[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 20, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S6702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                            HEALTHY FORESTS

  Mr. DOMENIC. Mr. President, an article from today's Los Angeles Times 
titled ``Fire Threat is Red-Hot in Parched West,'' outlines the threat 
wildfire poses to millions of acres of dense forests. The 
administration estimates that 190 million acres of forests are at risk 
for wildfire this summer. That threat is particularly ominous in the 
West, where years of drought have left our forests tinder dry. The Los 
Angeles Times notes that public opposition to forest thinning is waning 
because the public understands the relationship between dense forests 
and devastating fires. I applaud this public awareness and the growing 
public support for President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative.
  I congratulate President Bush for his vision and leadership in 
creating the Healthy Forest Initiative. His remarks today precisely 
outlined the crisis and proposed the right solution. Congress must act 
swiftly to rescue our national forests from years of neglect and 
mismanagement.
  Next month, Senator Craig and I will introduce legislation that 
reflects the priorities of the Healthy Forest Initiative as well as the 
priorities of the bipartisan House forest management bill.
  In the last decade, we have seen endemic litigation cause management 
paralysis in the Forest Service. This has cost us lives, communities 
and nearly 30 million acres of once beautiful forests--all lost 
needlessly to fire. I share President Bush's commitment to return to 
wise and proactive managing our forests to protect our environment and 
our rural communities.
  I ask unanimous consent to print the article I referred to in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2003]

                 Fire Threat Is Red-Hot in Parched West

                            (By Tom Gorman)

