[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 18 (Tuesday, February 5, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S659-S662]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BINGAMAN (for himself, Mr. Domenici, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. 
        Allard, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Salazar, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Craig, Mr. 
        Akaka, and Mr. Crapo):
  S. 2593. A bill to establish a program at the Forest Service and the 
Department of the Interior to carry out collaborative ecological 
restoration treatments for priority forest landscapes on public land, 
and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing the Forest 
Landscape Restoration Act. I developed this bill with Senators Domenici 
and Feinstein, and I am pleased they have joined as cosponsors. The 
bill also is cosponsored by Senators Allard, Wyden, Salazar, Cantwell, 
Craig, Akaka, and Crapo. I also am pleased that Chairman Grijalva will 
be introducing a companion bill in the House of Representatives, and I 
look forward to working with him as his subcommittee in the Natural 
Resources Committee moves forward with the bill.
  The bill establishes a program to select and fund projects that 
restore forests at a landscape scale through a

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process that encourages collaboration, relies on the best available 
science, facilitates local economic development, and leverages local 
funds with national and private funding.
  As many of my colleagues know, we are facing serious forest health 
and wildfire challenges in many of our National Forests. A century of 
over-aggressive fire suppression, logging, and other land uses have 
significantly deteriorated entire landscapes. These conditions have 
played an important role in the extraordinary wildfires and insect-
caused mortality we have seen on millions of acres of National Forest 
and other lands. To address these problems, it is critical to begin 
trying to restore our forests at a landscape scale.
  Landscape-scale restoration is important because, first, it is key to 
controlling wildfire suppression costs, which is one of the issues that 
is emphasized in our bill. Wildland fire appropriations have more than 
tripled in the last decade, and we are now spending billions every year 
trying to suppress fires. We will not be able to get control of the 
ballooning costs of fire suppression until we can allow more fires to 
play their natural, beneficial role in restoring and maintaining 
healthy, fire-resilient forests. But that will not be possible until we 
can reduce hazardous fuels and the risk of unnaturally intense fire on 
a landscape scale.
  So, our bill will help to reduce wildfire suppression costs through 
forest restoration.
  Second, landscape-scale restoration is an important component of 
successful economic development, another issue we have emphasized in 
our bill. In many cases, forest restoration will not be fiscally viable 
unless we can put the byproducts of restoration to economic use. Large-
scale forest restoration efforts can help to provide economies of 
scale, and long-term efforts can help to provide entrepreneurs with the 
confidence that encourages investment and initiative.
  So, our bill will help to make the restoration economy a reality by 
facilitating the use of restoration byproducts.
  Third, landscape restoration is necessary for the health of many of 
our forest ecosystems, which also is emphasized in our bill. We need 
healthy landscapes for a clean, abundant, and controlled water supply. 
We need them for clean air and carbon sequestration. We need them to 
support fish and wildlife. And we need healthy forest ecosystems if 
they are to have a chance to survive the pressures of climate change. 
Fire suppression and other land uses have caused entire forest 
landscapes to deteriorate, and we cannot reverse that deterioration 
without landscape-level restoration.
  So, our bill provides a unique program to conduct comprehensive 
ecosystem restoration through landscape-scale treatments.
  Our bill also builds upon the existing successes in forest 
restoration by requiring collaboration and the best available science 
to form the foundation for landscape restoration.
  Despite the importance of landscape-scale restoration, neither the 
National Fire Plan, nor the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, nor any of 
our other efforts have been very successful in facilitating restoration 
and hazardous fuels reduction on landscape scales. A lack of sufficient 
funding is one of the primary reasons. Restoring landscapes takes a 
significant amount of funding over a significant period of time. That 
has proven to be beyond the capacity of the local and regional agency 
budgets.
  To address this problem, the Forest Landscape Restoration Act 
authorizes $40 million per year for 10 years to be paid into a national 
pool. Eligible landscape restoration projects from around the country 
would compete for a portion of that money. Forty million dollars is not 
nearly enough money to fund landscape-scale treatments in all of the 
forest landscapes in need of restoration, but it is a realistic amount 
of funding, and it is enough to make landscape-scale restoration a 
reality.
  Because of funding and other challenges, landscape-scale restoration 
remains largely theoretical. As a result, this legislation is designed 
to be both practical and experimental. It does not redirect existing 
efforts. It instead adds to existing efforts by creating a program that 
will make planning, funding, and carrying out at least a handful of 
landscape-scale forest restoration projects possible. If it is 
successful--and I think it will be--we can expand it in the future.
  I would again like to thank Senators Domenici and Feinstein and the 
other cosponsors of the bill. I appreciate the stakeholders who have 
written to support this bill, including the Nature Conservancy--which 
has been very supportive of our effort--American Forests, the Forest 
Guild, Sustainable Northwest, the Watershed Research and Training 
Center, and Conservation Northwest. I look forward to working with them 
and the many other stakeholders as we move forward with the bill.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                S. 2593

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Forest Landscape Restoration 
     Act of 2008''.

