[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15457-15463]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       WESTERN CAUCUS: WILDFIRES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
to include extraneous material on the topic of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Arizona?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring this Chamber's attention to 
the devastating wildfires that have ravaged the Nation this year.
  The National Interagency Fire Center reports that there have been 
49,563 fires that have burned 8,422,251 acres so far in 2017. Wow. 
Another 80 million throughout the country are at high-risk status, 
including one-quarter of the 193 million-acre National Forest System.
  Though the Forest Service has spent a record $2.3 billion to fight 
fires in 2017, these resources are being spent on the back end.
  Mr. Speaker, the country has literally been on fire, particularly 
Western communities. It is far past time that this Chamber pass H.R. 
2936 and get serious about combating catastrophic wildfires before they 
get started.
  Mr. Westerman's bipartisan bill adopts a forward-thinking, active 
management strategy and also provides allocation reforms that would 
cease the practice of fire borrowing.
  I will likely have more comments later, but we have a few folks 
pressed for time, so I am going to end my comments there.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton), my 
friend.
  Mr. TIPTON. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the gentleman's efforts 
to be able to highlight the threat from wildfires that we are having in 
the West.
  Mr. Speaker, in recent weeks, the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and 
Irma have dominated our news cycles. Our hearts certainly go out to the 
people who have been impacted as they rebuild their lives and continue 
to work

[[Page 15458]]

to ensure that they have the resources they need.
  When we hear the term ``natural disaster,'' most of us probably think 
of hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes. Unless you come from the 
Western United States, you probably don't think of wildfires as a 
natural disaster. But they are, and they have devastating effects.
  Wildfire season is a part of life in the West, but this year's fire 
season is shaping up to be the worst in history. Years of mismanagement 
of our national forests have led to conditions where fires are burning 
longer and hotter than ever before.
  We need to address this problem on two fronts: one, through better 
forest management; and, two, by updating wildfire response so it is 
more in line with the Federal response to other natural disasters.
  On the forest management front, we need to give the Forest Service 
the tools to engage in actual forest management. This means removing 
the dead and downed timber that serves as a fuel source for either man-
made or naturally occurring fires, empowering local foresters and land 
managers to identify and designate areas of high risk, and supporting 
collaboration between all levels of government.
  These principles are laid out in the Resilient Federal Forests Act by 
my colleague, Mr. Westerman from Arkansas. I am proud to be a cosponsor 
of this legislation.
  We must also reform the Federal budgeting process for wildfire 
prevention and the suppression efforts. For too long, the process the 
Federal Government has used to allocate money to fight catastrophic 
wildfires has undermined forest management efforts that could prevent 
these types of fires from igniting in the first place.
  Under current law, if firefighting costs exceed an agency's budget, 
it must shift money from non-firefighting accounts to make up the 
difference. Last year, the Forest Service had to transfer $700 million 
from other budgeted line items to cover firefighting costs, which 
brought the agency's total firefighting efforts to about 55 percent of 
the entire budget.
  You would think that firefighting wouldn't be the biggest line item 
in the budget for an agency tasked with maintaining healthy forests. It 
is critical that we treat wildfires like other natural disasters after 
an agency's wildfire suppression funds are exhausted. The cost of any 
extraordinary firefighting that goes beyond the agency's annual budget 
should be funded through a budget cap adjustment similar to what is 
used by FEMA for other natural disasters.
  It is my hope that we can continue to bring more attention to 
wildfires that are burning across the West and the impacts they are 
having on our communities, and also that we can work together to 
advance policies that better support forest management and fire 
prevention and suppression efforts and forest health.

