[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 101 (Tuesday, September 5, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7967-S7974]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FOREST FIRES

  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I asked for time in our schedule today so 
that I might be joined with other Western Senators and those Senators 
concerned about the catastrophic fires that have been sweeping across 
public lands in the West for the last month and a half.
  Coincidentally, today is the first day of school across our Nation. 
Many of our children in elementary schools are going to be asked by 
their teachers: What did you do during your summer vacation? For the 
next few moments, I will suggest to you that this is my opening speech 
following my summer vacation. Let me tell you what I did during my 
summer vacation.
  I went home to my beautiful State of Idaho and watched it burn--
hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland, grassland, wild habitat, 
and environmentally sensitive land burned with catastrophic fires that 
were too dangerous, too hot, and too powerful to put firefighters in 
the face of to try to stop them and protect these beautiful natural 
resources.
  In fact, I never thought I would return to Washington, DC, in search 
of clean air. But it is true. The air is cleaner over our Nation's 
Capital today than it is in my beautiful State of Idaho, or Montana, or 
those Great Basin States of the West that are known for spaciousness, 
vistas, and clean air.
  This year's fire season may well prove to be the worst in half a 
century. All of our 11 Western States, as well as Kansas, Arkansas, 
Oklahoma, and Texas, are reporting very high and extreme fire danger 
levels today.
  As I speak, large fires are actively burning in California, Colorado, 
Florida--a little less so in Idaho today because it rained during the 
night, and it rained over the weekend. But it is true in Louisiana and 
Mississippi--a little less true in Montana because of that same 
rainstorm--Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South 
Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
  The map I have to my left demonstrates the character and the 
widespread nature of these fires. It isn't coincidental, nor is it 
unique, that most of these fires would be found on public lands--land 
managed by Federal land management agencies of this Government.
  As of last week, the National Interagency Fire Center reports that 81 
large fires are burning presently, covering nearly 1.7 million acres of 
land. The acres burned year to date exceed 6.5 million acres 
nationwide. That is over twice the 10-year average to date.
  The reason I keep using the word ``to date'' is because we are now in 
the early days of September, and normal fire seasons will run late into 
September--and even later into October in California and other places 
down toward and including the Southwest. The total number of fires on 
public lands has surpassed 74,000. Let me repeat that: 74,000 fires on 
public lands. That is almost 13,000 fires higher than the 10-year 
average.

  Nationally, wildfires this year have burned an area larger than our 
neighboring State to the District, Maryland. In other words, envision 
the entire State of Maryland charred by fire. That is how many acres 
have been consumed by fire in our Nation this year.
  There are roughly 26,000 firefighters battling wildfires. We have run 
out of trained firefighters and are preparing 550 new Army troops to 
assist fire crews. This is in addition to over 2,000 soldiers already 
deployed to fire crews nationwide, as well as firefighters from 3 
different foreign countries--Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. All of 
the personnel fighting fires deserve our heartfelt thanks for their 
efforts and their dedication. And yes, we have also lost lives of 
firefighters.
  Current estimates suggest that nearly $120 million was spent in 
August alone fighting wildfires. The National Interagency Fire Center 
in Boise reports it is spending $18 million a day on fire suppression 
and related efforts. Last week, the Federal Government reported that it 
has spent $626 million so

[[Page S7968]]

