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98-808 PS 2005

GAO FIVE-YEAR UPDATE ON 

WILDLAND FIRE AND FOREST 

SERVICE/BUREAU OF LAND 

MANAGEMENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN IMPLEMENTING 

THE HEALTHY FORESTS RESTORATION ACT

OVERSIGHT HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND 

FOREST HEALTH

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Serial No. 109-3

Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house 

or 

Committee address: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES 

RICHARD W. POMBO, California, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member

Don Young, Alaska 

Jim Saxton, New Jersey 

Elton Gallegly, California 

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee 

Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland 

Ken Calvert, California 

Barbara Cubin, Wyoming 

Vice Chair 

George P. Radanovich, California 

Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Carolina 

Chris Cannon, Utah 

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania 

Jim Gibbons, Nevada 

Greg Walden, Oregon 

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado 

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona 

Jeff Flake, Arizona 

Rick Renzi, Arizona 

Stevan Pearce, New Mexico 

Devin Nunes, California 

Henry Brown, Jr., South Carolina 

Thelma Drake, Virginia 

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico 

Cathy McMorris, Washington 

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana 

Louie Gohmert, Texas 

Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan 

Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Samoa 

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii 

Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas 

Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey 

Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Islands 

Ron Kind, Wisconsin 

Grace F. Napolitano, California 

Tom Udall, New Mexico 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam 

Jim Costa, California 

Charlie Melancon, Louisiana 

Dan Boren, Oklahoma 

George Miller, California 

Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts 

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon 

Jay Inslee, Washington 

Mark Udall, Colorado 

Dennis Cardoza, California 

Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota

Steven J. Ding, Chief of Staff 

Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel 

James H. Zoia, Democrat Staff Director 

Jeffrey P. Petrich, Democrat Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon, Chairman 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico, Ranking Democrat Member

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee 

Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland 

Chris Cannon, Utah 

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania 

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado 

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona 

Jeff Flake, Arizona 

Rick Renzi, Arizona 

Henry Brown, Jr., South Carolina 

Cathy McMorris, Washington 

Richard W. Pombo, California, ex officio 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan 

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii 

Dan Boren, Oklahoma 

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon 

Jay Inslee, Washington 

Mark Udall, Colorado 

Dennis Cardoza, California 

Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota 

Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia, ex officio 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on Thursday, February 17, 2005 ..................................................... 1

Statement of Members: 

DeFazio, Hon. Peter, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Oregon ............................................................................................................ 15

McMorris, Hon. Cathy, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Washington ............................................................................................... 15

Udall. Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

New Mexico ................................................................................................... 14 

Walden, Hon. Greg, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Oregon ............................................................................................................ 1

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 13

Statement of Witnesses: 

Cummins, James, Executive Director, Mississippi Fish and Wildlife 

Foundation ..................................................................................................... 60

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 62

Gregory, Lisa Dale, Ph.D., The Wilderness Society, Denver, Colorado ....... 73

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 75

Nazzaro, Robin M., Director, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. 

Government Accountability Office ............................................................... 16

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 20

Rey, Hon. Mark, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and 

Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture .......................................... 39

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 41

Tucker, Lena, Society of American Foresters, Springfield, Oregon .............. 67

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 70

Watson, Hon. Rebecca, Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals 

Management, U.S. Department of the Interior .......................................... 34

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 36

Additional materials supplied: 

Napolitano, Hon. Janet, Governor, State of Arizona, and Hon. Dirk 

Kempthorne, Governor, State of Idaho, Statement submitted for the 

record on behalf of the Western Governors’ Association ........................... 2

(1)

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON GAO FIVE-YEAR UPDATE ON WILDLAND FIRE AND FOREST 

SERVICE/BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT 

ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN IMPLEMENTING 

THE HEALTHY FORESTS RESTORATION ACT 

Thursday, February 17, 2005

U.S. House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health 

Committee on Resources 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:03 a.m., in 

Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Greg Walden 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Walden, Peterson, Tancredo, Hayworth, 

McMorris, Tom Udall, DeFazio, Inslee, and Mark Udall. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON 

Mr. WALDEN. The Subcommittee on Forest Health will come to 

order. The Subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on the 

Government Accountability Office Five-Year Update on Wildland 

Fire, and on the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management 

Accomplishments in Implementing the Healthy Forest Restoration 

Act. 

Under Committee Rule 4(g), the Chairman and the Ranking 

Minority Member may make opening statements, and if any other 

members have statements, they can be included in the hearing 

record under unanimous consent. 

It is fitting that this Subcommittee’s first full hearing in the 

109th Congress focuses on the issue of hazardous fuels and its relationship to wildland fire. While this Subcommittee will take up 

many other important topics in the next two years, when it comes 

to the ecological integrity of our Federal forests, all other issues 

take a back seat. The enormity and severity of the problem and our 

ability to affect it will have more impact on wildlife habitat, water 

quality, air quality and community protection than frankly any 

other forest issue. 

To explain the explosive nature of the problem, let me give you 

some forest growth statistics on our national forests. Total net 

growth is currently about 20 billion board feet per year, while total 

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mortality is approximately 10 billion board feet per year, and the 

annual harvest is less than 2 billion board feet per year. In other 

words, we are removing less than one-fifth of what is dying on our 

forests and less than one-tenth of what is growing. This is the 800-

pound gorilla that is wreaking havoc on our national forests and 

why today we have approximately 190 million acres of Federal land 

at high risk of catastrophic fire. While some of you may have grown 

tired of our call to thin and treat our forests, let me tell you this: 

you haven’t heard anything yet. 

In 1999, at the request of the Subcommittee, the Government 

Accountability Office produced an analysis of catastrophic wildfire 

that stated, and I quote: ‘‘The most extensive and serious problem 

related to the health of national forests in the interior West is the 

overaccumulation of vegetation, and catastrophically destructive 

wildfires.’’ This is the GAO making these comments, not us. The 

GAO’s report in no small way helped to set the stage for many of 

the positive changes that have occurred in the five years following 

the release of that report, from the creation of the National Fire 

Plan in 2000 to the development of the 10-Year Comprehensive 

Wildfire Strategy guided by the Western Governors’ Association, to 

the Bush Administration’s Healthy Forest Initiative, to the 108th 

Congress’s passage of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and to 

the quadrupling of funds spent by the agencies on hazardous fuels 

reduction and the resulting quadrupling of acreage treated—much 

has been done to address the problem. 

This week, again at the request of this Subcommittee, the 

Government Accountability Office produced a five-year follow-up 

report, which recognized that much progress has been made in 

wildfire management, from prevention to suppression. The report 

confirms what we had hoped to hear and what many of us worked 

so hard to achieve as we developed and moved the Healthy Forest 

Restoration Act through the Congress two years ago. 

But the GAO also confirms what many of us have seen and experienced recently as we visited Federal forests, that we have a lot 

more to do and a long way to go. So I have traveled around our 

national forests since passage of HFRA. I have found that while 

some forest units are aggressively implementing the law, others 

have hardly begun. The GAO’s report corroborates those shortcomings, stating that a number of the agency’s local fire management plans do not meet agency requirements. Particularly the GAO 

reported that an overarching cohesive strategy that identifies longterm options and needed funding requirements is still not in place. 

The Western Governors’ Association, in its own November 2004 report and in written testimony submitted for this hearing, makes 

similar recommendations. 

[The documents submitted for the record by the Western 

Governors’ Association follows:]

Statement submitted for the record by The Honorable Janet Napolitano, 

Governor, State of Arizona, (WGA Vice-Chair and Forest Health Co-Lead), 

and The Honorable Dirk Kempthorne, Governor, State of Idaho, (Forest 

Health Co-Lead), on behalf of the Western Governors’ Association 

Thank you Chairman Walden, Congressman Inslee and other distinguished members of this Subcommittee for the opportunity to submit written testimony for today’s hearing on wildfire and forest health. This statement is submitted on behalf 

3

of the Western Governors’ Association by Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona, 

Vice-Chairman and co-lead Governor for forest health; and Governor Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, co-lead Governor for forest health. WGA is an independent, nonpartisan organization of Governors from 18 western states and three U.S.-Flag Islands in the Pacific. We appreciate this opportunity to present the collective views 

of the Western Governors. 

With the 2005 wildfire season approaching, it is timely to review progress made 

during past five years on wildfire and forest health issues. As we look back, beginning in 2000 with the National Fire Plan under the Clinton Administration, proceeding to the Congressionally requested 10-Year Comprehensive Wildfire Strategy 

and its Implementation Plan (10-Year Strategy) guided by the WGA, and now to the 

Bush Administration’s emphasis on the Healthy Forests Initiative and the bi-partisan passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, it is clear that progress on 

wildfire and forest health issues rests on a strong foundation of bi-partisan cooperation. 

As a result of this cooperation, significant progress has been made implementing 

the 10-Year Strategy: Hazardous fuel reduction acreages have increased, federallevel cooperation and coordination has been enhanced through the formation of the 

Wildland Fire Leadership Council, and the fire preparedness of many western communities is increasing through the development of Community Wildfire Protection 

Plans. 

Yet, despite this important progress, after five years of concerted effort there are 

still hurdles facing our pursuit of the 10-Year Strategy goals. Additional commitment is needed. Federal agencies report that some 80-90 million federal acres alone 

remain at-risk of catastrophic wildfire. Wildland fire suppression costs have exceeded the $1 billion mark in three of the last five years. Significant gaps remain in 

implementing the collaborative framework the 10-Year Strategy. Communities continue to struggle to build local capacity to develop and implement wildfire mitigation programs. And there is a need for a clarified vision of restoring fire-adapted 

ecosystems, including landscape contexts that emphasize the use of fire as a management tool. Addressing these important hurdles will require additional commitment of time, energy and funding. 

Clearly there is still much work ahead of us. The three core principles of the 10-

Year Strategy—collaboration at the local, regional and national levels; prioritization 

emphasizing the protection of communities and key watersheds; and creation of uniform and cost-effective measures of accountability—remain as important today as 

they were in August, 2001, when the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, Governors, and a diversity of stakeholders first agreed to the 10-Year Strategy in Coeur 

d’Alene, Idaho. Our nation’s wildfire challenges will only be met with continued adherence to the 10-Year Strategy and integration of its principles into all our efforts 

to meet those challenges. 

With this in mind, the WGA continues to pursue improvement of our wildfire and 

forest health response. In June of 2003, the WGA hosted a Forest Health Summit 

to spotlight forest health and wildfire issues. At the Summit, Governors heard from 

diverse interests who offered recommendations to the Governors on how to improve 

forest health. One of many items that resonated with Summit participants and the 

Governors was a call to review the 10-Year Strategy. WGA established a Forest 

Health Advisory Committee (FHAC) to pursue this call and other recommendations, 

as WGA continues working with all its partners on forest health issues. 

Governors nominated forest health and wildfire stakeholders from across the spectrum of interested stakeholders for the FHAC to keep the Governors on the cutting 

edge of issues. The FHAC is comprised of more than fifty individuals from federal 

and state agencies, county elected officials, tribes, fire departments, conservation 

groups, industry, local communities and academia. 

The FHAC is founded upon the principle of collaboration. It is certainly not always easy, but the results showcase the good things that come when people work 

on commonalities. The FHAC is an example of the Enlibra principles created by 

WGA. The FHAC lends itself well to the complex, cross-boundary nature of wildfire 

and forest health issues. 

In November of 2004, the FHAC finalized its review entitled, ‘‘Report to the Western Governors on the Implementation of the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy.’’ The 

following month, the FHAC report was reviewed by WGA Governors at their December 2004 meeting. The FHAC report details significant progress over the past five 

years, thanks in large part to federal leadership and the professional staffs of the 

USDA Forest Service and the Department of the Interior fire bureaus. 

It is clear that communities and the environment are safer as a result of these 

10-Year Strategy efforts. Nonetheless, the report also lays out a comprehensive approach for continued improvement of our wildfire and forest health efforts. Some of 

4

these items will need Congressional attention. To give you a better idea of the report’s content, a number of items worth highlighting are detailed below. The entire 

FHAC report on the 10-Year Strategy is attached to this testimony. 

10-Year Strategy Needs 

A number of themes arose throughout the FHAC evaluation of the 10-Year Strategy. In particular, as we move forward in updating and improving our work under 

the 10-Year Strategy, there is a need for: 

• Improved information sharing and monitoring of accomplishments and forest 

conditions to improve transparency. The better job we do at relaying results of 

our wildfire mitigation efforts, the more buy-in and understanding there will be 

from the public. To this end, continued emphasis on open, transparent and clear 

reporting and monitoring processes is essential. 

• Committed long-term funding of the 10-Year Strategy. Drought and climate predictions do not portend favorably for avoiding catastrophic wildfire and the necessity of threat reductions over the next few decades. Committed long-term 

funding from all levels of government will be necessary to keep the hazardous 

conditions from endangering the public and unnecessarily risking our natural 

resources. The WGA forwarded 10-year federal funding projections developed by 

the National Association of State Foresters in a 2002 letter to Congress (http:/

/www.westgov.org/wga/testim/wildfire—approps—6—20—02.pdf). These figures 

provide some broad guidance on the resources necessary to meet all of our stated goals. 

• Landscape-level vision for restoration of forests. When working to restore forest 

health as a whole, the broadest possible vision is needed to address the interconnected nature of wildfire threats. Community, watershed and habitat protection are best achieved through landscape-level efforts. 

• Promoting fire as a management tool. The scale and magnitude of the catastrophic wildfire threat is beyond the collective capabilities and budgets of all 

governments involved in this fight. Therefore it is important to use all the tools 

before us, including prescribed fire. We must earnestly pursue both wildland 

fire use and mechanical treatments as management tools for hazardous fuel reduction. 

• Improved collaboration at all levels of government and in all 10-Year Strategy 

activities. As mentioned previously, the current wildland fire threat is larger 

than the current ability of government and their budgets. A recent Colorado 

State University study put direct and indirect loses to people and environment 

from the 2003 Hayman Fire at $230 million, or alternatively nearly $1,700/acre. 

In contrast, fuel reduction costs range from $200-1500/acre, depending on proximity to homes and the wildland-urban interface. Facing costs such as this, if 

we are to see continued progress, it is paramount that we collaborate on suppression, fuel reduction, restoration and community assistance issues to maximize results. 

The 10-Year Strategy can be broken down into five functional components; collaboration, wildfire suppression and preparedness, hazardous fuel reduction, ecosystem restoration, and community assistance. Below are notable details from the 

FHAC report, separated by topic. 

Collaboration 

Collaboration is seen by the WGA as the linchpin to our overall success. If federal, 

state, and local authorities and stakeholders do not approach wildland fire mitigation activities in a collaborative fashion, many efforts will struggle, and many more 

will end up at cross purposes and weakened results. Here are some actions to improve our collaborative efforts: 

• We must do a better job of monitoring for collaboration. Currently there is limited monitoring of collaborative forest health and wildfire activities. The 

Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) recognized this and set out to develop a monitoring framework for collaboration. While still in development, 

WGA has contributed to this effort and believes adoption of national level collaboration indicators will help program, project, and land managers make better 

decisions in the field. 

• Collaboration is not an easy concept to apply. Views on it differ. To build close 

working relationships, WGA will convene sub-regional workshops with federal 

support on forest health collaboration. The goal is to bring the collaboration concept to the folks on the ground by highlighting successful models of forest 

health project collaboration. The first workshop is scheduled for this Spring in 

Casper, Wyoming. 

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• The national level body for collaboration is the WFLC. Consisting of federal, 

state, tribal and county representatives, it is designed to include all governmental interests in decision-making. However, there is a need to establish a 

mechanism for more meaningful non-governmental stakeholder participation. 

• Along with the theme of information sharing and monitoring, improved public 

access to information under the National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting 

System is important to improve the transparency of actions under the Healthy 

Forests Initiative and National Fire Plan. 

• There is increased emphasis on forest health and wildfire protection planning. 

The advent of Community Wildfire Protection Plans demonstrate the need for 

development of web-based analytical tools that make GIS data and related mapping and modeling information available to local communities. 

Suppression/Preparedness 

As the most immediate of all 10-Year Strategy goals, the pursuit of improved suppression and preparedness response has been highly successful and has made the 

most progress of all the 10-Year Strategy goals. Nonetheless, additional improvements are noted in the FHAC report, with one deserving special mention here: 

• The increasing costs of wildland fire suppression threatens to topple all the efforts of the National Fire Plan, 10-Year Strategy, Healthy Forests Initiative and 

Healthy Forests Restoration Act. With predicted worsening droughts, overstocked forests packed with fuel, and an expanding wildland-urban interface, 

the societal, economic and natural impacts and costs of wildfire will continue 

to worsen. And as noted earlier, federal suppression expenditures topped the $1 

billion mark three of the last five years. Such suppression costs may drain funding for other natural resource and land management programs in the federal 

budget.

Austere federal budget estimates make it more important than ever to pursue 

strategic containment of suppression costs. With forests, as with people, preventive medicine is the most cost efficient. Full implementation of the seven recommendations in the WFLC chartered and WGA chaired report, ‘‘Large Fire 

Suppression Costs: Strategies for Cost Management,’’ has begun and needs to 

remain a priority (www.fireplan.gov/reports/2004/costmanagement.pdf). As per 

the report, true suppression expenditure savings will be achieved by focusing 

on strategic cost considerations, such as the seven report recommendations, not 

on tactical cost considerations, such as the apportionment of suppression costs 

between all involved jurisdictions. 

Hazardous Fuel Reduction 

The Healthy Forests Initiative has placed enormous emphasis on fuel reduction 

efforts to mitigate wildfire. With just over 4 million acres of lands being reported 

as treated by the federal agencies in 2004, we have seen results that give hope to 

reducing catastrophic wildfire threats. To continue this success, a number of next 

steps are presented in the FHAC report, with two being highlighted here: 

• There has and will continue to be tremendous debate about where fuel treatments should be located on the landscape. To constructively aid these efforts, 

more emphasis should be placed on developing priorities collaboratively as outlined in the January 2003 Memorandum of Understanding between federal 

agencies, states and counties. 

• Fire as a management tool for fuels reduction was a common and re-occurring 

theme of the FHAC report. The scale of the catastrophic wildfire situation requires efficient fuel treatment methods, to which more use of fire, to fight fire, 

should be pursued. One method to this objective is continued refinement of federal Fire Management Plans that prescribe suppression response and could be 

used to promote more wildland fire use. 

