[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 56 (Tuesday, May 7, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3964-S3965]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 107--EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF CONGRESS THAT 
   FEDERAL LAND MANAGEMENT AGENCIES SHOULD FULLY SUPPORT THE WESTERN 
  GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION ``COLLABORATIVE 10-YEAR STRATEGY FOR REDUCING 
  WILDLAND FIRE RISKS TO COMMUNITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT'', AS SIGNED 
  AUGUST 2001, TO REDUCE THE OVERABUNDANCE OF FOREST FUELS THAT PLACE 
NATIONAL RESOURCES AT HIGH RISK OF CATASTROPHIC WILDFIRE, AND PREPARE A 
    NATIONAL PRESCRIBED FIRE STRATEGY THAT MINIMIZES RISKS OF ESCAPE

  Mr. CRAIG (for himself and Mrs. Feinstein) submitted the following 
concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy 
and Natural Resources:

                            S. Con. Res. 107

       Whereas catastrophic wildfires not only cause environmental 
     damage to forests and other lands but place the lives of 
     firefighters at risk and pose threats to human health, 
     personal property, sustainable ecosystems, wildlife habitat, 
     and air and water quality;
       Whereas upon completion of the 2001 wildfire season, 81,681 
     fires burned 3,555,138 acres, which threatened rural 
     communities nationwide and killed 15 firefighters;
       Whereas more than 7,400,000 acres burned during the 2000 
     wildfire season--equivalent to a six-mile-wide swath from 
     Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, California--destroying 861 
     structures, killing 16 firefighters, and costing the Federal 
     Government $1,300,000,000 in suppression costs;
       Whereas an April 1999 General Accounting Office report to 
     the United States House of Representatives, entitled 
     ``Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy is Needed to 
     Address Catastrophic Wildfire Threats'' (GAO/RCED-99-65) 
     states that ``The most extensive and serious problem related 
     to the health of national forests in the interior West is the 
     overaccumulation of vegetation, which has caused an 
     increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable and 
     catastrophically destructive wildfires'';
       Whereas an April 2000 United States Forest Service report, 
     entitled ``Protecting People and Sustaining Resources in 
     Fire-Adapted Ecosystems: A Cohesive Strategy'', in response 
     to the 1999 General Accounting Office report, confirms the 
     previous report's conclusion and further warns that ``Without 
     increased restoration treatments . . . , wildfire suppression 
     costs, natural resource losses, private property losses, and 
     environmental damage are certain to escalate as fuels 
     continue to accumulate and more acres become high-risk'';
       Whereas the July 2001 General Accounting Office testimony 
     entitled ``The National Fire Plan: Federal Agencies Are Not 
     Organized to Effectively and Efficiently Implement the Plan'' 
     (GAO-01-1022T) before the United States House of 
     Representatives Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health 
     reported that ``The Federal Government's decades-old policy 
     of suppressing all wildland fires, including naturally 
     occurring ones, have resulted in dangerous accumulations of 
     hazardous fuels on Federal lands. As a result, conditions on 
     211,000,000 acres, or almost one-third of all Federal lands, 
     continue to deteriorate'' and ``[t]he list of at-risk 
     communities ballooned to over 22,000'';
       Whereas the escaped prescribed burn that created the Cerro 
     Grande Fire in May 2000, that consumed 48,000 acres and 
     destroyed 400 homes with losses exceeding $1,000,000,000 in 
     Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the escaped prescribed burn that 
     created the Lowden Fire in 1999 that destroyed 23 homes in 
     Lewiston, California, highlight the unacceptable risks of 
     using prescribed burning as the sole forest fuel reduction 
     practice by Federal land management agencies;
       Whereas similar catastrophic wildfire resolutions were 
     passed by the California Legislature (AJR 69) and Western 
     Legislative Forestry Task Force (R00-1) in 2000 and Oregon 
     (HJM 22), Idaho (SJM 104) and Montana (HJ 22) in 2001;
       Whereas the Western Governors Association's ``Collaborative 
     10-year Strategy for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to 
     Communities and the Environment'' was signed in 2001; and
       Whereas in 2000, the United States Congress provided an 
     unprecedented $2,900,000,000 in funding for the United States 
     Departments of Agriculture and Interior wildfire fire 
     fighting agencies to prepare for future fire-suppression 
     efforts and take proactive steps to reduce wildfire risk on 
     all Federal lands: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives 
     concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that--
       (1) in the interest of protecting the integrity and 
     posterity of United States forests and wildlands, wildlife 
     habitats, watersheds, air quality, human health and safety, 
     and private property, the Forest Service and other Federal 
     land management agencies should--

[[Page S3965]]

       (A) fully implement the Western Governors Association's 
     ``Collaborative 10-year Strategy for Reducing Wildland Fire 
     Risks to Communities and the Environment'', as signed August 
     2001, to reduce the overabundance of forest fuels that place 
     these resources at high risk of catastrophic wildfire;
       (B) use an appropriate mix of fire prevention activities 
     and management practices, including forest restoration, 
     thinning of at-risk forest stands, grazing, selective tree 
     removal, and other measures to control insects and pathogens, 
     removal of excessive ground fuels, and small-scale prescribed 
     burns;
       (C) increase the role for private, local, and State 
     contracts for fuel reduction treatments on Federal forest 
     lands and adjoining private properties; and
       (D) pursue more effective fire suppression on Federal 
     forest lands through increased funding of mutual aid 
     agreements with professional State and local public fire 
     fighting agencies;
       (2) in the interest of forest protection and public safety, 
     the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior should 
     immediately prepare for public review a national prescribed 
     fire strategy for public lands that creates a process for 
     evaluation of worst-case scenarios for risk of escape and 
     identifies alternatives that will achieve land management 
     objectives while minimizing the risk associated with 
     prescribed fire; and
       (3) a national prescribed fire strategy for public lands as 
     described in paragraph (2) should be incorporated into any 
     regulatory land use planning programs that propose the use of 
     prescribed fire as a management practice.

