    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2003, Book II)]
    [August 21, 2003]
    [Pages 1039-1045]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1039]]

    Remarks in Redmond, Oregon
    August 21, 2003

        Thank you. Please be seated. Thank you. You know you're in a pretty
    good country when you see a lot of cowboy hats out in the crowd--
    [laughter]--and when you got horses guarding the perimeter.
        Thank you for your hospitality. It is like home, except the
    temperature seems to be a little cooler and a little more hospitable.
    But thanks for your hospitality. I'm thrilled to be in Deschutes County,
    Oregon. I've been planning to come for a while. I'm sad that I had to
    come to see another forest fire.
        We just toured two fires that are burning in the area. It's hard to
    describe to our fellow citizen what it means to see a fire like we saw.
    It's the holocaust; it's devastating. We saw the big flames jumping from
    treetop to treetop, which reminds me about the brave men and women, what
    they have to face when they go in to fight the fires. I first want to
    start by thanking those who put their lives at risk to protect our
    communities, to protect our people, to protect our national treasures,
    the U.S. forests. I appreciate our firefighters. All those firefighters
    know something that I've come to realize, that we can thin our forests,
    that we can use commonsense policy to make the fires burn less hot and
    protect our forests.
        And that's what I want to talk about here. Before I do so, I want to
    thank Secretary Ann Veneman, Secretary Gale
    Norton for doing a fine job on behalf of all
    Americans. I want you to notice that these two ladies are from the West.
    I appreciate Dale Bosworth, who's the Chief of
    the U.S. Forest Service. I also want to thank Leslie Weldon. Where are you, Leslie? Where? Oh, hi, Leslie. Thank
    you. Leslie is the Forest Supervisor of the Deschutes National Forest.
    She was our tour guide. She is a dedicated professional, just like the
    people she works with from the U.S. Forest Service. I want to thank
    those who work for the U.S. Forest Service, for the BLM, for serving
    your Nation in the communities in which you live. I appreciate the hard
    work you put in. I appreciate your dedication to the preservation and
    conservation of one of the greatest assets the United States has, which
    is our land and our forests.
        I appreciate your Governor, Governor Kulongoski, who came with me today. I'm honored that he is here. It
    should say loud and clear to everybody that preserving and protecting
    our forests is not a political issue. It is not a partisan issue. It is
    a practical issue that we must come together and solve. So I'm very
    honored that the Governor is here.
        I'm also honored to be with the two members of the legislative
    branch of our Government in Washington, DC--a great United States
    Senator, Gordon Smith, and a great Congressman,
    Greg Walden. I appreciate being able to work
    with these two fine men. You've just got to know they represent your
    interests well. They're constantly talking about the people of Oregon.
    Every time I'm around them, they bring you up. They say, ``Let's have
    some commonsense policy in Washington, DC, to help people help
    themselves in our State. That's all we want. We just want the Federal
    Government to respond in a responsible way.'' And that's what we're here
    to talk about, how best to be able to do that.
        I don't know if you know this, but today are the Waldens' 21st anniversary. Congratulations to you both.
    Eileen must be a patient soul--[laughter]--
    kind of like Laura. We both married above
    ourselves, Congressman. [Laughter]
        Laura sends her love and her best, by the
    way. She's still in Texas and wasn't able to travel today, but I wish
    she could come and see how beautiful this country

    [[Page 1040]]