                              {time}  1915

  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the vice chairman for his comments.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Stewart).
  Mr. STEWART. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from 
Arizona, who I consider a friend and one of the great leaders in the 
Congress, for leading this Special Order and for bringing this 
important matter before the Chamber.
  2017 will go down as the worst wildfire season in history. My home 
State of Utah has definitely felt the effects. In June, the Brian Head 
fire burned more than 71,000 acres in my State. It burned for nearly a 
month, creating more than $36 million in damage. And that doesn't count 
the millions--indeed tens of millions of dollars it took to fight the 
fire.
  While the fire was burning through my district, I was able to meet 
with local, State, and Federal leaders to take a tour of the fire and 
to survey the damage and to try to find a solution. The images I saw as 
I toured this fire were truly heartbreaking. Dozens of evacuated homes, 
burned homes, ruined forests, firefighters and volunteers who were 
working day and night to try to contain the fire, ash-filled lakes.
  I took more than an hour in a helicopter to fly around the 
circumference of this fire. As I was flying around looking down, 
thinking about, among other things, the wildlife that had been 
devastated by this fire, I wondered: How long will it take for us to 
recover from this, for this beautiful landscape to recover?
  And I can promise you this, it will not happen in my lifetime.
  My family owns a ranch, and almost 70 years ago, we had a similar 
fire. You can still see the scars from that fire, which is several 
generations now.
  One incident manager told me: ``In 29 years of fighting fires, I have 
never seen a fire move so fast, burn so quickly and so hot that it 
could not be controlled or fought head-on.''
  You have to wonder: Why is that?
  The answer is very unfortunate. It is due to mismanagement.
  Current mismanagement--and it is mismanagement--has left our forests 
vulnerable to insects and disease that make for a ripe forest for 
catastrophic fires. These heavy-handed regulations paralyze forest 
managers so they can't accomplish the critical tasks that are necessary 
for proper forest management.
  This failure to treat high-risk areas and to remove hazardous buildup 
has left our land susceptible to fires that grow in size, severity, and 
cost.
  So you have to ask yourself: What is the answer? How do we stop this? 
How do we stop it from happening again?
  And the answer is really quite simple. Federal policies have 
contributed to recent catastrophic fires, and wildlife management 
begins with proper land management.
  That is why I support Representative Westerman's bipartisan Resilient 
Federal Forests Act, which allows agencies to do this work so that we 
can prevent these catastrophic wildfires.
  I look forward to the House passing this important legislation. Let 
us bring back the beauty of our forests. Let us bring back the health 
of our forests. Let us prevent these catastrophic fires that rage out 
of control.
  I thank Mr. Gosar for bringing this again to the floor.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Utah, who has seen the 
challenging aspects and destruction from the fires, for his remarks.
  I also now want to acknowledge my friend from Montana, who is 
actually still seeing the ravaging of the fires. In fact, Seeley Lake, 
Montana, set a record for the worst air quality ever recorded there, 18 
times greater than the EPA safe particulate limit. Wow, that is a 
record that we have got to stop.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Gianforte).
  Mr. GIANFORTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for 
bringing the attention of the House to this important matter.
  This summer, we had catastrophic wildfires in Montana. We burned 1.2 
million acres. That is the equivalent of the size of the State of 
Delaware. I have seen this destruction firsthand. I visited with 
incident commanders and firefighters on five separate wildfires this 
summer.
  In Lincoln County, the air quality was so unhealthy that teachers 
provided masks to the kids in school so they could breathe.
  In August, I had Secretary Zinke and Secretary Perdue come to Montana 
and tour the Lolo Peak fire, one of the most expensive fires that was 
fought this summer.
  I have worked to bring relief to Montanans. In July, emergency relief 
for farmers and ranchers was provided by opening up the C.M. Russell 
recreation area to grazing. We had hungry cows left from pasture being 
consumed and grass available. It was a commonsense solution to put 
those two together.
  Also in July, we successfully urged FEMA Director Brock Long to 
reconsider their denial of one of our fires and declare Montana 
eligible for emergency funds. For these two things, I am thankful.
  So the negative impact has been severe. And while there has been some 
relief, including welcome rain and snow, we can't rely on that. Again, 
this summer, over a million acres burned in

[[Page 15459]]

