNER, KENNEDY MEADOWS RESORT AND 
              PACK STATION, PINECREST, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Bloom. Hello, and thank you for the opportunity to be 
here today. My name is Matt Bloom, and I, along with my family, 
have lived and worked on the Stanislaus National Forest for 49 
years.
    In 1974, my family moved to Tuolumne County, as my father 
started working for the U.S. Forest Service. He was a timber 
management officer. I was raised in a Forest Service family and 
have witnessed firsthand many of the changes within the Forest 
Service. Many of these changes have led us to where we are 
today.
    I started working in the Sierras at the age of 15 at 
different pack stations, guiding horse trips in the various 
wilderness areas. In 1997, I bought Kennedy Meadows Resort and 
Pack Station, which my family and I currently own and operate.
    I have felt the huge economic and emotional impacts of 
multiple large fires. My experience comes from a lifetime of 
firsthand involvement in forest management. I have seen these 
changes, most of them relatively recent, to the U.S. Forest 
Service policies and forest management, both locally, 
regionally, and nationally, leading us to the poor position we 
are in today.
    Severe cuts to logging and thinning projects, including 
grazing, have led to a widespread buildup of ground fuels, 
which have led to fires burning out of control. The ground 
fuels provide a ladder for fuels to climb into larger trees. As 
they reach up, the trees start to burn, the fire temperature 
increases, and the fire begins to crown.
    When a fire crowns, it reaches the top of the forest canopy 
and extends from tree to tree. Any firefighter will tell you it 
is next to impossible to stop a crown fire, and they burn with 
such high intensity and are so hot that the soil becomes 
sterilized.
    These changes in policy started when the National 
Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, was used as a lobbying effort 
for various anti-logging and anti-grazing groups. These groups 
filed lawsuits against the U.S. Forest Service, halting many, 
if not all, timber sales--thus, for lack of a better term, 
weaponizing NEPA.
    For example, the spotted owl guidelines levied on the 
Forest Service land managers crippled the timber industry and 
are largely at fault for the large fuel buildup on the forest. 
Rather than finding mitigation to stabilize the owl habitat, 
everything was stopped. These fuels are what led to the giant 
fires we have been experiencing.
    The Forest Service changed the intent of their mission 
statement from multiple use to ecosystem management. This 
change in direction has allowed a one-sided mindset in land 
managers far different from the previous one of managing the 
forest for logging, grazing, recreation, and wilderness 
management.
    The firefighting side of the Forest Service also changed 
its mission from fire suppression to fire management, thus 
creating a practically whole new management approach.
    Natural fire and controlled burning are a vital part of a 
healthy forest and must be part of managing the forest. 
However, the Forest Service should maintain a focus on 
suppression and be mandated to stop uncontrolled fires as soon 
as they start.
    Decisions to have controlled burns should be made by 
forestland managers and not by fire crews. Burning is a great 
management tool, but it should be done on the terms of those 
who know the forest and not left to random lightning strikes.
    Another change I have seen in the Forest Service is the 
level of experience in higher management positions. Due to 
policies put forth through affirmative action, hiring practices 
on the U.S. Forest Service changed and positions haven't been 
filled based upon education, skill, or knowledge.
    What has happened is an entire agency muddled by 
inexperienced land managers who lack knowledge about the actual 
land and forest system they are forced to steward. All of us 
know that managements and leadership make an unsurmountable 
difference in any industry.
    Part of the reason I am here today is because I have felt 
firsthand the devastating consequences of mismanagement of the 
forest and fire suppression. The 2013 Rim Fire burnt 257,000 
acres and destroyed over a hundred structures. Fighting the 
fire cost $127 million, not counting the long-term economic 
damage caused by closures and bad air quality.
    The Rim Fire started from a campfire on the banks of the 
Tuolumne River. Initial suppression of the fire was curtailed 
because Forest Service leadership didn't want planes dropping 
retardant on the fire, fearing the effects it might have on the 
wild and scenic river area. This decision allowed for the fire 
to get out of control.
    My resort is a seasonal business. In a good year, we have 
150 days to make it, and we lost the busiest month and a half 
of our 5-month season because of that initial decision.
    The Donnell Fire started August 1, 2018, burned 36,000 
acres, destroyed 53 historic family cabins and a historic 
resort, Dardanelles. The fire started as an escaped campfire on 
the eastern shore of Donnell's reservoir, a remote location not 
easily accessible by vehicle.
    The Brightman hand crew was sent into this remote fire. I 
personally spoke with the crew members that were present the 
first couple of days. The Brightman crew told me they 
repeatedly asked for a helicopter to dip out of the adjacent 
reservoirs to aid in extinguishing the fire, but those requests 
were denied by the Forest Service. The Donnell Fire could have 
easily been stopped in a few hours with the aid they requested.
    I and many others observed that air was clear for flying 
and could not understand why they would not use the available 
air support. After a couple days, the fire jumped the fire line 
and ran up the canyon toward Dardanelles.
    Everyone was concerned and begged the Forest Service to do 
more, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. They constructed an 
additional fire line, tried to burn it out at night, but it 
didn't work. We repeatedly asked the Forest Service to provide 
structure protection in the Dardanelles area and were yet again 
ignored.
    The next day, the wind came up, pushed the fire over the 
line and toward Dardanelles. Standing at the road closure, I 
heard the radio call announcing that the fire was lost and 
would reach Dardanelles in 45 minutes. The Forest Service 
employee standing there turned to me and said: ``What do we do 
now?''
    It was too late. None of the structures had any protection, 
and the valley was destroyed within hours. Fifty-three cabins 
and a thriving historic resort were reduced to ashes. The 
highway was closed down, along with my resort and other 
recreation on the Highway 108 corridor for the entire month of 
August.
    The fire running out of control can be totally attributed 
to wrong decisions made during the initial response to this 
fire. Witnessing this was sickening and heartbreaking. Not a 
single person was held responsible for the poor decisions that 
led to so much destruction and pain.
    Change must occur and happen now. The Forest Service 
leadership needs to understand they are affecting massive 
forests, habitats, and history, and the lives of many people 
and families. Bad decisions cannot be allowed to continue. A 
national mandate for change is necessary.
    We must take bold changes to policies if we wish to avoid 
these devastating fires. Change the Forest Service's fire 
division's mission statement from management to suppression. 
Amend NEPA to allow for more effective logging and thinning 
projects. Put agencies such as CAL FIRE in charge of structure 
protection. Streamline the private----
    The Chairman. Mr. Bloom, I am going to have to ask you to 
wrap up.
    Mr. Bloom. OK. To conclude, please understand there are 
plenty of hardworking, conscientious employees in the U.S. 
Forest Service that want to fix these issues. Changing these 
policies, holding line officers accountable, and providing the 
necessary resources for them to perform their duties must come 
from Congress and the Department of Agriculture.
    Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Bloom follows:]
  Prepared Statement of Matt Bloom, Owner, Kennedy Meadows Resort and 
                              Pack Station