Ecosystem Restoration 

When the 10-Year Strategy was agreed to in 2001 and 2002, the state of affairs 

around ecosystem ‘‘restoration’’ was confusing at best. The terms restoration and rehabilitation have been, and are often used interchangeably, but do lead to entirely 

different outcomes on the ground. Now, with five years of experience, it is time to 

revisit the 10-Year Strategy and chart a more clear and understandable course for 

ecosystem restoration; a course that hopefully is clear on the differences between 

pre-fire restoration and post-fire rehabilitation. The WGA has already agreed to 

take up this mantle working with the WFLC to convene federal, state and stakeholder restoration and rehabilitation experts in a collaborative fashion to develop 

updated articulations of the restoration action items in the 10-Year Strategy. 

6

Community Assistance 

Whereas community assistance tends to be the most neglected of all 10-Year 

Strategy goals, it may very well be the most vital in terms of the long-term success 

of the National Fire Plan and Healthy Forests Initiative efforts. This is because it 

is the communities who must eventually take up the forest health/wildfire banner 

to make the needed on-the-ground changes happen. Without community assistance 

efforts, none of the other efforts will have lasting imprints on the ground. 

One great example of community assistance, comes from the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. The HFRA codified the concept of Community Wildfire Protection Planning, a significant step that empowers local communities by engaging them on a 

peer-to-peer level with federal and state agencies in wildfire mitigation activities. 

Yet there are still a number of improvements to be made, especially in terms of 

helping communities find the financial resources to engage in and contribute toward 

wildfire mitigation. Further attention is also needed in the realms of building community capacity, applying stewardship contracting authorities, improving grants 

and agreements, expanding small diameter utilization, and encouraging local wildfire codes. Congressional assistance will be needed to lift these items to the forefront 

of wildfire mitigation efforts and could very well define the success of all our efforts. 

Conclusion 

As a recap of the past five years, significant progress has been made that we need 

to recognize. This however does not mean we can now sit back and watch. One particularly ugly scenario involves the expanding wildfire suppression expenditures 

that could potentially drive more and more National Fire Plan activities. This becomes most apparent with the transferring of funds from other program accounts 

to cover growing suppression costs. This threatens to overwhelm and limit the land 

managers’ and communities’ ability to address wildfire threats proactively. Last 

year, Congress helped with a stop-gap, $500 million suppression budgeting measure 

to head off more borrowing from other agency programs, but continued Congressional attention is needed to overcome this juggernaut of a problem. 

So, significant efforts still lie ahead for Congress, the Administration, the 

Governors and the public. The WGA believes the FHAC report keeps all of us on 

the cutting edge of forest health and wildfire policy and we commend it to your 

attention. 

Thank you again for this opportunity to submit written testimony and please 

know that the WGA stands ready to pursue the 10-Year Strategy goals and looks 

forward to working with Congress on these issues as debate and oversight continues. 

WESTERN GOVERNORS’ ASSOCIATION

FOREST HEALTH ADVISORY COMMITTEE

REPORT TO THE WESTERN GOVERNORS ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 10-YEAR

COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY

NOVEMBER 2004

Background 

The Western Governors’ Association Forest Health Advisory Committee (FHAC) 

was established following WGA’s Forest Health Summit in Missoula, Montana in 

June 2003. In WGA Policy Resolution 03-18, the Governors agreed with a recommendation generated at the Summit to form an advisory committee to assist 

WGA with forest health policy issues. Each Governor named persons from around 

the nation to the FHAC. FHAC members are listed at the end of this report. 

The FHAC’s first met in March 2004 in Reno, Nevada. The purpose of the meeting 

was to prioritize Summit recommendations and focus future FHAC work. One of the 

recommendations that came to the forefront was: Review Progress to Date on Implementation of the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy and Develop Recommendations 

to Governors on New Action Items. 

The 10-Year Strategy and its implementation plan (together ‘‘the 10-Year Strategy’’) were adopted by WGA, the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior and 

many others in 2001 and in 2002. The purpose of the 10-Year Strategy is to reduce 

the risk of wildland fire to communities and the environment. Millions of acres of 

forest and rangeland ecosystems are in poor ecological health and at an unacceptable risk of catastrophic wildfire, as well as insect and disease infestations. Drought 

conditions that have been impacting much of the West in recent years add to the 

threat. 

The 10-Year Strategy establishes a collaborative framework for local, state, tribal 

and federal governments, along with non-governmental interests, to accomplish the 

following goals: 

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1. Improve Fire Prevention and Suppression; 

2. Reduce Hazardous Fuels; 

3. Restore Fire-Adapted Ecosystems; and, 

4. Promote Community Assistance. 

As of 2004, approximately 75 percent of the action items agreed to in the 10-Year 

Strategy are reportedly completed or in their final stages. In addition, significant 

related wildfire/forest health policy and legislative initiatives have recently been undertaken. For example, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) passed by the 

Congress in 2003 calls for using the 10-Year Strategy collaborative process to expedite hazardous fuel treatments on 20 million acres of federal lands. 

In this policy context, the WGA FHAC believes it is timely to assess the 10-Year 

Strategy to determine if the work completed to date is meeting its goals and to consider if additional action items are needed to further the goals. The FHAC completed a survey on these points during the summer of 2004. A 14-page summary 

of the responses was prepared. The FHAC convened again in Tempe, Arizona in November 2004 to assemble this report, based on the survey results. 

Overall Themes: 

A number of themes arose throughout this evaluation that should be heeded as 

work proceeds on all four goals of the 10-Year Strategy: 

• a need for information sharing and monitoring of accomplishments and forest 

conditions to improve transparency, 

• a need for committed long-term funding of the 10-Year Strategy, 

• the need for a landscape-level vision for restoration of forests, 

• the importance of promoting fire as a management tool, and 

• a strong call for improved collaboration at all levels of government and in all 

10-Year Strategy activities as appropriate 

COLLABORATIVE FRAMEWORK: 

Given the importance of the collaborative process in accomplishing the goals of 

the 10-Year Strategy, the FHAC conducted an evaluation of the collaborative framework called for by the 10-Year Strategy. Findings are provided below, along with 

suggested next steps as a beginning toward furthering needed collaboration. 

Summary of FHAC Survey Responses: The collaborative framework is not being 

used consistently at the local, state and national level as called for in the 10-Year 

Strategy. Most collaboration is occurring locally when an effective leader(s) emerges 

from within participating parties. Success is greatest when locals believe that they 

have a place at the table. Collaboration on project prioritization and implementation 

at the state / regional level is improving, but seems to be somewhat exclusive (‘‘by 

invitation only’’) and frequently is not broadly inclusive as agreed to in the 10-Year 

Strategy. 

The primary mechanism for the national-level collaboration on all aspects of the 

10-Year Strategy is the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC). While WFLC 

functions effectively for coordination among government entities, it does not provide 

for meaningful participation by non-federal stakeholders and tends to pre-determine 

outcomes prior to its meetings. The institution of new directives related to the 

Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) 

over the past year has made certain collaborative efforts more complicated. Further, 

the strong emphasis on fuels (Goal Two) under HFI/HFRA comes at the expense of 

other 10-Year Strategy goals, most notably restoration (Goal Three) and community 

assistance (Goal Four). 

Priorities to Improve Collaboration: 

• Highlighting successful collaborative efforts and establishing measures of success for each level of the 10-Year Strategy’s collaborative framework is an important first step in improving collaboration. Fuels reduction and forest ecosystem restoration projects should also report on their efforts in this regard. 

Use of the monitoring questions on collaboration provided by WGA to the WFLC 

would be a first step for measuring and improving success. 

• Support the development and delivery of workshops on how to successfully and 

consistently implement the collaborative framework at local and state/regional 

levels. 

• Establish a mechanism for more meaningful non-governmental stakeholder involvement in the WFLC. Suggestions to accomplish this include forming a comparable national team that addresses both governmental and non-governmental 

interests or by establishing a formal federal advisory committee. 

• Seek federal, state, tribal and local resources to develop Community Wildfire 

Protection Plans (CWPPs) and provide for their implementation. 

8

• Facilitate the development of web-based analytical tools that make GIS data 

and related mapping and modeling information available to local communities 

for wildfire protection planning. • Improve National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS) over 

the next two years. Improvements should: 

Æ allow portions of NFPORS to be used by the public and state/local governments; Æ capture and store project boundaries, not just project points; Æ permit appropriate non-federal entities to annually submit data for NFPORS; 

and, Æ track acres treated under CWPPs and illustrate where non-federal entities 

are playing key roles in hazardous fuels reduction treatments and/or forest 

ecosystem restoration. • Develop incentives for agencies and landowners to plan forest health treatments 

across administrative boundaries and focus on innovative, landscape approaches. 

GOAL ONE: Improve Fire Prevention and Suppression 

Summary of FHAC Survey Responses: General agreement that good progress has 

been made on Goal One, but continued improvement is needed. There is an overall 

sense that suppression is still driving National Fire Plan activities and that borrowing funds from other agency accounts to cover growing suppression costs threatens to overwhelm and limit land manager and community ability to address wildfire 

threats proactively. Collaboration is still a challenge, with many feeling that the cooperative nature of multi-jurisdictional suppression response is beginning to fray. 

National level directives are making local/regional collaboration difficult. 

Evaluation of the 10-Year Strategy Goal One Action Items: 

• (G1A): Fire Preparedness Budgeting—Fire Planning Analysis (FPA) tool developed, but state and local resources should be integrated into FPA to capture a 

valid landscape-level budget picture of preparedness resources. Future runs of 

the FPA should strive to incorporate local resources and stakeholders. • (G1B): Fire Leadership Training—Original intent to train all levels of decision 

makers in collaborative decision-making not met. Progress made, but room for 

improvement (consider evaluating collaborative, pre-fire decision-making during 

post-fire reviews). • (G1C): Rural Fire Report—Report completed (www.stateforesters.org/pubs/Final 

Rural Fire Report.pdf), implementation needs to continue, especially in recognizing equivalent training and experience as Incident Command System qualified (i.e. red carded). • (G1D): Minimum Impact Suppression Tactics (MIST)—Directive issued, 

(www.wildfirelessons.net/Library/Tools/NWCG—MIST—Directive—Attachment—1003.doc) concern over consistent implementation and if best science is 

available. • (G1E): Fire Prevention Planning / Firewise Communities USA—Strong support 

and active encouragement for more promotion. • (G1F): Reporting of Communities Protected—Success stories appear to be method of dissemination. Stories need to be ongoing. More consistency in reporting 

is needed as many efforts go unreported due to the lack of a formal reporting 

system. 

Next Steps to Improve Fire Prevention and Suppression 

A. Cost containment—Wildfire suppression expenditure cost-containment measures should continue to be vigorously pursued. Full implementation of the recommendations in the WFLC chartered, ‘‘Large Fire Suppression Costs: Strategies for Cost Management,’’ report should occur. Wildland fire management 

budgets are continually driven by suppression expenditures, thus hindering 

the ability of policy makers and land managers to address hazardous fuel, restoration and community assistance efforts. 

B. Prevention Incentives—Continued focus on Firewise Communities and 

Community Wildfire Protection Plans needs to be the centerpiece of local engagement and involvement in wildfire prevention activities. Instead of rewarding those that have wildfires with additional budget and personnel, an incentive system should be in place to reward fire prevention work that results in 

fewer emergencies that require expenditures to protect communities from abnormally severe wildfires. Incentives are also needed to encourage agencies 

and landowners to engage with each other, allowing better planning across administrative boundaries and development of innovative landscape approaches. 

C. Improve Local Fire Authority Response—Methods include: 

9

1) Examine the procedures and protocols for the efficient and expedited use 

of local resources in suppression activities; 

2) Support alternative training methods targeting rural and volunteer responders as advised under the Rural Fire Report; and, 

3) Develop a system to better engage underutilized suppression crews for 

mitigation work between dispatches, especially Native American crews. 

GOAL TWO: Reduce Hazardous Fuels 

Summary of FHAC Survey Responses: It was agreed much progress had been 

made on the hazardous fuels front. Some regions of the country expressed the sentiment that the federal government is still driving the Goal Two processes, with minimal ability of stakeholders to have a say in decisions and priorities. Clarity on how 

stakeholders can effectively participate in the federal planning process, particularly 

in incorporating non-federal concerns, is needed. Enhancing the collaborative selection of fuel treatment projects is also needed to improve implementation of Goal 

Two. A lack of understanding of the collaborative process, consistency in implementation and differing interpretation of fire regime / condition class (FRCC) were given 

as major stumbling blocks. Cumbersome budgeting processes, fuel target pressures 

and confusion of definitions impede working across jurisdictional boundaries. Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) with an eye toward landscape, interagency, multi-party planning are seen as a partial solution. 

Evaluation of 10-Year Strategy Goal Two Action Items: 

• (G2-A) Cohesive Strategy ‘‘Cohesive Strategy needs to be finalized, released and 

applied. 

• (G2-B) Fire Management Planning (FMPs)—All agree on the value of FMPs in 

order to reintroduce fire as a management tool on a landscape basis. Questions 

over national level commitment to their implementation were raised. 

• (G2-C) Internet Clearinghouse for Fuels Assistance—Idea is strongly supported, 

but only spotty regional/state success to date. Very important to continue support. 

• (G2-D) Fire Regime Condition Class—Agreement on need. The developing system is a good start. It needs to be ongoing and endeavor to be accessible by as 

many as practicable, with national guidance on interpretation and implementation. Needs to recognize/accept finer scale data where it exists and apply it 

across all lands. 

• (G2-E) Fuel Reduction Project Selection Process—This action is key to the success of the 10-Year Strategy, with many feeling the collaborative prioritization 

process is not happening fully. More collaboration was experienced for projects 

on non-federal/tribal lands, than on federal lands. Differing treatment targets 

/ budget cycles hinder coordination. Process needs alignment with landscape, 

inter-agency, multi-party planning and CWPPs project priorities where CWPPs 

apply. 

• (G2-F) Assess policies/processes (HFI) ‘‘Lack of agreement on whether HFI is 

helping or hindering the 10-Year Strategy move forward. Pre-HFI assessments 

undertaken were not collaborative and there have been no concerted assessments of state regulations. If further assessments or changes are pursued, apply 

the 10-Year Strategy collaborative framework to evaluate / review processes 

(NEPA, ESA, HFI, states, etc.) to date. 

Next Steps to Improve Reduction of Hazardous Fuels 

A. Fire Management Plans (FMPs)—Pursue policy adjustments that foster collaboration on FMP development, provide greater recognition of fire as a management tool, encourage alignment of FMPs with CWPPs and Land/Resource 

Management Plans and improve local-level monitoring of FMPs. Use collaborative framework to construct appropriately scaled review panels to evaluate 

FMPs. 

B. Greater Transparency—All levels of government should strive for transparency 

in fuel project selection by making data such as FRCC mapping, and out-year 

planning priorities available to the public in a timely manner. The Internet 

and other digital media provide good mechanisms for evaluating proposed 

projects for strategic placement. 

C. Fuels MOU—Provide guidance to the fuels MOU to help guide collaborative 

fuel project selection processes and structures. 

D. Project Prioritization—Through a state-level, multi-jurisdictional, collaborative 

body, priority should be given to projects that are an outcome of a CWPP as 

required by law. Assessment of risk and landscape management objectives 

should also be considered as priority factors in project selection. 

10

E. Pursue Cost Efficiencies—Pursue policies and actions that will support a utilization infrastructure in order to reduce treatment costs (e.g., large-scale stewardship contracting) and optimize benefits to communities. Consider a cost-efficiency criterion in fuel project selection processes. 

GOAL THREE: Restore Fire-Adapted Ecosystems 

Summary of FHAC Survey Responses: There is overall agreement that implementation of Goal Three has been poor. In part, the reasons for this include: a) the 

compelling need for agencies and stakeholders to focus their full attention on Goals 

One and Two; and, b) confusion over the intent of Goal Three and of the terminology 

used therein. Goal Three was included in the 10-Year Strategy to represent the consensus among the parties that restoration is vital to improving forest health. However, the unclear intent and language in Goal Three of the 10-Year Strategy reflects 

the fact that in 2001-2002, there was not consensus about how to proceed with 

forest ecosystem restoration. The policy context in 2004, as the FHAC reviews the 

accomplishments to date, is considerably changed. Additional detail is needed now 

to create new and clearly defined action items for Goal Three. The FHAC looks to 

Western Governors for leadership to develop a restoration strategy that builds on 

the progress already achieved on Goals One and Two. 

Evaluation of the 10-Year Strategy Goal Three Action Items 

• (G3-A) Post-fire Rehabilitation Training—Training has been completed for federal land managers, but needs to be extended to state, private and other forest 

landowners/managers. 

• (G3-B) Post-fire Rehab and Restoration Research—The action item did not differentiate between rehabilitation of burned areas and the restoration of forest 

ecosystems in both burned and unburned areas. There has been more progress 

on burned area rehabilitation than forest ecosystem restoration. 

• (G3-C) Restoration Project Selection Process—Pivotal item for successful restoration efforts, but current efforts not meeting mandate. Progress would be 

positively influenced by the development of a clear implementation strategy as 

outlined below. 

Next Steps to Improve Restoration of Fire-Adapted Ecosystems 

WGA should convene a national working group of state and federal agency experts, as well as other partners, to develop and complete a new set of action items 

for Goal Three by Fall 2005. This effort should provide a conceptual framework for 

restoration and address planning, technical assistance, tools, and priority setting. 

Specific objectives for the Restoration Working Group could include the following: 

A) Define what is meant by ‘‘Restore Fire Adapted Ecosystems.’’ Using the goal 

statements and actions in both the 10-Year Strategy and Implementation 

Plan, define what is intended by ‘‘pre-fire restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems’’ and ‘‘post-fire rehabilitation and recovery of fire-adapted ecosystems.’’ 

Useful definitions and concepts can be found in reports such as ‘‘Guiding Principles for Forest Ecosystem Restoration and Community Protection’’ (Arizona 

Forest Health Advisory Council, Campbell et al.). 

B) Develop a new articulation of G3-B to clearly differentiate between forest ecosystem restoration and post-fire rehabilitation so that progress can be tracked 

for each item. 

