**STATEMENT**

**GAIL KIMBELL**

**CHIEF**

**FOREST SERVICE**

**UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT of AGRICULTURE**

**BEFORE THE**

**SENATE ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE**

**APRIL 1, 2008**

**CONCERNING:**

***S. 2593, the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008***

Thank you for the opportunity today to provide the Forest Service's view
on S. 2593, a bill that would provide for the establishment of a program
to carry out collaborative ecological restoration treatments on priority
forest landscapes. We support the intent of the bill to work on a
landscape scale, to integrate the best available science, and to
implement proposals through a collaborative process. As reflected by the
inclusion of an ecosystems demonstration legislative proposal within the
President's FY 2009 Budget and much of our current work, we share this
goal. The Administration's ecosystem demonstration proposal would expand
our ability to bring new partners together with the Forest Service on
landscape-scale projects that restore forests through market-oriented
approaches to stewardship of national forests.

Both the President's proposal and S. 2593 reflect a collaborative
approach that builds commitment to partnership and ownership of the
results. Each would help different groups find their common interests
and leverages resources to get work done. Although the Forest Service
has been carrying out restoration work across landscapes under current
authorities, S. 2593 would enhance our current efforts by helping
prioritize landscape-level restoration work. In my testimony, I will
give some background on our current efforts in landscape-level work and
make some general comments on the bill.

We believe there is a need for action to restore the health of many of
the Nation's forests and rangelands. On the one hand, some of our
forests and grasslands have adapted to natural disturbance regimes. On
the other hand, many areas across the Nation are experiencing extended
droughts, reduced snow packs, damaging storm events, and other
environmental stressors. The presence of large amounts of hazardous
forest and rangeland fuels poses a risk of catastrophic wildfire that
threatens other public and private land and natural resources and
communities. Millions of acres of forest and rangeland ecosystems are
under attack from native insects, such as bark beetles as well as
non-native invasive species. For example between 2000-2004, trees were
killed on approximately 27.1 million acres in the Western States from a
combination of factors. These diverse threats affect aquatic and
terrestrial ecosystems in virtually every region of the country.

**Current Efforts**

We believe that hazardous fuels treatment and other forest management
approaches, such as forest thinning projects can help mitigate these
risks, restore healthy forest conditions, and increase the ability of
our Nation's forests and grasslands to adapt to ecological shifts
associated with climate change. The Forest Service has taken several
actions to accomplish these objectives, for example:

[Forest Restoration Framework and Policy]{.underline}. The Forest
Service has completed a strategic, science-based framework for restoring
and maintaining forest and grassland ecological conditions titled the
"Ecosystem Restoration Framework." The framework looks at the
development of an integrated agency-wide forest restoration policy to
promote ecosystem restoration and efforts to integrate this work across
all functional areas of the agency. The framework also considers
integration of ecosystem restoration into our national strategic, forest
land and resource management plans, and project plans; and use of
incentives to increase accomplishment of restoration objectives.

The framework will address policy factors such as requirements to plan,
implement, monitor, and evaluate ecological restoration activities in
consideration of current and future desired conditions and the potential
for future changes in environmental conditions, including climate
change. Our policy will provide consistent guidance to all of our field
units; communicate our intention to increase emphasis on operating at a
landscape scale, and our expectation to accelerate collaborative
restoration work. The policy is under development and is expected to be
released within the near future.

[Stewardship Contracting as a Tool to Accomplish
Restoration.]{.underline} The Forest Service has been actively using
stewardship contracts, part of the Healthy Forests Initiative, to
advance hazardous fuels reduction and other forest restoration
treatments in priority areas. Last year, we completed an assessment of
our progress on implementing stewardship contracting, and we are working
to expand our use of stewardship contracting. We believe that
stewardship contracting is an effective tool to implement the landscape
restoration proposals under this bill, and we think that the authority
to enter into the contracts should be made permanent. Several projects
stand out as examples of this tool's capability.

-   The *White Mountain Stewardship Contract* on the Apache-Sitgreaves
    National Forests in Springerville, Arizona is the largest
    stewardship contract in the nation. This contract has a 10-year term
    to treat 15,000 acres per year for a total of about 150,000 acres,
    and it is entering its fourth year. The project was designed and is
    being carried out through a collaboration of various state and local
    governments, representatives of local forest products industry, and
    special interest groups. The goals of this effort are to restore
    forest health, reduce the risk of fire to communities, reduce the
    cost of forest thinning, support local economies, and encourage new
    wood product industries and uses for the thinned wood fiber. Removal
    of saw timber is offsetting the cost of fuels treatments and
    improvements to forest health. In addition, the project will
    partially supply material to the Renegy Biomass Plant (25 megawatt)
    in Snowflake, AZ.