Montana alone; we lost two firefighters; livelihoods were threatened; 
wildlife habitats were destroyed; smoke hung in the air; and ash rained 
down on our homes and our cars.
  Air quality reached dangerous levels in our communities. In fact, 
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana donated 150 air filters to our 
schools so our children could breathe.
  I have also seen firsthand the positive results of managed forests. 
Just 2 weeks ago, I toured a BLM forest near Miles City, Montana, and 
showed the effect of treating and managing forests. A fire burned in 
2015 through a forest through the crowns, and when it reached a forest 
that had been managed, the fire quickly dropped into the undergrowth, 
burned through the grass, but none of the trees were lost.
  In the untreated forest, there is just dead trees that won't recover 
in our lifetime. In the treated area, all of the trees survived. In 
fact, when an overgrown forest is thinned, more surface water came 
back, there is better habitat for wildlife, and we just have a better 
result.
  I saw that also on the Roaring Lion fire, which occurred in the 
Bitterroot Valley in 2016, where, there, private property owners had 
managed their private property. When the fire on public land reached 
there, it was quickly extinguished and hundreds of homes were saved.
  So the benefits of properly managed forests are clear. We have 
healthier forests. There is more wildlife, more hunting, more 
recreational opportunities, more good-paying jobs, and wildfires are 
less severe.
  One of the biggest problems we have is litigation. We need more 
collaborative projects, but litigation is one of the greatest problems. 
Parties come to the table in good faith, they work collaboratively only 
to be overturned by court action by radical environmental extremists.
  The Stonewall Vegetation Project in Lincoln, Montana, is a good 
example. Here, the Forest Service worked together with local landowners 
over a 8-year period to develop a collaborative forest management 
project. Once it was approved a year ago, the lawyers swooped in, 
arguing the project would disrupt lynx habitat. The judge overturned 
the decision. Fires raged this summer. Now there is no more habitat for 
lynx, and all that carbon has been released into atmosphere.
  Benefits of forest management are clear. As I have mentioned, 
healthier forests, more wildlife, more hunting, jobs, and less severe 
fires. It is time to act. We can't control the weather, but we can 
control how we manage our forests. It is time to reform our forest 
management by passing Bruce Westerman's Resilient Federal Forests Act, 
and we also must put commonsense guardrails on the Endangered Species 
Act to reduce frivolous lawsuits.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana, who I am 
sorry to see have such a hard time this year in forest management, for 
his remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
McClintock), my friend and colleague.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Gosar of the 
Western Caucus for arranging this Special Order tonight and especially 
for his exemplary leadership as chairman of the Western Caucus.
  The wildfire crisis facing our forests across the West comes down to 
a very simple adage. Excess timber comes out of the forest one way or 
the other. It is either carried out or it burns out, but it comes out.
  When we carried out our excess timber, we had healthy resilient 
forests and we had thriving, prosperous communities. Excess timber 
sales from Federal lands not only generated revenues for our mountain 
communities, but created thousands of job.
  But in the 1970s, we adopted laws like the National Environmental 
Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act that have resulted in 
endlessly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive restrictions and 
requirements that have made the scientific management of our forests 
virtually impossible.
  Timber sales from our Federal lands has dropped 80 percent in the 
intervening years, with a concomitant increase in forest fires. In 
California alone, the number of saw mills has dropped from 149 in 1981 
to just 27 today.
  Timber that once had room to grow healthy and strong now fights for 
its life against other trees trying to occupy the same ground.
  Average tree density in the Sierra Nevada is three to four times the 
density that the land can actually support. In this weakened condition, 
trees lose their natural defenses to drought and disease and 
pestilence, and they ultimately succumb to catastrophic wildfire.
  Three years ago, an estimated 25 million trees in the Sierra fell 
victim to these stressors. Two years ago, that number doubled to 50 
million trees. Last year, more than 100 million dead trees are now 
waiting to burn in the Sierra.
  Well, after 45 years of experience with these environmental laws--all 
passed with the promise that they would improve our forest 
environment--I think we are entitled to ask: How's the forest 
environment doing?
  All around us the answer is damning. These laws have not only failed 
to improve our forest environment, but they are literally killing our 
forests.
  The same politicians responsible for these failed laws have recently 
conjured up two new excuses. One is climate change. The other is that 
we are putting out too many fires.
  Putting out too many fires?
  That invites an important question: Exactly which fires did they 
propose that we allow to burn?
  Perhaps the King fire that almost wiped out the towns of Georgetown 
and Foresthill on its way to Lake Tahoe in 2014?
  Or perhaps the Detwiler fire this year that almost wiped out the town 
of Mariposa on its way to the Yosemite Valley?
  Or any one of the more than 1,000 fires in the Sierra that CAL FIRE 
has put out this year, any one of which could have grown into a 
megafire but for the vigilance and competence of our fire agencies?
  Which of these fires would they allow to burn into a conflagration?
  True, controlled burns play an important role in clearing out 
underbrush, but as firefighters bitterly complained to me at the 
command center at the Detwiler fire this year, these same laws make it 
virtually impossible to get permits to do the controlled burns.
  The other reason that we hear is climate change. Well, let's put that 
to the smell test. Throughout our vast forests, it is often very easy 
to visually identify the property lines between well-managed private 
forests and the neglected Federal lands.
  Now, I have seen it myself on aerial inspections. The private managed 
forests are green, healthy, and thriving. The neglected Federal forests 
are densely overcrowded and often scarred by fire because we can't even 
salvage the fire-killed timber while it still has value. You can 
literally tell from the condition of the forest where the property line 
is. How clever of our climate to know exactly what is the boundary line 
between private and government lands.
  And if carbon dioxide is the problem, doesn't it make sense to mill 
fully grown trees to sequester the carbon and replace them with young, 
growing trees that absorb much higher levels of carbon?
  But, again, these same laws prevent this.
  This is not complicated. Our forests are catastrophically overgrown. 
Drought is a catalyst. It is not the cause. In overgrown forests, much 
snow evaporates in dense canopies and cannot reach the ground. The 
transpiration volume in an overgrown forest is a big problem in a 
normal rain year; in a drought, it becomes lethal.
  Pestilence is a catalyst; it is not a cause. Healthy trees can 
naturally resist bark beetles; stressed trees cannot.

                              {time}  1930

  A properly managed forest matches the tree density to the ability of 
the land to support it, but we cannot properly manage our forests 
because of the laws now in place.