C) Develop a new articulation for G3-C so that progress is made in developing 

a conceptual framework for forest ecosystem restoration, from which an implementation strategy for site-specific implementation can be derived and maintained. Both project and landscape scales have to be considered and local 

agreement on desired future conditions at the project level is an essential policy item. Beyond small-scale prescribed fire applications, this strategy needs 

to explore the reintroduction of ecosystem-scale fire into fire-dependent ecosystems. 

D) Consider how to promote reintroduction of natural fire regimes over the majority of forested areas as a strategy for improving forest health and reducing fire 

hazard and suppression costs. Investigate the removal and utilization of stems 

and biomass necessary to promote suitable desired future forest conditions and 

promote opportunities for local communities to benefit from restoration work, 

manufacturing and power generation. 

E) Consider how to encourage agency work on Land/Resource Management Plans 

and their associated Fire Management Plans that explore and promote 

wildland fire use. This should include consideration of adjacent communities, 

airsheds, EPA non-attainment areas, regional haze parameters and other recreational/quality of life issues. 

11

F) Consider how to evaluate all proposed land management actions with respect 

to whether they advance the goal of restoring fire-adapted ecosystems. Not all 

actions will, or should be targeted toward restoration, but actions that move 

away from restoration should only be carried out where there is a compelling 

need (e.g., thinning near wildland-urban interface in an area that would naturally be susceptible to stand-replacing fire) or legally binding objectives (e.g., 

protection of culturally-significant sites or habitat for endangered species). 

GOAL FOUR: Promote Community Assistance 

Summary of FHAC Survey Responses: Goal Four must be given the same emphasis Goals One and Two have received in order for its action items—and the 10-Year 

Strategy as a whole—to be accomplished. Significant advances have been made in 

sharing information on new technologies for small-diameter utilization (SDU), but 

communities often lack the capacity and infrastructure needed to successfully utilize 

them. Inadequate investment in related training and technical assistance, and a 

lack of financial incentives and funding for programs to enable SDU implementation 

have stalled progress. 

Evaluation of 10-Year Strategy Goal Four Action Items 

• (G4-A) Internet Clearinghouse for SDU Assistance—Site has good information 

on SDU options and available technical help. Lack of financing for SDU has 

stalled progress. • (G4-B) Improve Procurement, Contracting, Grants and Agreements—

Community/contractor capacity, local benefits, cost factors, merchantability 

standards, and use of grants and agreements all need more attention. There is 

an over-reliance on stewardship contracting as an implementation tool, given 

that there is not consistent contractor / agency ability and willingness to use 

this tool. • (G4-C) Sustainable Livestock Practices & Wildfire—No progress apparent at 

this time. Because grazing effects are very site-specific, difficulties arise in determining when/where/how grazing practices increase or diminish wildfire risk. • (G4-D) Local Fire Ordinances & Planning—Unclear on level of progress on this 

urgent issue. Action must occur primarily at the local level. • (G4-E) Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Definition and Prioritization—Provisions in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act provide one approach to accomplish this goal through Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs). Maintaining local flexibility is critical. • (G4-F) WUI Community List—Lists should be maintained, as needed, at the 

state level. • (G4-G) Improve SDU Material Technical Assistance—Successful models exist, 

but assistance services are not widely available. Elimination of the Forest Service’s Economic Action Program (EAP) worsens the situation. • (G4-H) Firewise Promotion—The program is popular and successful. Firewise 

programs should be incorporated into CWPPs. 

Next Steps to Improve Promotion of Community Assistance 

A. Building Local Implementation Capacity—Western governors should work to 

engage/convene a national process that includes federal agencies, Congressional representatives and stakeholders to secure support for forest-based economic development and local capacity to meet the goals of the 10-Year Strategy. Objectives of this effort should include: 

1) Developing an alternative to the EAP and other related authorities; 

and, 

2) Addressing critical weaknesses in community capacity that now significantly hamper accomplishment of Goals One, Two and Three. 

B. Stewardship Contracting Collaboration—To improve the effectiveness of stewardship contracting, the input of agency field and contracting personnel, communities, contractors, and others should be sought by the agencies to ensure 

training and technical assistance meet existing needs. Training should emphasize the use of the full range of stewardship authorities to carry out comprehensive forest ecosystem restoration projects, not just hazardous fuels reduction. 

C. Increased Use of Grants / Agreements—The Forest Service and BLM should 

make more use of grants and agreements to accomplish land management 

goals while simultaneously delivering community assistance. 

D. Small Diameter Material Utilization—Continued pursuit of consistent supply 

is needed to attract entrepreneurs and develop markets. Federal agencies need 

to improve their capacity to inventory and analyze (species, size, trees/acre, 

accessibility, etc.) small diameter material, establish realistic costs for its 

12

removal, and revise merchantability guidelines as necessary to encourage 

SDU. Local capacity and potential community benefits should be fully considered when designing fuels reduction and restoration projects. 

E. Promote Local Wildfire Codes—The National Association of Counties, the 

National League of Cities and the WGA should work to make model fire plans 

and ordinances widely available as well as encourage states, counties and municipalities to adopt wildfire codes. These tools should be considered for integration with CWPPs. 

F. Engage Insurance Companies—The Wildland Fire Leadership Council should 

work actively with the insurance industry to encourage their greater involvement in implementation of the 10-Year Strategy, particularly in the context of 

local fuel management standards, general Firewise treatments and CWPP 

requirements relative to reducing structural ignitability. 

WGA FOREST HEALTH ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Lori Faeth (Lead Governor Representative), State of Arizona, Office of the Governor 

Jim Caswell (Lead Governor Representative), State of Idaho, Office of the Governor

ALASKA Jeff Jahnke, State Forester 

ARIZONA Steve Campbell, University of Arizona 

Taylor McKinnon, Grand Canyon Trust 

Kirk Rowdabaugh, State Forester 

Thomas Sisk, Northern Arizona University 

CALIFORNIA Dale Geldert, State Forester 

Lynn Jungwirth, Watershed Research and Training Center 

Tad Mason, TSS Consultants 

Tom Neslon, Sierra Pacific Industries 

Dan Skopec, Office of the Governor 

Bruce Turbeville, California Fire Safe Council 

COLORADO Ron Wenker, Bureau of Land Management 

Greg Aplet, The Wilderness Society 

Joe Duda, Colorado State Forest Service 

Gayle Gordon, Bureau of Land Management 

Jay Jensen, Western Governors’ Association 

Paige Lewis, Colorado State Forest Service 

Paul Orbuch, Western Governors’ Association 

John Steffenson, Environmental Systems Research Institute, 

Inc. 

IDAHO Todd Brinkmeyer, Plummer Forest Products 

Jay O’Laughlin, University of Idaho 

Jonathan Oppenheimer, Idaho Conservation League 

Peggy Polichio, U.S. Forest Service/Idaho Department of Lands 

Sarah Robertson, U.S. Forest Service 

MONTANA Julia Altemus, Montana Logging Association 

Perry Brown, The University of Montana 

Carol Daly, Flathead Economic Policy Center 

Patrick Heffernan, PAFTI, Inc. 

Craig Kenworthy, Greater Yellowstone Coalition 

Tom Kuntz, International Association of Fire Chiefs 

Todd O’Hair, Office of the Governor 

Gordon Sanders, Pyramid Mountain Lumber 

NEVADA Steve Robinson, Office of the Governor 

NEW MEXICO Arthur Blazer, State Forester 

Rick DeIaco, Director of Forestry, Village of Ruidoso 

Walter Dunn, U.S. Forest Service 

Todd Schulke, Center for Biological Diversity 

OREGON Bob Alverts, USGS-BRD Western Regional Office 

Charles Burley, American Forest Resource Council 

Lance Clark, Office of the Governor 

Maia Enzer, Sustainable Northwest 

Sandy Shaffer, Applegate Partnership 

SOUTH DAKOTA Paul Riley, Office of the Governor 

Ray Sowers, State Forester 

UTAH John Harja, Office of the Governor 

WASHINGTON Kay Gabriel, Weyerhaeuser Company 

Don Hunger, Student Conservation Association 

Niel Lawrence, Natural Resources Defense Council 

Pat McElroy, State Forester 

13

WYOMING Bill Crapser, State Forester 

OTHER Dwight Atkinson, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

Paul V. Beddoe, National Association of Counties 

Thomas Brendler, National Network of Forest Practitioners 

Stan Coloff, U.S. Geological Survey 

Mike Long, Florida State Forester 

Jim Mosher, North American Grouse Partnership 

Jeff Hardesty, The Nature Conservancy 

Mr. WALDEN. So the purpose of this hearing is to evaluate the 

GAO’s recommendations in depth and to discuss next steps with 

the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior, 

while reviewing the important accomplishments that have been 

made thus far. 

We will also hear from others on different aspects of the Healthy 

Forest Restoration Act implementation, from the needed implementation of the all the titles of this law to the role and value of community wildfire protection plans. 

It is my hope that when the GAO testifies again to this Subcommittee five years from now their report will say that our efforts 

in this Congress, with this Administration, in cooperation with 

states and other allies, have made the crucial difference between 

creating a healthy dynamic forest landscape to one that continues 

to be choked with too much growth, too much mortality and too 

many catastrophic wildfires. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Walden follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Greg Walden, Chairman,

Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health 

It is fitting that this Subcommittee’s first full hearing in the 109th Congress focus 

on the issue of hazardous fuels and its relationship to wildland fire. While this Subcommittee will take up many other important topics in the next two years, when 

it comes to the ecological integrity of our federal forests all other issues must take 

a back seat. The enormity and severity of the problem, and our ability to affect it, 

will have more impact on wildlife habitat, water quality, air quality, and community 

protection than any other forest issue. 

To explain the explosive nature of the problem let me give you some forest growth 

statistics on our national forests. Total net growth is currently about 20 billion 

board feet (bbf) per year, while total mortality is approximately 10 bbf, and the annual harvest is less than 2 bbf. In other words, we are removing less than one-fifth 

of what is dying on our forests and less than one-tenth of what is growing. This 

is the 800 pound gorilla that is wreaking havoc on our national forests and why, 

today, we have approximately 190 million acres of federal land at high risk of catastrophic fire. While some of you may have grown tired of our call to thin and treat 

our forests, let me tell you this: you ain’t heard nothing yet. 

In 1999, at the request of this Subcommittee, the Government Accountability Office produced an analysis of catastrophic wildfire, that stated: ‘‘the most extensive 

and serious problem related to the health of national forests in the interior West 

is the overaccumulation of vegetation, which has caused an increasing number of 

large, intense, uncontrollable, and catastrophically destructive wildfires.’’ The GAO’s 

report, in no small way, helped to set the stage for many of the positive changes 

that have occurred in the five years following the release of that report—-from the 

creation of the National Fire Plan, in 2000, to the development of the 10-Year Comprehensive Wildfire Strategy guided by the Western Governors’ Association, to the 

Bush Administration’s Healthy Forest Initiative, to the 108th Congress’s passage of 

the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, to the quadrupling of funds spent by the agencies on hazardous fuels reduction and the resulting quadrupling of acres treated—

-much has been done to address the problem. 

This week, again at the request of this Subcommittee, the GAO produced a fiveyear follow-up report, which recognized that much progress has been made in wildfire management, from prevention to suppression. The report confirms what we had 

14

hoped to hear and what many of us worked so hard to achieve as we developed and 

moved the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. 

But the GAO also confirms what many of us have seen and experienced recently 

as we’ve visited federal forests—-that we have a lot more to do and a long way to 

go. As I’ve traveled around our national forests since passage of HFRA, I’ve found 

that while some forest units are aggressively implementing the law, others have 

hardly begun. The GAO’s report corroborates these shortcomings, stating that a 

number of the agency’s local fire management plans do not meet agency requirements. Particularly, the GAO reported that an overarching cohesive strategy, that 

identifies long-term options and needed funding requirements, is still not in place. 

The Western Governors’ Association in its own November 2004 report, and in written testimony submitted for this hearing, makes similar recommendations. 

The purpose of this hearing is to evaluate the GAO’s recommendations in depth 

and to discuss next steps with the Department of Agriculture and the Department 

of Interior, while reviewing the important accomplishments that have been made 

thus far. We will also hear from others on different aspects of HFRA implementation, from the needed implementation of all the titles of this law, to the role and 

value of Community Wildfire Protection Plans. 

It is my hope that when the GAO testifies again to this Subcommittee five years 

from now, their report will say that our efforts in this Congress, with this Administration, in cooperation with states and other allies, have made the crucial difference 

between creating a healthy, dynamic forest landscape, to one that continues to be 

choked with too much growth, too much mortality and too many catastrophic 

wildfires. 

Mr. WALDEN. I now recognize my friend and colleague, Mr. 

Udall, the Ranking Minority Member, for an opening statement. 

Good morning and welcome. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. TOM UDALL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Good morning, Chairman Walden, good to be 

here with you. 

I appreciate this opportunity to hear the findings of the GAO’s 

Five-Year Update on Wildland Fire, and the look into issues surrounding the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. While this GAO report finds that there has been progress in the area of wildland fire 

management, the report finds that the Forest Service and the Department of Interior still lack an overall cohesive strategy in dealing with wildland fire. 

The report recommends that the Secretaries of Agriculture and 

Interior provide Congress with a plan outlining the critical steps 

and timeframes for completing a cohesive strategy, as well as identifying the options for funding wildland fire management. 

I look forward to hearing from the agencies about where they are 

in the process of developing a cohesive strategy on wildland fire 

management. 

I also point out that the GAO report states that the same request 

for a cohesive strategy was made of the agencies five years ago. As 

we look into the implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration 

Act, I look forward to exploring the concerns raised by the Western 

Governors Association and others about a lack of adequate policy 

guidance in the area of collaboration. 

Furthermore, with an eye to the Forest Service Fiscal Year 2006 

budget, I hope to hear from our witnesses about their views on 

funding cuts to the State and private forest program that assists 

landowners in the estimated 85 percent of lands in the wildlandurban interface, which are state, tribal or private lands. I also look 

15

forward to hearing from both agencies on the total number of acres 

being treated in the wildland-urban interface and how that will 

change in the future. 

As we debated the Healthy Forest bill in the House, I stood with 

many of my colleagues in arguing that the money should follow the 

threat. Given the fiscal environment we face, it is just common 

sense to thin where there is the greatest risk of loss of property 

and life. 

Another area I think we can take a closer look into is the growing awareness that for many thinning contractors Workers Compensation insurance premiums account for nearly 50 percent of 

their cost to reduce hazardous fuels. 

Last, I believe we are being penny wise and pound foolish by 

cheating out our budget for forest thinning. Internal agency studies 

have indicated that the need for investment in forest thinning is 

multiple times more than the funding requested in the President’s 

budget. We all know that the funding requested in the President’s 

budget falls far short of the targets set in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. My concern is that this lack of investment in thinning 

now just leads to higher suppression costs in the future. Initial 

runs of computer models have indicated this, and frankly, I think 

it is just common sense. 

I think we will always be faced with a debate over whether trees 

are best left horizontal or vertical, but as I said yesterday, I look 

forward to working with Chairman Walden in a bipartisan way to 

find solutions. This GAO report provides some guidance on areas 

where we can work together. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and yield back. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Udall, and I like your line about 

whether trees are horizontal or vertical. What we want is not 

black, but green. 

I am now delighted to welcome to the Subcommittee, and give 

her an opportunity for an opening statement, a neighboring colleague to the north of Oregon in Washington, Cathy McMorris. 

Welcome. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. CATHY McMORRIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON 

Ms. MCMORRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will simply say I 

am pleased to be here. I represent the area of Eastern Washington, 

home of the Colville National Forest and the Wenatchee National 

Forest, and some other lands that have certainly been impacted, 

and I want to make sure that we are doing everything possible to 

ensure that the trees stay green. 

Mr. WALDEN. There we go. Thank you. 

I now turn to my friend and colleague from Oregon, Mr. DeFazio, 

for opening remarks. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. PETER DeFAZIO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am looking forward 

to the witnesses. 

I believe today we will underline the need, the necessity to turn 

even more resources toward fuel reduction in the future, which will 

16

both save lives, property, and ultimately, although there will be 

some initial costs, save the Federal Government the phenomenal 

amount of money that has been spent in recent years on fighting 

fires, and the other nice thing that comes from all of this is jobs, 

which is really important in my district and many other rural 

areas throughout the western United States that could be impacted. So I am looking forward to the testimony. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio. 

I would just tell the committee as well, as we did last year, I 

have sent a letter to the Chairman of the House Budget Committee 

dealing with the issue of trying to set aside funds in advance that 

could be drawn upon within the budget framework to fight fire. As 

you recall, we were successful last budget in getting $500 million 

set up in a special account if you will that can be drawn upon so 

that they don’t have to rob from some of the hazardous fuels accounts and other accounts if the fire season gets out of hand. 

Fortunately, last year, not coincidental with my chairmanship of 

the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, we had very few 

forest fires out in the west. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. WALDEN. I don’t know that I had anything to do with that, 

but clearly our committee was at its best. 

Mr. Tancredo, we are just completing opening statements. Do 

you have any comments you would like to share before we go to 

the witnesses? 

Mr. TANCREDO. How are you today? 

Mr. WALDEN. I am excellent. 

Mr. TANCREDO. No, I do not. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. 

At this point I would like to introduce the witness on our first 

panel. Today we have Ms. Robin Nazzaro. I hope I pronounced that 

correctly. Director, Natural Resources and Environment for the 

U.S. Government Accountability Office. 

I would like to remind our witness that under the rules you are 

asked to limit your oral statement to 10 minutes. You will have 10, 

the other witnesses will have 5. But of course your entire statement will appear in the record, and we certainly appreciate the 

work that you and your colleagues have done on this very informative report, which I have read in great detail. We welcome you 

here and thank you for your objective look at the problems that we 

face. 

I now recognize Ms. Nazzaro for your testimony. And I understand you are joined by Chester Joy, is that correct? 

Ms. NAZZARO. Yes. 

Mr. WALDEN. And anyone else that you may want to identify. 

Ms. NAZZARO. And Mr. Bixler will be running my slides for me. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Bixler on slides. 

