[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 110 (Wednesday, September 4, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8152-S8153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            DROUGHT AND FIRE

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I did not come to the floor this afternoon 
to speak to education. I came to the floor today to talk about what I 
saw on the Weather Channel this morning across the Great Basin West, 
the Weather Channel that spoke of a hot weather pattern that permeates 
the Great Basin West, that continues to allow it to be dry, and, as a 
result of the drought conditions, we have a unique weakness in the West 
this summer that tragically has been played out for a good number of 
years and will be played out into the future.
  The western skies are full of smoke today. They are full of smoke 
from forest fires that started burning in mid-June on the great Rocky 
Mountain front of the Colorado and down into the southwestern mountains 
of Arizona. To date, we have seen a fire scenario on our forested 
public lands that is almost unprecedented in the history of the U.S. 
Forest Service and U.S. Forest Service management.
  Today, as I speak, as a result of public policy and as a result of 
the drought conditions in the West, we have seen over 6.3 million acres 
of public land burned. That 6.3 million acres is not a record, but it 
is without question a historic record when you compare it with the 
averages of the kinds of public lands we have seen burned over the last 
good number of decades.
  We watched what happened in Arizona earlier this year when nearly 
700,000 acres were burned and thousands of homes were lost and lives 
were lost. Then, during the August recess while all of us were back in 
our States, we watched the firestorm that struck the eastern slopes of 
the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. In the State of Oregon, almost a 
million acres of land have burned.
  In the State of California, as I speak, 3 fires are burning and over 
12,000 acres have been burned.
  In the State of Colorado, over a half-million acres have been burned.
  That is a tragedy, without question. Wildlife habitat, watershed, has 
been destroyed at almost an unprecedented rate. Watershed for urban 
areas, habitat for endangered species--gone, up in smoke. There is 
nothing but a pile of ashes today because those fires were so hot, so 
penetrating, so intense, that they were unlike almost any other kind of 
fire we have seen on our public lands.
  Why has that happened? What am I talking about? Is this 
unprecedented? Or is fire simply natural in our forest systems? Fire is 
a natural element in our forest systems. But what we are seeing today--
because largely we took fire out of the ecosystems of our forests 70 
years ago--is that these are very much abnormal fires, burning hotter 
than ever, burning entire stands, burning the ground to such an extent 
that we are caramelizing the soil and burning the humus out of it. By 
so doing, we are disallowing the ability of those forests to rejuvenate 
as they would under a reasonably normal scenario.
  Why is this happening? It is happening because of public policy, 
because of an attitude that was held right here in this Senate that has 
crafted public policy over the last several decades that not only took 
fire out of the forests but didn't allow active management in the 
forest to replace what fire would have otherwise accomplished.
  As you know, in the Black Hills of South Dakota you have had this 
kind of situation. In fact, the Presiding Officer and his colleague, 
Senator Daschle, have felt the situation so intense and so risky of 
ecosystems, of timber, of wildlife habitat, of human dwellings and all 
of that, that you chose to act. I think you acted in a relatively 
appropriate way to recognize the need for immediate action that would 
not deny the thinning and the cleaning and the fuel reduction that 
needed to go on in those forests.
  I chaired the forest subcommittee for 5 or 6 years here in the 
Senate. We have spent a lot of time looking at this issue, trying to 
deal with this issue--largely to no avail.
  In the early 1980s, a group of forest scientists met in Sun Valley, 
ID, for a national review of the health of our forested lands. At that 
time, 1981 or 1982, I believe, those forest scientists, with no bias, 
simply made the statement that the public forests of the Great Basin 
West were sick, dead, and dying, and if there was not active management 
involved to change the character of the forest health, that within a 
decade or so these forests could be swept by devastating wildfires.
  Those scientists were not prophets. They didn't have a crystal ball. 
They simply looked at the facts that were available in the early 1980s 
and made a determination that, without active management, we could lose 
these forests in an unprecedented way.
  During the decade of the 1980s that followed and the decade of the 
1990s, we did just exactly the opposite of what those forest scientists 
proposed. We progressively became inactive on our forests, largely 
because many thought, and public policy allowed the argument, that no 
management and no activity would improve the environment. What we 
failed to recognize was that the environment had deteriorated so that 
simply could not be the case and that these kinds of fires would be 
stand altering, stand destructive, and destroying wildlife habitat and 
watersheds that we see in the West today.
  The fire seasons in the West are not over. Today, literally thousands 
of acres are still burning. My guess is that before the fire season is 
over, we will see over 7 million acres of land burned.
  Before we left for the August recess, a group of us gathered at a 
press conference to speak in a bipartisan way to this issue. At that 
time, we had not yet quite determined what we needed to do, but we 
believed the American public was becoming increasingly aware that 
something had to be done, that we needed to lean on this issue to save 
our forests, to save wildlife habitat, to have a watershed, and to 
protect homes in that urban wildland interface.
  I said at that press conference--the last of July or early August, 
and at that time--that less than 4 million acres had burned. I said 
that probably by the time we returned over 67 million acres would have 
burned. I was no prophet. I simply had studied fires and the way they 
were burning in the West over the last several years to recognize that 
was probably a reality. And it became a reality practically enough. 
Today, 6.3 million acres have burned. Thousands of acres are currently 
burning, with fires in almost all of the Western States--at this moment 
actively burning and out of control.
  We said at that press conference that when we returned, we would try 
to resolve a bipartisan approach we could bring to the floor so that we 
might offer it as an amendment to the Interior appropriations bill or 
some similar vehicle. We are in the final hours of trying to craft that 
kind of an amendment that would bring us together in a bipartisan way, 
and in a collaborative way, to solve this problem.