     SEC. 2. PURPOSE.

       The purpose of this Act is to encourage the collaborative, 
     science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest 
     landscapes through a process that--
       (1) encourages ecological, economic, and social 
     sustainability;
       (2) leverages local resources with national and private 
     resources;
       (3) facilitates the reduction of wildfire management costs, 
     including through reestablishing natural fire regimes and 
     reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire; and
       (4) demonstrates the degree to which--
       (A) various ecological restoration techniques--
       (i) achieve ecological health objectives; and
       (ii) affect wildfire activity and management costs; and
       (B) the use of forest restoration byproducts can offset 
     treatment costs while benefitting rural economies and 
     improving forest health.

     SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.

       In this Act:
       (1) Fund.--The term ``Fund'' means the Collaborative Forest 
     Landscape Restoration Fund established by section 4(f).
       (2) Plan.--The term ``Plan'' means the plan entitled the 
     ``10 Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan'' and 
     dated December 2006.
       (3) Program.--The term ``program'' means the Collaborative 
     Forest Landscape Restoration Program established under 
     section 4(a).
       (4) Secretary.--The term ``Secretary'' means the Secretary 
     of Agriculture, acting through the Chief of the Forest 
     Service.

     SEC. 4. COLLABORATIVE FOREST LANDSCAPE RESTORATION PROGRAM.

       (a) In General.--The Secretary, in consultation with the 
     Secretary of the Interior, shall establish a Collaborative 
     Forest Landscape Restoration Program to select and fund 
     ecological restoration treatments for priority forest 
     landscapes in accordance with applicable law.
       (b) Eligibility Criteria.--To be eligible for nomination 
     under subsection (c), a collaborative forest landscape 
     restoration proposal shall--
       (1) be based on a landscape restoration strategy that--
       (A) is complete or substantially complete;
       (B) identifies and prioritizes ecological restoration 
     treatments for a 10-year period across a landscape that is--
       (i) at least 50,000 acres;
       (ii) comprised primarily of forested National Forest System 
     land, but may also include other Federal, State, tribal, or 
     private land;
       (iii) in need of active ecosystem restoration; and
       (iv) accessible by existing or proposed wood-processing 
     infrastructure at an appropriate scale to use woody biomass 
     and small-diameter wood removed in ecological restoration 
     treatments;
       (C) incorporates--
       (i) the best available science and scientific application 
     tools in ecological restoration strategies; and
       (ii) the requirements for old-growth maintenance, 
     restoration, and management direction of paragraphs (2), (3), 
     and (4) of subsection (e) and the requirements for large-tree 
     retention of subsection (f) of section 102 of the Healthy 
     Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (16 U.S.C. 6512); and
       (D) does not include the establishment of permanent roads;
       (2) be developed and implemented through a collaborative 
     process that--
       (A) includes multiple stakeholders representing diverse 
     interests;
       (B)(i) is transparent and nonexclusive; or
       (ii) meets the requirements for a resource advisory 
     committee under section 205 of the Secure Rural Schools and 
     Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 (16 U.S.C. 500 note; 
     Public Law 106-393); and
       (C) has an established record of successful planning and 
     implementation of ecological restoration projects on National 
     Forest System land;
       (3) describe plans to--
       (A) use fire for ecological restoration and maintenance, 
     where appropriate;