    Hello and thank you for the opportunity to be here today, my name 
is Matt Bloom and I, along with my family have lived and worked on the 
Stanislaus National Forest for 49 years. In 1974, my family moved to 
Tuolumne County as my father started working for the US Forest Service, 
as a Timber Management Officer. During his career, my father was in 
charge of planning timber sales for the Summit Ranger District in 
Pinecrest, California. I was raised in a forest service family and have 
witnessed first hand many of the changes within the forest service. 
Many of these changes have led us to where we are today, facing a very 
high increase in devastating mega fires.
    I started working in the Sierra Nevada mountains at the young age 
of 15 at different pack stations, guiding horseback trips into various 
wilderness areas. In 1997, I bought Kennedy Meadows Resort and Pack 
Station, which my family and I currently own and operate. I have felt 
the huge economic and emotional impacts of multiple large fires within 
the Stanislaus National on land managed by the US Forest Service. My 
experience comes from a lifetime of first-hand involvement in forest 
management.
    I have seen many changes, most of them relatively recent to both US 
Forest Service Policies and Forest Management both locally, regionally 
and nationally; leading us to the poor position we are in today. I 
would like to overview the biggest changes and policies which should be 
immediately remedied.
    Severe cuts to logging or thinning projects, including grazing, 
have led to a widespread buildup of ground fuels which have led to 
fires burning out of control. The ground fuels provide a ladder for 
fuels to climb into the large trees, as they reach up, the trees start 
to burn, the fire temperature increases and the fire begins to 
``crown''. When a fire crowns it reaches the top of the forest canopy 
and extends from tree to tree, any fire fighter will tell you it's next 
to impossible to stop a crown fire, and they burn with such high 
intensity and are so hot the soil becomes sterilized, reducing the 
forest landscape to a pile of ash and making it difficult for even the 
smallest bush to return to the forest for years to come, thus also 
causing massive erosion. These changes in policy started when the 
National Environmental Policy Act (N.E.P.A.) was used as a lobbying 
effort by various anti-logging and anti-grazing groups. These groups 
filed lawsuits against the Forest Service, halting many if not most 
timber sales. Thus for lack of a better term, weaponizing NEPA, not for 
the good of all, not for the intent and safeguards of the policy, but 
to get their agendas pushed through. For example, the Spotted Owl 
Guidelines levied on the Forest Service land managers crippled the 
timber industry and are at largely fault for the fuel buildup in the 
forest. Rather than find a mitigation to stabilize the owl habitat, 
everything stopped. A massive build up of fuels occurred. These fuels 
are what lead to the giant fires we have been experiencing. The Forest 
Service changed the intent of their mission statement from ``multiple 
use'' to ``ecosystem management''. This change in direction has allowed 
a one-sided mindset in land managers far different from the previous 
one of ``managing the forest for logging, grazing, recreation and 
wilderness management''.
    The fire-fighting side of the Forest Service also changed its 
mission from ``fire suppression'' to ``fire management'', thus creating 
a practically whole new management approach. Natural fire and control 
burning are a vital part of a healthy forest and must be part of 
managing the forest, however, the Forest Service should maintain a 
focus on suppression and be mandated to stop uncontrolled fires as soon 
as they start. Decisions to have control burns should be made by forest 
land managers and not by fire crews. Burning is a great management 
tool, but it should be done on the terms of those who know the forest, 
not left to random lightning strikes.
    Another big change I have seen in the Forest Service is the level 
of experience in higher management positions. Due to policies put forth 
through affirmative action, hiring practices for the US Forest Service 
changed and positions haven't been filled based upon education, skill 
or knowledge. Positions were filled based upon mandated criteria, which 
is unfair, unjust and does not maintain the due diligence of the US 
Forest Service when it comes to care of the lands and the people. What 
has happened is an entire agency muddled by inexperienced land managers 
who lack knowledge about the actual land and forest system they are 
forced to steward. All of us know that managements and leadership make 
an insurmountable difference in any industry, for the US Forest Service 
this should be of particular note as it affects forest health, local 
economies, various watersheds, ecosystems and a multitude of user 
groups.
    Part of the reason I am here today is because I have felt first-
hand the devastating consequences of the mismanagement of the forest 
and fire suppression. The 2013 Rim fire burnt 257,314 acres and 
destroyed over 100 structures. Fighting the fire cost 127 million 
dollars, not counting the long-term economic damage caused by closures 
and bad air quality from the smoke. The Rim fire started from a 
campfire on the banks of the Tuolumne River. Initial suppression of the 
fires was curtailed because forest leadership didn't want planes 
dropping retardant on the fire, fearing for the effects it might have 
on the wildlife and scenic river area. This decision allowed for the 
fire to get out of control and quickly. My resort is a seasonal 
business, in a good year we have 150 days to survive, and we lost the 
busiest month and half of our 5-month season because of that initial 
decision.
    The Donnell fire started August 1st, 2018 and burned 36,000 acres, 
destroying 53 historic family cabins at various recreation tracts in 
Dardanelles and the historic Dardanelles Resort. The fire started as an 
escaped campfire on the eastern shore of Donnell's reservoir, a remote 
location not easily accessible by vehicle. The Brightman hand crew was 
sent to this remote fire from Brightman Station in the Stanislaus 
National forest. I personally spoke with the crew members that were 
present the first couple of days. The Brightman crew told me they had 
repeatedly made requests for a helicopter to dip out of the adjacent 
Donnells Reservoir to aid in extinguishing the fire, but those requests 
were denied by Forest Service management. The Donnell fire could have 
easily been stopped in a few hours with the aid requested. I and many 
others observed that the air was clear for flying and could not 
understand why they would not utilize available air support. After a 
couple days, the fire jumped the fireline and ran up the canyon towards 
the Dardanelle area. Everyone was concerned and begged the Forest 
Service to do more but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. They constructed 
additional fire lines and tried to burn it out all night but it did not 
work. We repeatedly asked the Forest Service to provide structure 
protection for the historic Dardanelles area, and were yet again 
ignored. The next day, the wind came up, pushing the fire over the line 
and towards Dardanelles. Standing at the road closure, I heard the 
radio call announcing that the fire was lost and would reach 
Dardanelles in 45 minutes. The Forest Service employee standing there 
turned to me and asked, ``What do we do now?'' It was too late, none of 
the structures had any protection, and the valley was destroyed within 
hours. 53 family cabins and a thriving, historic resort had been 
reduced to ashes. The highway was closed down, my resort along with 
other recreation on the highway 108 corridor was shut down entirely for 
August and we felt a heavy economic loss. This fire running out of 
control can be totally attributed to wrong decisions made during the 
initial response to this fire. Witnessing this was sickening and 
heartbreaking. Not a single person was held responsible for the poor 
decisions that led to so much destruction and pain. Change must occur 
and must happen now. Forest Service leadership needs to understand that 
they are affecting massive forests, habitats, history and the lives of 
many people and families. Bad decisions cannot be allowed to continue, 
a National mandate for change is necessary and with it needs to be 
accountability on the local, regional and national levels. If change is 
to occur, Forest Service management must be held accountable for the 
bad decisions made under their leadership.

    We must make bold changes to policies if we wish to avoid these 
devastating fires. Most people that understand what has been happening, 
including myself, feel that changing the following policies can 
drastically reduce the effects of fire on our forests:

  1.  Change the Forest Service's fire division's mission statement 
            from ``management'' to ``suppression''.

  2.  Amend N.E.P.A. to allow for more effective logging and thinning 
            projects. The approach should be thin it, burn it and thin 
            it again. This is an ongoing effort.

  3.  Put state agencies, such as CAL FIRE in charge of structure 
            protection on all fires occurring on Forest Lands. They 
            have the proper equipment and experience to handle it 
            effectively.

  4.  Streamline the Private equipment hiring process to avoid delays 
            in getting vital resources to fires.

  5.  Increase cattle grazing contracts in areas where it is suitable 
            to reduce the brush and grass that fuel these fires.

  6.  Shorten the process to allow control burning to reduce fuel loads 
            in the forest.

  7.  Hire more competent hands in charge of fighting fires and offer 
            them the necessary resources to do so. Implied in this is 
            the need to hold line officers accountable for their poor 
            decisions.

    To conclude, please understand that there are plenty of hard 
working, conscientious employees in the Forest Service that want to fix 
these issues. Changing policies like N.E.P.A. Affirmative Action and 
the mission of firefighters, holding line officers accountable and 
providing the necessary resources for them to perform their duties well 
must come down from Congress and the Department of Agriculture. It is 
unfair to simply blame the Forest Service without making the 
appropriate changes needed to better protect our forests and local 
communities. Thinning the forest through logging, grazing and control 
burns are vital to reducing the number of fires, but initial 
suppression of fires is paramount. The fires I discussed today could 
have been stopped before they devastated us, if a different management 
approach was applied. You must seek change for these policies or these 
fires will never end, will become stronger and hotter while our entire 
forest will be reduced to ashes. Businesses, jobs, families and local 
communities will be severely impacted. There are two options: make some 
bold changes or accept these consequences.

                                 ______
                                 

    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Bloom.
    Finally, I would like to recognize Mr. Bill Tripp, Director 
of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy for the Karuk 
Tribe.
    Mr. Tripp, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

  STATEMENT OF BILL TRIPP, DIRECTOR OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND 
     ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, KARUK TRIBE, ORLEANS, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Tripp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure 
and honor to address this Committee. I am delivering testimony 
on behalf of the Intertribal Timber Council.
    Today, I wish to convey some impacts of the Slater Fire 
that occurred in 2020 and begin to discuss long-term solutions 
for the wildfire crisis we now face.
    Events like the Slater Fire tend to perpetuate fear-driven 
motives in how we approach fire management. We cannot 
perpetuate a fear-driven, negative relationship with fire.
    In focusing on the beneficial aspects of fire, we can avert 
future disasters. We can increase community-based and 
collaborative fire use across large landscapes.
    Efforts are already underway, such as the Indigenous 
Peoples Burning Network and Western Klamath Restoration 
Partnership, those programs led by tribes like the Karuk and 
San Carlos Apache, and those efforts being coordinated by 
nongovernmental organizations like the Nature Conservancy and 
the Forest Stewards Guild.
    However, we also need the help of Congress if we are going 
to create the positive and lasting change we will need to 
maintain the resiliency we create together moving forward.
    The Slater Fire happened above the community of Happy Camp, 
California. It burned over 100,000 acres in less than 12 hours. 
It started by electrical infrastructure. It reset the entire 
Indian Creek watershed to a landscape filled with snags and 
brush.
    Two lives were lost, and half the homes in Happy Camp were 
burned down. Pets, livestock, and wildlife had little chance of 
survival, many of which died. A third person died in the post-
fire recovery efforts.
    It will take multiple generations of people to restore this 
watershed to any semblance of what it once was.
    This year, many Eastern states experienced smoke impacts 
like those we face in the West nearly every year. The Slater 
Fire produced readings on the Air Quality Index that exceeded 
850 for long durations. This is more than double the threshold 
considered hazardous to human health.
    On June 29, 2023, CBS News reported Washington, DC is 
having some of the worst air quality in the world. According to 
AirNow.gov, Washington, DC's Air Quality Index was at 163 as of 
7 a.m., which is considered unhealthy. However, this is less 
than 20 percent of the impact we experienced in a given day of 
the Slater Fire.

