[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 91 (Thursday, July 14, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
             IDAHO'S FORESTS: ACT NOW OR RISK CONFLAGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Idaho [Mr. LaRocco] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaRocco. Mr. Speaker, having just returned from Idaho following 
the July 4 break, I rise to convey to my colleagues a sense of urgency 
about the declining health of national forests in my State and 
throughout the West.
  An aerial inspection of the Boise, Payette and Clearwater National 
Forests revealed a disaster waiting to happen. I personally viewed 
overly-dense stands of trees, well outside their historical range of 
variability, extremely high fuel loads where mortality has outstripped 
decomposition, and forests riddled with dead and dying trees.
  The statistics are startling and telling. On the Payette's timber 
land, average mortality is 407 board feet per acre, while growth is 
only 248 board feet. Mortality figures on the Boise are even worse. 
Between 1988 and 1993, the forest lost more than 400,000 trees on more 
than 1 million acres of affected forest.
  The Intermountain Research Station has found that from the late 
1500's to the late 1800's, stand densities in the Boise basin ranged 
from 6 to 28 drought- and fire-resistant Ponderosa pine per acre. In 
1993, stand densities have reached 533 trees per acre, most of which 
are drought-intolerant Douglas-firs and 60 percent of which are dead.
  If these forests begin burning, they risk making the 1992 ``Foothills 
Fire'' which burned 260,000 acres on the Boise National Forest, look 
like a bonfire. The only thing between Idaho's forests and disaster is 
a lightening strike.
  With the build up of fuel loads, the size of fires has greatly 
increased in recent years. For example, between the years 1955 and 1985 
the average number of acres burned by forest fires on the 2.5 million 
acre Boise National Forest was 3,000 acres per year. In the 5 years 
from 1986 to 1992, the annual average has shot up to 56,000 acres, due 
to the overly dense stands, and drought conditions.
  In light of this critical situation, and the recent devastating 
wildfire in Colorado, I am here to encourage the administration and 
Congress in the strongest possible terms to address Idaho's serious 
forest health problems immediately.
  Mr. Speaker, the tragic fire in Colorado, where 14 brave souls 
sacrificed their lives to protect our natural resources, is a warning 
to us all this year. The warning in 1992 was the Foothills Fire on the 
Boise National Forest. To ignore the condition of our Nation's forests 
amounts to silvicultural malpractice.
  Last June, at my request, the Assistant Secretary of Natural 
Resources and Environment for the Department of Agriculture, Jim Lyons, 
toured Idaho's Federal forests and found them to be a ``tinderbox 
waiting to explode.'' And following the disastrous fire in Colorado, 
the New York Times quoted Assistant Secretary Lyons as stating, ``We 
need to do prescribed burning, more salvage, more harvesting of dead 
and dying timber, which is brought about by disease and insects.''
  In a recent letter to Assistant Secretary Lyons, I recommended forest 
health pilot projects for Idaho's failing forests. Overstocked stands 
could be thinned using methods which would be light on the land and 
which would bring stand densities to within their historical range of 
variability. In doing so, stands could be created which are more 
resistant to fires, similar to those which developed naturally before 
years of fire suppression and outmoded logging practices led to large-
scale forest type conversions.
  Mr. Speaker, I am satisfied the scientific evidence justifies such a 
project. In addition to the science, the Forest Service is developing a 
solid portfolio of forest health projects where stands have been 
thinned by removing smaller diameter and diseased trees. The 
accumulation of dead material has been reduced, producing a healthy 
overstory and a more fireproof stand.
  For example, in a place called Tiger Creek, shortly before the 1992 
Foothills Fire, the woods were first thinned of underbrush and then 
lightly burned by the Forest Service. At the height of its intensity, 
the Foothills Fire raced through the treetops until it reached the 
Tiger Creek site, where it subsided--and the thinned woods survived 
intact.
  The administration has indicated it possesses much of the authority 
needed to implement measures included in my bill, H.R. 229, the 
National Forest Health Act of 1993, and I have strongly urged them to 
do so without delay.
  My bill would authorize the Secretaries of Agriculture and the 
Interior to carry out forest health improvement programs, in 
consultation with State and Federal fish, wildlife, and cooperative 
forestry experts, to reduce further damaged to forest resources and 
promote management of sustained, diverse, and healthy forest 
ecosystems.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe this is clearly an issue of pay now or pay 
later. As my colleagues know, each year a great amount of Federal 
funding is needed to combat wildfires, and most of the time this type 
of default management is accomplished under dangerous situations where 
firefighters lives are put at risk and resource values are lost or 
greatly reduced.
  In the 1992 Foothills Fire, suppression costs and emergency 
rehabilitation for the 140,000 acres of Boise National Forest land 
burned was $24 million, or roughly $170 per acre. The cost of 
precommercial thinning of the Tiger Creek area, which the fire skirted, 
was only $125 per acre. And the commercial thinning in the area 
returned $30 to $1,500 per acre to the Forest Service, dependent on the 
timber market.
  I would much rather have the Forest Service use Federal dollars for 
sound pro-active management of our national forests, like in the Tiger 
Creek area, to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
  At last November's workshop on Assessing Forest Ecosystem Health in 
the Inland West, the scientists concluded, ``the costs and risks of 
inaction are greater than the costs and risk of remedial action.'' Mr. 
Speaker, I could not agree more.
  I believe the forest health situation in the West warrants the 
immediate attention of both Congress and the administration, and I urge 
my colleagues to join me in the coming months to assure that happens.

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