far on suppression costs this year. The Forest Service budget director 
estimates that wildfire costs this year will exceed $1 billion in 
total. This estimate assumes that the fire season ends in the normal 
framework I have discussed. However, the fires that are currently 
burning probably will not be extinguishable by man. They will have to 
wait for the snow to fall this winter or late fall or for major storms 
to move in the normal winter cycle.
  It is hard to believe that to be a true statement, but it is a true 
statement that in the heartlands of our wilderness, our public lands 
where these fires will continue to smolder, to flare up during the hot 
days of the late fall, it will take a snowstorm in the heart of Idaho 
to put out these kinds of fires.
  On Wednesday, August 30, President Clinton granted Montana Governor 
Marc Racicot's request that Montana be declared a Federal disaster 
area. On Thursday of last week, my Governor, Dirk Kempthorne, asked 
President Clinton to declare Idaho a disaster area, and he has. And I 
expect likely declarations coming soon from others.
  In a fire season as bad as the one we are now experiencing, it is 
undeniable we would be seeing a significant area burn. Indeed, the 
General Accounting Office has warned in a series of reports that there 
are 39 million acres of Federal lands at risk right now of uncontrolled 
catastrophic wildfire. Therefore, the severity of this season should 
not have been a surprise to anyone, nor should we have stood by saying 
this is a natural situation.
  Ten years ago, a group of foresters and renowned national 
silviculturists met in Sun Valley, ID, to study the character of the 
forests of the Great Basin of the West. They said at that time that 
those forests were in severe need of active management because they 
were nearly dead or dying from disease and bug kill and that if we 
didn't pursue an active management policy, these forests would be at 
risk of catastrophic fire.
  That was 10 years ago. Since that time, I and others have asked the 
General Accounting Office to study the state of our forests, only to be 
reminded that what has happened this year would happen if we were not 
actively involved. However, over the last 3 weeks we have heard a 
series of news stories that call into question whether the Federal 
firefighting agencies have been adequately funded, staffed, and 
prepared to deal with the fire risk that we all knew existed and that 
will still exist after this year. Notwithstanding differences in land 
management policy--and there are differences between this 
administration and me and other Members of the Congress--there is no 
disagreement that the Federal land management agencies should be 
prepared to deal with fires when they occur.
  Nevertheless, 3 weeks ago, USA Today reported that the Bureau of Land 
Management fire preparedness budget request was reduced first by the 
Department of the Interior and then by the Office of Management and 
Budget. Current and former Bureau of Land Management employees 
complained in writing that the effect of these budget reductions would 
be to reduce fire preparedness dramatically.
  That story was followed by a Washington Times investigative piece 
that reported that the money taken from the fire preparedness budget 
was used to acquire new Federal lands as a part of this 
administration's current land legacy initiative. I am sure that at the 
time the President had money taken from these fire budgets he didn't 
understand that his land legacy would be millions of acres of charred 
trees and lost wildlife habitat. Mr. President, that is the permanent 
flame that you may well have as your legacy.
  At the same time, United Press International filed a story that the 
Forest Service fire preparedness budget was similarly reduced either at 
the Department of Agriculture or the Office of Management and Budget, 
or both. United Press International quoted representatives of the 
Forest Service Employees Union complaining that, in downsizing, the 
administration disproportionately reduced the number of lower grade GS 
5's and 9's and put the money with GS 14's. What does that equate to? 
It said that it reduces people on the ground and puts them in the 
Washington, DC, office. Folks on the ground fight fires. People in the 
Washington office do not. Yet that is the kind of transition about 
which even the Forest Service Employees Union was talking. Those are 
amongst a lot of things that this Congress will have to deal with in 
the coming days.
  Last week, I had a good conversation with Forest Service Chief Mike 
Dombeck. We agreed on a series of steps for the agency and the Congress 
to take over the next few weeks to address the situation currently at 
hand. We are not going to see major policy shifts this year, but we 
clearly ought to outline in the Congressional Record why we are where 
we are today and why 6.5 or 7 million acres of our public lands have 
been charred.
  Clearly, it is important that we develop an emergency budget not only 
to pay the bills of firefighting that we have incurred, but also the 
kind of environmental restoration that is critical now so we will not 
see continued catastrophic events occurring as a result of these fires, 
the kind that could destroy wildlife habitat and watersheds, because we 
were not able to move quickly in the kind of environmental restoration 
that is very necessary. We also have private lands at risk and private 
property owners who deserve to be compensated because of the way the 
Forest Service managed these fires in certain instances, or the 
character in which these fires burned.
  I will be working with my colleagues in the coming days to do just 
that. First, we will hold hearings in the coming weeks regarding: Was 
the Forest Service prepared this season to fight these fires? If they 
were not, why were they not? Then we will begin to examine the current 
policy and its impact on these 30-plus million acres at risk. I hope to 
take colleagues with me, as chairman of the Forestry Subcommittee, to 
my State of Idaho and into Montana and the Great Basin area of the West 
in the next few weeks as we talk to the citizens on the ground who have 
experienced firsthand the risk of losing their homes, their property, 
and, yes, even their communities.
  We have already dealt with the urban wildland interface as a result 
of the catastrophic fires in Los Alamos. But even with that, we have 
not yet done enough. I hope the administration will bring forth a 
package in the coming days to work with us to develop a program of 
active management to try to save these environmentally sensitive areas, 
to improve the ability of these areas to deal with fire, and, most 
importantly, to improve the ability of our Federal lands management 
agencies to deal with fire in coming years. If we are truly in the kind 
of environment that I believe we are in, or if we are at a time and 
place of La Nina versus El Nino and ocean oscillations and seasonal 
changes in the environment, then next year could be every bit as great 
a fire year as this year. It is clearly important that we prepare now 
to do so.

  I have had several of my colleagues join me on the floor who wish to 
speak to this issue. Madam President, I ask how much time is left of 
the hour that I requested?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 46 minutes remaining.
  Mr. CRAIG. At this time I yield to Senator Craig Thomas of Wyoming 
for such time as he may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. THOMAS. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Idaho, who has 
been a leader for a very long time in this area--not only on fires, of 
course, but the management of forests, which is really the issue we 
will finally have to get to here. I thank him for what he is doing and 
certainly for the hearings he will have in his committee, which I think 
will be extremely important and are now extremely appropriate.
  Wildfires are a very serious thing. They are very scary. They are 
damaging. They threaten not only the forest itself but, of course, 
facilities and homes in the forests. I grew up right next to the 
Shoshone forest next to Cody, WY, between Cody and Yellowstone and, as 
a matter of fact, participated on two occasions in fighting forest 
fires. It really is something you can hardly imagine, particularly if 
you are on a steep mountainside and the forest fire itself releases 
boulders that roll down. There are lots of scary things about it.
  As my colleague and most of us know now, wildfires in the West of the 
United States have ravaged literally

[[Page S7969]]

thousands of acres this year, the worst experience we have had in 
forest fires for a very long time. Hopefully, that is now under 
control. There has been some change in the weather--snow, as a matter 
of fact, in some places. There has been some change also in the climate 
itself. We have had a very dry year in the West which has made it even 
more difficult.
  In my home State of Wyoming, we have had thousands of acres 
devastated. Let me share some of the actual numbers that I think are 
fairly startling. This is from the National Fire News. The National 
Interagency Fire Center puts this out from Boise, ID. They have a 13-
year comparison of the losses that have taken place as of September 4, 
for the year 2000.
  The loss has been 6,566,000 acres this year. This year, of course, is 
not completed. There are always losses. Last year, in 1999, there were 
4.4 million acres burned; the year before, 2 million, and 1 to 2 
million has been the more common amount, although in 1996 it was 5.7 
million acres that were destroyed.
  I guess the message is that we know there is going to be some burn. 
The burn, of course, is the natural way. There are those who argue: Let 
nature take its course. However, things are not the way they were 300 
years ago or 200 years ago. There has to be some kind of different 
approach.
  In the States, of course: California, 214,000 acres; in Florida--
Florida which is outside the West--183,000; Idaho, being the hardest 
hit at this point, 1.2 million acres burned in Montana, nearly a 
million--900,000 acres. New Mexico had almost half a million acres 
burned. So it has been very devastating. Certainly our first obligation 
is to fund and do what we can now to stop the fires and to repair the 
immediate damages.
  I think it is interesting that in the long term, the total this year 
is 6.5 million acres burned, and burned for the last 10 years, 2.9 
million--less than half. So we have had a very difficult experience 
this year.
  I ask unanimous consent a complete table of wildfire statistics be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record as follows:

