[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 86 (Tuesday, June 25, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              UTILIZING FOREST MANAGEMENT TO PREVENT FIRES

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                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 25, 2002

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member commends to his colleagues the 
following editorial from the June 21, 2002, edition of the Wall Street 
Journal entitled ``The Fire This Time.'' The editorial argues that the 
Clinton Administration's misguided environmental policy and forest 
management left our Nation's forests filled with fuel conducive to 
catastrophic forest fires such as we are seeing with the Hayman fire in 
Colorado.
  The editorial stresses that proper forest management can prevent 
catastrophic fires, which are neither good for the environment or our 
economy. The editorial also mentions that forests owned by private 
timber companies rarely burn, let alone at catastrophic levels. These 
companies employ sound forest management practices to prevent forest 
fires because they see their trees as an investment. This editorial 
makes the case that Americans should protect their investment in our 
public forests and protect them by allowing the Forest Service to 
utilize forest management principles and practice selective logging to 
remove the dead wood and underbrush that fuel these cataclysmic fires.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2002]

                           The Fire This Time

       In December 1995, a storm hit the Six Rivers National 
     Forest in northern California, tossing dead trees across 
     35,000 acres and creating dangerous fire conditions. For 
     three years local U.S. Forest Service officials labored to 
     clean it up, but they were blocked by environmental groups 
     and federal policy. In 1999 the time bomb blew: A fire roared 
     over the untreated land and 90,000 more acres.
       Bear this anecdote in mind as you watch the 135,000-acre 
     Hayman fire now roasting close to Denver. And bear it in mind 
     the rest of this summer, in what could be the biggest 
     marshmallow-toasting season in half a century. Because 
     despite the Sierra Club spin, catastrophic fires like the 
     Hayman are not inevitable, or good. They stem from bad forest 
     management--which found a happy home in the Clinton 
     Administration.
       In a briefing to Congress last week, U.S. Forest chief Dale 
     Bosworth finally sorted the forest from the tree-huggers. He 
     said that if proper forest-management had been implemented 10 
     years ago, and if the agency weren't in the grip of 
     ``analysis paralysis'' from environmental regulation and 
     lawsuits, the Hayman fire wouldn't be raging like an inferno.
       Mr. Bosworth also presented Congress with a sobering report 
     on our national forest. Of the 192 million acres the Forest 
     Service administers, 73 million are at risk from severe fire. 
     Tens of millions of acres are dying from insects and 
     diseases. Thousands of miles of roads, critical to fighting 
     fires, are unusable. Those facts back up a General Accounting 
     Office report, which estimates that one in three forest acres 
     is dead or dying. So much for the green mantra of ``healthy 
     ecosystems.''
       How did one of America's great resources come to such a 
     pass? Look no further than the greens who trouped into power 
     with the last Administration. Senior officials adopted an 
     untested philosophy known as ``ecosystem management,'' a 
     bourgeois bohemian plan to return forests to their 
     ``natural'' state. The Clintonnites cut back timber 
     harvesting by 80% and used laws and lawsuits to put swathes 
     of land off-limits to commercial use.
       We now see the results. Millions of acres are choked with 
     dead wood, infected trees and underbrush. Many areas have 
     more than 400 tons of dry fuel per acre--10 times the 
     manageable level. This is tinder that turns small fires into 
     infernos, outrunning fire control and killing every fuzzy 
     endangered animal in sight. In 2000 alone fires destroyed 8.4 
     million acres, the worst fire year since the 1950s. Some 800 
     structures were destroyed--many as a fire swept across Los 
     Alamos, New Mexico--and control and recovery costs neared $3 
     billion. The Forest Service's entire budget is $4.9 billion.
       That number, too, is important. Before the Clinton 
     Administration limited timber sales, U.S. forests helped pay 
     for their own upkeep. Selective logging cleaned up grounds 
     and paid for staff, forestry stations, cleanup and roads. 
     Today, with green groups blocking timber sales at every turn, 
     the GAO says taxpayers will have to spend $12 billion to cart 
     off dead wood.
       It's no accident that two of the main Clinton culprits--
     former director of Fish & Wildlife Jamie Rappaport Clark and 
     former Forest Service boss Michael Dombeck--have both landed 
     at the National Wildlife Federation, which broadcasts across 
     its Internet homepage, ``Fires Are Good.''
       Fixing all of this won't be easy. After 30 years of 
     environmental regulation, the Forest Service now spends 40% 
     of its time in ``planning and assessment.'' Even the smallest 
     project takes years. Mr. Bosworth has identified the 
     problems, but fixing them will require White House leadership 
     and Congressional cooperation.
       One solution would be to follow the lead of private timber 
     companies, whose forests don't tend to suffer such 
     catastrophic fires. Their trees are an investment; they can't 
     afford to let them burn. Americans should feel the same way 
     about theirs.

     

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