[[Page S8153]]

  Earlier this year, the Western Governors Association, in conjunction 
with the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, 
met and produced a western fire policy that dealt with these fire-prone 
acres. They proposed a collaborative process that targeted those 
critical areas in all of the States involved and that would allow us to 
move forward in a relatively unrestricted but environmentally sound way 
to do so. There has been a lot of work going on to try to solve this 
problem.
  Late this month, the President was out in Oregon, looked at those 
fire scenarios, and reported that he, too, agreed that active 
management was necessary, that our forests were at a critical state, 
that we were in a state of emergency, and that failure to respond was 
negligence on our part. The President also said we shouldn't block from 
the courthouse doors people who would want to appeal or object.
  While I agree with you, Mr. President, and Tom Daschle, your 
colleague, chose a slightly different course that would have denied 
appeals and court actions under certain circumstances, we are working 
right now to try to see if we can craft that collaborative process that 
would limit but still allow some degree of protest and/or objection, or 
appeal based on law and based on the reality of the environment, and at 
the same time not allow those thousands who would choose to obstruct 
entirely--to simply use that as a tool to bring any action on our 
public land.

  I hope by tomorrow we can bring to the floor that kind of an 
amendment which will have bipartisan support. We are going to try 
mightily to achieve that.
  Let me close with this thought, because to me this is the most 
frightening of the thoughts about which I have talked.
  Six point three million acres have burned to date, 2,500 homes have 
been wiped out, and 25 people have died trying to fight those fires. If 
this had been Hurricane Andrew, which devastated less, we, with the 
full force of the Government, would be out there today helping those 
people rebuild those homes and trying to solve the problem. But some 
have said: Oh, no, this is just Mother Nature, and this is natural. 
Well, hurricanes are Mother Nature, and they are very natural. But 
still we have reacted differently. A hurricane is going on in the 
forests of public lands--wiping out millions of acres of trees, 2,500 
homes, killing 25 people to date, and it is clearly something we have 
to speak to, and speak loudly.
  Even if we are able to gain public support to get optimum public 
activity on our public land, if we are able to thin and clean and 
fireproof tens of millions of acres a year--even if we do that--our 
scientists are telling us that the forested lands--the Great Basin West 
primarily, but all of the public forests of our country--today are in 
such unhealthy condition that over the next 15 years we could still 
average anywhere from 5 million to 8 million acres a year being wiped 
out by wildfire, depending on climate conditions--drought or lack of 
moisture.
  Shame on us for having waited so long to attempt to do so little. But 
we must attempt now to do something. I hope we can bring all of the 
communities of interest together in a kind of collaborative process to 
look at these acres, to deal with what we call the class 3 sick, dead, 
and/or dying bug-infested acres, to look at our urban wildland 
interface, to talk about and help shape the environment that protects 
homes while at the same time protecting wildlife habitat and watershed 
and what can once again be the beautiful forests of this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to proceed as if in morning business for up to 12 minutes
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. President.

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