[[Page 15460]]

  Mr. Westerman's Resilient Federal Forests Act and other measures will 
restore proper scientific management of our national forests, but we 
are running out of time to enact them, because we are running out of 
forests to save.
  Mr. Speaker, I again thank the gentleman for yielding today, I thank 
him for his leadership, and I thank him for arranging this hour 
tonight.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his 
thoughts. He brought up some specific facts that need reiteration just 
because they are so plentiful.
  The Forest Service only harvested 2.5 billion board feet in 2016, 
compared to over 10 billion board feet in 1990. To make matters worse, 
litigation and other challenges have caused a significant reduction in 
active sawmills nationwide from over 1,300 in 1995, to just over 220 
today.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).
  Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for 
yielding and for his leadership on this, and to my other colleagues 
from the West, who understand what we face, the problems we face, and 
what has happened to our forests.
  I stand united with all of you in the Western Caucus, because this is 
something we have done some work on in the past and then we have been 
stalled out, especially in the last 8 years. I know that President 
Trump stands with us, wanting to pass legislation, get it down to his 
desk so he can sign it so we can begin to be better stewards of our 
great public forests, these public forest lands important to all of us.
  As we saw painfully this summer, smoke chokes our citizens, it chokes 
children. Literally, in my district, elementary school children had to 
be sent home because of the smoke in their schools because of forest 
fires.
  In Oregon, we have seen some of the worst fires in our State's 
history. It seemed as if every day came with new reports of more fire, 
more smoke. While this year's fire season has been particularly intense 
and devastating, images like these are nothing new for Oregonians. Each 
summer, smoke has filled our skies in Oregon year after year after 
year. Vast swaths of our land in our beautiful State are charred.
  Unlike private forest owners, the State of Oregon, which I am very 
proud to be a resident of, and our forest policy and tribal lands and 
county lands, after a fire, they go in and clean it up, they replant, 
they get a new, healthy, young forest growing, which if you are 
concerned about reducing carbon emissions, you want healthy trees, 
because they actually sequester carbon. Burned, dead, decaying old 
trees actually emit carbon.
  So we can do good things for the ecology of our world by planting new 
trees after a fire. We will talk about that in a minute.
  Smoke inhalation has become a health hazard for Oregonians in their 
communities. I can't tell you how many in my communities, day after day 
after day, were given warnings by our health authority that the air was 
too dangerous to breathe, that it was unhealthy to breathe.
  A recent study found that wildfires contribute three times as much 
fine particulate matter into the air as previously thought, and this 
definitely can cause respiratory problems and make it difficult to 
breathe, as the citizens of our great State found this summer.
  Wildfires also pollute our atmosphere with carbon. In 2002, the 
Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon burned more than 500,000 acres, half a 
million acres. The carbon dioxide emitted during that fire amounted to 
almost one-quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted in the entire State of 
Oregon this year.
  By the way, we have burned 678,000 acres this year in Oregon at a 
cost of more than $340 million to fight those fires, State, local, and 
Federal costs, mostly Federal.
  Tomorrow, the Energy and Commerce Committee, which I chair, will hold 
a hearing to take a look at the air impact of fires, in part because I 
have constituents who have seen that, in some cases, fires are not 
aggressively fought if they are in certain federally designated areas, 
wilderness areas. There is a temptation, apparently, to not use all our 
tools, and to instead let them burn. That doesn't take into account 
what happens to air quality and the health of our citizens when fires 
are allowed to ravage and burn.
  So we will take a look at the issues involving air quality and 
pollutants emitted into the atmosphere and discuss how better 
management of our forests could help prevent catastrophic fires and 
actually protect our airshed and our health.
  Each of us today faces a similar situation. Devastating fires ignite 
across the West as fuel loads build across our public lands--Mr. 
McClintock did a great job laying that out--while broken Federal forest 
policy stands in the way of better management, healthier air, 
protection of our habitat and our watersheds and our streams and our 
forested communities.
  8.2 million acres burned this year. By the way, my colleagues, that 
is an area larger than Maryland, it is three-and-a-half or so times the 
size of, I believe, Puerto Rico, which has been wiped out. We talk 
about the devastation and disaster there and in the Virgin Islands and 
every other place, but somehow we sort of overlook the fact that we 
lose this almost every year in our West and in our forested land.
  Communities watched their mills close, meanwhile, as Federal policy 
and lawsuits and litigation has prevented proper management of our 
forests. So we have lost our jobs, we have lost our infrastructure, we 
have lost the revenues for our schools, and, in some cases, for basic 
services like law enforcement.
  Now, promises that somehow recreation and outdoor activities would 
replace those good family-wage jobs, tourism, they are falling short, 
because guess what, events are being canceled because now the fires are 
destroying the airshed.
  Constituents of mine have been sending photos this year about some of 
the fires. This one right here is from Mike, who was returning from a 
hunting trip just a few weeks ago. This was the Eagle Creek fire 
burning in the scenic Columbia River Gorge area between Cascade Locks 
and where I live in Hood River.
  We had an evacuation notice within a half a mile of where I live on 
Rand Road. It was level 1, but they had them higher than that as you 
got closer to this fire.
  Meanwhile, events like Cycle Oregon, its 30th anniversary, canceled 
because of the smoke; Sisters Folk Festival canceled because of the 
smoke. Down in Ashland, the Oregon Shakespeare Theater, world-renowned 
festival, they had to cancel nine of their shows at a cost of $400,000 
direct revenue loss, not to mention the concerns they have about 
indirect loss, people who didn't show up for other performances, and 
might even affect their annual sales.
  People are really tired of this. They expect this Congress to take 
action to try and protect and become good stewards of our national 
forest land, but this picture tells you what we faced. The Columbia 
Gorge, where I grew up right near here, I can't remember a time the 
freeway was closed as long as it was this summer. We had to go over 
across the river to Washington to our good friends on Highway 14. All 
the freeway traffic was diverted there, and there is still one lane 
here that can't pass, because now we are worried about mudslides and 
rockslides and trees coming down the hillsides.
  We need to get back to positive, active management in our Federal 
forests.
  Five years in a row, the U.S. House has enacted legislation, sent it 
over to the Senate, that would give our professional foresters, our 
scientists, the tools that they clamor for and need to better manage 
our forests and reduce the overloading of debris, of dead and dying 
trees, open up these stands to what they should be naturally, get back 
in balance with nature. Every year this goes over to the other body, 
and somehow it never comes back. That has to change.
  So tonight, I thank my friend from Arizona who organized this. He 
knows what forest fires are like in Arizona.