STATEMENT OF ROBIN M. NAZZARO, DIRECTOR, NATURAL 

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; ACCOMPANIED BY CHESTER JOY, 

U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Ms. NAZZARO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

Subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the status 

17

of the Federal Government’s efforts to address our Nation’s 

wildland fire problems. 

As you can see from our first chart, the national trend in recent 

years of wildland fire threats to communities and ecosystems has 

been increasing. The average number of acres burned by wildland 

fires annually from 2000 to 2003 was 56 percent greater than the 

average amount burned annually during the 1990s. While an increase in wildland fires may often be necessary to restore ecosystems, some fires can also cause catastrophic damages to communities and ecosystems. 

To illustrate this point, I have a short video with real-time footage that shows the importance of fuel reduction in minimizing such 

catastrophic damage. The first few scenes show a fire that is staying on the ground because there is relatively little vegetation to 

fuel the fire. In contrast, you will see the last two scenes are set 

in a forest area with dense vegetation. You will see how quickly a 

fire climbs to the crown, becoming very intense and fast moving. 

[Video shown.] 

Ms. NAZZARO. Here in the beginning—this was now the dense 

fire. 

Mr. WALDEN. Where was this fire? Do you know? 

Mr. JOY. This fire is test tracks in arboreal forests in Canada because they have to move it up there. They can’t do this. 

Ms. NAZZARO. Again, that was real time footage of how quickly 

it moved. 

Our reviews over the last five years identified several weaknesses in the Federal Government’s management response to 

wildland fires. Specifically we found that land management agencies lacked an effective national strategy to respond to wildland 

fires. Existing guidance was not specific enough for prioritizing fuel 

reduction projects. At the local level there were shortcomings in addressing wildland fire issues, including fire management plans, 

that as you noted did not meet agency requirements. The agencies 

lacked basic data on the amount and location of lands needing fuel 

reduction, and they lacked research on the effectiveness of fuel reduction methods. Further coordination among Federal entities and 

a collaboration with non-Federal entities was ineffective, and they 

had an ineffective system for accounting for expenditures and performance. 

My testimony today summarizes the findings of our report to 

you, which was released Monday, that discuss the progress the 

Federal Government has made in addressing these issues and the 

key challenges it faces in developing and implementing a long-term 

Federal response to wildland fire problems. 

In the past five years, the Forest Service and the land management agencies in the Department of the Interior have made important progress in each of these areas, and have put into place the 

basic components of a framework for managing and responding to 

the Nation’s wildland fire problems. Specifically, the Federal Government has been formulating a comprehensive strategy known as 

the National Fire Plan, which is comprised of several strategic documents. These documents set forth a priority to protect communities near wildlands. 

18

To address this priority the agencies, working with the States, 

identified a list of communities nationwide that are considered 

most at risk of wildland fire damage. Further, this priority has 

been emphasized by the enactment of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, which directs that at least 50 percent of the amount of 

funds available for fuel reduction on Federal lands is to be allocated to these urban areas. 

Significant improvement in data and research on wildland fires 

has also been made. In 2003 Agriculture and Interior approved 

funding for development of a geospatial data and modeling system 

called LANDFIRE to identify the extent and location of wildland 

fire threats and better target fuel reduction efforts. While 

LANDFIRE is not scheduled for national implementation until 

2009, initial results have been promising. 

Local fire management planning has also been strengthened. 

Completion of the agencies local fire management plans has been 

on an expedited schedule and are being prepared using an interagency template to ensure greater consistency in their content. 

Other critical improvements have been made in coordination 

among Federal agencies and in collaboration with their non-Federal partners. In 2001 Agriculture and Interior jointly adopted a 

10-year comprehensive strategy with the Western Governors Association. An implementation plan which was adopted in 2002, detailed goals, timelines and responsibilities. 

Regarding performance measurement and monitoring, Federal 

agencies adopted a measure that will allow them to better determine the extent to which their fuel reduction efforts are directed 

toward the land with the most hazards. The agencies also made 

progress in developing a system to monitor their efforts. This information will help in determining the nature of the threats and the 

likely effectiveness of different actions taken to address threats. 

In addition, the Forest Service and Interior appropriations for 

fuel reductions, preparedness and suppression have been increased 

substantially since 1999. As shown in the this slide, overall appropriations for both Forest service and Interior have nearly tripled in 

the past five years from about $1 billion in 1999 to over $2.7 billion 

in Fiscal Year 2004. More specifically, fuel reduction funding has 

quadrupled. 

While the Federal Government has made important progress to 

date in developing a sound foundation for addressing the problem 

that wildfires are increasingly presenting, the agencies need to 

complete and refine a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies the 

long-term options and related funding needed to reduce fuels on 

our national forests and rangelands, and to respond to the Nation’s 

wildland fire threats. 

However, to complete and begin implementing such a strategy 

the agencies must complete several tasks, each with its own challenges. 

To finalize a cohesive strategy the agencies need to complete 

three ongoing initiatives: further development of data and modeling 

systems to more precisely identify wildland fire threats; updates of 

local fire management plans to include the latest wildland fire data 

and research; and assessments of the cost effectiveness and affordVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:37 Mar 30, 2005 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\98808.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
19

ability of fuel reduction options. I will briefly discuss each action 

that we see needs to be done in these areas. 

Regarding the data and modeling system, in completing 

LANDFIRE the agencies need a consistent approach to assessing 

risks of wildland fires to ecosystem resources and an integrated approach to better manage and use information systems and data in 

making their wildland fire decisions. Moreover, the agencies will 

have to reexamine the LANDFIRE data and models before implementing them to assess how climate shifts may affect wildland fire 

risks. 

Fire management plans will need to be updated with detailed nationally consistent LANDFIRE data as they become available, recent agency fire research on optimal location of fuel reduction 

treatments in relation to communities and the latest research findings on optimal design and arrangement of fuel reduction treatments. 

Last, the agencies will need to complete several ongoing initiatives to assess the cost effectiveness and affordability of fuel reduction options. These initiatives include and initial interagency analysis of national fuel reduction options which need to be applied to 

a smaller geographic area to get more accurate estimates of longterm costs. The second initiative is a new budget allocation system 

based on cost effectiveness that is expected to take at least until 

2007 to complete. The third effort is a new strategic wildland fire 

analysis effort that is expected to be completed this year. That also 

may help in identifying long-term costs and funding options. 

In conclusion, there are a number of options, each involving different tradeoffs among risks and funding that need to be identified 

and better understood. This is the same message that we provided 

to you five years ago in calling for a cohesive strategy that identified the long-term options and related funding needed to reduce 

fuels on our national forests and rangelands, and to respond to the 

Nation’s wildland fire threats. 

The agencies and the Congress need such a strategy to help 

make decisions about effective and affordable long-term approaches 

for addressing problems that have been decades in the making and 

will take decades more to resolve. 

We have recommended in our report that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior provide the Congress, in time for its consideration of their Fiscal Year 2006 Wildland Fire Management 

Budgets, with a joint tactical plan that outlines the critical steps 

the agencies will take, together with related timeframes, to complete their cohesive strategy that would identify long-term options 

and funding needs. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I will be pleased to 

answer any questions that you or members of the Subcommittee 

may have at this time. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nazzaro follows:]

20

Statement of Robin M. Nazzaro, Director, Natural Resources and 

Environment, U.S. Government Accountability Office 

WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT 

FOREST SERVICE AND INTERIOR NEED TO SPECIFY STEPS AND A SCHEDULE FOR

IDENTIFYING LONG-TERM OPTIONS AND THEIR COSTS

Why GAO Did This Study 

Over the past two decades, the number of acres burned by wildland fires has 

surged, often threatening human lives, property, and ecosystems. Past management 

practices, including a concerted federal policy in the 20th century of suppressing 

fires to protect communities and ecosystem resources, unintentionally resulted in 

steady accumulation of dense vegetation that fuels large, intense, wildland fires. 

While such fires are normal in some ecosystems, in others they can cause catastrophic damage to resources as well as to communities near wildlands known as 

the wildland-urban interface. 

GAO was asked to identify the (1) progress the federal government has made in 

responding to wildland fire threats and (2) challenges it will need to address within 

the next 5 years. This testimony is based primarily on GAO’s report, Wildland Fire 

Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy (GAO-05-147), released on February 14, 2005. 

What GAO Recommends 

In its report and this testimony, GAO recommends that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior provide the Congress with a plan outlining the critical steps 

and time frames for completing a cohesive strategy that identifies the options and 

funding needed to address wildland fire problems. 

What GAO Found 

Over the last 5 years, the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and 

land management agencies in the Department of the Interior, working with the 

Congress, have made important progress in responding to wildland fires. The agencies have adopted various national strategy documents addressing the need to reduce wildland fire risks; established a priority for protecting communities in the 

wildland-urban interface; and increased efforts and amounts of funding committed 

to addressing wildland fire problems, including preparedness, suppression, and fuel 

reduction on federal lands. In addition, the agencies have begun improving their 

data and research on wildland fire problems, made progress in developing longneeded fire management plans that identify actions for effectively addressing 

wildland fire threats at the local level, and improved federal interagency coordination and collaboration with nonfederal partners. The agencies also have strengthened overall accountability for their investments in wildland fire activities by establishing improved performance measures and a framework for monitoring results. 

While the agencies have adopted various strategy documents to address the nation’s wildland fire problems, none of these documents constitutes a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies the long-term options and related funding needed to reduce fuels in national forests and rangelands and to respond to wildland fire 

threats. Both the agencies and the Congress need a comprehensive assessment of 

the fuel reduction options and related funding needs to determine the most effective 

and affordable long-term approach for addressing wildland fire problems. Completing a cohesive strategy that identifies long-term options and needed funding will 

require finishing several efforts now under way, each with its own challenges. The 

agencies will need to finish planned improvements in a key data and modeling 

system—LANDFIRE—to more precisely identify the extent and location of wildland 

fire threats and to better target fuel reduction efforts. In implementing LANDFIRE, 

the agencies will need more consistent approaches to assessing wildland fire risks, 

more integrated information systems, and better understanding of the role of climate in wildland fire. In addition, local fire management plans will need to be updated with data from LANDFIRE and from emerging agency research on more costeffective approaches to reducing fuels. Completing a new system designed to identify 

the most cost-effective means for allocating fire management budget resources—Fire 

Program Analysis—may help to better identify long-term options and related funding needs. Without completing these tasks, the agencies will have difficulty determining the extent and location of wildland fire threats, targeting and coordinating 

their efforts and resources, and resolving wildland fire problems in the most timely 

and cost-effective manner over the long term. 

A November 2004 report of the Western Governors’ Association also called for 

completing a cohesive federal strategy to address wildland fire problems. 

21

1GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Important Progress Has Been Made, but Challenges Remain to Completing a Cohesive Strategy, GAO-05-147 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 2005). 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the status of the federal government’s 

efforts to address our nation’s wildland fire problems. The trend of increasing 

wildland fire threats to communities and ecosystems that we reported on 5 years 

ago has been continuing. The average number of acres burned by wildland fires annually from 2000 through 2003 was 56 percent greater than the average amount 

burned annually during the 1990s. Wildland fires are often necessary to restore ecosystems, but some fires also can cause catastrophic damages to communities and 

ecosystems. Experts believe that catastrophic damages from wildland fires probably 

will continue to increase until an adequate long-term federal response, coordinated 

with others, is implemented and has had time to take effect. 

My testimony today summarizes the findings of our report released this week that 

discusses progress the federal government has made over the last 5 years and key 

challenges it faces in developing and implementing a long-term response to wildland 

fire problems. 1 This report is based primarily on over 25 reviews we conducted in 

recent years of federal wildland fire management that focused largely on the activities of the Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture and the land management agencies in the Department of the Interior, which together manage about 

95 percent of all federal lands. 

Summary 

In the past 5 years, the federal government has made important progress in putting into place the basic components of a framework for managing and responding 

to the nation’s wildland fire problems, including • establishing a priority to protect communities near wildlands—the wildlandurban interface; • increasing the amount of effort and funds available for addressing fire-related 

concerns, such as fuel reduction on federal lands; 

• improving data and research on wildland fire, local fire management plans, 

interagency coordination, and collaboration with nonfederal partners; and 

• refining performance measures and results monitoring for wildland fire management. 

While this progress has been important, many challenges remain for addressing 

wildland fire problems in a timely and effective manner. Most notably, the land 

management agencies need to complete a cohesive strategy that identifies the longterm options and related funding needed for reducing fuels and responding to 

wildland fires when they occur. A recent Western Governors’ Association report also 

called for completing such a cohesive federal strategy. The agencies and the Congress need such a strategy to make decisions about an effective and affordable longterm approach for addressing problems that have been decades in the making and 

will take decades more to resolve. However, completing and implementing such a 

strategy will require that the agencies complete several challenging tasks, including 

• developing data systems needed to identify the extent, severity, and location of 

wildland fire threats to the nation’s communities and ecosystems; 

• updating local fire management plans to better specify the actions needed to effectively address these threats; and 

• assessing the cost-effectiveness and affordability of options for reducing fuels. 

We are recommending that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior provide 

the Congress, in time for its consideration of the agencies’ Fiscal Year 2006 

wildland fire management budgets, with a joint tactical plan outlining the critical 

steps the agencies will take, together with related time frames, to complete a cohesive strategy that identifies long-term options and needed funding for reducing and 

maintaining fuels at acceptable levels and responding to the nation’s wildland fire 

problems. 

Background 

Wildland fire triggered by lightning is a normal, inevitable, and necessary ecological process that nature uses to periodically remove excess undergrowth, small trees, 

and vegetation to renew ecosystem productivity. However, various human land use 

and management practices, including several decades of fire suppression activities, 

have reduced the normal frequency of wildland fires in many forest and rangeland 

ecosystems and have resulted in abnormally dense and continuous accumulations of 

vegetation that can fuel uncharacteristically large and intense wildland fires. Such 

large intense fires increasingly threaten catastrophic ecosystem damage and also increasingly threaten human lives, health, property, and infrastructure in the 

22

wildland-urban interface. Federal researchers estimate that vegetative conditions 

that can fuel such fires exist on approximately 190 million acres—or more than 40 

percent—of federal lands in the contiguous United States but could vary from 90 

million to 200 million acres, and that these conditions also exist on many nonfederal 

lands. 

Our reviews over the last 5 years identified several weaknesses in the federal government’s management response to wildland fire issues. These weaknesses included 

the lack of a national strategy that addressed the likely high costs of needed fuel 

reduction efforts and the need to prioritize these efforts. Our reviews also found 

shortcomings in federal implementation at the local level, where over half of all federal land management units’ fire management plans did not meet agency requirements designed to restore fire’s natural role in ecosystems consistent with human 

health and safety. These plans are intended to identify needed local fuel reduction, 

preparedness, suppression, and rehabilitation actions. The agencies also lacked 

basic data, such as the amount and location of lands needing fuel reduction, and 

research on the effectiveness of different fuel reduction methods on which to base 

their fire management plans and specific project decisions. Furthermore, coordination among federal agencies and collaboration between these agencies and nonfederal entities were ineffective. This kind of cooperation is needed because wildland 

fire is a shared problem that transcends land ownership and administrative boundaries. Finally, we found that better accountability for federal expenditures and performance in wildland fire management was needed. Agencies were unable to assess 

the extent to which they were reducing wildland fire risks or to establish meaningful fuel reduction performance measures, as well as to determine the cost-effectiveness of these efforts, because they lacked both monitoring data and sufficient data 

on the location of lands at high risk of catastrophic fires to know the effects of their 

actions. As a result, their performance measures created incentives to reduce fuels 

on all acres, as opposed to focusing on high-risk acres. 

Because of these weaknesses, and because experts said that wildland fire problems could take decades to resolve, we said that a cohesive, long-term, federal 

wildland fire management strategy was needed. We said that this cohesive strategy 

needed to focus on identifying options for reducing fuels over the long term in order 

to decrease future wildland fire risks and related costs. We also said that the strategy should identify the costs associated with those different fuel reduction options 

over time, so that the Congress could make cost-effective, strategic funding decisions. 

Important Progress Has Been Made in Addressing Federal Wildland Fire 

Management Problems over the Last 5 Years 

The federal government has made important progress over the last 5 years in improving its management of wildland fire. Nationally it has established strategic priorities and increased resources for implementing these priorities. Locally, it has enhanced data and research, planning, coordination, and collaboration with other parties. With regard to accountability, it has improved performance measures and established a monitoring framework. 

Progress in National Strategy: Priorities Have Been Clarified and Funding Has Been 

Increased for Identified Needs 

Over the last 5 years, the federal government has been formulating a national 

strategy known as the National Fire Plan, composed of several strategic documents 

that set forth a priority to reduce wildland fire risks to communities. Similarly, the 

recently enacted Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 directs that at least 50 

percent of funding for fuel reduction projects authorized under the Act be allocated 

to wildland-urban interface areas. While we have raised concerns about the way the 

agencies have defined these areas and the specificity of their prioritization guidance, 

we believe that the act’s clarification of the community protection priority provides 

a good starting point for identifying and prioritizing funding needs. Similarly, in 

contrast to Fiscal Year 1999, when we reported that the Forest Service had not requested increased funding to meet the growing fuel reduction needs it had identified, fuel reduction funding for both the Forest Service and Interior quadrupled by 

Fiscal Year 2004. The Congress, in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, also authorized $760 million per year to be appropriated for hazardous fuels reduction activities, including projects for reducing fuels on up to 20 million acres of land. Moreover, appropriations for both agencies’ overall wildland fire management activities, 

including preparedness, suppression and rehabilitation, have nearly tripled, from 

about $1 billion in Fiscal Year 1999 to over $2.7 billion in Fiscal Year 2004. 

23

Progress in Local Implementation: Data and Research, Fire Management Planning, 

and Coordination and Collaboration Have Been Strengthened 

The agencies have strengthened local wildland fire management implementation 

by making significant improvements in federal data and research on wildland fire 

over the past 5 years, including an initial mapping of fuel hazards nationwide. Additionally, in 2003, the agencies approved funding for development of a geospatial 

data and modeling system, called LANDFIRE, to map wildland fire hazards with 

greater precision and uniformity. LANDFIRE—estimated to cost $40 million and 

scheduled for nationwide implementation in 2009—will enable comparisons of conditions between different field locations nationwide, thus permitting better identification of the nature and magnitude of wildland fire risks confronting different community and ecosystem resources, such as residential and commercial structures, species 

habitat, air and water quality, and soils. 