 THIRTEEN-YEAR WILDLAND FIRE COMPARISON STATISTICS YEAR-TO-DATE FOR THE
                              UNITED STATES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                             Number of       Number of
            As of September 4             wildland fires       acres
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2000....................................          74,571       6,566,520
1999....................................          70,609       4,403,438
1998....................................          60,872       2,037,629
1997....................................          49,644       2,720,690
1996....................................          86,533       5,787,767
1995....................................          63,170       1,661,679
1994....................................          58,638       3,238,065
1993....................................          46,625       1,613,843
1992....................................          70,444       1,478,661
1991....................................          57,583       2,020,184
1990....................................          55,630       4,386,528
1989....................................          45,015       1,448,639
1988....................................          67,945       3,623,613
------------------------------------------------------------------------


  NUMBER OF WILDLAND FIRES AND ACRES AFFECTED IN 2000 BY STATE UPDATED
                            SEPTEMBER 4, 2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                             Number of       Number of
                  State                        fires           acres
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AK......................................             351         751,233
AL......................................           4,377          65,477
AR......................................           2,019          26,226
AZ......................................           3,260          94,144
CA......................................           5,693         214,735
CO......................................           1,921         126,005
CT......................................              55             183
DC......................................               2               2
DE......................................              12             165
FL......................................           5,604         183,304
GA......................................           6,883          50,735
IA......................................               0               0
ID......................................           1,413       1,234,818
IL......................................              22             386
IN......................................             875           3,005
KS......................................              14             689
KY......................................           1,163          49,287
LA......................................           3,473          53,724
MA......................................           1,854           2,735
MD......................................             253             506
ME......................................             208             283
MI......................................             555           9,635
MN......................................           2,448          55,738
MO......................................             162          11,692
MS......................................           3,758          55,355
MT......................................           2,289         921,608
NC......................................           2,814          16,818
ND......................................             934          40,996
NE......................................              19             434
NH......................................             246             160
NJ......................................             521           1,432
NM......................................           2,222         453,519
NV......................................           1,000         634,478
NY......................................             104             452
OH......................................             737           3,950
OK......................................           1,100          46,481
OR......................................           1,583         427,617
PA......................................             113             954
PR......................................               1               1
RI......................................              81              75
SC......................................           3,738          18,301
SD......................................             507          14,704
TN......................................           1,476          18,984
TX......................................           2,468         176,194
UT......................................           1,613         235,186
VA......................................             687           8,234
VT......................................              28              67
WA......................................             942         256,706
WI......................................           1,435           4,509
WV......................................             920          18,917
WY......................................             621         276,061
                                         -------------------------------
      Total.............................          74,571       6,566,520
Ten-Year Average........................          61,975       2,934,848
------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Mr. THOMAS. I think we need to recognize and thank the people on the 
ground, the agencies, the firefighters, for all they did. This is tough 
work. This is dangerous work. So I am very grateful for what has been 
done.
  I was out in the midst of it, out in Yellowstone during this last 
August. Certainly some of the problems were that there were not enough 
facilities; there were not enough airplanes; there were not enough 
firefighters; there was not enough equipment to deal with all these 
things that happened. Again, I am not blaming anyone for that, but it 
did make it much more difficult.
  In the appropriations bill with which we are now dealing, I have 
requested some additional funds for wildlife and fire management this 
fiscal year. I am very concerned, as the Senator from Idaho pointed 
out, that in many of these cases--not only firefighters but also 
maintenance and other kinds of things--this administration has put more 
emphasis on acquisition and purchase than they have on the management 
of the resources we have now. I think we need to take a look at that. I 
am chairman of the parks subcommittee. All of us know there are $4 
billion or $5 billion in infrastructure repairs and maintenance needed. 
But that is not where this administration put the money.
  This land legacy thing was the one that had the emphasis. So there 
are some tough questions, I think, certainly not of motives but tough 
questions in terms of management, as to what our responsibility ought 
to be. I really am looking forward to the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee's oversight hearings when we can take a real, honest look at 
what we ought to do.
  What do the roadless areas we are talking about have to do with the 
ability to control fires? I think it has something to do with it. We 
have wilderness areas and parks, of course, that are managed 
differently. It is true that in a wilderness area you are not going to 
have roads. You have to deal with it another way. Most of these fires 
are not in the wilderness. If we had access to the fires early on, I 
think it would be helpful. Certainly harvesting, clearing out the 
underbrush, clearing out the fuel as it builds up, as it naturally does 
around mature trees--I have been in some places that are very nearly 
wilderness, again up around Cody, WY. When selective timbering is done, 
you go through and you hardly notice it having been harvested. But I 
tell you, there is much less likelihood of an uncontrollable fire in 
that area than in the condition in which it had been.
  Of course, the administration is quick to say it has properly managed 
the fires. This may not be the case, both from the standpoint of being 
as prepared financially as we should have been, and, of course, having 
some management techniques which many of the forest people, many of the 
people who are actually on the ground, recommend. They know there are 
things that can be done.
  I think this is an area we need to talk about. We need to talk about 
it now. Our focus, of course, has to be on the future and what we can 
do to limit the kinds of losses in our resources we had this year. I am 
very pleased to be able to work with my colleagues here, particularly 
the Senator from Idaho. I am looking forward to doing what we can to be 
prepared so in the future we will have less of a tragedy than we had 
this year.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank my colleague from Wyoming. Let me especially echo 
the point he made well just a few moments ago. We have had thousands of 
men and women out there on the fire lines risking their lives over the 
last month and a half. Clearly, a special thanks is needed to them for 
the work they have done. I think that is most appropriate as we assess 
now where we are and what we might be able to do, both short term and 
long term, in the packages that are put together and the policy changes 
that are made. The administration has said they will be coming forth 
with some proposals. We will take a very serious look at them as they 
come, to work with them in the immediate sense as we look at long term.
  Now, let me yield 10 minutes to the other Senator from Wyoming, Mr.