    is. See, we both grew up in the desert of west Texas. This is really a
    beautiful part of the world.
        I appreciate the mayors who are here today, Mayor Unger of Redmond, Mayor Teater of
    Bend, Mayor Allen, Mayor Uffelman, Mayor Elliott. I thank the
    mayors and the local authorities who have taken time to come and give me
    a chance to visit with you. I appreciate your service to your
    communities. I think mayor is a little tougher than being President
    because you've got to make sure the potholes are all full and the
    garbage is collected. [Laughter]
        I appreciate Garland Brunoe, who is the
    Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, and I want to
    thank all the tribal members who are here with us today as well.
        Today when I landed, I had the honor of meeting a fellow named
    Curtis Hardy. Curtis is sitting right there.
    The interesting thing about Curtis is, he's volunteered 5,000 hours over
    the last 10 years to the Deschutes National Forest. I asked
    Leslie if he was doing any good. [Laughter]
    She said, ``Absolutely.'' She says it's people like Curtis Hardy that
    make her job easier. It's very important for people to know that they
    can take time out of their lives, if they care about their beautiful
    surroundings, and make a positive, significant difference. Curtis is
    doing that. Curtis, thank you for setting such a good example, and I
    appreciate your service.
        Ann was right: I was here a year ago. Unfortunately, when I came a
    year ago, I witnessed the effects of fires. I saw the Biscuit fire and
    the Squires Peak fire. Both of them were devastating forest fires. They
    destroyed buildings and homes, changed lives. They destroyed natural
    resources. The Biscuit fire alone scorched nearly half a million acres,
    cost more than $150 million. It burned down over a dozen homes. You
    know, anytime our communities face the devastation of wildfire, it
    really does test the character of the people. For those whose lives have
    been deeply affected and probably will be affected by this fire, we send
    our sympathies, and we wish God's blessings on their families.
        The Federal Government can help. We will give grants, and the FEMA
    grants, all the SBA loans, the different things that happen when there's
    an emergency. I can assure you, Gordon and Greg will be all over us to
    make sure we appropriate the proper money to spend.
        But the Government has got to do more than just spend money. I mean,
    we'll spend it, but we've got to effect wise policy, it seems like to
    me. I mean, how often--we write checks a lot on firefighting, and we'll
    continue to do that. But it seems like to me we ought to put a strategy
    in place to reduce the amount of money that we have to spend on
    emergency basis by managing our forests in a better, more commonsensical
    way.
        The forest policy--the conditions of our forests didn't happen
    overnight. The experts who know something about forests will tell you
    that the condition, the overgrown and unhealthy condition, of a lot of
    our forest land happened over a century. It's taken a while for this
    situation to evolve. It may interest you to know that today there's 190
    million acres of forests and woodlands around the country which are
    vulnerable to catastrophic fire because of brush and small trees that
    have been collecting for literally decades. A problem that has taken a
    long time to develop is going to take a long time to solve. So what
    we're going to talk about today is the beginnings of a solution. But
    we've got to get after it now. We have a problem in Oregon and around
    our country that we must start solving.
        You see, the undergrowth issue, the problem of too much undergrowth,
    creates the conditions for unbelievably hot fires. These forest
    firefighters will tell you that these hot fires that literally explode
    the big trees can be somewhat mitigated by clearing out the undergrowth.
    And by the way,

    [[Page 1041]]