-   In Alamogordo, New Mexico, the Lincoln National Forest and the
    Mescalero Apache Tribe signed the *16 Springs Stewardship Project*
    under the authority of the Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA,
    Public Law 108-248). This is the first stewardship contract under
    the TFPA authority, which permits the Federal government to enter
    into contracts and agreements with American Indian Tribes for work
    on public lands bordering on or adjacent to tribal lands. The 6-year
    contract involves 15,000 treatment acres (half with commercial
    timber harvest and service work, half with service work only). The
    service work primarily consists of thinning and fuel treatments. The
    project is designed to reduce the threat of wildfire and forest
    disease spread from public lands to Tribal land. The project will
    contribute to the central priority of restoration of fire-adapted
    ecosystems by reducing intensities of wildfires, especially in
    Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) as identified under the Otero County
    Community Wildfire Protection Plan, sanctioned by the Otero County
    Working Group. Furthermore, the project will restore natural
    ecologic processes across a range of forest types, provide forest
    products to the local community, and enhance watershed conditions.
    The full implementation of this contract will reduce the threat of
    damaging wildfire to national forest system, private, and tribal
    lands.

-   The *Sustained Yield Restoration Stewardship Contract* on the
    Fremont-Winema National Forest in Lakeview, Oregon is a contract
    with a 10-year term that we anticipate will treat about 3,000 acres
    per year for a total of about 30,000 acres. This project will reduce
    the risk of catastrophic fire and restore watershed conditions. The
    goals of the project are to sustain and restore a healthy and
    resilient forest ecosystem that can accommodate human and natural
    disturbances, to sustain and restore the capacity to absorb, store,
    and distribute quality water, and to enhance opportunities for
    people to realize spiritual, and recreational values on the forest.
    The forest thinning treatments will yield sawlogs and biomass. The
    biomass from this contract will provide a portion of the material
    necessary to produce electric energy in the planned \$20-million
    Lakeview Biomass Plant. Once this plant is operational, it is
    expected to annually produce about 13 megawatts of renewable energy.
    The project is an outgrowth of a 20-year Memorandum of Understanding
    signed by The Collins Companies, Marubeni Sustainable Energy, Lake
    County Resources Initiative, Oregon Department of Forestry, Lake
    County, Town of Lakeview, City of Paisley, the BLM, and the Forest
    Service.

-   The *Front Range Stewardship Contract* is located on the Pike, San
    Isabel, Arapaho, and Roosevelt National Forests in Colorado and is a
    contract with a 10-year term that should treat about 4,000 acres per
    year for a total of about 40,000 acres. This contract will involve
    the harvest of saw timber, treatment of non-saw timber, biomass and
    slash and will create fuel modification zones, fuelbreaks and
    fireline construction. The project is designed to provide hazardous
    fuel reduction, forest restoration, watershed enhancements, and
    related services. The initiative is the outcome of the Front Range
    Roundtable, a diverse group of stakeholders that has worked together
    since 2003 to develop a long-term vision and roadmap for achieving
    comprehensive fire risk mitigation and forest health goals in the
    ten counties comprising Colorado's Front Range. Through intense
    ecological analyses, the Roundtable identified over 1.5 million
    acres along the Front Range in need of treatment to reduce the risks
    of wildfire to communities and restore forests to sound ecological
    health.

-   The *Francis Marion Biomass Removal Stewardship Project* on the
    Francis Marion National Forest in Cordesville, South Carolina
    offered two multi-year contracts to treat approximately 2,000 acres
    per year for 5 years for a total of 10,000 acres. The primary
    objectives are to reduce fire hazard and improve the forest health
    of dense stands of young loblolly pine that established following
    Hurricane Hugo of 1989. The contracts have stimulated a biomass chip
    market that supplements the energy needs of local users for power
    generation. The biomass chip value offsets the cost of
    pre-commercial thinning and has realized a major savings for the
    Forest. These contracts have resulted in stand treatment costs
    dropping by about 50 percent. The project sprung from a
    collaboration of Santee Cooper Power and Electric Company, South
    Carolina Forestry Commission, the Native Plant Society and the South
    Carolina Coastal Conservation League, and several local fire
    departments from communities adjoining the Forest.

Many of the successes in our use of stewardship contracting are a direct
result of the development and implementation of projects through
collaborative partnerships with groups of diverse interests.