The agencies also have improved local fire management planning by adopting and 

executing an expedited schedule to complete plans for all land units that had not 

been in compliance with agency requirements. The agencies also adopted a common 

interagency template for preparing plans to ensure greater consistency in their contents. 

Coordination among federal agencies and their collaboration with nonfederal partners, critical to effective implementation at the local level, also has been improved. 

In 2001, as a result of congressional direction, the agencies jointly formulated a 10-

Year Comprehensive Strategy with the Western Governors’ Association to involve 

the states as full partners in their efforts. An implementation plan adopted by the 

agencies in 2002 details goals, time lines, and responsibilities of the different parties 

for a wide range of activities, including collaboration at the local level to identify 

fuel reduction priorities in different areas. Also in 2002, the agencies established an 

interagency body, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, composed of senior Agriculture and Interior officials and nonfederal representatives, to improve coordination of their activities with each other and nonfederal parties. 

Progress in Accountability: Better Performance Measures and a Results Monitoring 

Framework Have Been Developed 

Accountability for the results the federal government achieves from its investments in wildland fire management activities also has been strengthened. The agencies have adopted a performance measure that identifies the amount of acres moved 

from high-hazard to low-hazard fuel conditions, replacing a performance measure 

for fuel reductions that measured only the total acres of fuel reductions and created 

an incentive to treat less costly acres rather than the acres that presented the greatest hazards. Additionally, in 2004, to have a better baseline for measuring progress, 

the Wildland Fire Leadership Council approved a nationwide framework for monitoring the effects of wildland fire. While an implementation plan is still needed for 

this framework, it nonetheless represents a critical step toward enhancing wildland 

fire management accountability. 

Agencies Face Several Challenges to Completing a Long-Needed Cohesive Strategy 

for Reducing Fuels and Responding to Wildland Fire Problems 

While the federal government has made important progress over the past 5 years 

in addressing wildland fire, a number of challenges still must be met to complete 

development of a cohesive strategy that explicitly identifies available long-term options and funding needed to reduce fuels on the nation’s forests and rangelands. 

Without such a strategy, the Congress will not have an informed understanding of 

when, how, and at what cost wildland fire problems can be brought under control. 

None of the strategic documents adopted by the agencies to date have identified 

these options and related funding needs, and the agencies have yet to delineate a 

plan or schedule for doing so. To identify these options and funding needs, the agencies will have to address several challenging tasks related to their data systems, fire 

management plans, and assessing the cost-effectiveness and affordability of different 

options for reducing fuels. 

Completing and Implementing the LANDFIRE System Is Essential to Identifying 

and Addressing Wildland Fire Threats 

The agencies face several challenges to completing and implementing LANDFIRE, 

so that they can more precisely identify the extent and location of wildland fire 

threats and better target fuel reduction efforts. These challenges include using 

LANDFIRE to better reconcile the effects of fuel reduction activities with the agencies’ other stewardship responsibilities for protecting ecosystem resources, such as 

air, water, soils, and species habitat, which fuel reduction efforts can adversely affect. The agencies also need LANDFIRE to help them better measure and assess 

24

their performance. For example, the data produced by LANDFIRE will help them 

devise a separate performance measure for maintaining conditions on low-hazard 

lands to ensure that their conditions do not deteriorate to more hazardous conditions while funding is being focused on lands with high-hazard conditions. 

In implementing LANDFIRE, however, the agencies will have to overcome the 

challenges presented by the current lack of a consistent approach to assessing the 

risks of wildland fires to ecosystem resources as well as the lack of an integrated, 

strategic, and unified approach to managing and using information systems and 

data, including those such as LANDFIRE, in wildland fire decision making. Currently, software, data standards, equipment, and training vary among the agencies 

and field units in ways that hamper needed sharing and consistent application of 

the data. Also, LANDFIRE data and models may need to be revised to take into 

account recent research findings that suggest part of the increase in wildland fire 

in recent years has been caused by a shift in climate patterns. This research also 

suggests that these new climate patterns may continue for decades, resulting in further increases in the amount of wildland fire. Thus, the nature, extent, and geographical distribution of hazards initially identified in LANDFIRE, as well as the 

costs for addressing them, may have to be reassessed. 

Fire Management Plans Will Need to Be Updated with Latest Data and Research 

on Wildland Fire 

The agencies will need to update their local fire management plans when more 

detailed, nationally consistent LANDFIRE data become available. The plans will 

also have to be updated to incorporate recent agency fire research on approaches 

to more effectively address wildland fire threats. For example, a 2002 interagency 

analysis found that protecting wildland-urban interface communities more 

effectively—as well as more cost-effectively—might require locating a higher proportion of fuel reduction projects outside of the wildland-urban interface than currently 

envisioned, so that fires originating in the wildlands do not become too large to suppress by the time they arrive at the interface. Moreover, other agency research suggests that placing fuel reduction treatments in specific geometric patterns may, for 

the same cost, provide protection for up to three times as many community and ecosystem resources as do other approaches, such as placing fuel breaks around communities and ecosystems resources. Timely updating of fire management plans with 

the latest research findings on optimal design and location of treatments also will 

be critical to the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these plans. The Forest Service indicated that this updating could occur during annual reviews of fire management plans to determine whether any changes to them may be needed. 

Ongoing Efforts to Assess the Cost-Effectiveness and Affordability of Fuel Reduction 

Options Need to Be Completed 

Completing the LANDFIRE data and modeling system and updating fire management plans should enable the agencies to formulate a range of options for reducing 

fuels. However, to identify optimal and affordable choices among these options, the 

agencies will have to complete certain cost-effectiveness analysis efforts they currently have under way. These efforts include an initial 2002 interagency analysis 

of options and costs for reducing fuels, congressionally-directed improvements to 

their budget allocation systems, and a new strategic analysis framework that considers affordability. 

The Interagency Analysis of Options and Costs: In 2002, a team of Forest Service 

and Interior experts produced an estimate of the funds needed to implement eight 

different fuel reduction options for protecting communities and ecosystems across 

the nation over the next century. Their analysis also considered the impacts of fuels 

reduction activities on future costs for other principal wildland fire management activities, such as preparedness, suppression, and rehabilitation, if fuels were not reduced. The team concluded that the option that would result in reducing the risks 

to communities and ecosystems across the nation could require an approximate tripling of current fuel reduction funding to about $1.4 billion for an initial period of 

a few years. These initially higher costs would decline after fuels had been reduced 

enough to use less expensive controlled burning methods in many areas and more 

fires could be suppressed at lower cost, with total wildland fire management costs, 

as well as risks, being reduced after 15 years. Alternatively, the team said that not 

making a substantial short-term investment using a landscape focus could increase 

both costs and risks to communities and ecosystems in the long term. More recently, 

however, Interior has said that the costs and time required to reverse current 

increasing risks may be less when other vegetation management activities—such as 

timber harvesting and habitat improvements—are considered that were not 

25

included in the interagency team’s original assessment but also can influence 

wildland fire. 

The cost of the 2002 interagency team’s option that reduced risks to communities 

and ecosystems over the long term is consistent with a June 2002 National Association of State Foresters’ projection of the funding needed to implement the 10-Year 

Comprehensive Strategy developed by the agencies and the Western Governors’ Association the previous year. The state foresters projected a need for steady increases 

in fuel reduction funding up to a level of about $1.1 billion by Fiscal Year 2011. 

This is somewhat less than that of the interagency team’s estimate, but still about 

2-1/2 times current levels. 

The state foresters projected a need for fuel reduction funding increases that was 

somewhat less than that of the interagency team’s estimate, but still up to about 

2-1/2 times current levels, or over $1.1 billion annually. 

The interagency team of experts who prepared the 2002 analysis of options and 

associated costs said their estimates of long-term costs could only be considered an 

approximation because the data used for their national-level analysis were not sufficiently detailed. They said a more accurate estimate of the long-term federal costs 

and consequences of different options nationwide would require applying this 

national analysis framework in smaller geographic areas using more detailed data, 

such as that produced by LANDFIRE, and then aggregating these smaller-scale results. 

The New Budget Allocation System: Agency officials told us that a tool for applying this interagency analysis at a smaller geographic scale for aggregation nationally may be another management system under development—the Fire Program 

Analysis system. This system, being developed in response to congressional committee direction to improve budget allocation tools, is designed to identify the most 

cost-effective allocations of annual preparedness funding for implementing agency 

field units’ local fire management plans. Eventually, the Fire Program Analysis system, being initially implemented in 2005, will use LANDFIRE data and provide a 

smaller geographical scale for analyses of fuel reduction options and thus, like 

LANDFIRE, will be critical for updating fire management plans. Officials said that 

this preparedness budget allocation system—when integrated with an additional 

component now being considered for allocating annual fuel reduction funding—could 

be instrumental in identifying the most cost-effective long-term levels, mixes, and 

scheduling of these two wildland fire management activities. Completely developing 

the Fire Program Analysis system, including the fuel reduction funding component, 

is expected to cost about $40 million and take until at least 2007 and perhaps until 

2009. 

The New Strategic Analysis Effort: In May 2004, Agriculture and Interior began 

the initial phase of a wildland fire strategic planning effort that also might contribute to identifying long-term options and needed funding for reducing fuels and 

responding to the nation’s wildland fire problems. This effort—the Quadrennial Fire 

and Fuels Review—is intended to result in an overall federal interagency strategic 

planning document for wildland fire management and risk reduction and to provide 

a blueprint for developing affordable and integrated fire preparedness, fuels reduction, and fire suppression programs. Because of this effort’s consideration of affordability, it may provide a useful framework for developing a cohesive strategy that 

includes identifying long-term options and related funding needs. The preliminary 

planning, analysis, and internal review phases of this effort are currently being 

completed and an initial report is expected in March 2005. 

The improvements in data, modeling, and fire behavior research that the agencies 

have under way, together with the new cost-effectiveness focus of the Fire Program 

Analysis system to support local fire management plans, represent important tools 

that the agencies can begin to use now to provide the Congress with initial and successively more accurate assessments of long-term fuel reduction options and related 

funding needs. Moreover, a more transparent process of interagency analysis in 

framing these options and their costs will permit better identification and resolution 

of differing assumptions, approaches, and values. This transparency provides the 

best assurance of accuracy and consensus among differing estimates, such as those 

of the interagency team and the National Association of State Foresters. 

A Recent Western Governors’ Association Report Is Consistent with GAO’s Findings 

and Recommendation 

In November 2004, the Western Governors’ Association issued a report prepared 

by its Forest Health Advisory Committee that assessed implementation of the 10-

Year Comprehensive Strategy, which the association had jointly devised with the 

26

2 Report to the Western Governors on the Implementation of the 10-Year Comprehensive 

Strategy, Western Governors’ Association Forest Health Advisory Committee (Denver, 2004). 

agencies in 2001. 2 Although the association’s report had a different scope than our 

review, its findings and recommendations are, nonetheless, generally consistent 

with ours about the progress made by the federal government and the challenges 

it faces over the next 5 years. In particular, it recommends, as we do, completion 

of a long-term federal cohesive strategy for reducing fuels. It also cites the need for 

continued efforts to improve, among other things, data on hazardous fuels, fire management plans, the Fire Program Analysis system, and cost-effectiveness in fuel 

reductions—all challenges we have emphasized today. 

Conclusions 

The progress made by the federal government over the last 5 years has provided 

a sound foundation for addressing the problems that wildland fire will increasingly 

present to communities, ecosystems, and federal budgetary resources over the next 

few years and decades. But, as yet, there is no clear single answer about how best 

to address these problems in either the short or long term. Instead, there are different options, each needing further development to understand the trade-offs 

among the risks and funding involved. The Congress needs to understand these options and tradeoffs in order to make informed policy and appropriations decisions 

on this 21st century challenge. 

This is the same message we provided to this subcommittee 5 years ago in calling 

for a cohesive strategy that identified options and funding needs. But it still has 

not been completed. While the agencies are now in a better position to do so, they 

must build on the progress made to date by completing data and modeling efforts 

underway, updating their fire management plans with the results of these data efforts and ongoing research, and following through on recent cost-effectiveness and 

affordability initiatives. However, time is running out. Further delay in completing 

a strategy that cohesively integrates these activities to identify options and related 

funding needs will only result in increased long-term risks to communities, ecosystems, and federal budgetary resources. 

Recommendation for Executive Action 

Because there is an increasingly urgent need for a cohesive federal strategy that 

identifies long-term options and related funding needs for reducing fuels, we have 

recommended that the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior provide the Congress, in time for its consideration of the agencies’ Fiscal Year 2006 wildland fire 

management budgets, with a joint tactical plan outlining the critical steps the 

agencies will take, together with related time frames, to complete such a cohesive 

strategy. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to answer any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have at 

this time. 

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments 

For further information about this testimony, please contact me at (202) 512-3841 

or at nazzaror@gao.gov. Jonathan Altshul, David P. Bixler, Barry T. Hill, Richard 

Johnson, and Chester Joy made key contributions to this statement. 

Mr. WALDEN. Ms. Nazzaro, thank you, and I commend you for 

coming in 16 seconds early too. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. WALDEN. A very helpful presentation. 

I would just point out for our committee members, you each 

should have a document that looks similar to this that is a report 

of the fuels treatment accomplishments for each State, in theory 

the State in which you reside, and so for Fiscal Year 2004. So you 

will have some good information there broken out by agency type, 

whether it is the Bureau of Indian Affairs, BLM, Fish and Wildlife 

Service, National Parks Service and U.S. Forest Service, and the 

way that the treatments occurred and whether it was in a 

wildland-urban interface of not. 

27

Then also we have provided for you a healthy forest report. This 

is information from the U.S. Forest Service which we have requested on a—did you say weekly basis or monthly basis—a 

monthly report on the initiatives being taken to make our forests 

healthier and our communities more secure. 

So I would draw your attention to both of those documents which 

you should have before you. 

I have a couple of questions I would like to pose to you, and then 

we will go for questions from the other committee members. Ms. 

Nazzaro, do you know the status of the 2002 Interagency Options 

Study concerning funding levels? 

Ms. NAZZARO. No, we do not. 

Mr. WALDEN. So you don’t know whether it has been adopted or 

not? 

Ms. NAZZARO. No, we do not know that. 

Mr. WALDEN. Can you describe that for me, what you do know 

about it, if anything? 

Mr. JOY. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. WALDEN. Is your mike on by the way? 

Mr. JOY. I am sorry. Mr. Chairman, the agency study has been 

on the websites, et cetera, and it was intended to be an interagency 

cohesive strategy document to support that. It has not yet been released by the agency. And in response to our report, one of the 

things they mentioned was there were some adjustments in the 

numbers that might have to be taken into account because of other 

activities not funded by the fuel account, but had some effects. But 

it is by far and away, obviously, the most comprehensive study that 

outlines options and cost. 

Mr. WALDEN. I commend what has happened over the last five 

years, a quadrupling of the monies for fuel reduction is certainly 

a major step forward. I think all of us who are involved in this 

issue, as I think most of us on this Subcommittee certainly have 

been over the years, know that with the streamlined process we anticipate there will be additional demands for funding to be able to 

work through more projects because we should see more projects 

come on line, so I think we are all cognizant of the need for more 

money and also the budgetary constraints in which we find ourselves. But I concur with my colleagues that we are best putting 

our money in an investment that reduces the threat of fire and increases the health of our forests than wail until damage is done. 

Since your report in 1999 you state that important progress has 

been made. Is there any reason for you to believe that in another 

five years you won’t also find some significant process, or have you 

found reluctance among the agencies to move forward? I understand they have indicated an inability to comply with what you 

have recommended with to their ’06 budget and some difficulty 

there. 

Ms. NAZZARO. On that last point there may have been a misunderstanding though as to were we asking for the cohesive strategy that we had initially recommended five years, that that be 

completed in time for the ’06 budget. Rather, what we are talking 

about is a tactical plan that would give you, if you will, the who, 

what, where, when is this cohesive strategy actually going to be developed. We have not seen any reluctance on the agency part, and 

28

as we have mentioned, we have seen significant progress and 

would expect significant progress to continue. However, we do see 

some significant challenges for them as well, as we pointed out. 

Mr. WALDEN. In your testimony you indicate a need for more cost 

effective approaches to reducing fuels, and obviously we agree with 

that, being stewards of the taxpayers’ purse. I have heard some 

complaints that little mechanical thinning is taking place, which is 

more expensive, and that prescribed fire is currently the number 

one tool for reducing fuel loads. Isn’t it true that some of the highest priority areas though, such as the wildland-urban interface, are 

indeed the most expansive to treat because we need to do it 

mechanically? How do we deal with this problem? 

Ms. NAZZARO. At this point our recommendation is to set priorities. If they would develop the various options and then look at the 

available funding or funding needs, at least we would know that 

we are funding, you know, the optimal areas and we are appropriately using the funding that is available. 

Mr. JOY. Mr. Chairman, I might also add, as we said in 1999, 

essentially what you said there, some of the highest priority areas 

are obviously wildland-urban interface. There you have to use mechanical. So there is going to be a need to not always use the 

cheapest method but it is not very effective to have a town burn. 

But at the same time, one of the things about the numbers that 

you need to understand is that for many, many years in the Southeastern part of the United States, burning, controlled burning has 

been used across wide areas and will continue to be because they 

can more safely do it than they can in the dry west. So part of the 

imbalance in the figures is that essentially you will see a lot of controlled burning because of the southeast. But on the other hand, in 

the interior west, where you represent, obviously there is going to 

have to be mechanical around towns. 

Mr. WALDEN. And I guess that is one of the issues I intend to 

continue to pursue because just a raw acreage number may not 

speak to the quality of work being done. It may, but where you can 

burn, for example, as you have indicated, and accomplish a lot in 

some areas of the country, we can burn in the West too, but it may 

not be where we most need to do the work. So somehow we have 

to make sure this is balance, and clearly we have the experts to 

achieve that. 

Ms. NAZZARO. And that brings attention to where we were talking about the appropriate measurement for success as to what had 

they accomplished. Just talking about the total number of acres 

burned is not adequate. You need to know how many of the most 

hazardous acres have been reduced to less hazardous conditions. 

Mr. WALDEN. And how those were determined. 