[[Page 15461]]

My colleague from Washington, my colleague from California, myself, our 
colleague from Montana, we have dealt with this year after year after 
year. Now, more than half of the Forest Service budget is spent 
fighting fire. That is not what we should do as a matter of bad policy.
  We need to change Federal policy. We need to let our scientists 
manage these forests, restore jobs to our forested communities, protect 
our airsheds, our watersheds, and get back in balance. So I commend my 
colleagues in the Western Caucus for moving this forward.
  I just finished a very positive meeting with the Speaker of the 
House, who is committed to helping us on this matter. I look forward to 
us having the opportunity to vote on the Resilient Federal Forests bill 
and get our Senate colleagues on board as well.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman so greatly for his 
indulgence in coming down and expressing the problems that have been 
faced in Oregon and thank him for the timely hearing tomorrow in Energy 
and Commerce. We certainly appreciate it.
  We need to enlighten all Americans as to the tragedy that is going on 
in our public Western lands.
  Mr. WALDEN. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GOSAR. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I hope they will tune in tomorrow and watch 
the testimony at that hearing. I think they will get a better 
understanding of what the people in our districts have faced. For a 
month this summer, schools had to be closed, festivals canceled, people 
choking, going to the hospitals. This is serious stuff, and we need to 
address it.
  Mr. GOSAR. I want to highlight one thing that the gentleman actually 
brought to attention. Catastrophic fires also cause significant damage 
to the environment. Robust data from NASA has concluded that one 
catastrophic wildfire can emit more carbon emissions in a few days than 
total vehicle emissions in an entire State over the course of the year. 
Phenomenal. We just have to make sure people understand.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  Mr. WALDEN. We appreciate it.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Newhouse), my dear friend.
  Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from 
Arizona, my good friend, Mr. Gosar, for holding this Special Order and 
for giving us the opportunity not only to address the House on this 
very important issue, but also to address our Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, this year alone, over 8 million acres have burned across 
our country. And get this: ten times that, another 80 million acres, 
are considered high risk to threat of catastrophic wildfires.
  If this doesn't amount to a national disaster, nothing does. If we 
don't acknowledge that it does, this will only continue to devastate 
our rural communities across the Nation.
  The previous speaker, my friend from Oregon, talked about the impact 
of the health to people living in these communities. I could attest to 
you myself, living in central Washington, we had smoke where the 
visibility was less than a quarter of a mile for weeks at a time. I 
knew people who had chronic coughs as a result of this smoke. Myself, 
get this: I had to come back to our Nation's Capital for my cough to 
clear up over our August break. The air was that bad.
  So, Mr. Speaker, this evening, as you have heard from my colleagues 
from across the Western United States, as we gather to draw attention 
to this devastation, these catastrophic wildfires, what they pose to 
our communities, so States from Arkansas to Arizona, from Colorado to 
California, Montana to New Mexico, from Wyoming, from Oregon, to the 
great State of Washington, we are here to stress the importance of 
addressing the broken funding systems as well as the lack of resources 
that are necessary to adequately prevent and then suppress and fight 
these wildfires.
  So we gather to highlight the dire need to reform the mismanagement 
of our Federal forests, which leads to the exacerbation of this 
devastation. Mr. Speaker, we gather to give voice to our often 
forgotten communities and our constituents.
  Now, you have heard these Special Orders before. We as Members of 
Congress take these good opportunities to simply speak about a problem 
and bring light to its actuality, to let people know about it, but 
tonight is different, because my colleagues and I are here not just to 
talk about this, not just to highlight the major problem of wildfires 
across the country, but, in fact, we bring good news as well. We offer 
solutions to this important issue.
  So this evening, I rise in support and urge support of two provisions 
originating right here in Congress, the people's House, to address 
these issues.
  First of all, H.R. 2936, the Resilient Federal Forests Act, which is 
sponsored by my good friend from the State of Arkansas, Mr. Westerman, 
which addresses the disastrous consequences of catastrophic wildfires 
by utilizing tools the Forest Service and other agencies can use to 
reduce the threats that are posed by wildfires, by insects, by disease 
infestation, and dangerous old forest overgrowth that serve as a 
tinderbox for wildfires.
  This legislation would enable the necessary management techniques to 
address our forest health crises and significantly improve the 
resiliency of our Nation's forests.
  On top of that, H.R. 167, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, which is 
sponsored by my good friend and colleague from Idaho, Mr. Simpson, 
fixes the way that we budget for wildfire suppression by treating these 
catastrophic wildfires like any other natural disaster, which they are.
  Currently, agencies like the Forest Service are forced to borrow 
funding from accounts outside of their firefighting in order to address 
these fire suppression costs. This has become known as fire borrowing. 
This tool was intended to be an extraordinary measure, but in the past 
8 of the last 12 years, the Forest Service has had to move funds from 
other operating accounts to fight these fires.
  Mr. Speaker, this problem is systemic, it is dire, and we must 
address it.