    the undergrowth chokes off nutrients from older trees. It makes our
    forests more susceptible to disease. We got a problem. It's time to deal
    with the problem. And that's what we're going to talk about.
        Before I talk about the solutions, I do want people to understand
    that if you are concerned about the endangered species, then you need to
    be concerned about catastrophic fire. Fires destroy the animals which,
    obviously, live amidst the raging fire. If you're concerned about old
    growth, large stands of timber, then you better be worried about the
    conditions that create devastating fires. The worst thing that can
    happen to old stands of timber is these fires. They destroy the big
    trees. They're so explosive in nature that hardly any tree can survive.
    We saw that with our own eyes, choppering in here. Thinning underbrush
    makes sense, makes sense to save our species. It makes sense--of
    animals. It makes sense to save the big stands of trees.
        You know, what I'm telling you about a strategy to deal with our
    forests to make them healthy is not something that was invented in
    Washington, DC. It's the collective wisdom of scientists, wildlife
    biologists, forestry professionals, and as importantly, the men and
    women who risk their life on an annual basis to fight fires. That's who
    I've been listening to.
        Our administration is taking their advice. Congress needs to take
    their advice. Congress needs to listen to the--[applause]. So having
    listened and realized that we've got a problem, I've proposed a Healthy
    Forest Initiative. And I proposed it right here in Oregon one year ago.
    At my direction, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture and the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality,
    Connaughton, who is here with us today, on
    my staff--these three--that's why they're here, by the way. I want you
    to look at them. They are responsible for putting this initiative into
    place.
        Their job is to cut through bureaucratic redtape to complete
    urgently needed thinning projects. That was the first task I gave them.
    We're going to focus on areas where thinning is the most critical, where
    the damage can be most severe by--caused by fires. We're working with
    the Western Governors Association to determine projects of the highest
    priority in each State. In other words, we're setting priorities, and
    we're getting after it.
        We are speeding up the process of environmental assessments and
    consultations required by law. Look, we want people to have input. If
    somebody has got a different point of view, we need to hear it. This is
    America. We expect to hear people's different points of view in this
    country. But we want people to understand that we're talking about the
    health of our forests, and if there's a high priority, we need to get
    after it before the forests burn and people lose life.
        We're expediting the administrative appeals process so that disputes
    over thinning projects are resolved more quickly. We want to hear
    people. We want them to have a point of view. We want to save our
    forests, too. That's what we want to do here in America. We want to deal
    with the problem. Nobody's to blame. The problem has existed for years.
    Now let us be the ones who start solving the problem. And that's what
    I'm going to ask Congress to do when they come back.
        Our approach relies on the experience and judgment and hard work of
    local people. Metolius Conservation Area is such an example. Leslie was
    describing it to me. The Friends of the Metolius, a conservation group,
    came to the Forest Service with an interesting idea. What I'm about to
    tell you is called a collaborative effort--to do some commonsense things
    in our forests to protect them and protect the communities around the
    forests.
        So these good folks came and said, ``Look, why don't we set up some
    sample plots in the Deschutes Forest to be treated with thinning and
    burning and mowing and to leave some of the plots untreated, so

    [[Page 1042]]

    people can see the difference between a treated plot and an untreated
    plot, to kind of break through the myths, the mythology, the propaganda
    of what it means to protect our forests?'' And the Forest Service
    agreed, and they worked together, and they shared costs. And thousands
    have now come and have seen good forest management practices in place.
    They've seen what is possible to do. And I want to thank the folks for
    working hard in a collaborative way to share your wisdom and your hard
    work, to help educate our fellow citizens about the realities of what
    we're talking about when it comes to maintaining a healthy forest.
        Bill Anthony is not with us today--I think
    he's fighting the fires--deserves a lot of credit for this program, as
    does Leslie. They're in the process, by the
    way, of treating 12,500 acres--additional 12,500 acres. I want to thank
    the Friends of the Metolius. I want to thank the local citizenry here
    for doing what is right. Ranger Bill says community participation has
    been critical to the success of the project, and that's the kind of
    initiatives we like and want. We want initiatives where the Federal
    Government works closely with the State government, with community
    groups, conservation groups, local people, in order to do what is right
    for our country and our States. You see, there's too much confrontation
    when it comes to environmental policy. There's too much zero-sum
    thinking. What we need is cooperation, not confrontation.
        I appreciate the stewardship contracting programs that will be going
    on. I hope you do, as well. You see, the thinning projects that are
    going to go forward should help some of these local communities that
    hurt. And by the way, I fully understand Oregon's unemployment issue.
    It's the highest in the Nation. I'm sorry it's the way it is. There are
    some things we can do to help people. We want people working. We want
    people to have food on the table.
        Stewardship contracting--what that means is, is that private
    organizations or businesses will be able to do the necessary thinning,
    and they'll be able to remove small trees and undergrowth, and they'll
    be able to keep part of what they remove as partial payment. That seems
    to make sense to me. First of all, somebody's working. It seems like the
    taxpayers come out okay. After all, if you're able to keep some of the
    thinning, which protects our forests, as part of the payment, it's a--
    takes a little load off the taxpayer. The local community's tax base
    will get better when somebody spends the money they make from thinning
    the projects, and the forests are more healthy. Stewardship contracting
    makes sense. It's an integral part of our plan.
        I'll give you a quick report. The Healthy Forests Initiative is
    producing results. Last year, we treated 2\1/4\ million acres of
    overgrown forests. By the end of the fiscal year in September, we will
    have treated more than 2.6 million acres of forest and rangeland. We're
    slowly but surely getting after it, as we say in Crawford, Texas. We're
    beginning to deal with the problem that we've--that will help make the
    country, by solving the problem, a better place.
        This year alone, we'll spend more than $43 million of forest
    treatment projects here in the State of Oregon. And as we go forward
    with the Healthy Forests Initiative, if we can ever get it authorized by
    Congress, I look forward to working with the appropriators, working with
    Gordon and Greg, to get
    the projects funded. We just don't want the initiative authorized; we
    want the initiative funded so we can solve the problem.
        But the initiative I've laid out is one step. Congress needs to act.
    People ought to understand up there in Washington that--or over there in
    Washington, way over there in Washington--[laughter]--that current law
    makes it too difficult to expedite the thinning of forests because it
    allows the litigation process to delay progress and projects for years
    and years. That's the