Mr. JOY. Mr. Chairman, if I might add one more thing about that 

because I think it is so on point, what you have raised about this 

choice business. Although it is more expensive to necessarily have 

to do mechanical around the wildland-urban interface, the fact of 

the matter is that the cost of the firefighting in that area to protect 

that is going to also be massively more expensive. So even though 

it may cost more as investment to reduce fuels there, you are going 

to be saving a very high investment in what we are going to throw 

out to stop that there. 

29

Another thing I would add, and that is I think the distinction by 

what we meant be a cohesive strategy, is it is based on cost effectiveness in terms of what it is, the expenditure you have to make 

to prevent the other expenditures. 

Mr. WALDEN. Right. That was Mr. DeFazio’s point. 

Mr. JOY. And over time it is making the investment now so that 

you don’t have to do it later. It is both time and place, the cost effectiveness. That is what we mean by cohesive and how it is different than say the 10-year comprehensive strategy. 

Mr. WALDEN. I thank you very much. 

I now turn to my colleague, Mr. Udall, for questions. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Following up on what you just specifically said, how are we doing 

when you look at the big numbers? The numbers in your report are 

very large in terms of acreage of fuel-treated areas. Do you have 

any conclusions in terms of how we are doing on what you just 

talked about? 

Ms. NAZZARO. In looking at the total number of acres doesn’t 

present the right picture. The agencies talk about reducing the 

number of acres, but what we really would like to see is a discussion of how many of the higher hazardous acres have been, if you 

will, corrected and are now in the less hazardous range. So at this 

point we have not verified or validated any of their numbers. We 

have not gone out to look at any of these sites. So I couldn’t tell 

you the accuracy of their data. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Do you think that would be a helpful thing at 

this point, or is the most important thing this cohesive strategy 

and the tactical plan? 

Ms. NAZZARO. That clearly is, long-term, the best approach, so 

that you know exactly what we are dealing with, what options are 

available to us and what the potential costs could be, and then if 

we are limited by funds, that we are applying the funds appropriately. 

Mr. JOY. Mr. Udall, and in fairness also, it should be noted that 

the number that you are looking at, say in the budget that talk 

about total number of acres? 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Yes. 

Mr. JOY. One of the things we note in the report, the agencies 

have adopted a new way of counting that is not reflected in those 

yet. The GPRA measures for performance for fuel reduction are 

moving, instead of to just gross acreage numbers, to acres that 

have been moved from a hazardous condition to a less hazardous 

condition, so there may be a little catch up here in the actual reporting. I would imagine next year you will be getting the types of 

numbers that Ms. Nazzaro was speaking about. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. On page 10 of your testimony you say that this 

is the same message that we provided to this Subcommittee five 

years ago in calling for a cohesive strategy that identified options 

and funding means, but it is still not being completed. I understand there is a little bit of disagreement here on whether you are 

calling in ’06 for the cohesive strategy to be in place or whether you 

are calling for a tactical plan that will put the cohesive strategy in 

place. I mean, what kind of timetable do you think we are looking 

30

at and do you recommend in terms of getting the cohesive strategy 

in place and operating? 

Mr. JOY. Mr. Chairman, if the question is, should it be five years 

from now, well, I would suppose everybody would hope that would 

be the case, but I guess the point of our recommendation is not so 

much that there is a point in time that we should all wait for. We 

already have the 2002 analysis which needs some adjustment. 

There are a lot of things that can be done now to begin to frame 

that picture from the bottom up. I guess what I am saying is if you 

take that as a first approximation, then the question begins, OK, 

how does it play out in the local areas, to the fire management 

plans now? That should be something that should be updated, but 

again, as Ms. Nazzaro said, we are not calling for that to be done 

by the 2006 budget. We are just saying, tell us the schedule for developing it, because five years ago we said to do it, and here we 

are now. There wasn’t sort of a schedule laid out. Maybe if we had 

a schedule for doing it, then it will be a more sort of transparent 

focus process. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Wouldn’t a year be a reasonable amount of time 

to come up with a strategy? 

Mr. JOY. An initial approximation? Well, as I say, they already 

have an initial approximation with the 2002 one, but of course that 

needs some refinement. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Udall. 

Mr. Hayworth? 

Mr. HAYWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Ms. Nazzaro. I apologize, we have concurrent meetings 

in Ways and Means today so I am a little late and could not personally hear your testimony. 

As I have reflected on the questioning of my colleagues, perhaps 

this isn’t so much an interrogative as just a restatement of some 

of the challenges we are facing. We are oft accused of inventing a 

bureaucratic bogeyman, but one of the challenges we confront is so 

often it seems while our forest burn—and I realize there have been 

a variety of folks who step in ostensibly for the right reasons and 

are able to get injunctions at the last nanosecond, at the eleventh 

hour to prevent thinning projects somehow, the misguided notion 

that by not having forest thinning we are actually saving the 

forest, and we have seen what has happened with the destruction 

that has been wreaked in the State of Arizona and elsewhere in the 

West. And of course we moved for it here with the help of the 

Administration, and at long last passed a Healthy Forest Initiative. 

I guess the challenge that we need to look at is we are dealing 

with accountability. When we become prisoners of a process and 

bureaucratic inertia sets in to where in examining what the process 

will be, we will have a meeting now to decide next Thursday when 

the third meeting will be, and then perhaps we can come to some 

sort of decision in terms of the process, it doesn’t do any good for 

anybody. 

I know we are going to have your best efforts, but it would be 

my hope because so obviously there needs to a framework of accountability and a way to see how results are measured, and as we 

move forward with this, I would think that—I heard my colleague 

31

from New Mexico talk about a year’s time. We have to get through 

another fire season. We have real challenges. We probably needed 

this stuff a year ago yesterday, even before passing this. That was 

then, this is now. 

I guess what I am trying to say is can we get this done stat? Can 

we move forward much more quickly? Because when we are dealing with—as we heard in the testimony, when you take a look at—

luckily, Show Low, Arizona was averted in the Rodeo-Chediski fire, 

but when you look at what has happened, the effects of these fires 

on towns in the west, for all intents and purposes, they become like 

a war zone. Is there a sense of urgency to understand that domestically we are basically dealing with these forests in the aftermath 

in a war zone, and will we see that type of mentality, get it done 

stat brought to these projects? 

Ms. NAZZARO. I don’t want to appear glib in an answer, but I 

would suggest you ask the agency those questions as to what they 

could realistically do in what kind of a timeframe. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. Well, let me ask then in terms of the standards, 

all glibness aside, are you satisfied that best efforts are being followed, that we are seeing the translation of what the intent of the 

Congress was to bureaucratic regulation? Is it your perception that 

within the agencies that things are moving along at an adequate 

clip? 

Ms. NAZZARO. They are making progress toward this cohesive 

strategy. We did not look at the process actually to see if there are 

problems, that maybe they are doing some things wrong or some 

things that are right should be done more. We did not assess process, so I don’t know that I can give a fair answer to that. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. Thank you for your time. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from the Fourth District of 

Oregon, Mr. DeFazio. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

When I look at your report, page 15, it says, ‘‘The team concluded 

reducing the risk to communities and ecosystems across the Nation 

could require an approximate tripling of current fuel reduction 

funding to about $1.4 billion for an initial period of a few years.’’

As I look at the budget this year, BLM and Forest Service comes 

to about $492 million, which is approximately a third of that. So 

where are we getting spending at one-third of that level? Are we 

keeping up with the increase of fuel loads? Are we getting ahead 

of it, or are we falling behind? 

Mr. JOY. Congressman DeFazio, I think the study says that at 

that level, or at least at the level that was being spent in 2002, we 

are probably falling behind. But the issue here is—and that is really why the importance of options—the reason for that is there is 

a good chance we will never do everything, and so it involves making choices. Congressman Hayworth’s point, for instance, about this 

being a war footing is sort of like trying to figure out where it is 

you can make some progress. You have to make some choices. 

We are not in a position to say that the 2002 interagency analysis is correct because we didn’t examine it, and we want to make 

very clear we are not saying that any given level is the right one 

or wrong one. Clearly, the conclusion of that report is that more 

32

has to be done. But let’s suppose that there is X amount of money. 

The question is always going to be, what is the best set of options 

to spend that money? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. 

Mr. JOY. And that is the framework. I wish I could be more direct in an answer to you, but you understand we are not—

Mr. DEFAZIO. No, no, I understand. 

Mr. JOY. But we have to have a framework. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So basically with proper planning, prioritization, 

targeting, we could for several years spend productively, cost effectively, about three times what we are spending? 

Mr. JOY. That is that report’s initial observation or initial assessment. We think that is why it is an important one to serve as the 

baseline. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Just focusing on the wildland-urban interface, you 

pointed out that it is more expensive to operate there. But there 

is one principal reason for that. It is more labor intensive, obviously, selective removal of understory, removal of brush, those 

sorts of things. But if we look at a cost/benefit ratio in terms of cost 

avoided, in terms of firefighting in or near urban areas or even isolated dwellings that are in the interface that are surrounded by 

forest, and also the beneficial effects of employment, has anybody 

studied that or quantified that in any way to show what the cost/

benefit ratio is or what the employment impacts are in these rural 

areas, many of which are depressed in my State and other States, 

by spending money doing the mechanical work in the urban 

wildland-urban interface? 

Ms. NAZZARO. No. The answer to that is no, but the logic, the argument you make seems very solid. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Maybe do you think it would be useful as part of 

that targeting process to have those as factors? When the agencies 

are looking at how to target, wouldn’t it be useful to use those factors, what the potential avoided cost is in terms of major fire 

events proximate to dwellings in those areas? 

Ms. NAZZARO. Definitely. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. And also the employment effect? 

Mr. JOY. That is what the 2002 analysis did on a national scale, 

except it didn’t get into quite some of the economic ones, and their 

point was that that same analysis to be more accurate has to be 

brought down to the more local level where you can get those kinds 

of numbers, and then aggregate it up to get a more accurate. That 

is essentially the starting point of that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So that is something to ask the agencies again, are 

they moving in that direction? Are they doing that sort of analysis. 

Because to me—it is hard with these gross numbers to know, because there are so many varying situations even within just my 

State. When I look here, it looks like we spend—in terms of acreage, we are doing an awful lot of mechanical in other than 

wildland-urban interface. But with these gross numbers I don’t 

know what that means where it is. 

But we had a fire in Greg’s district along Century Drive there 

in Central Oregon where—it is one of the most startling examples 

of a lost opportunity because if you drive along, you can see where 

you had these big ponderosas were torched because there were ladVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:37 Mar 30, 2005 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\98808.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
33

der fuels right next to them which were trees that should have 

been thinned out that were substantial in size, 30, 40 feet high, but 

they allowed crown fire to happen and killed the larger trees that 

would have and have historically survived. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio. 

Mr. Peterson, do you have any questions for the panel? 

Mr. PETERSON. No. 

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Inslee, do you have any questions for the GAO 

representatives? 

Mr. INSLEE. I do. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

I am sorry I haven’t been able to hear your testimony. I will read 

it. I just want your comments on the wildland-urban interface, and 

I just briefly picked up that it looked like less than half of the expenditures are in the wildland-urban interface even within Federal 

ownership. Is that accurate and is there any changes coming in 

that regard, or what could you tell us about that? 

Ms. NAZZARO. These are numbers that the agency reported, and 

we did not get behind any of the numbers to determine accuracy. 

I mentioned that earlier, that we did not go in and verify or validate any of the data that they gave us. It may be more appropriate 

for you to ask the agency how accurate they are or what direction 

they are moving. 

Mr. INSLEE. Is there anything in your report about sort of the 

thinking of the agency in that distribution model? In other words, 

they felt statutorily compelled to be at 50/50 or they were unable 

to do a different allocation that they wanted to, any findings in 

that regard? 

Ms. NAZZARO. That isn’t something that we pursued with them, 

but the overall priority has been determined to be these communities that are near, that are in the urban interface as you mention, and that has been set as a priority and certainly I would expect that they would be increasingly focusing on that area. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. 

Mr. WALDEN. Is that it, Mr. Inslee? 

Mr. INSLEE. Yes, thank you. 

Mr. WALDEN. Staff indicates to me that in Fiscal Year 2004 

about 62 percent of the funds were spent in the wildland-urban 

interface. We will hear from the agency to further deal with that. 

Obviously, they need to follow our statutory guidelines. 

We want to thank this panel very much. Thank you and your colleagues for the work you have done on this report. It is invaluable 

information as we pursue this together to make our forests 

healthier and safer. Thank you for being with us. By the way, obviously, the hearing will stay open, the record, for 10 days, so if committee members who are here or not here have additional questions, they will be able to submit those and get answers. 

Now I would like to introduce our second panel. On Panel II we 

have The Honorable Rebecca Watson, Assistant Secretary for Land 

and Minerals Management, U.S. Department of the Interior; and 

The Honorable Mark Rey, Under Secretary for Natural Resources 

and Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

34

Let me remind our witnesses that under our committee rules you 

are asked to limit your statements to five minutes, and of course 

your entire statement will appear in the record. 

I would now like to recognize Ms. Watson if you are ready for 

your statement. Thank you for being with us, and thank you for 

all the work you do in the agency. 

STATEMENT OF REBECCA WATSON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY 

FOR LAND AND MINERALS MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and 

members of the committee. 

I am Rebecca Watson, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals 

Management at the Department of the Interior. I appreciate having 

the opportunity to discuss the Bureau of Land Management’s implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. 

The Department of Interior is working aggressively to use the 

tools provided by the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative and the 

Healthy Forest Restoration Act to reduce hazardous fuels. The Bureau of Land Management was fortunate to be provided stewardship contracting authority through the Omnibus Appropriations 

Act for Fiscal Year 2003. The BLM is matching up the best tools 

with project needs to get hazardous fuels work done. 

Within months of HFRA’s passage the Forest Service and BLM 

issued a joint implementation guide for field offices. I personally 

led a satellite broadcast mandatory training session for all BLM 

field offices on these new authorities. I wanted to emphasize the 

importance of these tools, encourage our people to use these tools 

so they would use the right tools to get the work done. 

I think one of the most innovative tools Congress has provided 

is stewardship contracting. It allows us to enter into long term 

goods for service contracts up to 10 years that not only result in 

improved land health but also encourages infrastructure investment. This investment can turn forest slash into bio-energy. By the 

end of 2005, only our second year of implementation, the BLM will 

have used the stewardship contracts for more than 90 projects, and 

produced more than 30,000 tons of biomass energy. 

In this first photo, it is Canyon City, Oregon, where BLM has entered into a stewardship contract at Little Canyon Mountain. The 

photo on the left is Canyon City in 1898. The photo on the right 

is from 2002. The forest condition in 1898 was primarily open 

forest on the upper reaches of the mountain. Today, about 100 

years later, the forest is densely colonized areas that were once 

open and created the classic wildland-urban interface. In the middle of the 2002 photo you can see pine trees with red needles that 

have been killed by pine bark beetles. 

The second photo shows a closeup of the understory vegetation, 

thick Doug fir with few pine trees. The project was designed to remove the ladder fuels and open up the crowns to reduce the potential for crown fires. The reduced density will also improve stand resistance to beetles. The photo on the right shows the stand after 

treatment. The project is in its first year of a 10-year contract that 

will ultimately treat 1,850 acres and exchange nearly $120,000 

worth of saw timber for the work. 

35

The next photo. The project at Little Canyon Mountain was developed in a collaborative framework with the BLM. Mr. Chairman, 

you might recognize this photo. 

Mr. WALDEN. I was going to commend you on not only your photography but your choice of locations. 

Ms. WATSON. Well, you know, we see a handsome guy, we have 

to include him there. 

The next project is in Medford, Oregon. 

Mr. WALDEN. Another splendid location I might add. 

[Laughter.] 

Ms. WATSON. I know, it is rather shameless. But this one, I actually just reviewed this week at the Department of Interior we are 

reviewing these stewardship contracts at my level in the first year 

to make sure they are on target, and this one is one that really did 

strike me. These landowners in this area had looked at their own 

land, they had done fuels treatment in their land, but right in the 

middle was a landlocked parcel of BLM land and there was no access for BLM in there without permission of landowners. They 

came to the BLM and they said, ‘‘We want to treat your land. It 

is a fire hazard to our land.’’ So they have presented a stewardship 

contract. They are going to go in there. It is going to produce some 

posts and poles, firewood and some saw logs, and the BLM finds 

this will cut the cost of the project in half. So it came right out of 

the community for us. 

The next photo. This project gets at some of the issues that were 

raised earlier, and this is the potential for commercial biomass. 

This is a forest project in Alturas, California. This is management, 

restoration of sagebrush steppe getting rid of western juniper. 

This is a fire regime condition class 3. It is an area I visited last 

year. Again, it is a community focused project in Susanville, California. They want to clear 400,000 acres of juniper. They are going 

to provide 5.2 million tons of biomass to a nearby biomass power 

plant. Biomass has a huge potential to help us take what would 

otherwise be a cost and turn it into an economic opportunity for 

communities in the West. 

Another opportunity, again in Oregon, is the Warm Springs 

Tribe. We are working with the Confederated tribes of the Warm 

Spring in Oregon to develop a plant that will use biomass from 

both BLM and Forest Service lands. The Deschutes County Conservation District is part of this effort. It is going to create 75 new 

jobs and preserve 135 jobs at the tribe’s sawmill. I would add that 

the National Association of Conservation Districts is a strong partner with Department of Ag and Department of Interior in providing education on the potential of biomass. We signed an MOU 

with them. We have provided them funding, and they are working 

with us to educate folks in this area. 

Photo No. 5 is Klamath Falls, showing again how we can utilize 

juniper. There is other uses for this material that we take off the 

forest. Then I want to skip to the next photo, and next one. 

And this is LANDFIRE we heard discussed earlier in the testimony. This shows how we can use LANDFIRE. It is a tool not only 

to help us target how we spend our money, but it also helps us 

fight fires more intelligently. This showed where the predicted fire 

was in red, and then the actual fire is in purple. This was a protoVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:37 Mar 30, 2005 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\98808.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
36

type. It was used in my home State of Montana to help them fight 

the Rampage fire. This allowed them to move their resources over 

there and fight the fire more quickly and more efficiently, more 

cost effectively. 