                              {time}  1945

  The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act is a necessary solution to solve 
the crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, the fourth district of the State of Washington, which I 
am proud to call my home, has been devastated by wildfires in recent 
years, from the Carlton Complex Fire of 2014, which at the time was the 
largest in State history, to the Okanogan Complex Fire, which only the 
next year surpassed that record. In addition to that, we lost three 
firefighters in the process.
  Our communities know what it means to live with the overwhelming 
consequences of continual disastrous wildfires year after year after 
year, and it doesn't have to be this way. We can solve this problem.
  My colleagues and I gather tonight to shed light on this problem and 
to offer solutions and to let our constituents know that we will not 
give up in this effort.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. Speaker, the two speakers have now brought up the issue that the 
House has repeatedly passed resolutions and ideas in regards to funding 
and taking care and mitigating our forest tragedy. There is an old 
adage around here that the Democrats may be the opposition, but the 
Senate is always the enemy. What we are here to do is light a fire 
under the Senate. Their talk is cheap; their actions speak. So let's 
light a fire.
  To do that, I now yield to the gentleman whose Resilient Federal 
Forests Act is the topic for this evening, H.R. 2936.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman.)
  Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Gosar) for his leadership in setting up this Special Order

[[Page 15462]]

on the importance of proper forest management, proper forest management 
on our Nation's Federal lands. I would also like to thank him for his 
unwavering support of my bill, H.R. 2936, the Resilient Federal Forests 
Act of 2017.
  It is my sincere hope that we see H.R. 2936 move off the floor of the 
House with strong bipartisan support and then move through the Senate 
and get it on the President's desk so he can sign this and we can start 
the process of reversing something that has been going on for many 
years.
  As a person educated in forestry, I can tell you that forests grow 
slowly. We almost don't recognize the change in the forest because it 
happens so slowly over time. But given enough years, we see what has 
happened to our timberland out West. I have a map here of all the 
forest fires that we have seen out West this summer.
  We didn't just get to this point overnight. It happened over a series 
of years. It happened when, back in the 1990s, I believe, we had an 
overreaction to probably some forest management practices that weren't 
the best that they could be. The pendulum swung way too far, and we got 
in a position where, what I say is, we were loving our trees to death, 
and we stopped managing our trees.
  But we kept putting fires out, and fire is nature's natural way to 
manage overgrown forests. So what we have seen happen over time is we 
have seen more insects and disease infestations. As these trees grow 
closer together and fill the growing space, they start competing for 
water; they start competing for sunlight; they compete for nutrients; 
they become weak, and they become susceptible to insect attacks; they 
become susceptible to disease; and then they die. We get lightning 
strikes or we get fires to get out, and then we are dealing with a 
catastrophic event.
  But it doesn't have to be this way. If we would employ sound forest 
management practices, we can do a lot to mitigate the intensity and the 
number of these fires.
  As we look at issues that are created with these fires, we know that 
this has been the worst fire season on record, but it broke the record 
that was set in 2015 as the worst fire season on record. I predict 
that, if we don't start managing our forests now, in the next coming 
years we are going to see new worst fire seasons on record.
  This is a process that will continue to get worse unless we address 
the problem. It is to the point where it is going to take time to 
reverse what has happened and to get the forest back into a healthy 
state.
  I was notified this week about a sheep farmer down here in southeast 
Wyoming, in Torrington, who was a young guy getting into the business, 
and he lost five sheep. He took them to the veterinarian to do a 
postmortem analysis and found out they died from smoke inhalation.
  Now, the fire that was creating the smoke that was drifting down 
there was about 800 miles away in Montana. If it is causing that kind 
of health risk to sheep, what is it doing to the residents that live 
out here? I know that there have been schools closed, there have been 
people who have to stay indoors, but this creates a health risk. It is 
more than just a risk to healthy forests. It is a risk to healthy 
humans.
  We have got another map here, and this shows the smoke drift on a 
particular day. I believe this was September 14. This is a map that was 
produced by NOAA, and you can see where the fires were, and you can see 
how the winds carry the smoke. The red shows the most intense areas of 
smoke, the lighter green the intermediate, and then the darker green 
shows where the least smoke intensity was.
  This map really illustrates how fires in certain areas, the smoke 
gets picked up by the wind and gets carried to different places across 
the country.
  When I look at this map of the Western United States--and me being 
from Arkansas, some might ask: How do these fires affect forestry in 
Arkansas?
  Well, we have talked about fire borrowing. When we take money from 
one account in the Forest Service budget and put it in the firefighting 
account, that takes money away from management practices that could 
take place on the forest in Arkansas and other places to the east where 
we don't have as many catastrophic fires. On top of that, we see how 
the smoke drift affects many, many parts of the country.
  When we think about the smoke, what is that smoke? It is mainly 
carbon. One of the main purposes of a healthy forest is to fulfill the 
cycle of photosynthesis, where it pulls carton dioxide out of the 
atmosphere, takes that in through the leaves, converts it into sugars, 
and releases oxygen back into the air. The forests clean the air except 
when they are burning at the rate that they are burning right now, at 