    The primary Karuk village in the Happy Camp area is called 
athivthuuvvuunupma, or place where Hazel Creek flows through. 
This Indigenous, traditional ecological knowledge indicates 
that there was once a lot of healthy hazel to make baskets out 
of and to provide nuts for food. The best hazel comes from 
black oak stands which grow in some of the driest, most fire-
prone places. Excluding fire from this kind of environment sets 
the stage for disastrous consequences.

    Through most of my career, I have watched the existing 
management paradigm put Native American cultural identity at 
risk. The occurrence of the Slater Fire had the worst 
consequence I have seen yet, but in the same vein signals a 
reminder that we must look to our past, be mindful of our 
future, resolve our differences, and rely on cultural 
foundations to lead us into a viable future.

    It is currently against State and Federal law, regulation, 
and policy to burn in the time of year we are supposed to burn 
black oak woodlands according to our Indigenous laws of the 
land.

    California has a 1-million-acre treatment goal with nearly 
half of the acres slated for beneficial fire use. A fraction of 
this is likely to get done, given the recent trajectory. 
However, burning 20 acres a day over a 14-day period, three 
times a year, in 120 different places would accomplish over 
100,000 acres. Historically, burning 120 villages of Karuk 
territory would amount to 10 percent of the statewide goal and 
less than 1 percent of the target landscape.

    We need to pool our resources to restore conditions 
conducive of carrying out these historic fire regimes, with 
peoples of place, while enabling a growing cultural fire 
practitioner base to help maintain the resiliency we all create 
together.

    As Indigenous people, we did not ask for fire to be taken 
from us. It was taken without consent. It is our responsibility 
to give it back to the people or we will continue to have the 
negative consequences that come with fire events like Slater 
Fire.

    None of us, not even the most advanced fire management 
systems in the world that currently exist here in the United 
States, can do it alone.

    I would like to thank the esteemed Chair Westerman and the 
rest of the Committee for affording me the opportunity to 
speak, and I am happy to field any questions you may have 
during this session or in following up as requested.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Tripp follows:]
      Prepared Statement of Bill Tripp, Intertribal Timber Council
    My name is Bill Tripp I am the Director of Natural Resources and 
Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural 
Resources. I am delivering testimony here today on behalf of the 
Intertribal Timber Council, which is a nonprofit nation-wide consortium 
of Tribes dedicated to improving the management of natural resources of 
importance to Native American communities.
    It is a great pleasure to have the honor of addressing the House 
Natural Resources Committee on this important topic.
    Today, I wish to convey some impacts of the Slater Fire that 
occurred in 2020, and begin to lead the conversation toward long term 
solutions for the wildfire crises we now face. Events like the Slater 
Fire tend to perpetuate fear-driven motives in how we approach fire 
management. We cannot allow this fear to perpetuate a negative 
relationship with fire.
    Instead, in focusing on the beneficial aspects of fire, we can set 
the stage for averting future catastrophes. We can restore conditions 
conducive of increasing community-based and collaborative fire use 
across large landscapes. Such efforts are already underway, such as the 
Indigenous Peoples Burning Network and Western Klamath Restoration 
Partnership; those programs led by Tribes like the Karuk and San Carlos 
Apache; and those efforts being coordinated by non-governmental 
organizations like the Nature Conservancy's family of fire networks and 
the Forest Stewards Guild's all hands all lands burning program. These 
efforts are supported by a plethora of agency and institutional 
partners. However, we also need the help of Congress if we are going to 
create the positive and lasting change, we will need to maintain the 
resiliency we create together moving forward.
    The Slater Fire happened above the community of Happy Camp, 
California. It burned over 100,000 acres in less than 12 hours. It 
started by electrical infrastructure. It reset the entire Indian Creek 
watershed to a landscape filled with snags and brush, with very few 
pockets of large live trees remaining. Two lives were lost, and half 
the homes in Happy Camp burned down, rendering many homeless. Pets, 
livestock and wildlife had little chance of survival, many of which 
died. A third person died during the post fire recovery efforts. It 
will take multiple generations of people to restore this watershed to 
any semblance of what it once was.
    This year, many eastern states experienced smoke impacts like those 
we face in the west nearly every year. The Slater Fire produced 
readings on the Air Quality Index that exceed 850 for long durations. 
This is more than double the threshold considered Hazardous to human 
health.
    On June 29, 2023, CBS News reported Washington DC as having some of 
the worst air quality of the world. According to AirNow.Gov, Washington 
DC's Air Quality Index (AQI) was at 163 as of 7 a.m., which is 
considered unhealthy. However, this was less than 20% of the impact we 
experienced in a given day of the Slater Fire.
    The primary Karuk village in the Happy Camp area is called 
athivthuuvvuunupma, or place where hazel creek flows through. This 
Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge indicates that there was 
once a lot of healthy hazel to make baskets out of and to provide nuts 
for food. The best hazel comes from black oak stands, which grow on 
slopes where the sun shines most intensely, some of the driest, most 
fire prone places. Excluding fire from this kind of environment sets 
the stage for disastrous consequences. Every year, I witness fire being 
excluded from areas that need to burn for our homelands to remain 
survivable. Through most of my career I have watched the existing 
management paradigm put Native American Cultural Identity at risk. The 
occurrence of the Slater Fire had the worst consequence I have seen 
yet, but in the same vein signals an inflection point that serves to 
remind us that we must look to our past, be mindful of the changes 
coming in our future, resolve our differences, and rely on cultural 
foundations to lead us into a viable future. It is currently against 
state and federal law, regulation and policy to burn in the time of 
year we are supposed to burn black oak woodlands according to our 
Indigenous laws of the land; we need to bring alignment between these 
systems.
    California has a 1 Million acre treatment goal, with nearly half of 
the acres slated for beneficial fire use. A fraction of this is likely 
to get done given the recent trajectory. However, most people don't 
realize that burning 20 acres a day over a 14-day period 3 times a year 
in 120 different places would accomplish over 100,000 acres. This would 
amount to about 10% of the statewide goal on less than 1% of the target 
landscape. We need to pool our resources to restore conditions 
conducive of carrying out these historic fire regimes, with peoples of 
place, while enabling a growing cultural fire practitioner base to lead 
the charge in maintaining the resiliency we all create together. As 
Indigenous peoples, we did not ask for fire to be taken from us, it was 
taken without consent. It is our responsibility in the modern era to 
give it back to the people, or we will continue to have the negative 
consequences that come with fire events like the Slater Fire. None of 
us, not even with the most advanced fire management systems in the 
world that currently exist here in the United States, can do it alone.
    Congress has an important role in this effort, both by providing 
equitable funding to Tribes and by creating a legal framework that 
enables Tribal stewardship not just on Tribal lands, but across the 
landscape. Some specific recommendations can be found in the attached 
letter, from the Karuk Tribe to the U.S. Forest Service.
    I would like to thank the esteemed chair Bruce Westerman and rest 
of this committee for affording me this opportunity to speak. I am 
happy to field any questions you may have during this session or in 
following up as requested.

                                 *****

                               ATTACHMENT

                              Karuk Tribe

                             Happy Camp, CA

                                                  June 20, 2023    

Christopher Swanston
Director, Office of Sustainability and Climate
201 14th Street SW, Mailstop 1108
Washington, DC 20250-1124
Submitted via: www.regulations.gov

Re: Comments of the Karuk Tribe on Advanced Notice of Proposed 
        Rulemaking re Forest Service Organization, Functions, and 
        Procedures (Docket ID FS-2023-0006)

    Ayukii (Greetings) Mr. Swanston,

    Since time immemorial, the Karuk People have lived in the Klamath-
Siskiyou Mountains in the mid-Klamath River region of northern 
California. With an Aboriginal Territory that includes an estimated 
1.38 million acres, Karuk people historically resided in more than one 
hundred villages along the Klamath and Salmon Rivers and tributaries, 
and we continue to live here and practice our culture today. Thriving 
with an economy supported by rich natural endowments and a strong 
culture-based commitment to land stewardship, Karuk eco-cultural 
management has shaped the region's ecological conditions for millennia 
and continues to do so.