       Zion National Park, Utah.--Park ranger David Eaker walks 
     through a field thick with grass as tall as his waist and 
     deceptive in its greenery.
       Don't think for a minute, he says, that the drought is over 
     and the risk of fire has decreased in the West.
       Spring rains here and elsewhere have nourished fresh 
     growth, belying the continuing, deep effects of the drought. 
     For the last three years, Zion has been too dry even for 
     grass, and now long-dormant grass seeds have sprouted across 
     meadows and mesas.
       ``But this will all be brown by late June or early July,'' 
     Eaker said, ``and when it dries out, it will be nothing but 
     fine fuel.''
       If the grass ignites, whether from a tourist's cigarette in 
     Zion Canyon or by lightning strikes in the upper reaches of 
     the vermilion-streaked sandstone mountains, the brittle 
     ponderosa and pinyon pines and junipers will burst into 
     flames.
       Last summer, fires burned 7.1 million acres and 815 homes 
     and other structures, mostly in the West. Zion escaped with 
     eight small fires, scorching only 18 acres.
       With parched forests and weather conditions that are 
     expected to remain dry and hot, fire officials are braced for 
     another dangerous season of wildfires. Eaker's park is almost 
     dead center in the region where the drought will persist, 
     according to projections issued Thursday by the National 
     Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction 
     Center.
       The forecast through August shows that the drought, which 
     began in 1999, may worsen from southern Idaho and 
     southwestern Wyoming southward to the Mexican border. Some of 
     the regions last summer experienced the driest months in 
     recorded history, with trees drier than kiln-dried lumber.
       Ed O'Lenic, senior meteorologist at the Climate Prediction 
     Center, said heavier-than-normal rainfall is expected in late 
     July and August across southern Nevada, Arizona, southern 
     Utah, western Colorado and much of New Mexico. Still, he 
     said, there won't be enough rain to erase the ravages caused 
     by three years of sustained drought.
       While the coastline areas from San Diego to Seattle are 
     drought-free, conditions change rapidly within miles and 
     remain bleak across entire states. In woodlands from the San 
     Bernardino Mountains to the high desert of Santa Fe, N.M., 
     hundreds of thousands of acres of ponderosa and pinyon pine--
     the most prevalent trees of the arid West--are dead or dying, 
     weakened first by a lack of moisture and then by burrowing 
     insects.
       ``Even if we get above-normal rainfall, we may still see 
     extreme fire behavior,'' said Tom Wordell, wildland fire 
     analyst for the U.S. Forest Service. Computer modeling, he 
     said, predicts that fire will spread at twice the normal rate 
     among the weakened trees.
       A key to firefighting is anticipating where fires will 
     break out and placing personnel and equipment in the region 
     ahead of time, said Kim Christensen, who coordinates 
     firefighting logistics at the National Interagency Fire 
     Center in Boise, Idaho.
       The fire center predicts wildfires by charting which 
     forests are the densest because they have burned the least in 
     recent years, analyzing the moisture content of the most 
     flammable trees and brush, and monitoring weather fronts that 
     may spawn lightning-laced thunderstorms.
       A handful of firefighters can be assigned to areas of 
     advancing lightning storms and, in the most vulnerable areas, 
     hundreds of firefighters and air tankers, managed by a 
     military-like command structure, can be positioned for a 
     quick response. About 99 percent of fires are extinguished by 
     the first firefighters on the scene, officials said.
       Last year at this time, when big fires already were burning 
     in New Mexico and Arizona, thousands of firefighters were 
     flown to a staging area in Albuquerque, cutting response time 
     by several days.
       On July 31, the busiest day of last year's fire season, 31 
     large blazes were burning across the nation, 148 new fires 
     erupted and fire bosses had to decide where to dispatch 
     28,000 wildland firefighters, 1,205 engines, 30 air tankers 
     and 188 helicopters.
       Because this year's fire season has started more slowly, 
     air tankers have been sent only to Alaska and Minnesota, 
     where current weather conditions make them more susceptible 
     to wildfires.
       In another effort to reduce fires, foresters throughout the 
     country, in line with the 2-year-old National Fire Plan, are 
     thinning woods. Most of last summer's worst fires gorged on 
     forests overgrown with small trees and brush because of a 
     decades-long national policy to extinguish fires as quickly 
     as possible. Had fires been allowed to burn in previous 
     years, experts concede, those forests would have provided 
     less fuel for subsequent fires.
       Some environmental groups have filed lawsuits to block 
     forest thinning, and neighboring communities have complained 
     about the smoke of prescribed fires. But public opposition is 
     waning because ``there's a much broader awareness of the 
     relationship between overly dense forests and large, 
     difficult-to-control fires,'' said Tim Hartzell, who heads 
     the wildland fire coordination office for the National 
     Park Service.
       ``Our approach is very surgical, targeting the highest-
     priority areas, especially in terms of preventing a fire from 
     roaring into a town,'' he said.
       Fire officials have identified about 190 million acres of 
     federal land, mostly in the West, that are considered at high 
     risk for catastrophic blazes this summer. Of that, 2.4 
     million acres were thinned last year and an additional 1.4 
     million acres have been thinned so far this year, said Corbin 
     Newman, who coordinates the National Fire Plan for the U.S. 
     Forest Service.
       Crews thin specific areas in forests where the spread of 
     fire can best be slowed, he said, with greater attention to 
     areas near residential development or areas that are critical 
     for watershed and wildlife habitat.
       Fiercely burning fires are only one outgrowth of the 
     drought. Farmers have less water for crops, and with hay and 
     alfalfa production retarded, cattlemen are supplementing feed 
     for their breeding stock with federal-surplus powdered milk. 
     Environmentalists from Northern California's Klamath Basin to 
     New Mexico's Rio Grande want water released from reservoirs 
     to sustain endangered fish, at the expense of farmers and 
     urban dwellers complaining of water restrictions.
       In Colorado, a late-winter snowstorm has allowed Boulder to 
     lift water restrictions, but in nearby Aurora, which relies 
     on a different watershed, there is a continuing prohibition 
     against the planting of sod, restrictions on new developments 
     and limits to landscape watering.
       ``We didn't get in the drought in a year and we won't get 
     out of it in a year,'' said Jack Byers, deputy state engineer 
     for the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
       The Western Governors' Assn. pushed unsuccessfully last 
     year for Congress to assign a federal agency to oversee 
     drought planning and response. New legislation will be 
     reintroduced in coming weeks, said Nebraska Gov. Mike 
     Johanns.
       ``Drought is every bit as significant a natural disaster as 
     a tornado, hurricane or flood,'' Johenns said. ``But federal 
     policy in this area has been very hit-and-miss. We need to 
     focus the best science available on predicting drought and in 
     planning strategies to respond to it.
       Politics aside, park ranger Eaker is wrestling with 
     realities. Crews at Zion, in southwestern Utah, are thinning 
     trees near park employee residences, and firefighters remain 
     alert to thunderheads that may unleash lightning.
       ``Last year at this time the flow of water through our fork 
     of the Virgin River was 5% of normal,'' he said.
       ``It's now flowing at 40% normal, but soil moisture is 
     still low, and now we have more grass fuel than we've seen in 
     years. Our anxiety about fire is as high as ever.''

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