[[Page S7970]]

Mike Enzi. I am pleased he joins us today to discuss this critical 
situation in the West.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I rise to join in this elaboration on the 
damage and devastation that is going on in the West. It has been a 
tradition in the Senate that when disasters happen, Senators come to 
the floor and they ask emergency measures be taken, both to stop what 
is happening and to make up for some of the economic loss that is a 
result of the emergency.
  That is what we are doing today. Just as importantly, we are here 
today suggesting that there are changes the Federal Government can make 
so that we do not have these problems again. Prevention is better than 
pain. Prevention is better than the pain that is caused by the forest 
fires that devastate homes, jobs, and recreation.
  Senator Thomas and I have been traveling around Wyoming. We are 
downwind from Idaho. We are downwind from Washington. We are downwind 
from Montana. In the daytime, one cannot see the mountains or the fires 
for the smoke. At night, you can see the fires as you drive down the 
roads, and people prepare their evacuation plans to get out of their 
homes, to abandon their homes to flames. It is a terrible situation.
  It can be prevented, but we are going down the wrong road right now. 
I rise to express my deep concerns over the mismanagement of the 
National Forest System that has led to one of the worst fire seasons in 
the history of the United States of America.
  There is no question that fire is a part of the natural world. No one 
knows this better than the men and women in the Western United States 
who have risked their lives during the last 4 months to protect and 
save homes, lives, property, and the environment from the terrible 
threat of the catastrophic wildfires.
  As of September 4, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID, 
reports that 6.6 million acres of Federal public lands have been burned 
this year alone. In comparison, in 1996, we suffered what was up until 
then the worst year on record for fires in the continental United 
States. At that time, we lost 5.8 million acres. We have already 
exceeded that loss by almost 800,000 acres, and it is growing.
  What makes this tragedy so terrible is that most of this threat could 
have been prevented had our Federal land management agencies not been 
stymied by the Washington, DC, one-size-fits-all-based policies that 
sacrificed forest health for political gain. Rather than implement 
policies that would have made our forests more fire resilient and would 
have made forest communities safer from the threat of catastrophic 
wildfires, these agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau 
of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Fish and 
Wildlife Service, have adopted practices from Washington that have 
allowed our forests to grow denser and denser without establishing the 
proper safeguards, such as defensible fuel profile zones and 
mechanically thinned forests that can incorporate fires into the 
natural management.
  For more than 60 years, our Nation has placed an emphasis on 
aggressive fire suppression programs which have removed fire as a 
mitigating factor in maintaining forest health. As a result of these 
well-meaning efforts, many of our forests now suffer from an unnatural 
accumulation of vegetation on the forest floors. Dense undergrowth, 
combined with increasing taller layers of intermediate vegetation, has 
turned Western forests into deadly time bombs.
  Unlike healthy fires of the past that thinned out the underbrush and 
left the large trees to grow larger, modern wildfire quickly claims the 
dense vegetation like a ladder until it tops out at the uppermost, or 
crown, level of the forest and races out of control as a catastrophic 
fire. Because of their high speed and intense heat, these crown fires 
leave an almost sterile environment in their wake. After a crown fire, 
nothing is left behind--no trees, no wildlife, and no habitat--with few 
micro-organisms left to rebuild the soil.
  Vegetation manipulation, including timber harvests, is therefore 
necessary to restore our forests, particularly in the West, to 
conditions that are most resistant to catastrophic disturbance and that 
are within acceptable ranges of variability. Good stewardship, 
scientific studies, including the Sierra Nevada ecosystem project 
report, state that timber harvest is a tool that can be used to enhance 
overall forest resilience to disturbance. The SNEP report states, for 
example, that ``logging can serve as a tool to help reduce fire hazard 
when slash is treated and treatments are maintained.'' If conducted on 
a large enough scale and in a controlled manner, timber harvests can 
restore our national forests to a point where large catastrophic fires 
are much less likely. In other words, we can harvest the trees instead 
of burning them down. We can make them into boards that will keep that 
CO2 they have absorbed over a lifetime intact in a home 
instead of going up in smoke as CO2.
  The Forest Service has recognized this threat and in April of this 
year stated that ``Without increased restoration treatments . . . 
wildfire suppression costs, natural resources losses, private property 
losses, and environmental damage are certain to escalate as fuels 
continue to accumulate and more acres become high risk.''
  The Clinton-Gore administration, however, has chosen to ignore its 
own experts and has proposed new programs that would combine with 
current planning efforts, such as the Sierra Nevada framework, Interior 
Columbia Basin ecosystem management project, the roadless initiative, 
and the Federal monument proclamations, will only make the situation 
worse by removing our access to forests and by taking away some of our 
most effective forest management tools. Instead, the administration 
wants to rely on the extensive use of prescribed fire which will 
further exacerbate the risk of catastrophic wildfires on the Federal 
land throughout the West and proposes to prohibit all forms of 
commercial timber harvest, regardless of the objective.

  Those prescribed fires get out of control, as I am sure the Senator 
from New Mexico will point out in a little while, in one of those 
damaging winds. In Wyoming, prescribed burns get out of control, and if 
you cannot get to the fire, you cannot put out the fire. We are talking 
about a roadless initiative in the United States right know.
  This is a map that shows the forest system in Wyoming--not the 
grasslands, not the Bureau of Land Management-controlled lands--the 
forest system. Wyoming has about 400 miles on a border. If we take away 
the roads in any of those colored areas, how do we get in to fight the 
forest fire while it is still a small fire? That is when we want to 
take them on. That is when we need to be able to get to them. If we 
wipe out the roads--and they are referred to sometimes as ghost roads 
because they are not roads one takes a normal car over, but they are 
roads from which fires can be fought.
  Madam President, I draw your attention to another sign that has 
appeared in Montana. This is actually addressed to all of us, but it is 
a little more pointed than that:

       To the firefighters: Thank you for all your efforts.
       To the U.S. Forest Service: Everything that we love is gone 
     . . . up in smoke. The mismanagement of our forests has 
     turned our beautiful valley into an ash heap.
       To Bill Clinton and Al Gore: Because of your environmental 
     policies, the jobs are gone, the way of life is gone, and now 
     the beauty is gone. What's next? Shame on you.