    The Klamath River and its tributaries, forests, grasslands, and 
high country are essential for the cultural, spiritual, economic, and 
physical health of Karuk people. Because the changing climate poses 
serious threats for Karuk culture, sovereignty, and all life on earth, 
it is essential that Karuk people be involved in management and co-
management of our lands of territorial affiliation. While a serious 
threat, the needs to address climate change is perhaps most 
productively viewed as an opportunity to assert and expand Karuk 
traditional practices, tribal management authority, and culture in 
recognition of Karuk tribal sovereignty.

    Karuk tribal knowledge and management principles can be used to 
mitigate, prepare for, and adapt to the growing impacts of climate 
change. However, we need our Forest Service partners to create the 
enabling conditions that support the Tribe to effectively engage on 
federally administered lands. Thus, the Karuk Tribe recommends the 
following reforms to the USDA Forest Service's policies and practices 
in order to promote climate resilience:
1. Cultural Burning: Separate and Distinct from Prescribed Fire

    The fire suppression and exclusion paradigm has adversely affected 
ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them, including the 
Karuk. This has contributed to the increasing scale and severity of 
wildfire and has made our landscapes and communities more vulnerable to 
the many effects of climate change (see more within the Karuk Climate 
Vulnerability Assessment and Karuk Climate Adaptation Plan--available 
here: https://karuktribeclimatechangeprojects.com/).
    One important step in the right direction would be for the US 
Forest Service to recognize cultural burning as separate and distinct 
from prescribed fire. Cultural burning is governed under the sovereign 
authority of tribes, and Indigenous cultural burning practices are 
distinguished from other types of fire management (e.g., local, state 
and federal agency) as they are applied within the context of 
traditional law, rights, objectives, and outcomes. The Karuk Tribe 
seeks to retain this practice and have our federal partners recognize 
our traditional forest management practice.

    Enabling and supporting Indigenous cultural fire practitioners to 
reinstate cultural fire regimes is critical to restore and maintain 
balanced ecosystem processes and functions and make them more resilient 
to climate change. It is also one step towards accounting for past 
social and ecological injustices. In addition to recognizing cultural 
burning as separate and distinct from prescribed fire, the USFS should 
enable and accommodate cultural burning by Tribes on all lands 
administered by the Forest Service that fall within the each Tribe's 
lands of territorial affiliation. Coordination and communication 
between the USFS and the interested Tribe(s) should be encouraged, but 
federal agency approval should not be required. This will be an 
important way to demonstrate co-management between the USFS and Tribes 
by creating spaces and structures for mutually-beneficial coordinated 
decision-making.
2. Agency-specific NEPA Regulatory Changes

    For millennia, Indigenous people have applied fire to landscapes 
across the United States in deliberate, frequent, and highly 
knowledgeable ways. As such, the intentional use of fire by Tribes 
should be considered a component of baseline environmental conditions, 
and not as a major federal action requiring National Environmental 
Policy Act (NEPA) review and assessment.

    Moreover, the Forest Service should consider how to partner with 
and enable Tribes to effectively prepare NEPA and other environmental 
documents when required for land management activities that can help us 
both adapt to and mitigate the climate crisis. Often the environmental 
compliance portion of a project can take years, and we are watching our 
landscapes (and communities like Happy Camp, CA) both accumulate fuels 
and then burn in high severity wildfire while we wait. Empowering 
Tribes to prepare cultural resource sections as well as entire NEPA 
documents, and to engage in planning activities in ancestral 
territories and across jurisdictions using tools such as Integrated 
Resource Management Plans, will help the Forest Service and other 
federal agencies better address the climate crisis.

    In order to do so, it will be critical that the USFS actively fill 
leadership positions with people willing to engage with Tribes and 
willing to lead the agency into a new era of co-management, co-
stewardship, and coordinated decision-making. Criteria for hiring and 
promoting Forest Supervisors, District Rangers, Regional leads, and 
other key leadership positions should reflect this as a priority.
3. Co-Management Agreement Templates

    The Administration has repeatedly highlighted the importance of 
Tribal co-stewardship and co-management, and has directed the Secretary 
of Agriculture to strengthen partnerships between Tribes and federal 
agencies. However, meaningful co-management has been hindered by 
federal law and unclear guidance. Agreements outside of the TFPA 
context have not been designed for work with Tribes. Thus, the Forest 
Service should examine the agreement structures they are currently 
using to work with tribes, and should then collaborate with tribes to 
develop co-management agreement templates that recognize tribal 
decision-making authority, tribal sovereignty, self governance, and 
self determination.

    Additionally, the USFS should assess hiring and promotions criteria 
and invest in the training and resources required to develop a 
workforce that is sufficiently knowledgeable, cooperative, and creative 
in order to meaningfully partner with Tribes on co-management 
agreements. The USFS should provide funding to tribal programs included 
in co-management agreements to allow tribes to carry out activities of 
mutual benefit to Tribes, the federal government, and the public. In 
short, it is essential for USFS to invest in the future of the Tribes 
and their workforces, while promoting co-management.
4. Planning Authority (IRMP)

    Effective collaboration and integration of Indigenous Knowledge 
into management practices on USFS lands depends not only on landscape-
scale project implementation but landscape-scale planning efforts and 
engagement with Tribes. This requires cross-boundary planning, burning, 
and land management. Currently, Integrated Resource Management Plans 
(IRMP) are a tool that allow for comprehensive management of natural 
resources on Tribal lands, and, in limited circumstances, federal lands 
adjacent to Tribal lands.

    Expansion of the use of IRMPs across boundaries and jurisdictions, 
including on USFS lands throughout Tribes' ancestral territories could 
promote cohesive, sustainable ecological restoration and climate 
resilience through effective planning and coordination across 
jurisdictions and in ways that honor and respect tribal sovereignty and 
Indigenous knowledge, practice, and belief systems. The Forest Service 
should explore how to better engage with this tool within its existing 
authority, and we would be happy to collaborate as a pilot example.
5. Reserved and Retained Treaty Rights

    Reserved, retained, and other tribal rights are often misunderstood 
and ignored in the context of Tribal sovereignty and land stewardship. 
Treaties generally outline the rights that Tribes give up in exchange 
for other benefits, actions, or commitments from the United States. Any 
rights not explicitly described in treaties are therefore retained, and 
must be respected by the U.S. Government. These rights may be applied 
both on land retained and land ceded throughout Tribes' lands of 
territorial affiliation, including land administered by the USFS.

    While some rights have been recognized and respected as retained by 
the USFS, there are a number of other rights that are also retained by 
Tribes, but not always recognized by the Forest Service. These include 
rights such as cultural burning, as well as the right to access and 
utilize traditional foods, fibers, and medicines.

    The USFS should, whenever appropriate, proactively seek out Tribal 
consultation to ensure that retained rights are upheld on land 
administered by the USFS that falls within Tribal lands of territorial 
affiliation, including those of cultural and customary use. The USFS 
should also identify potential barriers to the exercise of reserved, 
retained and other rights by Tribal members, including the right to 
cultural burning and access and resource utilization, and make clear to 
employees and representatives of the USFS that the exercising of these 
rights is welcome and encouraged.
6. Regenerative Economic Systems

    Current funding mechanisms for collaboration between Tribes and the 
USFS are incompatible with the concept of Tribal sovereignty, as 
implementation of tribal policies and priorities is heavily dependent 
on funder priorities, review, and approval. As the USFS seeks to 
integrate Indigenous Knowledge into its management practices, fiscal 
limitations on these activities and on Tribal authority to manage funds 
impacts the potential for sustainable co-management between Tribes and 
the USFS. Reliance on project-based grant funding, in particular, makes 
it difficult for Tribes to build stability and reclaim self-
sufficiency.

    Developing a stable, skilled land management workforce, for 
example, is challenging based on a system of project-based funding, 
given that positions cannot be guaranteed beyond the timeline of a 
given project. Members of the local Tribal community may be unable to 
accept the instability of project-based grant-funded positions as a way 
to build their careers, making it difficult to attract and retain a 
skilled Tribal workforce, while also creating challenges for Tribes 
seeking to build institutional knowledge. The accumulation of 
institutional knowledge, local workforce capacity, and financial 
resources over time is difficult to impossible within this funding 
paradigm.

    This is happening at a time when there is immense need for tribal 
leadership and tribal workforce to implement landscape-scale 
restoration of the ecological systems and fire regimes needed to ensure 
greater resilience in the face of climate change.

    In contrast, regenerative economic systems are built on the concept 
that tribal programs can and should eventually become self-sustaining 
or otherwise perpetuated. Instead of a linear system in which Tribes 
must receive and exhaust funding repeatedly, a regenerative system 
could follow various models, such as an endowment model, where income 
under Tribal management could be invested in order to provide cash-flow 
over time. Transitioning to regenerative economic systems will require 
transformative change. However, specific policy changes can promote 
Tribal sovereignty as well as collaboration for the purpose of 
landscape-scale stewardship. When creating or implementing funding 
programs and agreements, the Forest Service should keep these 
principles in mind, and consider innovative ways that tribes can be 
supported to re-invest in themselves and in tribal programs to create 
long-term sustainability, resilient tribal programs, and a stable 
tribal workforce.
7. Consultation Funding

    To effectively and meaningfully engage in Tribal consultation 
requests put forth by the Forest Service, Tribes must often dedicate 
significant time and resource capacity, which they often do not have to 
give. If the Forest Service wishes to equitably seek and integrate 
tribal consultation into agency functions, policies, and procedures 
moving forward, the USFS should consider providing funding to Tribes to 
enable meaningful participation.