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       (B) improve fish and wildlife habitat, including for 
     endangered, threatened, and sensitive species;
       (C) maintain or improve water quality;
       (D) prevent, remediate, or control invasions of exotic 
     species;
       (E) maintain or decommission roads;
       (F) use woody biomass and small-diameter trees produced 
     from projects implementing the landscape restoration 
     strategy;
       (G) report annually on performance, including through 
     performance measures from the Plan;
       (H) develop small business incubators and provide 
     employment and training opportunities to people in rural 
     communities, including contracts for monitoring activities, 
     through--
       (i) local private, nonprofit, or cooperative entities;
       (ii) Youth Conservation Corps crews or related 
     partnerships, with State, local, and non-profit youth groups;
       (iii) small or micro-businesses; or
       (iv) other entities that will hire or train a significant 
     percentage of local people to complete such contracts; and
       (I) take into account any applicable community wildfire 
     protection plan (as defined in section 101 of the Healthy 
     Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (16 U.S.C. 6511));
       (4) analyze the anticipated cost savings resulting from--
       (A) reduced wildfire management costs; and
       (B) a decrease in the unit costs of implementing ecological 
     restoration treatments over time;
       (5) estimate--
       (A) the annual Federal funding necessary to implement the 
     proposal; and
       (B) the amount of new non-Federal investment for carrying 
     out the proposal that would be leveraged by Federal funding 
     for ecological restoration treatments; and
       (6) be subject to any other requirements that the Secretary 
     determines to be necessary for the efficient and effective 
     administration of the program.
       (c) Nomination Process.--
       (1) Submission.--Collaborative forest landscape restoration 
     proposals shall be submitted to the appropriate Regional 
     Forester for consideration.
       (2) Nomination.--A Regional Forester may nominate 
     collaborative forest landscape restoration proposals for 
     selection by the Secretary.
       (3) Documentation.--With respect to each collaborative 
     forest landscape restoration proposal that is nominated under 
     paragraph (2)--
       (A) the appropriate Regional Forester shall--
       (i) include a proposal to use Federal funds allocated to 
     the region to fund those costs of planning and carrying out 
     ecological restoration treatments on National Forest land 
     consistent with the landscape restoration strategy that would 
     not be covered by amounts transferred to the Secretary from 
     the Fund; and
       (ii) provide evidence that amounts proposed to be 
     transferred to the Secretary from the Fund during the first 2 
     years following selection would be used to carry out 
     ecological restoration treatments consistent with the 
     landscape restoration strategy during the same fiscal year in 
     which the funds are transferred to the Secretary;
       (B) if actions under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of 
     the Interior are proposed, the nomination shall require--
       (i) the concurrence of the appropriate official of the 
     Department of the Interior; and
       (ii) a proposal to fund ecological restoration treatments 
     consistent with the landscape restoration strategy that would 
     be carried out by the Secretary of the Interior; and
       (C) if actions on land not under the jurisdiction of the 
     Secretary or the Secretary of the Interior are proposed, the 
     appropriate Regional Forester shall provide evidence that the 
     landowner intends to participate in, and provide appropriate 
     funding to carry out, the actions.
       (d) Selection Process.--
       (1) In general.--After consulting with any scientific and 
     technical advisory panels established under subsection (e), 
     the Secretary, in consultation with the Secretary of the 
     Interior, shall, subject to paragraph (2), select the best 
     collaborative forest landscape restoration proposals that--
       (A) have been nominated under subsection (c)(2); and
       (B) meet the eligibility criteria established by subsection 
     (b).
       (2) Criteria.--In selecting collaborative forest landscape 
     restoration proposals under paragraph (1), the Secretary 
     shall give special consideration to--
       (A) the strength of the ecological case of the proposal for 
     landscape restoration and the proposed restoration 
     strategies;
       (B) the strength of the collaborative process;
       (C) whether the proposal would reduce the relative costs of 
     carrying out treatments as a result of the use of woody 
     biomass and small-diameter trees;
       (D) whether the proposal is likely to achieve reductions in 
     long-term wildfire management costs;
       (E) the strength of the landscape restoration proposal and 
     strategy; and
       (F) whether an appropriate level of non-Federal investment 
     would be leveraged in carrying out the proposal.
       (3) Limitation.--The Secretary may select not more than--
       (A) 10 collaborative forest landscape restoration proposals 
     to be funded during any given year; and
       (B) 2 collaborative forest landscape restoration proposals 
     in any 1 region of the National Forest System to be funded 
     during any given year.
       (e) Advisory Panels.--
       (1) Scientific advisory panel.--The Secretary shall 
     establish a scientific advisory panel comprised of not more 
     than 12 experts in ecological forest restoration and fire 
     ecology to evaluate, and provide recommendations on, any 
     proposal that has been nominated under subsection (c)(2) and 
     meets the eligibility criteria established by subsection (b) 
     with respect to--
       (A) the strength of the ecological case of the proposal for 
     landscape restoration and the proposed restoration 
     strategies; and
       (B) whether the proposal is likely to achieve reductions in 
     long-term wildfire management costs.
       (2) Technical advisory panel.--The Secretary may establish 
     a technical advisory panel comprised of experts in rural 
     business development and the use of woody biomass and small-
     diameter trees to evaluate, and provide recommendations on, 
     any proposal that has been nominated under subsection (c)(2) 
     and meets the eligibility criteria established by subsection 
     (b) with respect to whether the proposal is likely to reduce 
     the relative costs of carrying out treatments as a result of 
     the use of woody biomass and small-diameter trees and provide 
     local economic benefit.
       (f) Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Fund.--
       (1) Establishment.--There is established in the Treasury of 
     the United States a fund, to be known as the ``Collaborative 
     Forest Landscape Restoration Fund'', to be used to pay up to 
     50 percent of the cost of carrying out ecological restoration 
     treatments on National Forest System land for each 
     collaborative forest landscape restoration proposal selected 
     to be carried out under subsection (d), consisting of--
       (A) such amounts as are appropriated to the Fund under 
     paragraph (5); and
       (B) any interest earned on investment of amounts in the 
     Fund under paragraph (3).
       (2) Expenditures from fund.--On request by the Secretary, 
     the Secretary of the Treasury shall transfer from the Fund to 
     the Secretary of Agriculture such amounts as the Secretary of 
     Agriculture determines are necessary to carry out ecological 
     restoration treatments under paragraph (1).
       (3) Investment of amounts.--
       (A) In general.--The Secretary of the Treasury shall invest 
     such portion of the Fund as is not, in the judgment of the 
     Secretary of the Treasury, after consulting with the 
     Secretary, required to meet current withdrawals.
       (B) Interest-bearing obligations.--Investments may be made 
     only in interest-bearing obligations of the United States.
       (C) Acquisition of obligations.--For the purpose of 
     investments under subparagraph (A), obligations may be 
     acquired--
       (i) on original issue at the issue price; or
       (ii) by purchase of outstanding obligations at the market 
     price.
       (D) Sale of obligations.--Any obligation acquired by the 
     Fund may be sold by the Secretary of the Treasury at the 
     market price.
       (E) Credits to fund.--The interest on, and the proceeds 
     from the sale or redemption of, any obligations held in the 
     Fund shall be credited to and form a part of the Fund.
       (4) Accounting and reporting system.--The Secretary shall 
     establish an accounting and reporting system for the Fund.
       (5) Authorization of appropriations.--There is authorized 
     to be appropriated to the Fund $40,000,000 for each of fiscal 
     years 2008 through 2018, to remain available until expended.
       (g) Program Implementation and Monitoring.--
       (1) Work plan.--Not later than 180 days after the date on 
     which a collaborative forest landscape restoration proposal 
     is selected to be carried out, the Secretary shall create, in 
     collaboration with the interested stakeholders, an 
     implementation work plan and budget to implement the 
     collaborative forest landscape restoration proposal that 
     includes--
       (A) a description of the manner in which the proposal would 
     be implemented to achieve ecological and community economic 
     benefit, including capacity building to accomplish 
     restoration;
       (B) a business plan that addresses--
       (i) the anticipated unit treatment cost reductions over 10 
     years;
       (ii) the anticipated costs for infrastructure needed for 
     the proposal;
       (iii) the projected sustainability of the supply of woody 
     biomass and small-diameter trees removed in ecological 
     restoration treatments; and
       (iv) the projected local economic benefits of the proposal; 
     and
       (C) documentation of the non-Federal investment in the 
     priority landscape, including the sources and uses of the 
     investments.
       (2) Project implementation.--Amounts transferred to the 
     Secretary from the Fund shall be used to carry out ecological 
     restoration treatments that are--
       (A) consistent with the landscape restoration proposal and 
     strategy; and
       (B) identified through the collaborative process described 
     in subsection (b)(2).
       (3) Annual report.--Annually, the Secretary, in 
     collaboration with the Secretary