  If we do not do anything about it, shame on us.
  In the interest of protecting the integrity and posterity of our 
forest and wild lands, wildlife habitat, watershed--if there is a 
forest fire and it wipes out all the trees, next year North Dakota will 
have more floods because more water will make it into the stream--air 
quality, human health and safety, and private property, the U.S. Forest 
Service and other Federal land management agencies must immediately 
enact a cohesive strategy to reduce the overabundance of forest fuels 
which place these resources at high risk of catastrophic wildfire.
  While this strategy must include increased timber sales, however, 
there is no reason these sales cannot be structured to improve forest 
health by including in the terms of the contracts a requirement to thin 
out the underbrush and leave our forests in a healthier, more 
sustainable condition.

[[Page S7971]]

  I have concentrated on forest fires. There are grassland fires 
happening on BLM lands, private lands, and there are some lessons to be 
learned on taking care of those, too. It is not as dramatic to talk 
about a grass fire as a timber fire, but on those lands where there is 
good stewardship, the fires will stop. Where there is bad stewardship, 
the fires will blow across at a rate animals cannot even run.
  The catastrophic wildfires not only cause damage to forest and other 
lands but place the lives of firefighters at risk, pose threats to 
human health, personal property, sustainable ecosystems, and air and 
water quality.
  We must call to task the failed policies and move forward with better 
proactive policies that protect the West and the United States from the 
overriding threat of catastrophic wildfire.
  I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of our time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his 
comments. He has made a very critical statement as it relates to some 
of the initiatives that are before us today, as it relates to roadless 
initiatives, roadless areas, accessibility to these areas, and the risk 
of catastrophic fire.
  Last week, I sent to the President a letter indicating we had 
discovered that the administration, in their roadless area initiative, 
was not using the current reports on catastrophic fire as it related to 
their initiative. We would ask them to go back and review that before 
they attempted, by regulation, to lock up another 10, 15, 20, 30 
million acres of land. It ought to be examined against the current 
fuel-loading on that land and the risk of catastrophic fire.
  Now I will yield to the Senator from New Mexico who has just gone 
through a catastrophic fire in his State that nearly wiped out one of 
our great National Laboratories. It certainly wiped out a beautiful 
area in the mountains of New Mexico near Los Alamos where it took 
hundreds of homes and may well end up costing the taxpayers of this 
country over $1 billion to repair bad policy and bad decisionmaking 
coming together that created the Los Alamos fire.
  I yield to my colleague from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I recall coming to the floor when we 
considered the military construction appropriations bill. My friend, 
the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl, recalls that. The military 
construction bill came to the floor and we told the Senate how we 
worked for over a month, in a bipartisan manner, to provide the 
administration with tools to improve fuel reduction in the wildland and 
urban interface; that is, urban interface areas for communities that 
are at risk.
  I understand the distinguished Senator, Mr. Kyl from Arizona, has 
some very excellent portrayals of what happens to forests that are 
attended to and cleared as compared with those we leave unattended and 
then have a fire. Unfortunately, the administration threatened to veto 
the legislation we worked on because they found some of the suggestions 
too hot to handle. However, my colleagues found the suggestions very 
prudent, and later accepted my amendment to the Interior appropriations 
bill, which is where we finally were able to offer it. It was offered 
there as an emergency measure and received huge bipartisan support.
  Throughout the United States, there is an increasing amount of land 
in what natural resource scientists and firefighting experts call 
wildland-urban interface. This is very important because if that burns, 
not only do we lose forests, but we lose communities, we lose villages, 
we lose watersheds right close to cities which have a propensity to 
destroy the water supply as the trees in the watershed burn.
  Many millions of acres--according to the General Accounting Office 
estimate, 39 million acres or more--of national forests are at high 
risk of wildfires.
  Over August--it was not a luxury; normally visiting my State is a 
privilege and a luxury--I had to go there to visit fire-devastated 
communities, and in particular one, Los Alamos, but also some smaller 
ones. One of the communities is named Weed, where a couple hundred 
people came with their concerns because they are so frightened about 
what is happening to the forests on which they live, work, and from 
which they used to make a living.
  As of today, there are over 52 fires burning over 1,000 acres each 
across this country.
  The total number of acres burned this year is 223 percent of the 10-
year-to-date average.
  On Labor Day, almost 17,000 acres burned--on that one day.
  Close to half a million acres have burned in my State this year; many 
more in other States, including the States of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, 
Montana, and others.
  When we first started working on this measure, the administration 
believed there was too much national environmental special interest 
group opposition to my mild fuel-reduction amendment. But I wanted to 
ensure that we did not just throw money at the problem and say we 
solved the threat to our communities.
  We gave them, in that amendment, $240 million in emergency funding to 
work on hazardous fuel reduction. Actually, since that amendment, which 
will be in conference under the chairmanship of Senator Gorton, there 
have been many more fires that have occurred. Much more evidence has 
been discerned with reference to communities that are right up next to 
forests that are loaded with kindling on the ground, ready to make a 
small fire into a monstrous fire.
  The language in that amendment provides the land management agencies 
additional authority that they now lack to do some of this fuel 
reduction work. We asked them, at their sole discretion, to do this 
work in a way that would provide jobs to local people, opportunities to 
private, nonprofit, or cooperating entities, such as youth conservation 
corps, and opportunities for small and micro businesses.
  We asked the two Secretaries involved to identify those communities 
where hazard reduction activities were already underway or could be 
commenced by the end of the calendar year. We further asked the 
Secretaries to describe, by May of the coming year, the roadblocks to 
beginning hazardous fuel reduction work in the remaining communities at 
risk.
  I can tell you about some of the communities in my State because our 
State forester had no hesitation to find out this information. He went 
out to find it. We have an excellent State forestry department and an 
excellent State forester.
  They found the Ruidoso area, an area many people visit, has a very 
serious threat in terms of heavy pine scattered throughout the areas 
and residue on the ground of a very high kindling nature.
  In Santa Fe, the water supply is in immediate jeopardy.
  The growing East Mountain communities of Albuquerque are facing 
significant fire hazards.
  The Middle Rio Grande Bosque--a green area, a greenbelt along our 
river, the Rio Grande--and the Espanola area, increasingly face the 
threat of out-of-control fire; that is, federal forests that are not 
cleaned up, forests that have not been paid any attention to in terms 
of management.
  Los Alamos was deeply impacted by the Cerro Grande fire and will have 
the continued threat in unburned canyons.
  We have all seen on television the terrible pictures of personal 
devastation from that area where more than 400 people were left without 
residences. Some were in duplexes that were burned to the ground. We 
have to pay for those because that fire was started by a Park Service 
employee who made a very serious mistake. I think we are all aware of 
that. That actually happened.
  I want to summarize my remarks by suggesting that it is still very 
interesting to me how the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Babbitt, can 
come out to the West and say some of the things he does. President 
Clinton's Interior Department has been in charge of many federal 
lands--along with Agriculture Department, in charge of the forests for 
as long as Clinton has been President. I say to my friend from the 
State of Arizona, soon that will be 8 years. They have been in control 
of: How should we manage? What should we cut? What should we do with 
these forests? It is interesting that Mr Babbitt