    Tribal knowledge and management principles mitigate climate impacts 
for the benefit of Native and non-Native communities alike--so 
increased investment to develop reciprocal relationships between 
governments is critical to preserving social, economic, cultural, and 
ecological resilience to climate change.

    Yootva (thank you) for taking these recommendations into 
consideration. The Karuk people are a ``fix the world'' people, and we 
look forward to meaningful engagement with you all on these 
recommendations as the climate and wildfire realities we are facing 
require coordinated and effective action.

            Yootva (Thank you),

                                          Russell Attebery,
                                              Karuk Tribal Chairman

                                 ______
                                 

    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Tripp.
    And that concludes our witness testimony.
    I would again like to thank all of our witnesses for your 
fine testimony today and for the efforts you have put in to be 
here and to provide insight.
    We are now going to move to Member questions. I will 
recognize each Member for 5 minutes of questions. We will start 
with Mr. McClintock.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes.

    Mr. McClintock. Thank you very much.
    Supervisor Turnboo, you described the tragedy of the utter 
destruction of the county of Grizzly Flats. I described a 
categorical exclusion from NEPA that expedited forest thinning 
in Tahoe that was responsible for stopping the Caldor Fire 
short of South Lake Tahoe. You described the Trestle Project 
and the fact that it has been held up by 10 years.
    If that categorical exclusion authority had been available 
to the El Dorado National Forest as it has been for 7 years to 
the Tahoe Basin, would the town of Grizzly Flats have survived?
    Mr. Turnboo. Yes. The thing is, if you click on the link 
that I have on that presentation that I gave all of you, it 
talks about the Trestle Project.
    And the Forest Service even admitted that if they didn't do 
this project they would lose Grizzly Flats. Well, that is what 
happened, because they took too long and drug their feet. And 
they only did 14 percent of that over 20,000 acres. And if they 
would have had that project complete, it would have saved 
Grizzly Flats. The town would have not gone through that.
    Mr. McClintock. These restrictive laws and the endless 
litigation that they spawn could been put aside in favor of 
doing the forest management that would have saved the town of 
Grizzly Flats.
    Is this a question of placing green left ideology ahead of 
common sense?
    Mr. Turnboo. Exactly. And let me get back to it a little 
bit on a lot of this, like the Sierra Club, where these 
projects are put in place and then they stop it with lawsuits. 
And then it goes on and on and on, and then it brings it back 
again.
    If that stuff could stop, we wouldn't have the problems we 
have today.
    Mr. McClintock. I have to cut you off because my time is 
limited. I apologize for that.
    Dr. Daley, the private forestlands are not subject to the 
restrictive laws like NEPA that we have been discussing. By all 
accounts, they maintain their forestland in excellent 
condition. It is resilient. It is fire resistant. It is 
healthy. You could often tell the boundary line between the 
private and public lands by the condition of the forest on each 
side of the boundary lines.
    So, for those who say, well, that is climate change, how 
clever the climate to know exactly where the boundary lines 
are.
    Our private foresters maintain healthy and resilient 
forests and they make an awful lot of money doing that. Yet, by 
all accounts, the Federal lands are maintained in decrepit 
conditions and it costs us millions of dollars every year.
    How do you explain that mystery?
    Dr. Daley. I am not sure it is a mystery.
    And my example is, my Federal permit is checkerboarded with 
Sierra Pacific International. So, I have two landlords. One is 
the Federal Government. One is Mr. Emmerson with Sierra Pacific 
in checkerboard with no fences.
    In that fire scar where we take our cattle in December, 
Sierra Pacific has made a commitment to plant 3 million trees a 
year for 3 years--they have exceeded that goal, after removing 
the timber and being able to harvest it. It is not a pretty 
sight, I will be honest, to have all that timber gone, but 
there are now 9 million new trees and more coming because 
private lands could----
    Mr. McClintock. I observed the same thing when I toured the 
footprint of the King Fire 5 years after that fire had 
decimated the forest. The SPI lands were newly planted. They 
were green and growing. The Federal lands had been abandoned. 
There was brush buildup and dead trees now falling on top of 
that brush for a perfect fire stack for a second-generation 
fire.
    Mr. Bloom, we are told that our situation is due to a 
century of fire suppression, but fire suppression was only half 
of that equation. The other and more important half was you 
remove that excess timber so that it doesn't catch fire, so 
that you don't have to put out those fires. That was an 
equation that worked.
    Without removing the excess timber, it is going to burn. 
There is no doubt about that. That is the only other way it can 
come out of the forest.
    This ``fire is our friend'' ideology produced the Tamarack 
Fire. That is the one that smoldered for 10 days while the 
Forest Service took pictures of it for Facebook. Never bothered 
to drop a bucket of water on it. It exploded out of control on 
the 10th day and took out 70,000 acres of forestland. You just 
described that same ideology and the effect that that had on 
the Donnell Fire.
    Are we being too cavalier and careless using fire for 
forest management these days?
    Mr. Bloom. I think that fire has a big role to play in 
management of fuels, but I think it needs to be on our terms. I 
think land managers need to decide when to do controlled burns 
and when it is appropriate in a controlled fashion and not 
leave it up to fire crews to decide or a lightning strike or 
some random thing. I think it is a great thing and needs to be 
done but it has to be done on our terms, not at the whim of a 
fire crew.
    Mr. McClintock. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
    I will now turn to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Federal Lands from Wisconsin.
    Mr. Tiffany, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Daley, how many people were killed in the fires that 
you alluded to in your testimony?
    Dr. Daley. About 110 between the Camp Fire and the North 
Complex Fire.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, in other words, 110 Americans were killed 
as a result of improper forest management here in the United 
States of America.
    Dr. Daley. Communities destroyed, livelihoods destroyed, 
people lost, never to recover.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Turnboo, what does Grizzly Flats look like 
today?
    Mr. Turnboo. Grizzly Flats is devastated, is what it is. 
There are a lot of RVs, small trailers that are people living 
on their property. We are starting to rebuild a little bit. A 
few of the houses and stuff are coming back. But a lot of those 
people were underinsured.
    Mr. Tiffany. Is it safe to say that it has affected tourism 
and recreation in your area?
    Mr. Turnboo. Oh, definitely. It really has. We lost the 
only school we had out there. We had the only church that was 
out in Grizzly Flats. Also, it impacted the water agency.
    But not only that, right now I work with the Secretary of 
Ag and right now we are working with the Forest Service to 
build a community center so they have a sense of community and 
bring that community back together in Grizzly Flats.
    I spoke to the Secretary of Agriculture. We made this 
happen. And the Forest Service was very generous, giving the 
Grizzly Flats 5 acres so we can build that new community 
center.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Menetrey, why not move employees? You said 
in your testimony. Why not move employees within the Park 
Service?
    Mr. Menetrey. I believe I was talking about Forest Service.
    Mr. Tiffany. Forest Service.
    Mr. Menetrey. Well, because if you keep them until they 
finish the project that they were sent there to do and they get 
shuffled off to another situation instead of maybe providing 
some more employees for the other projects.
    Mr. Tiffany. So, are you saying, in instances churning 
employees by the Federal Government is actually not more 
efficient?
    Mr. Menetrey. Yes.
    Mr. Tiffany. And, in fact, is it inefficient?
    Mr. Menetrey. Inefficient, and we need more of them.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. White, why are insurance companies leaving 
California? What I am hearing from you is they will no longer 
provide policies for people in California. What is the reason 
behind that?
    Mr. White. I think there are a couple reasons. No. 1 is 
they need the higher premiums on the policies, and our 
California Insurance Commissioner is not allowing them to 
increase premiums.
    But the second is the fuel load around all of our 
communities, we have to manage it. We are doing a good job on 
the private side, doing a lot of fuel management projects with 
Fire Wise and other organizations. But there are 50 million 
acres of Federal lands that are prohibiting a lot of work.
    Mr. Tiffany. What is the impact then if you can't get 
insurance? What are you hearing from individuals that have been 
denied having insurance or they have had their policies pulled?
    Mr. White. People are having to self-insure or go to the 
state's last resort of last insurance, which is the State FAIR 
Plan, which is highly unfair.
    Mr. Tiffany. Does that put an additional burden on the 
taxpayers of California?
    Mr. White. It is a huge burden on the taxpayers of 
California.
    Mr. Tiffany. You said something about the lack of 
management leads to actually more ESA listings. Did I hear that 
correctly, and could you explain that?
    Mr. White. Correct. When we lose this habitat for these 
ESA-listed species, it burns up in a fire, so does that 
species. And it takes the remaining little bit of acreage and 
just exacerbates the issue. And same with species that are not 
listed yet. When we start losing that habitat for those 
species, it is going to produce those species to be listed.
    Mr. White. So, as a result of a lack of proper management, 
proper forest management, we are actually seeing more ESA 
listings?
    Mr. White. Correct.