[Open Space Strategy.]{.underline} In December of 2007, we announced the
release of the "Forest Service Open Space Strategy." Healthy ecosystems
require maintenance as well as restoration. The loss of open space
threatens the sustainability of the Nation's forests and grasslands. We
lose approximately 6,000 acres of open space to development or land
conversion each day across the United States. Land development is
outpacing population growth, especially in rural areas where the trend
is low density, dispersed development. The new Forest Service strategy
provides a framework for working with others to conserve open space. It
emphasizes collaborative approaches and partnerships to conserve
ecologically and socially important forests, grasslands, ranches, and
urban green spaces. These important lands provide vital ecosystem
services and benefits for society, such as clean air, abundant water,
connected fish and wildlife habitat, scenic beauty, outdoor recreation,
and renewable resource products.

[Landscape Research]{.underline}. Forest Service Research and
Development provides long-term research, scientific knowledge, and tools
that can be used to manage, restore, and conserve forests and
rangelands. Forest Service research-based information relevant to this
bill includes social science on collaborative planning that can help
managers plan and carry out projects. Also, we are responsible for the
Nation's Forest Census, known as the Forest Inventory and Analysis
program. Research information is essential for understanding effects and
management options for multiple stressors on ecosystems, such as
drought, invasive species, fire, and air pollution and loss of open
space. Other relevant research under way addresses how biomass
utilization can help reduce fire impacts by reducing fuel loads.
Additionally, there is ongoing research on costs of fire suppression and
various fuels treatment that will be available for managers' use.

**Ecosystem Services: A More Inclusive Path Forward to Obtaining Forest
Benefits**

Our country and those elsewhere are becoming increasingly aware of the
importance of healthy forest ecosystems as ecological life-support
systems. As you know, healthy forests provide strong economies and jobs,
but also yield other goods and services that are vital to human health
and livelihood -- natural assets we call ecosystem services. Many of
these goods and services are traditionally viewed as free benefits to
society, or "public goods" - wildlife habitat and diversity, watershed
services, carbon storage, and scenic landscapes, for example.
Recognizing forest ecosystems as natural assets with economic and social
value can help promote conservation and more responsible
decision-making.

The President's FY 2009 Budget reflects a commitment to the expanded
thinking about ecosystem services and recognition of other values that
flow from healthy ecosystems. The Budget's proposal would bring new
partners together with the Forest Service in a broad effort to advance
stewardship on national forest lands in landscape-scale projects that
address a full range of ecosystem services. Restoring ecosystem function
through projects such as hazardous fuels reduction lets local interests
invest in local projects to their own benefit with an assurance of the
outcomes of that investment. Here are some of the highlights of this
proposal:

-   The Forest Service would have the authority to implement up to five
    Ecosystem Services Demonstration Projects with partners to restore,
    enhance, or protect ecosystem functions on National Forest System
    lands.

-   Outcomes from these projects will demonstrate the value of clean
    water, carbon sequestration, and other critical services that
    forests provide.

-   The ecosystem services provided by these projects will be identified
    and measured through applied research, providing valuable
    information to potential and emerging markets.

-   These projects will benefit the Forest Service and a partner,
    defined as either a State, political subdivision of a State, Indian
    tribe, or non-profit organization.

-   The projects will be expanded or accelerated using the funds or
    services provided by a partner. Partnering entities could carry out
    the project for the agency, provide funds for project implementation
    up to a total of \$10 million for all projects, or provide a
    combination of funds and services.

-   Each project will be consistent with applicable land and resource
    management plans and will comply with environmental laws and
    regulations.

-   All ecosystem service benefits that accrue from these projects will
    remain public.

**S. 2593, the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008**

As does the ecosystem services proposal, S. 2593 would provide an
additional tool for restoration consistent with current efforts.
Projects would be created collaboratively and be part of a system that
is evaluated on a landscape scale. In particular, this could be helpful
for developing comprehensive management options that address issues
related to climate change. I would like to now turn to the bill
language.

*Section 3. Definitions*. We believe a definition of the term
"restoration" would be useful and should focus on restoration of
healthy, sustainable, productive ecosystems for the future, as opposed
to a return to a historic condition. We would like to work with the
Committee on the definition.