    [[Page 1043]]

    problem. And those delays, the endless litigation delays, endanger the
    health of our forests and the safety of too many of our communities.
        So I've asked Congress to fix the problem. Gordon and Greg are working hard to
    fix the problem. The law called the ``Healthy Forests Restoration Act''
    would bring government and communities together to select high-priority
    projects relevant to local needs. In other words, it's part of the
    prioritization of what I just described to you earlier. It would also
    direct courts to consider the long-term threats to forest health that
    could result if thinning projects are delayed. In other words, it says,
    ``We have a national goal to protect our--one of our finest assets, and
    that is our forests. And therefore, you--Mr. Judge, make sure you
    understand that a healthy forest is a part of your consideration when
    you're listening to these appeals.''
        The legislation makes forest health the priority, a high priority,
    when courts are forced to resolve disputes. And it places reasonable
    time limits on litigation after the public has had an opportunity to
    comment and a decision has been made. Congress must move forward with
    this bill. It's a good, commonsense piece of legislation that will make
    our forests more healthy, that will protect old-growth stands, that will
    make it more likely endangered species will exist, that will protect our
    communities, that will make it easier for people to enjoy living on the
    edges of our national forests.
        The House of Representatives passed the bill--and I appreciate your
    good work, Greg. The Agriculture Committee has agreed on a bill. The
    Agriculture Committee agreed on a bill, and when the Senate returns,
    they need to pass the healthy forests legislation and get it to my desk.
        The administration is also working to help communities of this
    region by implementing the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. This plan was
    designed to protect wildlife and to support a viable woods-products
    industry in the Northwest. It was designed, obviously, before I arrived
    in Washington. It's a good plan. It makes a lot of sense. It was a plan
    forged by conservationists, industry professionals, government officials
    who came together to decide on a reasonable target for sustainable
    timber harvesting on a small portion of our forests. The plan calls for
    harvesting of about a billion board foot of timber per year. It will
    strengthen our communities. It will help rural America. It will help our
    homebuilders. It makes sense. It was a promise made to the people of the
    Northwest. It's a promise I intend to work with the Federal Government
    to keep.
        Good forest policy can be the difference between lives surrounded by
    natural beauty or natural disaster. And we're watching a natural
    disaster unfold right here in this part of the world. And we can do a
    better job protecting our assets. We can do a better job protecting
    people in the communities. Now it's time for people who represent
    different parts of the country to come together to see the devastation
    that takes place out West on an annual basis and allow these good people
    out West to manage their assets in a way that we'll not only be able to
    say we've done a job well-done for future generations but we're
    protecting something that we hold dear, and that is the forest lands of
    America.
        Before I finish, I do want to talk about another conservation issue
    that affects the people of the west coast, and that's energy
    reliability. First, I thought our Government response to the power
    outage out East and in the Midwest was a good response. You know, after
    September the 11th, we came together in a way to be able to better deal
    with emergencies that affected America. The Federal Government, the
    State government, the local governments all worked in a very close way,
    and the communications was good. The system survived. The system
    responded well. We had a lot of good people who didn't panic and dealt
    with the problem in a very professional way. And I want to thank our
    citizens out East and