    Mr. Tiffany. And we all know the Endangered Species Act, 
since we are in this great state, is the Hotel California, 
where you may enter and never leave, right?
    Mr. White. Correct. Less than 5 percent leave.
    Mr. Tiffany. Would you rather have a government program 
supporting you or be allowed to manage, as we saw decades ago 
when we had loggers, miners, mills, farmers, ranchers, guides, 
and all the rest? Would you rather have a government handout, 
or would you rather be allowed to be able to manage your 
enterprise to be able to be successful?
    Mr. White. Definitely be able to manage our enterprise to 
be successful, not looking for a government handout.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Chairman, I would just close by saying The 
Sacramento Bee, I think you alluded to what they said in 
regards to the environmental NGOs. They are actually destroying 
the environment all in the claim of protecting.
    I think The Sacramento Bee should also send that editorial 
that they put out to the current President of the United States 
after what he did with another million acres here in the United 
States of America this past week down in Arizona, where once 
again we are going to see an area that is not going to be 
managed appropriately. I think both the national environmental 
groups, as well as this President, need to see what is 
happening, because it is destroying America.
    And I would just say to all Americans out there, especially 
I think about my daughters who are very much environmentally 
conscious, like this generation is that is coming up that will 
lead America: You either change the management practices or 
places like Yosemite, one of the most beautiful places that we 
have here in America, are going to continue to be threatened.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, a 
freshman member of our Committee from the Central Valley.
    Mr. Duarte, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Duarte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am so honored to be 
up here not only among the fellow Congressmen and the Chairman, 
but a dream team of foresters and leaders here in the Sierra 
Nevada that know firsthand what is going on. And it is a real 
privilege to be here today.
    I will ask Mr. Bloom and Mr. Tripp, the folks involved in 
forest policy, the national forestlands, as I understand them 
from a Congressional Research Office report, are administered 
for sustained yields of multiple uses, including outdoor 
recreation, camping, hiking, hunting, et cetera, livestock 
grazing, timber harvesting, watershed protection, and fish and 
wildlife habitats.
    Are those, in your opinions, compatible uses?
    Mr. Bloom. Absolutely.
    Mr. Duarte. If I add to that list preservation of 
wilderness, do we now have a list of completely compatible 
uses?
    Mr. Bloom. Yes, that is exactly what the national forests 
should be.
    Mr. Duarte. Preservation of wilderness.
    Mr. Bloom. Yes, that is part of it.
    Mr. Duarte. Are we concerned that some of the preservation 
strategies involve no logging roads, no thinning, no active 
management of the wilderness designated areas?
    Mr. Daley, you are nodding. I will let you answer.
    Dr. Daley. It is one of my greatest frustrations, is in the 
effort to preserve, we don't conserve. In fact, we often 
destroy.
    It is intended to do that, and I think well meaning very 
often that we need to preserve it. But when you begin to 
preserve, a good example you talked about that or mentioned 
that, quickly, is when you take out every road post and say we 
are preserving it, there is no access, how are you going to 
fight the fire if it is there? How are you going to have 
access?
    I have watched the Forest Service step in after a fire 
where they had built fuel breaks that would allow them to 
protect the next fire coming through, and what they have done 
is they have destroyed those fuel breaks because that wasn't 
natural.
    So, what we did is we spent taxpayer dollars to build the 
fuel break and then taxpayer dollars to destroy the fuel break 
6 months later. It is absolutely illogical.
    Mr. Duarte. Thank you.
    Rural communities have been affected in many ways by forest 
policy. The preservation strategies have destroyed our logging 
mills, destroyed our loggers. If you want to go log and get 
busy and start fixing the forest with commercial systems, let 
some guys make a buck, can these family businesses attract the 
bank capital, see it as worthwhile to invest their own capital, 
attract the human capital they need?
    How are we going to recapitalize these industries to get 
through the hundreds of millions of acres of backlogs of 
unhealthy forests that we have today?
    I will take any answer.
    Mr. Turnboo. Well, a good example, we had 28 mills in El 
Dorado County. We now have one, which is a planing mill. We had 
numerous logging companies throughout El Dorado County. We 
managed our forest very, very well at that particular time. We 
took out 224,000 board feet, cut board feet of timber out of 
the national forest in 1994.
    When all the regulations and everything were put in place, 
in 1995 we put out less than 10,000 cut board feet.
    We need to bring logging back, but there has to be a 
guarantee. I have talked several times this year to Pacific. If 
they can't get a guarantee of how much stock they could get 
from the forest, they are not going to bring a mill back to El 
Dorado County.
    So, there has to be a guarantee, they have to work 
together, because we need a mill back in El Dorado County. We 
really do.
    We are working on a biomass facility right now, which is 
going to turn debris into biodiesel. It has already been put in 
place. It is a great thing that we have done. And this is one 
of the things I have talked about for several years.
    Mr. Duarte. Thank you.
    So, who of our panel of guests here, speakers, is a multi-
generational family operation?
    Mr. Turnboo. Well, yes, there you go. Yes.
    Mr. Duarte. So, we might destroy the Sequoias in our 
generation, we are trying not to, but we might, simply for not 
cleaning litter out from under them and putting a few 
firebreaks and thinning materials around them. Trees from the 
time of Christ, we might be the generation to destroy it.
    We probably have destroyed to a great extent our forests. 
The fire map you showed, those are moonscapes. I have driven 
through them. I farm up there. It is horrifying moonscapes, 
actually worse than what we drive through here, going from 
parts of Yosemite. These are actually more severe.
    Are our grandkids going to listen to us when we blame the 
Democrats?
    Dr. Daley. My comment would be, I wish we could quit 
blaming people and look for solutions.
    Mr. Duarte. Right.
    Dr. Daley. And if we can do that in California, which is 
not an easy place to do that, I would encourage federally to 
try to make that work.
    We have people. I have the Newsom Administration, including 
four of their cabinet members and now the head of the U.S. 
Forest Service, who was head of Region 5, come up and tour with 
us. And until they saw it, they didn't get it. And now they are 
fans of grazing all of a sudden.
    They still haven't solved the problems because SPI was with 
us. And SPI said, they said: Will you take this timber? They 
said: If you will guarantee us the timber, we will build a mill 
tomorrow. We will build mills wherever. And the Forest Service 
couldn't do it. That would be helpful.
    Mr. Duarte. So, the ping-pong match, you are saying, 
conservative policies, let's go get the material. 
Preservationist policies, let's stop everything. That 
absolutely makes impossible long-term capital investment, human 
capital, financial capital, social capital.
    We have to get to a point where we respect the loggers, the 
ranchers as the true stewards of these lands or we are simply 
going to lose them to catastrophic fire.
    Dr. Daley. Correct.
    Mr. Turnboo. Our family, like I said, have been loggers for 
generations.
    Mr. Duarte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from the state of 
Washington, who is also the Chair of the Western Caucus.
    Mr. Newhouse, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Newhouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I want to say thank you to all of our witnesses here 
today for coming and sharing with us your experiences and your 
perspectives.
    As I look out over the crowd in front of me and watch the 
squirrels darting in between all your legs--I hope you are 
paying attention to that--what we can see from here is the 
sheer rock wall, just a majestic sight. And I have to think, 
not to lose the opportunity to compare, it is symbolic of 
sometimes the walls that we run into in Washington, DC when we 
try to make substantive changes and improvements.
    But hopefully, the majesty that we are witness to with the 
trees and the mountains and the waterfalls also gives us hope 
and inspiration to do the hard work and be persistent and to 
keep at our job so that we can make those improvements.
    We have heard a lot about the damages that have been seen 
here in California, here at Yosemite. I have to tell you, too, 
in my home district in central Washington State we are seeing 
it too. In fact, just last month we lost 7,000 acres in 
Klickitat County. There is a large fire up north near Oroville 
that is spreading across into Canada. Like somebody said, these 
fires know no borders.
    We are also seeing the impact to human health, to our 
agricultural industry. As a wine grape grower, I can 
sympathize, Mr. White, with what you are seeing. We are seeing 
the exact same thing.
    So, as you can tell, we are looking for answers, for 
solutions, to put our heads together--literally--to come up 
with what it is that we need to do to improve these situations 
that we face. These fires are becoming all too frequent, 
becoming all too often, and all too catastrophic.
    One of the things that we have tools at our disposal are 
aerial fire trucks, and they are truly a huge asset when 
responding to these fires.
    One of the things that I have learned is that response 
times, if there are expectations set, results improve. The 
National Fire Protection Association developed some standards, 
both nationally and internationally. My state, Washington, I 
think California has adopted similar standards, and they 
provide quick responses to save property, to save lives, to 
save animals.
    I want to say too that many members on this Committee, many 
members of the Western Caucus have come forward with ideas to 
improve our response to wildfires and improve the situation as 
it relates to our management of our forests.
