[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 165 (Wednesday, September 23, 2020)]
[House]
[Page H4725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    WILDFIRES BURNING IN CALIFORNIA

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, fire season continues to rage on in 
California and in the West, and it continues to underline the need for 
us to have active management of our forests, our wildlands, our 
grasslands, everything to do with fire season and the increased fuel 
loads that we are seeing.
  We hear a lot of talk about climate change. Well, I keep coming back 
to, If the climate is changing, what are we doing about it?
  We can argue over whether it is manmade climate change or nature 
caused, we are still allowing our forests, our grasslands, our 
wildlands to be overloaded with fuel, and that puts our towns, people's 
livelihoods in great danger and great peril.
  I could list time after time the tragedies that we have seen in 
northern California with people losing their homes, portions of small 
towns, their livelihoods because we are not doing the job on our 
Federal lands, and we are not telling the environment groups to back 
off with their lawsuits that prevent the work from being done that so 
desperately needs to be done.
  We have to get cracking on this and get our job done here as Federal 
representatives to help save our rural areas.

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