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    up in the Midwest for doing such a fine job of responding to a very
    difficult situation and being respectful for their neighbor.
        And yesterday Secretary of Energy Abraham and the Canadian Minister of Natural
    Resources met in Detroit. It's the joint
    effort to find out what went wrong. We're going to try to find out as
    quickly as we can exactly what caused the rolling blackout. But this
    rolling blackout and the problem we've got here with hydropower, the
    problem in California recently should say loud and clear to members of
    the legislative branch of Government that we've got an energy issue that
    we need to solve in America.
        I called together a--put the task force together and made 105
    recommendations for our Government to look at about a comprehensive
    national energy plan, one that encourages conservation, one that
    encourages energy efficiency, one that realizes that we've got to be
    less dependent on foreign sources of energy. And part of that was to
    recognize that our infrastructure, the electricity infrastructure, needs
    to be modernized.
        And we've taken some action without law passed by the legislative
    branch. For example, there's a bottleneck that plagued California for
    years. In other words, electricity wasn't able to move as freely from
    south to north, north to south, as we wanted. And we're now permitting
    lines so that that bottleneck can be removed. And the Department of
    Energy is working with the private sector to get the lines up and
    running so we can move more electricity.
        And we've been dealing with the shortage of hydropower. As you know,
    you've got an issue in the Klamath Basin, and we've been trying to come
    up with reasonable policy so that people can farm the land and fish can
    live at the same time.
        But Congress needs to act. I don't know if you know this or not, but
    for many years the reliability of electricity in America depended on
    companies observing voluntary standards to prevent blackouts. I don't
    think those standards ought to be voluntary. I think they ought to be
    mandatory. And if there's not reliability backup for electricity, there
    ought to be a serious consequence for somebody who misuses the public
    trust. And Congress needs to have that in the law.
        We ought to authorize the Federal Government to step in as last
    resort to put up new power lines where it best serves the national
    interest. We ought to make investment--new investment in a transmission
    of electricity easier to make. We've got some old laws that were passed
    a long time ago that make it harder for people to invest in new
    electricity lines, new transmission lines. That doesn't make any sense.
    If we've got a problem, let's deal with it.
        The law that passed out of the House of Representatives deals with
    it. I'm confident--and the Senate passed a bill--in other words, out of
    the two bodies, they need to get together. I talked to Pete
    Domenici, the Senator from New Mexico. I
    talked to Billy Tauzin, the chairman
    from Louisiana. They both agreed on what I've just described to you as
    necessary in a new bill, so that we can say we solved the problem; we're
    modernizing our electricity system so the people of America don't have
    their lives disrupted like what happened during the rolling blackout
    that took place last week. So we're going to get us a good energy bill.
    We need an energy bill, an energy strategy, and we need the will to
    implement it.
        Let me conclude by telling you that I'm incredibly proud of our
    country. You know, we've been through a lot. We've been through a
    recession. You're still in it here in Oregon. We had these people attack
    us because of what we stand for. We love freedom in America, and we're
    not going to change. We stood tall and strong. We're a determined
    country, to not only protect ourselves; we're determined as well to
    protect ourselves by spreading freedom throughout the world. We know
    that free

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    societies will be peaceful societies. We believe in America that freedom
    is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to every single
    human being on the face of the Earth.
        We've been through some tough times, and these tough times came to
    the right nation. Our values are strong. Our people are courageous and
    strong and compassionate. I love being the President of the greatest
    nation on the face of the Earth.
        May God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:23 p.m. at the Deschutes County
    Fairgrounds. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Ted Kulongoski of
    Oregon; Mayors Alan Unger of Redmond, Oran Teater of Bend, Richard Allen
    of Madras, Stephen Uffelman of Prineville, and David Elliott of Sisters,
    OR; Garland Brunoe, tribal council chairman, Confederated Tribes of Warm
    Springs; Bill Anthony, Sisters District Ranger, Deschutes National
    Forest; and Minister of Natural Resources Herb Dhaliwal of Canada.