[[Page S7972]]

would come out West and say: This administration is not responsible for 
any of this; it comes from administrations before this one.
  Frankly, how many years would it take this administration to fix the 
problems in the management of the forests? I have listened to my good 
friend, the chairman of the subcommittee that handles this issue in the 
Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I heard him talk about what the 
Federal Government has done and not done.
  I have not heard anything about a major effort to clean up the 
forests. In fact, I think it has been to the contrary. I think there 
has been a fear that if you clean this up, you are logging. If you 
clean up the stuff on the ground so it will not burn, you are putting 
people to work in rural areas; and you are supporting this idea that 
there are many uses for forests, you are making it a reality--where 
this administration wants to push more to only public use rather than 
any private use.
  I say to the Secretary of the Interior--and I certainly have not 
heard Secretary Glickman say this--but for him to come out West and say 
this didn't happen on their watch seems to me to be skating on very 
thin ice in terms of the reality of things.
  What do we have now? What we have now is a Presidential election. 
Vice President Gore is running, and many of us think most of these 
policies were run through his staff for their ``environmental'' 
validity.
  I think it would be nice to know, since the Secretary of the Interior 
denies that this administration and our Vice President, who many know 
was in charge of a lot of environmental policies--where was he on all 
these fire danger issues? More importantly, where will he be if he is 
elected? I cannot believe that if a set of questions were put to him--
and we can't do that--he will answer them only if he wants to and only 
if they write them up a certain way. What did you do during your 8 
years with reference to this problem, and if you are elected, what will 
you do during the next 4 years? Be very specific. Wouldn't it be 
something if you asked: Do you support a policy saying you can not put 
a road in the forest, even to stop the fire? I don't know if he would 
answer that.
  The policy in this country now appears to be not to put any roads in. 
In my State they have told me that in the overgrown Santa Fe watershed, 
they don't believe they are allowed to put a road a half mile up--even 
a temporary one--to thin a rather steep slope, which you cannot get to 
from the main road. There are many frustrating stories like that. We 
hear stories about the federal land management agencies concerned with 
``protecting'' certain things on the ground before you use a 
Caterpillar to stop a fire.
  Frankly, to me, the results make that policy an adversity, because in 
order to save some resources, the result is ironically thousands and 
thousands of acres of burned forests and damaged resources. So which is 
the more prudent policy? To try to stop the fire early on at a quarter 
of its entirety using mechanized equipment, or let the whole thing burn 
and look back on it and say we didn't touch any of the ground with a 
tractor or any equipment, but we sure burned the forest down? These are 
very important issues. Where do we go next?
  I submit that Congress is going to see--even in the few days it has--
that that $240 million as an emergency comes out of that conference. I 
think some Senators are getting some estimates about the environmental 
restoration cost for some of these forests that burned in the State of 
Senator Kyl, and certainly in the distinguished chairman's State, and 
in the State of Montana and others. What will it cost to go back and 
rehabilitate and make them grow again? That surely is a great American 
emergency.
  Do we want to leave these millions of acres with only the stark 
reality of a fire? Millions of trees are standing that are burned. Do 
we want to leave them all there until they rot away? Don't we want to 
say that as part of a rehabilitation plan, we ought to remove some of 
them?
  Frankly, I will give you one example. We have a little community in 
Otero County called Alamogordo. It had one nice lumber mill, which just 
closed. Do you know what is around it? A very big fire that we reported 
here on the floor. Around the small town of Weed, near that closed 
sawmill, stands millions of burned trees with about 25 percent of their 
utility gone. We have not yet decided to remove one of those trees and 
to put somebody back to work in that lumber mill because of the 
policies the Senator from Idaho was speaking of.
  We need plans. I agree. But we also need to put the money up so the 
plans and the work be done quickly, in my opinion. One of the biggest 
and most important things we can do in the coming weeks is to provide 
this to the administration and say, ``Get started.'' Clearly, they 
won't accomplish a great deal, but the sooner we get started the 
better.
  I understand Senator Kyl has an expert in his State who has worked on 
the issue of how much good can we do in cleaning up the forests, so 
that we have some fire prevention, instead waiting around and then 
trying to put out a devastating fire.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG. Before I yield to the Senator from Arizona, I thank the 
Senator from New Mexico for his most appropriate statement. He 
experienced this firsthand earlier in the year before Idaho and Montana 
experienced it--the kind and the character of truly intensive and 
catastrophic fires, burning thousands of degrees hotter than a normal 
fire in a normal forest setting.
  He is right. Over the course of the next several weeks, as chairman 
of the authorizing subcommittee, I am going to work very hard to come 
up with figures and amounts that we can build into an emergency package 
and hopefully include it in the Interior appropriations bill, which 
would fit the kind of environmental restoration necessary on the acres 
that have already burned, but also the kind of urban interface 
stewardship programs that will bring about the fuel reduction that our 
colleague from Arizona will speak to in a moment. He and people in his 
State have done some very interesting and extremely valuable pioneering 
work on the Ponderosa Forest of northern Arizona, which is important 
for this Congress, and hopefully this administration, to take into 
consideration as a part of the way we deal with these forest lands that 
now have literally tens of thousands of gallons of gasoline-equivalent 
fuel on the ground, which burns explosively under the right 
circumstances, as we have just experienced.
  Let me yield to my colleague from Arizona, Senator John Kyl, to speak 
to this issue and the experiments going on in his State.
  (Mr. ENZI assumed the chair.)
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Idaho for bringing 
the attention to this issue to the Senate floor, to our colleagues 
here, as well as to people around the country. To my colleague from New 
Mexico with whom I have been visiting about this matter for 5 or 6 
years now, a real thanks for his efforts to bring a $240 million 
supplemental appropriation which will only begin to scratch the surface 
of the needs we have. Half of that money goes to the Department of 
Agriculture's U.S. Forest Service and the other half goes to the 
Department of the Interior for the BLM because in our public forests 
today we have them spread both in the National Forest System, as well 
as the Department of the Interior-administered lands of the BLM. 
Arizona and New Mexico have the largest pine forests in the world.
  Senator Craig pointed out that we have done some pioneering here. For 
the last decade or so, Northern Arizona University's School of Forestry 
has been working on techniques to return the forest to the rather 
parklike, very natural condition that it was in at the turn of the 
century, 100 years ago, when you had very broad stretches of grassland 
with few trees per acre--maybe 100 trees per acre. Big beautiful trees, 
ponderosa pines, are a little bit reminiscent of a sequoia, for 
example--very large, yellow bark, a beautiful huge tree. When they are 
spaced out a fairly large distance from each other in a rather parklike 
condition, I don't think there is anything prettier.
  More to the point, there is nothing more beneficial for the flora and 
fauna in the area. Lush grass feeds the deer and elk and other 
browsers. We have a healthy environment for birds and other species 
and, frankly, the entire ecological situation is the way that God 
created it to be.

