[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 131 (Tuesday, July 27, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H3913-H3914]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           FOREST MANAGEMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, it has been obvious for years now that we 
need to rethink our forest management strategies.
  2020 was the worst fire season on record for California and much of 
the West. California alone saw 4.2 million acres of land burned. 
Currently, there are 85 large fires burning across the West and already 
1\1/2\ million acres burnt.
  Last week the smoke reached all the way to Washington, D.C., causing 
health advisories for people not to be outside if they either have 
health issues or for athletic purposes in D.C. and Baltimore. The plume 
even reached all the way up to New York.
  The U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior have 
identified more than 80 million acres that are overgrown and at a high 
risk of fire.
  As wildfires burn across California and the West, Republicans have 
several bill proposals before this House that would improve forest 
management. These bills propose comprehensive solutions to address the 
declining health of our forests and help prevent catastrophic wildfires 
by expediting the environmental analysis, reducing frivolous lawsuits, 
and increasing the pace and scale of management practices.

  We have suppressed fires for over 110 years which is okay on the 
surface, but now most forests are intensely overstocked and overgrown 
with the fuel that causes the fires because we didn't do the other side 
of the coin: the harvest work, the treatment, and the removing of 
materials.
  For example, in California most forest types had in the past about 64 
trees per acre in the mid-1800s. Now they sit at over 300 trees per 
acre or more, causing weak trees that are more susceptible to insects 
and ultimately death because they don't have enough water supply, and 
so this in itself exacerbates the drought within the forest with all 
the competition of trees per acre and the death of the trees 
themselves.
  One of my bills, the CLEAR Zones Act, would allow better clearing 
around power lines. It would allow a wider buffer to prevent trees from 
falling on the lines and igniting a fire which is what they do. A tree 
falling into power lines lately was likely the cause of the Dixie fire, 
currently the largest fire burning in California. So far it has burned 
right around 200,000 acres in my district, and it is only 22 percent 
contained.
  This is hitting the area north of the Camp fire that burned in 2018. 
As you might remember from history, Mr. Speaker, it burned the town of 
Paradise, part of Magalia, Concow, and Yankee Hill, this large area 
here.
  Then following up in 2020 was the North Complex fire. They are 
burning up against each other basically over history here. And now we 
have the Dixie fire, as it is known, along with a smaller one called 
the Fly fire which have burned together. Pretty soon the whole 
landscape is going to have a history of having burned.
  For what reason?
  It is because we won't manage the lands. We won't do what needs to be 
done to put the kind of buffers and the kind of zones in that would 
help make it easier for the firefighters.
  Well, the solutions we do have are: we have proper forest management. 
We have seen that in this area here, around this current Dixie fire.
  The Collins Pine Company based in Chester, California, and a lot of 
areas in northern California, has done a lot of free work along 
highways around the community that would be very, very helpful and 
ultimately will be very helpful towards the type of management that 
will make us fire-safe.

[[Page H3914]]

  The thinning that is done along the highways and around the towns is 
what has made it possible for the firefighters in a very difficult 
situation--on the just seen Dixie fire, on my map there--to have a 
chance to stop this fire finally. It has ravaged so much, and they have 
done an amazing job of protecting communities and homes in those areas.
  But it has turned from a fire where a tree hit a power line--we are 
still waiting for the forensic report on that--from a small, half-acre 
fire and just a couple weeks later 200,000 acres and all this 
endangerment.
  So work that had been done previously by Collins Pine is going to 
probably save the day for the town of Chester and others up in that 
direction.
  So if we dramatically increase the fuel treatments across all these 
landscapes, then it gives us a fighting chance. We need to thin the 
forest and return low-intensity fire to these landscapes in the form 
also of a prescribed fire at a time of year when we can control them. 
The Native Americans used to use this method, and we can learn from 
them.
  This map of fuels treatment projects around the Whiskeytown National 
Recreation Area, overlaid with the satellite image of the 2018 Carr 
fire burn scar, shows that where the fuels were managed the fire was 
less intense. The green area has been highlighted to show a better 
contrast. The areas that had been thinned did not burn nearly as 
intensely. Instead, the big trees survived, the fire goes through the 
area at the bottom of the forest much more slowly, and it is much more 
manageable. The upper areas are the ones that burned to a crisp.
  So this map shows that forest management works and that thinning 
works. We need to increase the pace and scale of this type of project 
so when fires come, the landscape is ready, and it doesn't endanger our 
firefighters and our communities unnecessarily.
  Fire will happen. It is going to happen whether it is a manmade 
accident or nature with lightning strikes and the things that happen 
there. It is going to happen.
  But what are we going to do to address that?
  If we want to talk about change of temperatures and the drought 
situation we are facing in the West, we have to do even more to address 
overgrown forests and the amount of inventory per acre a forest can 
handle. Basically, all these trees in an overloaded forest are called 
ladder fuels. The fires will be lower intensity if we do the right 
work. They are easier to put out and much less devastating. Indeed, it 
is the natural landscape we used to have over 100 years ago when fire 
was actually constructive.

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