8.5 million acres of our Federal timberland that went up in smoke, 
putting hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. If 
we want to talk about taking carbon out of the atmosphere, the solution 
to that is a healthy forest.
  But not only do forests clean the atmosphere, they clean the water. 
The more ground cover we have, the more water gets filtered as it goes 
into the ground, as it goes into streams.
  But overstocked forests can also prevent water from actually getting 
into the ground table and getting into streams. In areas in the West 
where we are having water shortage problems, proper management of 
forests can help to alleviate those problems.
  We are not talking about clear-cutting. I get so tired of people 
saying, ``All they want to do is clear-cut our Federal forests.'' We 
don't want to clear-cut the Federal forests. We want to manage them. We 
want to use practices like thinning from below, where we take out small 
stock, where we take out the smaller trees. Some of it is merchantable; 
some of it is not. We can produce timber that can be used in the rural 
areas where it is grown to help the economies out there.
  But the end goal is to have a healthy forest with larger trees spaced 
further apart without all the fuel ladders going down to the ground so 
that, when a fire moves through these areas, it burns at a low 
temperature through the ground. And guess what. That creates great 
wildlife habitats when we do that.
  There are so many benefits of having a healthy forest, and as a 
forester, a forester who was trained at a school that was started by 
Gifford Pinchot, who is the father, along with Teddy Roosevelt, of our 
Federal forests, it is embarrassing to me what has happened to our 
Federal lands across this country.
  Roosevelt and Pinchot talked about conservation. They talked about 
leaving our resources in better shape than we found them in. Right now, 
we are not doing that. We are allowing the lack of management to 
destroy these resources for future generations. We are allowing the 
lack of management to emit hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into 
the atmosphere and also take that vegetation away that provides 
wildlife habitat, that provides a filter for clean water, and that 
provides timber that is pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.
  We can do better than this. We have provisions in the Resilient 
Federal Forests Act to allow the Forest Service to actually manage the 
timber. We require them to do a no-management analysis, because when 
you look at the dynamic nature of a forest, if you say, ``We are not 
going to do anything,'' well, you just made a management decision.
  Again, the trees are living, growing organisms. Even though the 
Forest Service says, ``We are not managing it,'' they are going to 
continue to grow. They are going to fill the growing space. If we 
continue to suppress fire, the fuel load is going to get worse, and we 
are going to have more and more forests subject to catastrophic 
wildfire of, I believe it is, 192 million acres of Federal timberland 
in this country. About 60 million acres right now, according to the 
Forest Service, is subject to catastrophic wildfire.
  It is time to act. We have waited too long, and the problem continues 
to get worse. It will continue to get more severe as time moves on if 
we don't start intervening now.
  Mr. Gosar, I want to again thank you for putting this together, for 
the efforts that you are putting forth so

[[Page 15463]]

that we can take a proactive stance to make not only our air cleaner by 
not having all these catastrophic wildfires, but to conserve our 
forests so that they are healthy, so that they are functioning the way 
that they should be.
  I want to thank you again for all that you are doing, the work for 
the Western Caucus and all the members here, realizing, on both sides 
of the aisle, how important it is that we do the right thing, that we 
pass H.R. 2936, and that we start addressing this problem now.
  Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his 
excellent leadership. He is very modest.
  Listen, folks, I made a comment. Around here in Washington, D.C., we 
talk about the Democrats being the opposition and the Senate being the 
problem. Well, as you know, this is a very bipartisan bill. He is very 
modest.
  Let's go back through what H.R. 2936, the Resilient Federal Forests 
Act, actually does.
  It allows for the streamlined review of projects up to 30,000 acres 
if the management strategy is put forward by collaborative 
stakeholders. Imagine that, something so simple.
  It also requires litigants opposing active management projects to 
propose an alternative proposal as opposed to just saying ``no.'' 
``No'' isn't a solution. It is what you are for.
  It removes incentives for extreme special interest groups to file 
frivolous lawsuits--boy, once again, coming to the table with a 
solution.
  It empowers local stakeholders and decisionmakers. So often we 
overlook the people on the ground, on Main Street, who have to live 
with the consequences for bad policy decisions.
  It also empowers Tribal communities to be part of the solution and to 
help reduce the risk of wildfire. We see this time and again, that the 
Native Tribes that are in charge of their forests have pristine 
management practices.
  H.R. 2936 also maintains current protections for our environmentally 
sensitive areas, including wilderness and roadless areas. What a 
concession.
  We need to be clear about larger risk areas and get to these in a 
more timely manner that we really want to handle.
  This bill is good for forest-dependent species as it allows for 
improvements to their habitat.
  This bill adopts a forward-thinking, active management strategy that 
combats dangerous wildfires before they get started, which includes 
reforms that would end the practice of fire borrowing.
  I want to thank the gentleman for his excellent piece of legislation. 
It is time that it moves forward.
  Once again, it is not the House that is the problem, but our 
colleagues across the street. Once again, talk is cheap; actions speak. 
Americans need help.
  The fact that these disasters are quite natural might lead one to 
think they are inevitable, but according to forestry officials and 
experts, it is our stunted Federal forestry management and underfunded 
and misallocated Forest Service accounts that are to blame.

