[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 74 (Thursday, May 23, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5520-S5521]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             FOREST HEALTH

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, within an hour or so, we will be adjourning 
and out for the Memorial Day recess. But when we return, it is my plan 
to mark up legislation in the Public Lands and Forestry Subcommittee 
that I chair, dealing with forest health, the health of the forests of 
our country.
  For well over a decade now, we have studied the issue of how to 
manage our forests in light of the recurrence of wild storm style 
forest fires that continue to devastate our forests across the Pacific 
Northwest and across the Southwest every time we get into a dry period, 
especially the kind the Southwest, New Mexico and Arizona and Colorado, 
are experiencing at this moment.
  What we have found, Mr. President, is that in our great ability to 
put out fires, we have allowed to build up on our forest floors, 
massive amounts of fuel in the form of dead and dying trees as a result 
of bug kill, as a result of fungus, or simply as a result of the 
overpopulation of our trees and therefore their death because of lack 
of moisture. In my State of Idaho and across the inland West, where 
before man came to that region we had tremendously healthy forests and 
populations of trees of 40 or 50 or 60 trees per acre, now, because of 
our ability to put out fires, we are finding that we have 300 and 400 
trees per acre. Of course, there is only so much moisture. When we get 
into a drought cycle, there is not enough moisture to keep all of those 
trees alive.
  What we are finding is that before we had this tremendous ability to 
put out fires, fires would come along on a relatively regular basis, 
caused by lightning strikes or actually caused by native Americans who 
saw the useful tool of fire. It would burn at a low rate, at a low 
pace, burn off the shrubbery and the brush, allow the mature trees to 
stand and allow young trees that had reached a certain age to survive. 
That kept the forests, primarily of the West, in a very productive and 
rather pastoral form.
  But that changed and it has changed dramatically over the last 50 
years, as we learned to put out fires. But we did not go in and do what 
Mother Nature was doing, and that was to thin trees or to take down the 
underbrush. As a result of that, we have had a massive fuel loading in 
many of the forests of the West and Southwest.
  Mr. President, you and I have witnessed, in the last several months, 
fires in New Mexico and Arizona and now in Colorado that, by our forest 
scientists'

[[Page S5521]]

estimation, are the most intense and hottest wild fires we have ever 
experienced. As a result, Mother Nature is not served well. These fires 
devastate the forests, leaving not even a snag standing, destroy the 
ecosystems, and scald the soil in a way there is little to no recovery 
for a period of years and years. Those are not normal fires. They are 
abnormal fires, as a result of massive fuel buildup.
  I was visiting with the Senator from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, 
about the fires in his State. One of those areas that was burned had 
been devastated by beetles. Better than 50 percent of the stand was 
dead. Yet, because of current law and because of certain interest 
groups, we were not allowed to go in and thin and clean and allow new 
growth to start. As a result of that, fire swept through there and 
destroyed the whole area.
  S. 391, the bill that I have worked for over a year to craft, 
visiting with scientists, holding hearings, and making sure we build a 
strong bipartisan effort, better known as forest health legislation, 
the kind I want to mark up as soon as we get back here in early June 
and bring it to the floor for a debate, hopefully it can become law and 
become the public policy and a new management tool for our U.S. Forest 
Service.
  It would allow the Forest Service to go in and look at these lands 
and under current environmental law assure they have the flexibility to 
go in and thin and remove brush and actually even use fire in a 
selective way, to assure that our forests can regain their health and 
regain their vitality in an environmental way and not be swept away and 
destroyed, as the forests we have seen under fire in the last few weeks 
throughout the Southwest. Of course, in the State of Colorado last 
week, when man got in the way of the fire, or man's dwellings, they, 
too, were swept away, as was true in the State of Idaho in 1994 when we 
saw wildfires, as a result of our forest health, that were beyond man's 
recognition.
  So I hope when we come back, we can join the wisdom of the Spokesman-
Review newspaper that editorialized yesterday in my area, in the inland 
West, saying that we ought to pass S. 395, we ought to make good public 
policy, and we ought to allow, once again, strong multiple-use 
environmental standards to return to our public forests and to the 
management of those public forests. So it is my wish we mark up S. 395 
and move it to become public law.
  I hope in early June we can have it here on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate for a good debate and passage.
  I yield the remainder of my time.

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