Next slide. This is in a King River study area in Sierra National 

Forest in California and it shows a different use for LANDFIRE, 

and again it gets to the idea of how can we use our dollars more 

effectively? How can we target what acres we want to treat? And 

this shows predicted fire behavior. This shows where fire would 

move more easily, and that shows in the red. The thickest lines 

represent the highest risk for fire movement. Knowing these potential pathways, land managers could plan strategic fuels treatment, 

shown in green, so they could place those where they could best 

slow the spread of fires. In this example these fuel treatments 

could reduce the burn area by some 45 percent. 

The last photograph. That is a fire whirl. These can buildup hundreds of feet high and crash down, igniting large areas. Predictive 

fuels modeling with fire behavior and weather modeling can help 

us understand where conditions can create this devilish dance. 

LANDFIRE is a vital tool for identifying and mitigating risk, identifying community wildfire protection plans. 

I think the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service have 

made significant improvements in reducing the risk of catastrophic 

wildfire as the GAO recognized in its excellent report. There is always room for improvement and more work, and we appreciate the 

GAO’s focus on what we can do to move forward, and we are eager 

to do so with your cooperation and theirs. 

With that, I will conclude my remarks. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Watson follows:]

Statement of Rebecca Watson, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals 

Management, U.S. Department of the Interior 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the U.S. Department of the Interior’s 

progress toward implementing the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) 

[P.L.108-148]. I am Rebecca Watson, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land 

and Minerals Management. The testimony of my colleague, Mark Rey, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the Agriculture Department, addresses implementation of HFRA by the U.S.D.A. Forest Service. My statement will 

address the implementation of HFRA by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). 

The authorities of the HFRA build upon, and work in conjunction with, other programs, including the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI), the National Fire 

Plan, and stewardship contracting under the 2003 Omnibus Appropriations Act, to 

reduce the threat of wildland fires and restore the health of our public lands. 

Implementation of Healthy Forests Initiative 

The HFRA complements administrative reforms developed and implemented since 

the President announced the HFI in August 2002. These administrative reforms facilitate hazardous fuels treatment and restoration projects on Federal land, including: 

• Two new categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act 

(NEPA) to facilitate implementation of fuels treatment projects and post-fire rehabilitation activities that do not have significant environmental effects; 

• Streamlined consultation procedures for threatened and endangered species 

with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service 

for National Fire Plan projects; 

• Improved direction from the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on conducting environmental assessments under NEPA; 

• Improved procedures for administrative appeals of proposed agency actions; and 

• Publication of a Federal Register Notice for wood biomass removal in all service 

contracts. 

37

Stewardship Contracting 

The BLM and the Forest Service were authorized under the FY 2003 Omnibus 

Appropriations Act (Section 323 of P.L. 108-7) to use stewardship contracting to reduce hazardous fuels and restore forest and rangeland health. Stewardship contracts allow private companies, tribes, non-profit organizations, and others to retain 

forest and rangeland products in exchange for performing services to improve forest 

and rangeland health. This authority allows Federal land management agencies to 

achieve important land health goals. Long-term contracts (up to 10 years) foster a 

public/private partnership by giving those who undertake stewardship contracts the 

security to invest in equipment and infrastructure that will enable them to harvest 

or productively use the biomass generated from these stewardship services to make 

products or to produce biomass energy. 

By the end of FY 2005, the BLM will have used stewardship contracting authority 

for over 90 projects to restore forest health and treat fuels on approximately 40,000 

acres of public land. For example, the forested areas near Canyon City, a community of 700 residents in central Oregon, experienced significant mountain pinebeetle 

infestation mortality. In response, in 2004 the BLM issued a 10-year stewardship 

contract to reduce fuels, improve forest health, and reduce soil erosion on nearly 

1,850 acres of public land. Under the stewardship contract, the BLM will exchange 

approximately $120,000 of small diameter sawtimber (2.5 million board feet) for 

fuels reduction services and other restoration activities. 

BLM’s Implementation of HFRA 

Since HFRA was signed into law in December 2003, the BLM and Forest Service 

have developed procedures and guidance for the use of this new authority on 

projects to reduce the risk of severe wildland fire and restore forest and rangeland 

health, including: • Issuing an interim field guide in February 2004 that was jointly prepared by 

the BLM and the Forest Service to assist Federal land managers in better understanding the requirements for implementation of the HFRA; • Developing a variety of educational and training tools for agency employees on 

HFI and HFRA, stewardship projects, Endangered Species Act counterpart regulations, and biomass programs; • Applying these new tools (such as categorical exclusions, HFRA, and CEQ 

guidelines on environmental assessments) in 2005 in planning nearly half of all 

new fuels treatment projects, an increase of approximately 85 percent over FY 

2004; • Certifying 413 BLM staff to use the new counterpart regulations for consultation on threatened and endangered species; and • Issuing a variety of materials on the HFI and HFRA that are available to the 

public on the Internet at the website: www.healthyforests.gov. 

Implementation of Specific Titles of HFRA 

Title I—Hazardous Fuels Reduction on Federal Lands 

The HFRA provides for the collaborative development and expedited environmental analysis of authorized projects on public lands managed by the BLM that 

are at risk of catastrophic wildland fire. The HFRA authorizes expedited action on 

public lands: located in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas; identified as condition 

class 3 (high fire frequency) where there are at-risk municipal water supplies; where 

threatened and endangered species or their habitats are at-risk of catastrophic fire 

and fuels treatments can reduce those risks; and where windthrow, insect infestation, or disease epidemics threaten the forest or rangeland resources. 

The HFRA builds on community and resource protection activities carried out 

under the National Fire Plan, and encourages local communities to work with Federal agencies to develop Community Wildfire Protection Plans. These plans assist 

local communities, as well as State, Federal, and Tribal cooperators to clarify and 

refine priorities, roles and responsibilities in the protection of life, property, and 

critical infrastructure in the WUI. The BLM has developed guidance and conducted 

workshops on the roles and responsibilities of the BLM in the development of Community Wildfire Protection Plans. Thus far in FY 2005, the Department has assisted 

140 communities in completing their Community Wildfire Protection Plans. Several 

counties in western Oregon have used funds available under Title III of the Secure 

Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (P.L.106-393) to begin the 

fuels assessments and Geographic Information Systems data collection needed for 

these plans, and have recommended Title II funding for projects to implement them. 

The BLM began using the HFRA authorities in FY 2004 to expedite the planning 

of new hazardous fuels reduction projects. Using HFRA authorities in FY 2004, the 

BLM undertook fuels reduction activities on some 1,500 acres and used HFRA in 

38

planning for out-year fuels reduction projects. The BLM plans to use HFRA on some 

9,000 acres of treatments to be implemented in FY 2005, and will use HFRA in 

planning approximately 20 fuels projects in FY 2005 and FY 2006. 

In order to assist land managers in identifying areas at risk due to the accumulation of hazardous fuels and to help prioritize hazardous fuels reduction projects, the 

Department of the Interior and the Forest Service are implementing a wildland 

vegetation mapping project known as ‘‘LANDFIRE.’’ The LANDFIRE project is a 

six-year, $40 million interagency partnership sponsored by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council. When complete, LANDFIRE will allow us to target those critical 

acres for fuels treatment that will provide the maximum protection to communities 

and other important resources identified by communities. LANDFIRE will generate 

consistent, comprehensive, standardized, landscape-scale maps and data describing 

vegetation, fire, and fuels characteristics across the United States. It will provide 

spatial data and predictive models needed by land and fire managers to prioritize, 

evaluate, plan, complete, and monitor fuel treatment and restoration projects. Additionally, LANDFIRE will improve hazardous fuels treatment coordination between 

agencies and support implementation of the National Fire Plan and the HFRA. 

We believe that this capability is a vital tool for identifying and mitigating risks 

identified in Community Wildfire Protection Plans. The agencies are evaluating the 

use of prototype LANDFIRE data in helping land managers and local communities 

collaboratively select fuels treatment projects for FY 2006. 

Title II—Utilization of Wood Biomass 

Wood biomass is predominantly the by-product of hazardous fuels removal 

projects that reduce the risk of wildland fire and improve forest health. In June 

2003, the Secretary of the Interior joined the Secretaries of Agriculture and Energy 

in signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that commits the Departments 

to support the utilization of wood biomass by-products from restoration and fuels 

treatment projects wherever ecologically, economically, and legally appropriate, and 

consistent with locally developed land management plans. 

Early in 2004, Secretary Norton charged the Department and its agencies with 

development of a coordinated biomass implementation strategy. Interior agencies 

were directed to implement the interagency MOU by April 2004. Under this direction, and using the authorities provided in the HFI, the National Fire Plan, stewardship contracting, and the HFRA, the BLM implemented its strategy for increasing biomass utilization from BLM-managed lands. Stewardship contracts alone produced nearly 30,000 tons of biomass in 2004, the first full year the BLM had this 

authority. 

A key provision in the MOU requires the BLM to encourage the sustainable development and stabilization of wood biomass utilization markets. Tamarisk and juniper 

removal is a priority and offers a real opportunity to develop new biomass projects. 

To that end, we are working closely with the Forest Service’s Forest Products Lab 

in Madison, Wisconsin. The BLM also is working to increase its use of bio-based 

products, such as in mulch used to stabilize soils following wildfire or in signs. In 

addition, the Department has several projects in which local field offices are working with nearby communities to increase biomass utilization. For example, in Oregon, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has funded a study for the Confederated Tribes 

of the Warm Springs to determine the feasibility of generating power from available 

biomass, partially from BLM and Forest Service lands. Finally, as noted earlier, the 

Department has issued an Interim Final Rule to allow the option for biomass removal in land management service contracts wherever ecologically appropriate and 

in accordance with the law (60 FR 52607-52609). This will provide easier access to 

Federal biomass supplies while we prepare the Final Rule. 

Outlook 

The authorities for expedited agency decision-making provided by the HFI, stewardship contracting, and the HFRA, are helping the BLM to expedite important 

projects to treat hazardous fuels, restore fire-adapted ecosystems, restore healthy 

conditions to public forests and rangelands, and reduce the threat of catastrophic 

wildland fire to at-risk communities. While the BLM is using the HFRA to conduct 

fuels treatment projects, much work remains. The BLM’s field offices will continue 

to learn from their experiences in implementing and seeking the most effective ways 

to use all of the important authorities provided by the Congress for Healthy Forests. 

Conclusion 

The BLM and Forest Service are achieving significant improvements in the health 

of the public forests and rangelands. The agencies will continue to work in partnership with other Federal agencies, as well as State, local, and Tribal governments, 

39

to accomplish additional fuels reduction and restoration projects. We appreciate 

your support. I would be glad to answer any questions. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Watson. We appreciate 

it, and I appreciate you highlighting 3 of the 20 counties in my district, work you are doing there. 

Mr. Rey, welcome. We are delighted to have you here and we 

welcome your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF MARK REY, UNDER SECRETARY FOR 

NATIONAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT, U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Mr. REY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Administration’s progress in implementing the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. I also want to thank 

you and the members of this Subcommittee for your role in the passage of the legislation and your continuing support for our implementation efforts. 

The President’s Healthy Forest Initiative includes both the 

Healthy Forest Restoration Act and administrative reforms that 

have given Federal agencies new tools to reduce the risk of severe 

wildland fires and restore forest and rangeland health. 

The entirety of my statement for the record addresses the various components of the hazardous fuel reduction program. The 

Forest Service and the Department of the Interior agencies accomplished 4.2 million acres of hazardous fuel reduction during 2004, 

including 2.4 million acres in the wildland-urban interface, and exceeded our program goals. 

So far in 2005, about 919,000 acres have been treated. A more 

complete accounting of our accomplishments in 2004 can be found 

in the Healthy Forest Report located on the Internet at 

www.HealthyForests.gov. 

I agree with the discussion in the previous panel that the more 

important measure is not gross acres but right acres, and as you 

will see in my prepared statement, in 2005 97 percent of the acres 

treated are priority acres, either acres within the wildland-urban 

interface or acres at high risk outside the wildland-urban interface 

agreed to as priority during the collaborative process outlined in 

the National Fire Plan. So we are moving toward treating a significant supermajority of the right acres first. 

I also want to point out that in Fiscal Year 2006 the President’s 

budget provides for more than 867 million proposed for a variety 

of activities that will enable the departments to continue our efforts to prevent the risk of catastrophic wildfires and restore forest 

and rangeland health. We expect these efforts to include utilizing 

the new legislative and administrative tools provided under the 

Healthy Forest Initiative. 

Another important and related action is the authority provided 

by Congress to expand the use of stewardship contracting by the 

Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management under the 

Omnibus Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2003. The Forest 

Service awarded 162 stewardship contracts and agreements between Fiscal Years 1999 and 2004. 114 of these have been awarded 

in the last two years alone. 

40

We anticipate the use of this tool is likely to increase with the 

release of four integrated resource contracts specifically designated 

for stewardship contracting and with the enactment of the Tribal 

Forest Protection Act, which also was enacted by this committee’s 

leadership last year. 

As a result of two workshops held with the Intertribal Timber 

Council, we are now receiving proposals from a wide range of tribes 

to treat agency lands adjacent to tribal lands, using tribal resources and authorities for that purpose. 

The balance of my statement chronicles our progress in implementing each of the titles of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. 

What I would like to do before we turn to questions and answers 

is use a few graphics to show you the progress made to date. 

In Chart 1, you can see the acres of hazardous fuels treated that 

have been treated from Fiscal Year 2000 through 2005, to date. 

The pink is in non-WUI acres, the blue is in wildland-urban interface acres, and as you can see, over the last couple of years 

wildland-urban interface acres have increased as a proportion of 

the whole. Our progress to date in 2005 is significant inasmuch as 

we haven’t entered the primary operating season for 2005 yet to 

date. 

If you want to look at the next chart for 2004, what you can see 

is that in 2004 58 percent of the acres treated were wildland-urban 

interface acres, 42 percent were non-wildland-urban interface 

acres, and that includes, as I said earlier, a number of high priority 

acres such as municipal watersheds which are typically not found 

in the wildland-urban interface. This is a breakdown of acres treated. If we were to break down dollars expended, it would be skewed 

even more heavily to the wildland-urban interface because the average per acre cost of treatment in the wildland-urban interface is 

generally higher. 

The next chart shows the breakdown between acres treated using 

hazardous fuels dollars and acres—that would be the blue—and 

acres treated using other appropriated accounts that result in 

treatments that reduce wildfire risk on other high priority lands. 

And as you can see, other program accounts are making a significant contribution to implementation of the Healthy Forest Initiative and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act with 28 percent of the 

total being funded through those accounts. 

The next chart shows you our progress to date from both the 

Forest Service and the Department of the Interior, breaking down 

that progress between wildland-urban interface acres and nonwildland-urban interface acres, and as you can see, we are still in 

excess of 50 percent in wildland-urban interface acres. Typically, 

early acres, that is, acres early in the operating season, tend toward non-wildland-urban interface acres because they tend heavily 

to spring burning acres in the Southeast, which are typically not 

within the wildland-urban interface to the same percentage and degree as mechanical acres are as we get later into the season. 

As far as the breakdown between prescribed fire and mechanical 

acres, the next chart will show you that for Fiscal Year 2005 to 

date. As you can see, this early in the season a supermajority of 

the acres treated are through prescribed burning. That will change 

as the season progresses and as we get later into the season and 

41

into the operating season, particularly in the west where we are 

going to be using a heavier percentage of mechanical acres. 

So with that, that is quite an overview of our progress to date 

from 2000, and for 2005 to date. I would be happy to respond to 

any of your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rey follows:]

Statement of Mark Rey, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the 

Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture 

INTRODUCTION 

Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Administration’s 

progress in implementing the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (HFRA). This 

important piece of legislation received bipartisan support in both houses of Congress 

and was signed into law by President Bush on December 3, 2003. I want to thank 

you and the members of this subcommittee for your role in the passage of the legislation and in your continuing support for our implementation efforts. 

THE HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE 

The President’s Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) includes both the HFRA and administrative reforms that give federal agencies tools to reduce the risk of severe 

wildland fires and restore forest and rangeland health. The Act recognizes that critical fuels treatment and forest and rangeland restoration projects have been unnecessarily delayed by administrative procedures. This delay puts rural communities 

and critical ecological resources at substantial risk from severe wildland fire. 

The HFRA complements administrative reforms that were put into place previously. These reforms help expedite hazardous fuel treatments and ecological restoration projects on federal land and have been successfully implemented. 

My statement will address the various components of the hazardous fuel reduction program. First I want to state that the Forest Service and the Department of 

the Interior (DOI) agencies accomplished 4.2 million acres of hazardous fuel reduction for 2004, including 2.4 million acres in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), 

and exceeded our program goals. So far, in FY 2005 about 919,000 acres have been 

treated. A more complete accounting of our accomplishments in 2004 can be found 

in the Healthy Forests Report located on the internet at www.HealthyForests.gov. 

I also want to point out that in the FY2006 President’s Budget more than $867 million have been proposed for a variety of activities that will enable the departments 

to continue our efforts to prevent the risk of catastrophic wildfires and restore forest 

and rangeland health. 

We expect these efforts to include utilizing the new legislative and administrative 

tools provided under the Healthy Forests Initiative. The new administrative tools 

include: • Developed a new categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy 

Act (NEPA) to facilitate implementation of hazardous fuels treatment projects 

having minor environmental effects; we plan to use this exclusion on 950 treatments in FY 2005; • Finalized Counterpart Regulations for Endangered Species Section 7 consultation on National Fire Plan projects issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service and 

National Marine Fisheries Service; this has streamlined Section 7 consultations 

on these projects. The Forest Service has entered into Alternative Consultation 

Agreements with the services. Those agreements called for development of a 

training and certification process which is now in place. Over 650 Forest Service 

employees have been certified under that process; • Five pilot projects that applied new direction from the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on conducting environmental assessments under NEPA 

were completed and the Forest Service is working with the Bureau of Land 

Management and CEQ to assess the results of the process; and 

• The 2003 amendments to the Forest Service administrative appeals regulations 

expanded the categories where emergency determinations can be used in order 

to expedite project operations. (36 C.F.R. 215.10) That authority has been employed in several cases to protect the government’s interest in salvage timber 

projects, where the value of dead or dying timber, such as in the aftermath of 

a fire, diminishes over time. In three cases, the Department has prevailed, thus 

far, against efforts to halt operations. In two of those cases, the Ninth Circuit 

also declined to issue preliminary relief. 

