Wildfires And Forest Management

Floor Speech

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I join in thanking Representative Westerman for this legislation and this Special Order tonight, explaining the extent to which these catastrophic wildfires are destroying the West and other areas of our country.

This year, over 9 million acres have burned in the West. It is a new record for catastrophic wildfires. This year, most of the damage has been in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and northern California.

You heard the gentleman from northern California earlier talk about the number of houses that have been destroyed; the lives that have been disrupted; the wildlife that has been destroyed; the habitat that has been destroyed; the carbon that has gone up in the air and the illness that that has caused; the watersheds that are destroyed; the oxygen that is destroyed when you have ash running down hillsides into streams, choking the oxygen out of the water, killing the fish.

The habitat destruction, the effects on people and ungulates and fish and resources, it is irresponsible. We have a stewardship obligation for these lands. We know how to manage these lands. This doesn't need to be happening.

Representative Westerman is a professional forester and an engineer. He has spent his career studying the science of doing this right.

I have a photograph here of an example of how to do this right. He showed us some earlier from his State of Arkansas. I want to show you how his methodology works in the Black Hills that straddle the border between South Dakota and Wyoming.

You can't see this terribly clearly, but if you look at this vibrant green in the middle and compare it to the browns and yellows that you see down here--Black Hills National Forest--that has been thinned, that has been forested, that has been conservation logged.

It has created sunlight in places that were clogged and choked from sunlight. It has created healthy underbrush, as opposed to a clogged underbrush that burns. It has allowed wildlife to graze. It allows snow to be stored and held longer in the forest into the spring and very early summer before it melts and goes downstream, thereby preventing flooding downstream. It is a natural hedge against flooding.

We know all of this. All we have to do is pass and implement Representative Westerman's bill, and we can start preventing this.

The day to save a tree is yesterday, but this summer, because we have ignored this problem for so long, we let 9 million more acres go up in smoke in the West.

I spent the entire August work period in my State of Wyoming. Although Wyoming, thank God, wasn't on fire this summer--it has been in the past--but I can tell you, every day, when I woke up on the western side of the State of Wyoming, my eyes were burning from fires that were burning hundreds of miles west of me in Idaho, in Oregon, in Washington, and in northern California.

To ignore science, to ignore management practices, and to allow this to continue is abominable.

The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman) has the answer. The House passed it. I urge the Senate to take it up.

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