[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11455]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     THINNING AMERICA'S FOREST LAND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, as I stand here today, my home State of 
Arizona is burning. We have lost now nearly 400,000 acres to fire. That 
is more than 500 square miles. Colorado is burning as well. We have 
lost a tremendous amount of forest just this year, and we have got to 
do something about it.
  We should not be surprised at the losses so far to fire. Our forests 
have been choked with underbrush and excess trees for years now; and 
whenever we try to go in and thin and manage our forests, we are 
blocked by radical environmentalists who file lawsuits, who create such 
uncertainty with the Forest Service that nobody can go in and thin our 
forests like they should.
  One of the groups that is blocking us from going into forests and 
thinning is a group called Forest Guardians, one of these radical 
environmental groups. They were interviewed in the East Valley Tribune 
in Arizona yesterday, and in the paper it says, Forest Guardians oppose 
using any forest thinning that might benefit commercial logging 
companies. If one uses the words thinning and/or they use the word 
forest and commercial in the same sentence, it seems they sue before 
one can finish the sentence. They simply oppose anything that benefits 
commercial companies, which means that to go in and thin the forest it 
is all on the public treasury.
  It is estimated that it would cost them $35 billion to go in and thin 
our forest properly, to prepare them to make sure that we do not have 
the devastating crown fires that are killing trees and everything, 
wildlife, whatever stands in their way, but we can cannot do it with 
the public treasury. We have to allow people to go in, but of course 
they oppose that.
  Going on, it says, and hear what the Forest Guardians are suggesting: 
Instead, small numbers of small trees should be removed by crews using 
solar-powered chain saws to ensure the work does not affect air quality 
in the forest. Solar-powered chain saws. I know my way around a 
hardware store pretty well, although I have never stumbled into the 
solar-powered chain saw aisle. It is simply laughable, if it were not 
so horrifying, that we are being held up by such groups that have such 
outlandish ideas.
  I do not know what is next, trained beavers? Are we supposed to round 
up the animals of the forest, Mr. Deer and Mr. Bear, and convince them 
to get a forest council together to help us replant? We need to remind 
the radical environmentalists that Ferngully was a cartoon.
  We have serious problems here in our forests. They demand serious 
solutions, serious debate, serious answers, and we are getting solar-
powered chain saws? We have got to rethink what we are doing.
  Our State is burning. Colorado is burning. There are some 3 million 
acres of Ponderosa pine forest in Arizona. We stand a chance of losing 
most of that over the next year or two. It is a tinderbox unless we get 
in, and we cannot afford to wait another 4 or 5 years until we wade 
through all the lawsuits to allow private interests in to thin forests. 
We have got to move ahead, and I plead with those serious 
environmentalists who want to protect habitat for endangered species, 
who want to have beautiful forest land, to join with us and create a 
balance as we are getting serious about the issue, instead of throwing 
up roadblocks and talking about solar-powered chain saws and the like.

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