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I am pleased to support my 
colleague, Senator Craig on this concurrent resolution on protecting 
our Western forests from catastrophic fire.
  It could not be more timely.
  Unfortunately, this year is shaping up to be one of the worst fire 
years on record for many States in the West and for southern California 
in particular.
  The fire season usually begins in California in early summer and can 
last all the way up to November.
  A few years ago it became clear to me that we had a potential 
disaster on our hand beginning every June.
  In the 106th Congress Senator Domenici, several of our colleagues and 
I worked to greatly increase funding for fire prevention.
  That included millions of dollars for the removal of dead and dying 
and small diameter trees and thick underbrush that have accumulated in 
our national forests, dramatically increasing the likelihood of serious 
and highly destructive forest fires.
  Recently, the Forest Service identified 24 million acres of land in 
the Continental U.S. as being at the absolute highest level of 
catastrophic fire risk.
  Almost a full one third of this area, 7.8 million acres, lies in 
California; this is more than any other State.
  It includes the entire Sierra Nevada mountain range, the newly 
designated Sequoia National Monument, it also includes the Plumas and 
Lassen Forests in and around the Quincy area, where forest fires in the 
past have destroyed homes and businesses and spotted owl habitat.
  And it includes the Lake Tahoe Basin, where one-quarter of the trees 
are either dead or dying.
  And the probability of major fire conflagration remains and grows 
each year. Such a fire around Lake Tahoe for instance could permanently 
destroy the water quality of one of the most pristine lakes in the 
world.
  Not to mention a potential loss of life, habitat and property that 
could be devastating.
  Each year, the Forest Service spends hundreds of millions of dollars 
putting out fires.
  This money would be much better spent preventing fires in the first 
place rather than cleaning up after the fact.
  And that is what our resolution seeks to address.
  How did things get this way?
  Well through the turn of the 20th century, the U.S. population was 
predominantly spread out and agrarian.
  Forest fires burned naturally at fairly predictable intervals and 
they burned hot enough to restrict encroaching vegetation and prevent 
fuel from loading up on the ground, but not hot enough to kill old 
growths.
  Forests in the U.S. survived in this fashion for literally thousands 
of years.
  By the middle of the twentieth century, however an increasing 
population began to occupy new urban-wildland interface zones on what 
had once been forests.
  Suddenly, forest fires had to be put out or suppressed in order to 
protect the surrounding communities.
  It seemed intuitive to simply continue fighting fires as they arose 
and leave the forests otherwise, untouched.
  So nothing was done to groom the forests, to remove the dead and 
dying, to reduce undergrowth, and to prevent subsequent conflagrations.
  What is called fuel load has grown to astronomical proportions in 
many of our national forests.
  Dead and dying trees which were no longer consumed by fire, lingered 
while brush began to build up at ground level.

  Newer, different species of trees, no longer stifled by natural fire, 
began to crowd out some of the older growth trees.
  Forests became crowded and severely fire-prone.
  Newer, different species of trees, no longer stifled by natural fire, 
began to crowd out some of the older growth trees.
  In the meantime, what we learned was that one-size does not fit all 
when it comes to managing our forests.
  Each forest is distinct. Differences in topography, geography, flora 
and fauna, elevation, and climate dictate how a particular forest 
should be managed.
  A forest in the California Sierras is different from a forest in 
Alaska or Pennsylvania or Idaho.
  It is imperative that the Forest Service use all available tools to 
clean up the forests and reduce fire risks.
  This includes removing dead and dying trees, thinning overgrowth, and 
using mechanical treatment and controlled burning.
  It should also include the fuel breaks demonstrated by the Quincy 
Library Group Project.
  If we don't use all these tools, incidents of serious fire will only 
continue to increase.
  In California, fire susceptible Douglas and White firs have grown 
underneath old growth ponderosa pines.
  The newer firs which are not resistant to fire, create potential fuel 
ladders that permit a fire to reach the tops, or crowns of old growths 
for the first time.
  For most of recent history an old growth pine was impervious to fire 
since rarely did a fire reach all the way up to its crown.
  Now with these relatively new fuel ladders, fire threats to old 
growths are very real.
  Drought periods have further stressed the forest, predisposing it to 
insect infestations, disease and of course, severe wildfire.
  California forests provide homes for dozens of endangered and 
threatened species including the Marbled Murrelet and the Spotted owl.
  It is an understatement to say that today, the risk of fire is the 
most serious threat to our forests and these species.
  It may be the most immediate short-term environmental threat that our 
western forests face.
  That is why this policy of fire prevention and this resolution are so 
important.
  And I urge my colleagues to support the Craig-Feinstein resolution.

                          ____________________