[[Page S7973]]

  Then along came man, and through a series of mistakes we mismanaged 
the forests to the point that today most of the forest is clogged and 
gnarled into what they call a ``dog hair trimmer,'' meaning that a dog 
can't run through it without leaving half of his hair behind on the 
underbrush that has been growing up.
  What happens is that, first of all, all of this underbrush competes 
for the nutrients and the water in the soil so none of the trees grow 
to be the big, beautiful trees we all love, and none of the grass can 
grow so that the browsers--the deer, elk, and animals such as that--
don't come into the area. And because every bit of nature depends on 
something else, most of the species simply vanish. Nothing can really 
survive there.
  You create two other conditions: disease-prone because they are weak; 
secondly, fire-prone, where a spark of fire here is like setting off 
tinder with a larger box around it to burn. Because of the undergrowth 
and fuel on the ground, as soon as the fire starts, it quickly spreads 
to the lower branches and then the upper branches of the trees, and 
that is why you see this almost explosion of fire as it crowns out; it 
goes right up through the top of these huge, magnificent trees and 
explodes the trees in the process. What happens is that the soil is 
baked to a temperature that is unhealthy for regeneration. Ordinarily, 
nature-caused fire will burn along the ground and burn a little bit of 
the underbrush that is there but never crown out. As a result, it is 
not the timber fire that you get here. This literally sterilizes the 
soil. For years, nothing can regenerate. Perhaps devastatingly, erosion 
results very quickly--destroying streams, rivers, and lakes. It takes 
the topsoil that has taken millions of years to be created so things 
can grow, and wipes that out. It drains all of it right down into the 
rivers and streams and clogs them up.

  What is the environment for the flora and fauna? There is nothing. We 
talk about endangered species. Goodbye species.
  We had a fire around Four Peaks in Arizona which destroyed about 
75,000 acres. I learned that this was the heaviest concentration of 
black bear habitat in the country and perhaps the world. What happened 
to all of these black bears? Many of them did not survive. Many of the 
other animals did not survive. The trees are gone. We have a very large 
bird population in Arizona. Amazingly enough, many of those birds had 
nowhere else to go.
  The point is that when you have this kind of catastrophe, you are not 
aiding nature; you are destroying it. All of the environment is 
destroyed in the process--not to mention the waste and the cost. We 
have now spent about $1 billion this year to fight these fires. That 
money could have gone a long way toward managing the forests and 
preventing the fires in the first place. You are not simply saving 
timber; you are not simply preserving a nice view for people. You are 
saving the environment for the flora and fauna--preventing erosion, 
preventing the sterilization of the soil, and all of the rest.
  As I started to say, work has been done around the country, but most 
importantly in Northern Arizona University, pioneered by Dean Garrett, 
and most recently by Dr. Wally Covington at Northern Arizona 
University. Secretary Bruce Babbitt is a friend of Wally Covington and 
fully supports the work that he has been doing at Northern Arizona 
University. In some small projects in northern Arizona, we have been 
able to acquire funding to do this forest restoration and demonstrate 
the efficacy of the treatment.
  The problem is the administration has not carried that on to a larger 
treatment area. I don't know why because science proves it out. 
Secretary Babbitt understands that it is the right thing to do. But I 
think, frankly, it is a fear that the radical environmentalists, which 
this administration relies upon for a great deal of its support, will 
object. Indeed, after putting together a wonderful program with the 
support of Secretary Babbitt, Dr. Covington, the Grand Canyon Trust, 
and other environmental groups, all of whom were working together to 
make the area around Flagstaff, AZ, safer, to improve the environment, 
and to restore the forests to a healthy condition, radical 
environmental groups sued to stop the process and delayed it for an 
entire year--to no effect because the project will go on. But it will 
be delayed a year.
  The GAO reports that we have 39 million acres to treat in this 
country. Strike that. With 6 million acres having burned this year, we 
are now down to 33 million acres. We have to do this within a 20-year 
period if we are going to save these forests. That is going to require 
a commitment of the next administration. If the current administration 
can't do the job, maybe the next one can.
  Finally, I am holding a document put out by the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture Forest Service, Southwestern Region, called ``Arizona's 
Wild Land Urban Interface.'' To summarize what is in this document, you 
see areas that haven't been treated that are severely burned. Then you 
see what happens when they treat the areas. You find, for example, in 
the Coronado National Forest a before-and-after picture where you see 
this clogged-up condition of undergrowth. It is not pretty, it is not 
environmentally sound, and the number of trees per acre are reduced to 
about 300. Whereas they had about 1,500 before, they are trying to get 
it down to about 150 per acre. When you do that, you have a beautiful 
park-like condition that is healthy.