    I just wanted to throw out a couple of questions. I was 
thinking about the county supervisors, but anybody, if you have 
any ideas, who would like to chime in as well.
    Could you speak to some of the hurdles that you experience, 
regulatorily, laws that are in place that prevent responding to 
fires, that tie your hands behind your backs to where we cannot 
do what we need to do?
    So, some specific things that we could take back with us to 
Washington, DC and make some positives changes.
    I will start with you, Supervisor Menetrey.
    Mr. Menetrey. Thank you.
    As I mentioned in my oral testimony, the inaction on 
immediate suppression, I don't know that that is a law, but it 
is a decision that is made when a fire is ignited in the Forest 
Service. Our Ferguson Fire was ignited off a roadway down here, 
and because the forest ran for acres, and acres, and acres they 
let it go until it got so big that it was out of control.
    So, I would say the Forest Service adopting an ``immediate 
suppression'' attitude would be huge for my community.
    Mr. Newhouse. So, some of these standards, like the NFPA 
standards, would be a good thing.
    Mr. Menetrey. Yes.
    Mr. Newhouse. Mr. Turnboo, any ideas?
    Mr. Turnboo. One of the things is Tom McClintock brought a 
bill that tailed around the county, and we are talking about 
the 10 a.m. policy, and that fire needs to be suppressed by 10 
a.m. the next day.
    We had this ``let it burn'' policy that has been in effect 
for quite a while. And I remember getting an e-mail from Randy 
Moore, which I got on the 23rd when the Caldor Fire was still 
burning. And basically he said that we are not going to go back 
to the ``let it burn'' policy, but we are also not going to go 
back to the 10 a.m. policy.
    The deal with the ``let it burn'' policy has been a problem 
for decades, is what it has been, and that is why we have these 
horrific fires, because we don't get the firefighters to be 
able to suppress these fires right away.
    That is what happened in the Caldor Fire. In the Caldor 
Fire, there was no response for a few days. If they would have 
had a fuel break, if they would have put a fuel break in with 
dozers or whatever, they would have saved Grizzly Flats. But 
they didn't act on it. There are actually dispatch records, if 
you look up ``Grizzly Flats burning,'' Channel 10 did a 
documentary.
    The dispatch records--I got them because I asked for a FOIA 
request and I didn't get it because they said it was under 
investigation. But I got the records and it says that they told 
those people to go home. They called all these firefighters off 
at around 5 p.m., so there was nobody that would be out there 
to be able to save the residents in Grizzly Flats.
    Mr. Newhouse. We have to be able to act as fast as the 
fire.
    Well, I appreciate very much all of your input. I wish we 
had more time. But, as Mr. Tripp said, this conversation will 
continue. And I look forward to working with you in into the 
future.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 
Valadao, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Valadao. Well, thank you, Chairman.
    I want to first start by thanking the Chairman and this 
Committee. This is the second time I have had the honor of 
sitting on this Committee. I am a guest today because I am an 
appropriator, but it really means a lot to us in California 
that you have taken the time to at least do two of these in 
California. We did one on water a few months back, and now we 
are doing one on forestry. And the fact that we have a few 
Members from outside of the state to come out and listen as 
well is important.
    The area that I have the honor of representing, we don't 
have forest fires in that part. And when we hear these stories, 
and, Mr. Turnboo, in your testimony, the letters from these 
constituents who have lost their family homes are devastating.
    And we experience when those fires are happening, 
obviously, we are losing firefighters to come up and help fight 
some of these fires, but we are struggling with some air 
quality issues. We are struggling with a lot of issues that 
were affecting us, obviously, food quality, like the wine grape 
growers, obviously, the loss of production if it is not on your 
solar, but on anything else.
    But it didn't really hit me until I heard, I think it was 
Mr. McClintock at some point or Mr. LaMalfa in Washington say, 
well, all that smoke you are burning are our folks' dreams, 
businesses, everything they had worked so hard to build.
    And it really should, I think, affect a lot of people a lot 
more. It is going to have a devastating impact, obviously, on 
our health in the valley, it is going to have a devastating 
impact on our economy in the country, and it is going to have 
these things that are going to make some real differences. But 
you have homes that have been in families for hundreds of years 
that have burned.
    And I know that a lot of it has been addressed up until 
this point where we talked about investment from Mr. Duarte. He 
brought up, how do we attract some of this investment? And I 
know some of the regulations we are going to struggle with.
    But what about the next generation? What are we doing to 
do?
    And I wanted to address this question first off to Mr. 
White. You served as the Chairman of the California Young 
Farmers and Ranchers Committee. According to the U.S. 
Department of Ag, the average age of a farmer is 57 years old, 
which, as I am getting older, doesn't seem that old. It is 
getting there.
    But we need to recruit and retain young farmers and 
ranchers. And when we see the inability to attract investment, 
the hurdles, as Mr. Newhouse explained, sometimes this feels 
like what we have to get through just to get into the business 
or to try to continue to do business in the state of California 
or in the Federal Government.
    What are we doing? Are we doing enough to attract these 
young farmers? And when they see what we are dealing with, what 
their parents are dealing with, what their neighbors are 
dialing with, what do we need to do different to be able to 
attract the next generation and continue or at least try to 
enter into this world of agriculture, ranching, and play a role 
in trying to protect this beautiful state that we have?
    Mr. White. I think the younger generation, we see our 
parents and grandparents dealing with regulation. We are being 
over-regulated to death, and it is killing our economies and 
the industry.
    The forest is a great example, like we talked about, is all 
the sawmills have gone except for the guys that have private 
land and no one is going build a sawmill to take lumber out of 
our national Forest Service unless they can get contracts with 
the Forest Service, the Federal Government, to produce lumber 
out of that.
    So, I think that is the biggest challenge, is the 
regulation and lack of knowing tomorrow from our government.
    Mr. Valadao. And, Dr. Daley, I think you are fourth 
generation?
    Dr. Daley. Fifth.
    Mr. Valadao. So, you are fifth.
    Dr. Daley. Yes.
    Mr. Valadao. So, your next generation, are they going to 
follow in your footsteps?
    Dr. Daley. I have one back on the ranch who probably 
questions, he is probably glad I am here today, that is easier, 
after he finishes the university. And I have a daughter who is 
a veterinarian and the youngest one, back from the Army, 
deciding what to do.
    But this idea of a track, it has always been difficult in 
agriculture. I don't think that that has changed. I think there 
are still a lot of people committed and wanting to do so.
    Frankly, it is capital as much as it is regulation. It is 
both, which makes it extremely challenging for young people to 
become engaged.
    And then, if you are not smart enough to have only one 
child and you have three, there is a complexity of 
transitioning and legacy planning, which is an entirely 
different question as you move to the next level.
    Mr. Valadao. My family farm is in the Central Valley, and 
that is one of the things that we struggle with. We see 
consolidation everywhere.
    And one of the things I always like to point out to my 
friends across the aisle is the amount of regulation, the 
amount of bureaucratic red tape, you have these farmers, you 
have these business owners who just can't deal with it anymore 
and they end up selling out.
    And the guys that get bigger are the ones that can afford 
to hire the consultants, the attorneys, and all the different 
folks to get them across all those different types of whatever 
permit or whatever agency they need to deal with.
    And it is the same thing that is affecting the regulations. 
It is the same thing that is affecting the investment from the 
business. But the small farmer just doesn't see that 
opportunity anymore, and it is just so difficult to push back. 
And we have to continue to work on that.
    And I don't know if you have any closing ideas while I 
still have a few seconds.
    Dr. Daley. Well, just one of the things that you mentioned, 
real quickly.
    The water quality issue I think is one that we haven't 
addressed. I am at Lake Oroville, Lake Shasta, state water 
projects, Federal water projects. All those dead animals, 
frankly, all that timber went into Lake Oroville, which goes 
throughout the state of California. So, it is everybody's 
problem, not just mine.
    Mr. Valadao. And in my part of California, when we had the 
devastation with all the water coming in, the flooding that 
ended up at the lake bottom, a lot of the water came in, 
brought a lot of debris. Some of it was trees and I saw TVs out 
in the middle of fields as well, and garbage bags, and things 
like that.
    But all of that went over the top of the reservoirs on the 
overflows, went into the canals, and started to create these 
little mini-dams, which then changed the way water was flowing 
through some of those rivers. And then it would just flood out 
farms and communities, and I had entire communities under 
water. And it was frustrating to see.
    And, sadly, it is all the same thing. It is regulation 
restricting us the ability to manage our waterways, or our 
mountains, our ranchlands, whatever it may be.
    Mr. Chairman, again, I am out of time. I appreciate the 
opportunity, and I yield back.
    The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
    That leaves me with 5 minutes for questioning that I will 
yield to myself.
    And to give you a heads-up, my questioning is going to be 
easy because I am going to give each of you about 30 seconds to 
tell us anything you didn't get to tell us or any final 
thoughts that you might have or suggestions you might have on 