*Section 4. Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program*. Section
4(a) would require the Secretary, in consultation with the Secretary of
the Interior, to establish a program to select and fund ecological
restoration treatments for priority forest landscapes. Section 4(b) sets
out criteria that ecological restoration proposals under the program
would be required to meet in order to be eligible for nomination.
Requirements include a landscape restoration strategy that identifies
and prioritizes treatments for a 10-year period across a landscape that
is at least 50,000 acres, and is comprised of primarily forested
National Forest System lands, but may also include other Federal, State,
tribal, or private land. The restoration proposal would be required to
be developed and implemented through a collaborative process. It must
include an analysis that estimates the anticipated cost savings
resulting from reduced wildfire management costs, and decreases the unit
costs of implementing ecological restoration treatments over time.
Additionally, the restoration proposal must include an estimate of the
amount of new non-Federal investment that would be leveraged by Federal
funding for restoration treatments, though non-Federal investments are
not affirmatively required.

We support the intent of the bill to work on a landscape scale, to
integrate the best available science, and to implement proposals through
a collaborative process. We already use criteria to support resource
allocation in priority treatment areas regarding hazardous fuels.
However, we suggest the Administration's ecosystem services proposal
provides for a broader suite of actions beyond hazardous fuels alone,
but are willing to work with the Committee on technical aspects of the
eligibility criteria in the bill.

Section 4(c) sets out a nomination process that would require submission
of proposals to Regional Foresters for consideration. As part of the
nomination process, Section 4(c)(3)(B) would require the Regional
Forester to obtain concurrence from the Secretary of the Interior if
actions under the jurisdiction of Interior are proposed.

Section 4(d) would establish the process for selecting the collaborative
forest landscape restoration proposals, which would require consultation
with the Secretary of the Interior even for proposals that do not affect
lands administered by the Interior Secretary. We would like to work with
the Committee to modify this provision to require consultation only when
lands administered by the Secretary of the Interior are part of the
proposal.

Section 4(f) would establish the Collaborative Forest Restoration Fund
that could be used to pay up to 50 percent of the cost for carrying out
proposals for ecological restoration treatments on National Forest
System lands. The bill provides for authorization of up to 40 million
dollars to the Fund for each fiscal year 2008 through 2018. No more than
10 proposals could be funded during any given year, nor could more than
2 proposals be funded in any 1 region during a given year. Under section
4(f)(3) amounts appropriated from the general fund of the Treasury would
be invested in interest bearing securities of the United States.  The
Administration objects to this provision. Amounts available for
investment should be limited to funds collected from the public and not
to funds appropriated from the General Fund which are not made subject
to the appropriations process.  We are also concerned that amounts
appropriated to the Fund may result in a decrease of amounts
appropriated for other high priority work and that there is no
requirement for matching of non-Federal monies for projects that occur
on non-Federal lands.

Section 4(g) would establish program implementation and monitoring
requirements. Section 4(g)(1) would require the creation of an
implementation work plan that includes a description of the landscape
restoration proposal, a business plan, and documentation of the
non-Federal investment in the priority landscape. Section 4(g)(4) would
require the Secretary, in collaboration with the Secretary of the
Interior, to use a multi-party monitoring, evaluation, and
accountability process to access the ecological, social, and economic
effects of each forest landscape restoration project. We are concerned
that, in practice, the implementation of the bill may be
administratively burdensome. Also, it is not clear when environmental
analysis would be required. However, we would be happy to work with the
Committee on clarifying language and to make any necessary
administrative changes to the bill.

We support landscape level planning, projects implemented cooperatively,
and monitoring of performance. We recommend replacing "multi-party
monitoring" with science-based" monitoring. This bill would provide the
opportunity to use a network of landscape level projects to conduct
coordinated research on key questions, such as effects of treatments on
soil, water, fire hazard, wildlife, insect and disease, and economics. A
well designed system of science-based monitoring at the appropriate
scale, combined with a well-designed set of landscape treatments, would
provide valuable information about the effects and effectiveness of
large landscape treatments over time across a number of different types
of ecosystems. The results of the monitoring would improve information
for managers providing a network of standard measures of effectiveness
and effects of landscape restoration.

**Conclusion**

Mr. Chairman, the Forest Service is committed to working with Congress
and various stakeholders to protect communities and people and to work
collaboratively to restore healthy ecological conditions on lands of all
ownerships that have undergone many changes. We believe that the actions
we are currently taking will be enhanced by various provisions of S.
2593, particularly if combined with the provisions of our ecosystem
services demonstration project legislative proposal. Together they will
provide the Forest Service some important tools we need to do work to
restore our Nation's forests and grasslands to a condition so they can
better resist disease, insects, and catastrophic fire.

We recognize and appreciate the time spent by the Committee to develop a
bipartisan constructive approach to carrying out collaborative ecosystem
restoration of priority forest landscapes. We look forward to the
opportunity to work with the Committee to explore the establishment of
an ecosystem services authority and to make technical amendments to
clarify and strengthen the bill. I will be glad to answer any questions
you may have.