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     of the Interior and interested stakeholders, shall prepare a 
     report on the accomplishments of each selected collaborative 
     forest landscape restoration proposal that includes--
       (A) a description of all acres (or other appropriate unit) 
     treated and restored through projects implementing the 
     landscape restoration strategy;
       (B) an evaluation of progress, including performance 
     measures and how prior year evaluations have contributed to 
     improved project performance;
       (C) a description of community benefits achieved, including 
     any local economic benefits;
       (D) the results of the multiparty monitoring, evaluation, 
     and accountability process under paragraph (4); and
       (E) a summary of the costs of--
       (i) treatments; and
       (ii) relevant fire management activities.
       (4) Multiparty monitoring.--The Secretary shall, in 
     collaboration with the Secretary of the Interior and 
     interested stakeholders, use a multiparty monitoring, 
     evaluation, and accountability process to assess the positive 
     or negative ecological, social, and economic effects of each 
     project implementing a selected collaborative forest 
     landscape restoration proposal for not less than 15 years 
     after project implementation commences.
       (h) Report.--Not later than 5 years after the first fiscal 
     year in which funding is made available to carry out 
     ecological restoration projects under the program, and every 
     5 years thereafter, the Secretary, in consultation with the 
     Secretary of the Interior, shall submit a report on the 
     program, including an assessment of whether, and to what 
     extent, the program is fulfilling the purposes of this Act, 
     to--
       (1) the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the 
     Senate;
       (2) the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate;
       (3) the Committee on Natural Resources of the House of 
     Representatives; and
       (4) the Committee on Appropriations of the House of 
     Representatives.

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