top of the great suggestions you have already given us.
    And I just want to let you know how much I appreciate each 
one of your testimonies.
    Dr. Daley, you hit on something that was a little bit of a 
conundrum for me about having this hearing here where 
everything is beautiful. And I talked to staff about, well, 
maybe we should go to one of these devastated areas.
    But also to your point, I want us to convey a message of 
fixing it in the future; where we can be, not where we are. I 
think everybody that cares about this issue understands the 
devastation of these catastrophic wildfires.
    And actually, as somebody who studied forestry in graduate 
school, as I drove up Highway 41 to the park and I saw the 
massive fire scars as we toured in the park yesterday, one of 
the most iconic places on the planet has been ravaged by 
wildfire. You get outside the park and the Forest Service, and 
it is even worse. We can do better than that.
    Mr. Menetrey, you mentioned action/no action. We have had 
this in bills, and we can't get that passed through Congress. 
And it brings out an important point.
    Forests are dynamic. They are living organisms. They change 
every day. They compete for growing space. They compete for 
water and nutrients.
    And we can say we are not going to manage, but that is a 
management decision, and that is the management decision that 
has been made. That is something we will continue to push for. 
It needs to be in the NEPA analysis to say, OK, here is what 
happens if you do the management, here is what happens if you 
don't do the management. And right now the litigants are using 
that to their advantage because the courts do not consider what 
happens if you don't do the management.
    Mr. White, you talked about losing 22 insurance companies 
in California. That is a major issue. Those companies didn't 
leave California because they don't want to make money. They 
left California because they can't make money writing policies. 
Their actuaries are telling them: You have to leave here, you 
have to leave a market, you have to shrink your business 
because you can't make a living here.
    Mr. Tripp, you talked about tribal involvement that is so 
important; talked about affordable housing. The United States 
is the largest importer of timber in the world. While we leave 
it in the forest and let it burn up, we could be meeting 
housing needs.
    There are so many things that we benefit from a healthy 
forest, and we have given agencies those authorities.
    Mr. McClintock's bills that have proven that successful, 
sometimes they get utilized, sometimes they don't. The 2018 
Farm Bill, we gave the Forest Service a 20-year stewardship 
contract agreement. Because of those companies that left, 
because there is no timber here, they are not going to build 
the 200 or 300 million-dollar facility if they can't get the 
timber to put in it.
    So, we said you can sign a 20-year stewardship contract. We 
did that in 2018. There is yet to be one single 20-year 
stewardship contract executed by the Forest Service. It is 
frustrating. But we have to keep working, and we can't lose 
hope.
    Mr. Tripp, we will start with you. Any last comments or 
observations?
    Mr. Tripp. Yes. Thank you.
    I would just like to add that here, a year or two following 
the Slater Fire, there were some additional fires in and around 
the community of Happy Camp on the other side of the river.
    The priority was to get those ones out next to the 
community. And that was a great, great decision. But part of 
that decision was to get out into the wilderness and put three 
fires out that had in areas that have burned four times in the 
past 20 years and were close as they can get to their natural 
fire regimes.
    And that kind of decision can also be a mistake. Maybe in 
that situation with the amount of resources we had, getting 
those fires out small and fast is the right decision in that 
moment. But not having the ability to get back there in the 
fall and relight some of those places and allow fire to 
function in its role on that landscape is the type of thing 
that would lead to future devastating consequences.
    So, I would just ask that we consider that side of the 
discussion as well as the conversation progresses.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Tripp.
    Mr. Bloom, you made an important point about the Rim Fire, 
I believe it was the Rim Fire, and the failure to use fire 
retardant because of the scenic river. As you make your final 
remarks, could you tell everyone what the main ingredient in 
fire retardant is that we are so worried about?
    Mr. Bloom. It is mainly just a fertilizer.
    The Chairman. Right. Exactly.
    Mr. Bloom. I would start with things that you can fix now.
    I would amend NEPA to make thinning, grazing, and that sort 
of thing to reduce fuel loads easier to get through.
    Change the Forest Service's mission statement in fire back 
to suppression so that we can stop these fires.
    Definitely shorten the process to allow controlled burning 
and reduce fuel loads.
    They also need to change their equipment hiring process. It 
is very messed up. The state has a pretty good model where they 
can hire local equipment when the fire first starts and then 
transition to their longer-term hire list, where the Feds seem 
to want to go off their list. So, they may have to bring a 
bulldozer from Arizona clear to California to work on the fire.
    There are some things like that that we can change 
relatively soon that would make a big difference.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. White.
    Mr. White. I would say when the Forest Service allows these 
fires to get as big as they get and then they escape forest, 
national land, then they start calling CAL FIRE and the rest to 
come help them.
    And when all those resources leave our communities to come 
up and help solve a problem that was created because we just 
let it keep burning in the national lands, that is when what 
happened with us in 2020 in Napa, we had the lightning fires 
and there were no resources. Everybody was out on multiple 
fires throughout the state. And it was farmers and ranchers 
with bulldozers and water trucks protecting houses. We lost 
some, but we saved a lot.
    And I would just leave with you a wildfire is driven by 
three things: topography, weather, and fuel. We can't control 
the topography, we can't control the weather, but we can 
control the fuel, and we have not controlled the fuel.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Dr. Daley.
    Dr. Daley. We have had good discussions regarding pre-fire 
treatment: logging, thinning, mastication. We have talked very 
little about post-fire management, and that is extreme 
frustration.
    We have also talked about NEPA reform. You folks, bless you 
for trying, but I have been talking about that every time I 
went to DC for a long time, and I don't see where there is 
movement. It just seems like a brick wall. So, we don't get 
change.
    I would at least ask maybe minor things. Mr. McClintock 
addressed it briefly in terms of categorical exclusions. Why 
isn't there a categorical exclusion for post-fire remediation 
immediately, because that is what we are not doing.
    In our landscape, the Forest Service has done nothing. They 
finally have a salvage. It is so late, they are just going to 
pile and burn 300 feet on either side of one road out of 40,000 
acres. That is all they are going to treat because there is no 
categorical solution.
    The Forest Service's hands are tied there. They said after 
a certain time we are going to have to go through NEPA. Well, 
at that point there is no value in the timber. The landscape 
has set itself up for catastrophic wildfire again.
    I don't expect NEPA reform. I wish for it. I doubt it. I 
would like a categorical exclusion post-fire so we can quickly 
get in there, do what we need to do without waiting.
    The Chairman. Good observation. Good forest management 
would say you just go regenerate the forest.
    You may be surprised, in the debt limit bill we actually 
got some pretty significant NEPA reform, saying you can only go 
1 year and 75 pages on an environmental assessment or a maximum 
of 2 years and up to 300 pages on an environmental impact 
statement. That is the law of the land right now. It was passed 
on a bipartisan basis. It will be interesting to see if that 
gets executed.
    Supervisor Turnboo.
    Mr. Turnboo. I think we all need to be good stewards of the 
land, and I think that is what we got away from. And the 
problem is we need to bring logging back, good forest 
management, attack these fires. When it comes to these roads, 
especially in these forests, to make sure that we have adequate 
roads, especially if we do have a wildfire, to be able to get 
there.
    During the Caldor Fire, there were a lot of roads that were 
washed out, and the Forest Service didn't maintain them. That 
was one of the reasons why they didn't get to the Caldor Fire 
quick enough. That is one of the reasons.
    So, like I said, we just need to be good stewards, and we 
need to focus on that.
    The Chairman. Supervisor Menetrey.
    Mr. Menetrey. Thank you, sir.
    Yes, I think that where the forest is approachable for some 
of the things that we have talked about--mechanical thinning, 
controlled burns, forest management--that is awesome.
    But in the areas--and you guys have been up here a couple 
days now--where the terrain doesn't allow for access, again, I 
will say it, we need immediate suppression. Because once that 
fire gets big, the smoke takes over, the air assets can't see 
where they need to go, and it is just disastrous.
    So, I think it is an all-of-the-above activity. But 
suppression is my big deal, immediate.
    Thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    And I would encourage members of the public and the 
audience to fill out comment cards on the table on the left 
when you leave today. And I would again like to thank all the 
witnesses for their valuable testimony and the Members for 
their questions.
    Members of the Committee may have some additional questions 
for our witnesses, and we will ask that they respond to these 
in writing.
    Under Committee Rule 3, members of the Committee must 
submit questions to the Committee Clerk by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, 
August 16, 2023. The hearing record will be held open for 10 
business days for those responses.
    If there is no further business, without objection, the 
Committee on Natural Resources stands adjourned.

    [Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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