                              {time}  2000

  Our system is broken. These fires start naturally and decimate our 
natural ecosystems, but the ultimate cause at the level of their 
severity and recurrence is manmade.
  The facts about the relationship between management and wildfires 
speak for themselves. Forest Service data indicates that active forest 
management reduces wildfire intensity, while improving forest health. 
In spite of this, only 1 to 2 percent of high risk areas are actively 
treated and subject to forest management.
  The United States Forest Service expends too many resources fighting 
fires after they break out to work to prevent them in any significant 
way before they start. By performing routine thinning, culling 
hazardous fuels on the forest floors, and conducting controlled burns, 
they could accomplish exactly that, but such a course of action would 
require ample resources and wise allocation. As you could guess, my 
professional diagnosis is that both of those are in short supply.
  I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle are able to hear 
what I say next. If you care about carbon emissions, you should care 
deeply about this issue, no matter where you live in the country, no 
matter where you live.
  NASA data shows that one wildfire can emit more carbon in a few days 
than total vehicle emissions in a State for the whole year. To put it 
in perspective, controlled burning releases roughly 10 percent as much, 
and is only one part of an overall active management strategy.
  So the correct choice in this situation is obvious: we spend a little 
more on the front end so that we can save ourselves much of the 
economic, environmental, and familial displacement costs on the back 
end. These costs are year after year, and they are catastrophic when 
they are left untreated.
  Treatment is the right course of action, but it requires a little bit 
of planning, due diligence, and yes, action on our part. I know 
Congress is a big fan of the word, but when you look at the track 
record, Congress isn't a big fan of actually acting.
  In response to this dire situation, Members of Congress from across 
the country will be sharing their thoughts and experiences within their 
home States. They will be discussing this during the year, and this 
past year of terrible wildfires. These are stories that need to be 
recounted.
  They will also be speaking about the solutions that we have come 
together with, for forestry officials and stakeholders across the 
country. Tackling this problem has become a collaborative and holistic 
national policy effort, and the policy proposals we have produced are 
reflective of this fact. They are also bipartisan.
  But, Mr. Speaker, we can't let this just be a rhetorical exercise. We 
are united in demanding Congress do something. This Chamber has the 
knowledge and aptitude to deliver policy solutions. Now we need the 
political will to turn that knowledge into congressional action. Only 
then will huge portions of the country finally see some relief from 
these disasters.
  When your home is on fire, it is straightforward, it is a nonpartisan 
issue. You call the fire department, and after the problem is dealt 
with, you make sure that you eliminate what caused the fire so that you 
don't see it again.
  Mr. Speaker, our Nation was on fire this year, and I demand that we, 
as this Chamber, unite in the same spirit of decisive problem solving 
as we do for our natural disasters. Let's put these fires out, and then 
let's stop the brunt for next year's fires before they start.
  In my four terms as a Congressman from Arizona, I have had to witness 
the largest catastrophic fire in Arizona history, and also the most 
catastrophic life-taking, the Yarnell fire. The first was the Wild Well 
fire in northeast Arizona, and the second was the Yarnell fire that is 
now in the movie theaters that took the lives of 19 firefighters. That 
is a travesty.
  This is something that gives when it is managed right. The people 
back home know the right answer. Let's give them the tools, the working 
power, and the policy that allows them, instead of being victims, to be 
stalwart solutions for a policy that gives back.
  As the gentleman from Arkansas said, as Teddy Roosevelt said: Leave 
our natural resources better than we found them.
  Mr. Speaker, the speakers tonight shared their stories. We want 
America to hear those loud and clear. These are natural disasters no 
different than hurricanes, but these, in one case, are different. They 
are manmade.
  Let's bring this commonsense policy that Mr. Westerman has put 
forward. He is a true advocate and smart in regards to those reforms; 
that is why we want to make sure that H.R. 2936 gets moved through this 
Chamber, and then put the onus back on the Senate, so that we actually 
reward the people for good policy and making sure that the victims are 
turned upside down and made stalwart solution makers.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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