  I can tell you, having visited the treatment areas around Flagstaff, 
that after about 3 years you see the pitch content of the trees 
significantly improved. That prevents the bark beetles from attacking 
the trees. The protein content of the grass is an order of magnitude 
higher. All of the elk, deer, and other animals are coming in to 
browse. Everything about the forest is healthier when you can go in and 
thin out this underbrush and hopefully follow up with a prescribed burn 
which simply burns along the ground and burns any of the residue. It 
doesn't crown out. After that, you can let nature take its course 
because then you have a healthy forest with larger diameter trees. If 
lightning strikes, not one of those trees catches fire. It starts with 
the grass on fire around it. It may burn the grass for several acres. 
That is all right. That will regenerate in just 1 year. That is 
acceptable. But it doesn't crown out and destroy the rest of the 
forest. That is what we have to commit to do in all of our Nation's 
forests.
  I commend the small first step that Senator Domenici has taken here 
with appropriations. I commend the administration to create a budget 
that will begin to spend, frankly, billions of dollars that are 
necessary to treat the forests of our country, not just in the 
southwest but all over the western United States which so desperately 
needs this new forest management to save our Nation's forest.
  I appreciate the fact that Senator Craig has offered me the 
opportunity to speak to this today, and I look forward to continuing to 
talk about this issue because, unfortunately, like some of the other 
things, it takes a catastrophe to finally bring out what has to be 
done. While all of us lament the catastrophe, at least perhaps it will 
jolt us into doing what is right to save our wonderful forests in the 
U.S.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kyl for what I think is a 
very clear explanation of what happens when you have this massive fuel-
loading that has occurred on the floors of our public land forests in 
the Nation. When he talks about active management, he is not talking 
about wilderness areas. He is not talking about wildlife preserves. He 
is talking about the millions and millions of acres of land that we 
call multiple-use lands or lands that are classified within this 
roadless area that this administration is currently examining and is 
considering keeping roadless and undisturbed.
  The question becomes very clear. Can you do this kind of active 
management by righting the wrongs of past actions we have taken on our 
public lands to restore forest health and to allow fire then to be a 
participant in the ecosystem in a way that is not catastrophic or stand 
altering or wildlife destroying? Those are very real changes with which 
all of us have to grapple. We ought to start. I will start with 
hearings in the next few days that will deal with that. Some of 
our environmental friends recognize this. One of them happens to be 
from New Mexico. The Forest Guardian Group is

[[Page S7974]]

quoted as saying that wildfires are getting bigger, burning hotter, and 
the effects are more devastating.

  It is clear that we will have to take mechanical steps to thin 
forests before we can use fire to restore these forests to their 
natural regimes.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the Senator allow me a question?
  Mr. CRAIG. I am happy to yield to the Senator from New York.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I hope he will make available more of the research that 
has been described so carefully by himself and the Senator from 
Arizona. This is new to an easterner but not too new. Two-thirds of the 
State of New York is covered by hardwood forests and some cedar and 
pine. But these are important propositions that should be listened to 
intensively. I surely wish to be one who will do so, and I look forward 
to supporting the efforts that are indicated.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator from New York for saying so. Yes, it 
is true that some of these ideas are new. Some of them have been 
building over the last decades as we have recognized the current state 
of the health of our forests. My time is up.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am sure the chairman would wish us to 
yield such time as the Senator from Idaho needs to conclude.
  Mr. CRAIG. Let me conclude because the chairman of the Finance 
Committee has just brought a very critical issue to the floor. I 
appreciate the opportunity to kind of sandwich ourselves in between the 
opening remarks of the chairman and the opening remarks of the ranking 
member of the Finance Committee as it relates to China and PNTR, which 
is the most important issue before this Senate. But it is important 
that Senators be given an opportunity to hear the concerns that are now 
out there about our public lands and some remedial action that we can 
take in the short term as we look at long-term policies working with 
this administration and future administrations to resolve this kind of 
critical issue.
  I thank you very much for the time and the time my colleagues have 
used in joining me to bring out some of the necessary and important 
facts about the events that are occurring out there as we go through 
this most devastating fire season.
  Let me conclude once again with this thought. Six and one-half 
million acres of public land have now burned. For those who might be 
listening and who do not understand what 1 acre of land represents, or 
1 square mile of land, let me suggest that it is the entire State of 
Maryland charred to the ground, with piles of ash, with snags of 
timber, standing dead trees, nothing left, with the risk of siltation 
and soot and ash moving into the watershed, into the streams, and into 
the valuable aquatic habitat. No wildlife can live there. Much of the 
wildlife having been destroyed, no trees can provide the productiveness 
to build a home and provide fiber for our country except in charred 
snags. An area the size of the State of Maryland has now 
burned. Thousands and thousands of acres continue to burn. I believe 
that is a national crisis. It is a crisis on which all Members must 
focus. If it had been a hurricane that just wiped out the State of 
Maryland, we would all be rushing to save that State.

  Fire, too, is a part of Mother Nature's disaster or catastrophic 
scheme. I hope our colleagues will work with us and that the Nation 
will begin to understand that active management on these timbered 
public lands in the appropriate and designated areas is not only 
critical; it is necessary to save our forests.
  I yield the floor.

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