[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 119 (Thursday, September 19, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Page S8897]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                FORESTS

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I congratulate my colleague from 
Oregon and my colleague from California for the effort to try to reach 
a rationalization relative to the decimation of the forests in the 
Pacific Northwest.
  I am frustrated with regard to the extended negotiations associated 
with forest health. Any Member, if we are stricken, seeks the very best 
advice. We do not hold a townhall meeting. We seek out a specialist, a 
specialist who obviously is well trained, a specialist who bears the 
brunt of a suit if there is malpractice associated with the care given.
  If I may draw a parallel, we have very sick forests. They are sick as 
a consequence of well-meaning environmental pressures to basically 
terminate access into the forests, which has always been provided by 
logging. Many people assume that old growth has always been. They 
overlook the reality that a forest is similar in many respects to a 
field of wheat. If it is harvested, it regenerates.
  Depending whether selective logging is used or clearcut logging, the 
appropriate procedure is reforestation. Reforestation occurs by 
individually planting trees or it can be done by natural reseeding, 
which is much the case in my State. But we prolong this argument and 
take it beyond the realm of addressing in a timely manner the necessary 
correction. The necessary correction associated with our forests as a 
consequence of the tremendous exposure of fires is the management of 
underbrush that is predominant in the second growth. If that is not 
cleared, why, clearly we expose ourselves to complications associated 
with a huge fire moving through an area very rapidly and the inability 
to go in and fight it because we have eliminated access in much of our 
national forest.

  So I beseech my colleagues to consider the ramifications. Let's make 
these decisions not on emotion; let's make them on the best forest 
management practice. We have foresters who spend a lifetime in the area 
of forest health. We have to listen to those people; otherwise, we are 
kidding ourselves and we are kidding the public. We should be taken to 
task by the public for not directing this corrective result.
  While well-meaning environmental groups say let nature take its 
course, that is not, if you will, in the opinion of many of us, the 
appropriate procedure. We can help nature. We can help our forests. The 
forests are there, and we should recognize that we use the forests. 
They are a place of recreation; they are a place of productivity. If we 
have fires, we should take what the salvage capabilities are in the 
forests and move that timber out while it still has some value.
  It is very frustrating to the Senator from Alaska. We have fires in 
the interior. The Tongass is a very wet area and we have few fires. But 
to see this debate go on and on with no conclusion, no recognition that 
decisions should be made on the basis of forest health, is extremely 
frustrating. I hope my colleagues will consider the bottom line. Let's 
make a decision on what is good for forest health.

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