Another important and related action is the authority provided by Congress to expand the use of stewardship contracting by the Forest Service (FS) and the Bureau 

42

of Land Management (BLM) under the Omnibus Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 

2003 (Section 323 of P.L. 108-7). The Forest Service awarded 162 stewardship contracts and agreements between Fiscal Years 1999 and 2004, 114 of these in the last 

two years alone. We anticipate the use of this tool is likely to increase with the release of four integrated resource contracts specifically designed for stewardship contracting, and with the enactment of the Tribal Forest Protection Act. As a result 

of two workshops held with the Intertribal Timber Council we are now receiving 

proposals to treat agency lands adjacent to tribal lands. 

PROGRESS MADE ON IMPLEMENTING HFRA 

In the time since Congress passed HFRA, the Departments have taken a number 

of actions to implement each title of the Act including: 

Title I — Hazardous Fuels Reduction on Federal Lands 

HFRA provides for the collaborative development and expedited environmental 

analysis of authorized projects, a pre-decisional Forest Service administrative review 

process, and other measures on National Forest System and BLM lands that are 

at-risk of catastrophic fire. HFRA focuses attention on four types of federal land: 

the wildland-urban interfaces of at-risk communities, at-risk municipal water supplies, land where threatened and endangered species or their habitats are at-risk 

of catastrophic fire and where fuels treatment can reduce those risks, and land 

where windthrow, or insect or disease epidemics threaten an ecosystem component 

or forest and rangeland resources. 

Restoring fire dependent ecosystems is the long-term solution to reducing the 

harmful effects of catastrophic wildfire. The 10 Year Implementation Plan continues 

to guide the agencies’ priorities, and we are placing our resources where we have 

the greatest risk, the most capability, and highest efficiency. We know it is not possible to treat all the acres in need; our goal is to treat the right acres in the right 

place at the right time. Forest Service Chief, Dale Bosworth, and DOI Assistant Secretary Lynn Scarlett issued joint national direction to establish a collaborative process for prioritization and selection of fuels treatment projects. This direction is consistent with the performance measures established in the 10-Year Implementation 

Plan. Specifically, we monitor the number of acres treated that are in the WUI or 

outside the WUI in condition classes 2 or 3 in fire regimes 1, 2 or 3, and are identified as high priority through collaboration consistent with the Implementation Plan. 

In FY 2005, 97% of Forest Service proposed treatments are in these high priority 

areas. 

Fire Management Plans have been completed for 99 percent of the National 

Forests and National Grasslands. These plans follow an interagency format, which 

provides an increased level of consistency among federal agencies, facilitating local 

collaboration and increased accomplishment on fuel treatment projects. Many of 

these new plans have enabled wildland fire use for the first time or have substantially increased the area where wildland fire use can be implemented. Increasing 

wildland fire use will result in increases in inexpensive fire use treatments in many 

areas. 

The LANDFIRE project is a multi-partner ecosystem and fuel assessment mapping project. It is designed to map and model vegetation, fire, and fuel characteristics for the United States. The objective is to provide consistent, nation-wide spatial 

data and predictive models needed by land and fire managers to evaluate, prioritize, 

plan, complete, and monitor fuel treatment and restoration projects. Two prototypes, 

in Montana and Utah, will be completed this spring. A rapid assessment of fire regime condition class at the mid scale is expected to be completed this year. We expect national delivery of LANDFIRE products to occur over the next 5 years with 

the western United States due in 2006. These data will help agencies focus where 

the risk is the greatest. 

The HFRA encourages the development of Community Wildfire Protection Plans 

to improve the strategic value of fuels treatments in and around the WUI. Our partners, the National Association of State Foresters, the Society of American Foresters, 

the National Association of Counties, and the Western Governor’s Association have 

prepared guidance for at-risk communities on how they might prepare a Community 

Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP). The state foresters are leading the efforts to organize communities to draft CWPP’s and report over 600 plans completed across the 

nation. For example, in Northeastern Oregon the Oregon Department of Forestry 

is providing staff to facilitate and document the development of CWPPs in partnership with the county commissioners. The Forest Service and other federal agencies 

provide technical support in fuels assessment, mapping and fire behavior modeling. 

43

Title II — Utilization of Woody Biomass 

Title II provides authority to help overcome barriers to the production and use 

of woody biomass material produced on fuels reduction and forest restoration 

projects. Title II contains three focus areas: it amends the Biomass Research and 

Development Act of 2000 to provide for research on woody biomass production and 

treatment; it amends the authority for the Rural Revitalization Through Forestry 

program by providing for cooperation with the Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory, and State and Private Forestry programs to accelerate adoption of biomass 

technologies and market activities; and it authorizes federal grants to facilities 

using biomass for wood-based products to help offset the cost of the biomass. 

The Departments of Agriculture, the Interior, and Energy have signed a memorandum of understanding that lays the groundwork for the interagency biomass 

committee to implement biomass projects. The FY 2004 grant solicitation process 

under the Biomass Research and Development Act was modified to incorporate Section 201. This action generated a significant increase in the number of woody biomass related proposals received. USDA awarded over $6 million in 2004 as part of 

a joint biomass research and development initiative with the Department of Energy. 

The Forest Service has new provisions in some timber sale, service, and stewardship contracts that allow contractors the option to remove woody biomass by-products from land management activities. This option, where ecologically appropriate, 

will provide economic and social benefits by creating jobs and conserving natural resources. Removal or use of woody biomass will reduce smoke and emissions from 

prescribed and natural fires, preserve landfill capacities, and reduce the threat of 

catastrophic wildfires to communities and utilities. 

The Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory published a request for proposals 

in the Federal Register on February 10, 2005, looking for creative solutions to address the nationwide challenge in dealing with low-value material removed from 

hazardous fuel reduction efforts. Up to $4.4 million will be available in 2005 to help 

improve utilization of, and create markets for small-diameter material and low-valued trees removed from hazardous fuel reduction activities. These funds are targeted to help communities, entrepreneurs, and others turn residues from hazardous 

fuel reduction projects into marketable forest products and/or energy products. The 

President’s FY 2006 Budget includes a $10 million request for capital improvements 

in our Forest Products Lab, which has been a world leader in developing innovative 

products made from wood and other forest materials. 

Title III — Watershed Forestry Assistance 

Title III authorizes the Forest Service to provide technical, financial and related 

assistance to private forest landowners aimed at expanding their forest stewardship 

capacities and to address watershed issues on non-Federal forested land and potentially forested land. Title III also directs the Secretary to provide technical, financial 

and related assistance to Indian tribes to expand tribal stewardship capabilities to 

address watershed issues. 

The Forest Service, working with State forestry agency personnel and Tribal 

members, has developed separate draft guidelines to implement the State and Tribal Watershed Forestry Assistance programs. These draft guidelines will be published in the Federal Register for public comment this summer. 

Title IV — Insect Infestations and Related Diseases 

Title IV directs the Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey to establish an accelerated program to plan, conduct, and promote systematic information gathering 

on insect pests, and the diseases associated with them. This information will assist 

land managers in the development of treatments and strategies to improve forest 

health; to disseminate the results of such information and to carry out the program 

in cooperation with scientists from colleges and universities including forestry 

schools, governmental agencies and private and industrial landowners. 

The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior announced during the Forest 

Health Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas last summer the formation of a series 

of partnerships to help implement the HFRA in the southern United States. Among 

these are Forest Service partnerships with southern universities and state forestry 

agencies to conduct two landscape scale applied research projects on the Ozark-St. 

Francis National Forest to address infestations of the southern pine beetle and red 

oak borer, which threaten forest health in the region. The study plans for these two 

projects have now been developed and peer reviewed and the public involvement 

phase will be completed in March. Another applied silvicultural assessment study 

plan for reducing mortality from gypsy moth and oak decline on the Daniel Boone 

National Forest is nearing completion. The Forest Service also has two projects on 

44

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid in North Carolina and on the genetic diversity of Western 

White Pine. 

Title V — The Healthy Forest Reserve Program 

Title V directs USDA to establish a program for private landowners to promote 

the recovery of threatened and endangered species, improve biodiversity and enhance carbon sequestration. Title V authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to acquire 30-year or 99-year easements (not to exceed 99 years), or utilize 10-year costshare agreements on qualifying lands. The Secretary may enroll up to two million 

acres depending on appropriations. Title V also contains provisions allowing the Secretary to make safe harbor or similar assurances to landowners who enroll land in 

the program and whose conservation activities result in a net conservation benefit 

for listed, candidate, or other species. 

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has been designated 

to administer the Healthy Forest Reserve Program in coordination with the Forest 

Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, and 

is in the process of drafting rules to implement the title. 

Title VI — Forest Inventory/Monitoring and Early Warning Systems 

Title VI directs the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out a program to monitor 

forest stands on some National Forest System lands and private lands to improve 

detection of and response to environmental threats. 

The Forest Service announced in October, 2004 a national strategy to prevent and 

control the threat of invasive species and non-native plants in the United States. 

The strategy focuses on four key elements: preventing invasive species from entering the country; finding new infestations before they spread; containing and reducing existing infestations and restoring native habitats and ecosystems. The strategy 

will rely on ‘‘The Early Warning System for Forest Health Threats in the United 

States,’’ developed as part of HFRA, which describes for the first time, in one place, 

the nation’s system for identifying and responding to forest health threats, including 

web sites to obtain further information. 

The Forest Service also conducted a rapid detection pilot survey of invasive bark 

beetles in 10 port cities in FY 2004 and has increased the number of surveyed sites 

to 40 in FY 2005. Based upon early detection results from FY 2004, we are initiating a rapid response to an orthotomicus beetle found in California which will include more extensive trapping and delimiting of this potentially destructive nonnative pest. 

Additionally, the Forest Service is establishing two threat assessment centers in 

Prineville, OR and Ashville, NC to develop use oriented technology and cutting edge 

research on invasive species. These centers will develop predictive models that integrate all of the threats to forest health such as insects, pathogens, fire, air pollution 

and weather. Results will help prioritize where treatments should occur and the ecological, environmental and social costs of not doing necessary treatments. 

OUTLOOK FOR FUTURE IMPLEMENTATION OF HFRA 

We expect to continue to make headway into treating hazardous fuels to restore 

fire adapted ecosystems and to help make communities safer. Although we recognize 

that HFI and HFRA authorities are helping to restore healthy forest and rangeland 

ecosystems we have much work ahead of us. We need to solve the problem that 

much of the woody material removed in fuels treatment projects is below merchantable size and is very expensive to treat. We need to improve the public’s understanding that it is appropriate to do mechanical treatment that removes merchantable trees. What is important is that we are leaving a healthier, more resilient 

forest on the landscape. 

We need continued bipartisan congressional support of these hazardous fuels reduction efforts, and need to expand our capacity to treat more with less, using biomass utilization, stewardship contracting, and other activities. Homeowners need to 

continue to take responsibility for treating hazardous fuels on their own lands by 

taking action through the FIREWISE program, which helps people who live or vacation in fire-prone areas educate themselves about wildland fire protection. Homeowners can learn how to protect their homes with a survivable space and how to 

landscape their yard with fire resistant materials. 

CONCLUSION 

Mr. Chairman, the new authorities are proving to be very helpful in our efforts 

to make significant improvements to the health of this country’s forests and rangelands. We will continue to work with our other Federal, State, Tribal and local partners to accomplish this. We appreciate your support. I would be happy to answer 

any questions the committee members may have.

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98808.001 98808.002
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98808.003 98808.004
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98808.005
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Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Rey. One of the questions that 

came up in our hearing—it seems like a week ago, but I think it 

was yesterday—on biofuels, was the notion that the stewardship 

contracts at 10 years simply are not long enough for those who 


98808.006
49

would like to participate or join in the process to be able to purchase the equipment and know they will have a steady supply and 

a guarantee to enter into creation of new biomass facilities. 

Have you looked at the option of maybe having us extend those 

contracts out, say, to 20 years or something, to really gin up this 

market and to create certainty for private sector investment? Is 

that something that you are hearing, or a concern that is being 

raised? 

Mr. REY. I have not heard that concern, but it is a logical concern 

to be raised depending on the size of the capital investment that 

is being considered in order to use low value material. The larger 

the capital investment required, the longer the amortization schedule that the investor would like. The longer contract provides them 

to engage a lender in negotiating a longer amortization schedule 

for whatever loans and investments thereafter get to be made. So 

it is logical that a longer contract term would be beneficial in that 

regard. 

On the other hand, both the General Services Administration 

and the Office of Management Budget are very wary of the Government signing on to long-term contracts in that that increases the 

uncertainty associated with what the Government is committing as 

well as any downstream liability if circumstances on the ground 

change, so that is a balance that has to be struck. 

We have had some 10-year contracts issue in the past year, and 

those have resulted in some new investments and new infrastructure that have occurred, and so we have had some investors who 

have been willing to do that. 

Mr. WALDEN. Would it work to give you the authority to go up 

to 20 years but not mandate that they be 20, to give flexibility then 

in certain circumstances? 

Mr. REY. Sure. It would give us more flexibility. We would have 

to put a lot more reopeners for a lot more contingencies in a contract of that length, and you could only tell for certain whether 

that is helpful once we actually completed a contract negotiation 

with an individual contractor. 

Mr. WALDEN. Let me move on. I have a couple other questions 

in the time that remains. One of them, as you know, Mr. Rey, I 

have talked to you personally about and have a real commitment 

to managing the HFRA acreage at the—I want to know forest by 

forest how HFRA is being utilized, if it is. Do you have the ability 

to hold your local line officers accountable for using the new authorities in HFRA at that level and then being able to report back 

to the committee? Because I also want to know is it working or not, 

or are they stumbling into problems that we need to address, or are 

they not using it, or are they using it fully? 

Mr. REY. I think the short answer is they are using it generally 

very well. We do have the ability and are holding them accountable 

to it, and we do have the ability to report on their progress on a 

forest by forest basis, and I have a printout that I will submit for 

the committee’s record for the hearing today on progress to date on 

each national forest. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. 

Mr. REY. What you will find when you look at the printout is 

about what you would expect, that is, the majority of forests are 

50

using the new authorities, both HFRA and HFI authorities. There 

are a few forests that haven’t gotten to it yet. Those are forests 

that by and large have circumstances that don’t necessarily make 

this as high a priority, or specific tools as useful in their circumstances, and as you would guess, those are mostly forests in 

the Northeast. 

Mr. WALDEN. I have two more questions in a minute 20, so I will 

try and keep them brief. Under HFRA Title I projects, do you have 

any idea how many of those are being litigated and how that compares to fuels reduction projects that are non-HFRA? 

Mr. REY. We haven’t been implementing HFRA projects long 

enough to get a good sample set to know whether they are going 

to be litigated any more or less frequently than other projects, and 

that is because we did the first generation of HFRA projects last 

summer. They are moving to completion now. The appeals process 

is completed. Now litigation is going to start. A few of them have 

been litigated to be sure, but I don’t think we have enough data 

to make a comparison between those and—

Mr. WALDEN. But you are finding less litigation under HFRA or 

more? 

Mr. REY. Still too early to say. I would say about the same. I 

would say that generally speaking, the rate of challenges of fuels 

projects has been increasing to some extent, but our success rate 

in defending them has been increasing as well. 

Mr. WALDEN. One final question because I know it is one many 

of us on this Subcommittee were involved in last year, and that is 

the issue of firefighting and especially the issue of the air tankers. 

I have recently seen in the press some Western Governors have expressed their interest as well. Can you just give us a brief update 

maybe, each on you, on the air tanker and firefighting process we 

see unfolding for this summer? 

Mr. REY. I think the first thing to note is that last year, with a 

limited number of large air tankers for a portion of the year, our 

success rate at extinguishing fires at initial attack was superior to 

2003. In 2003 we succeeded in extinguishing 98.3 percent of all ignitions on initial attack. Last year we succeeded in extinguishing 

99 percent of all ignitions on initial attack. That success in extinguishing 70 additional fires—that is what it amounts to, 70 additional fires that did not escape—saved us on the average $22 million in fire suppression costs. 

So our projections about the success of a modified fleet with a 

heavier reliance on helicopters and single-engine tankers appears 

to have been well founded. 

Now, that having been said, there is, as we have said in hearings 

before, still a role for the large fixed-wing air tankers, and we have 

RFPs out already to begin to contract with them for this year. In 

response to the initial RFP we will be putting I the air we believe 

nine P-3 Orions. That is the one model that we have established 

operational life limits for. We have ongoing studies to try to 

establish—I think we will succeed in establishing operational life 

limits for the P-2Vs and the DC4s, 6s and 7s. That work will be 

completed on or about June 1st. Once it is completed, we will 

review each of those other aircraft and return those aircraft that 

are within their operational life limit to the fleet and stand down 

51

other aviation assets like helicopters that are more expensive to operate. 

One of the other things we found this year is that as a consequence of the conflict over the aging fixed-wing air tanker fleet, 

our helicopter contractors are beginning to adjust their equipment 

and technologies to improve the efficiencies or large heli-tankers 

and type 1 helicopters such that through new technological developments they have increased their range and effectiveness. 

So we are pretty confident, actually I should say we are very confident that however the review of the remaining fixed-wing air 

tankers turns out, we will field an adequate aerial operation to continue the rate of success that we have enjoyed so far. 

Mr. WALDEN. Ms. Watson, do you have any comment on that? 

Ms. WATSON. No, I don’t really have anything to add because we 

work very closely with the Forest Service on air tankers. 

Mr. WALDEN. All right. Thank you very much. 

I now turn to my colleague, Mr. Udall. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Under Secretary Rey, we all appreciate the tight budgets we face, 

and while the Forest Service is devoting more funding to hazardous 

fuels reduction, it falls far short of what was authorized in the 

Healthy Forest bill and what has been identified as short-term 

needs by the agencies. When this issue has been raised, your response has typically been that the streamlining of environmental 

review and new stewardship contracting authority would reduce 

the cost of thinning projects, allowing the agency to cover more 

acres with less money. 

With these stewardship contracts, in particular goods-for-service 

contracts, will employers be obligated to pay the prevailing wage 

as required under Davis-Bacon and the Service Contract Act? 

Mr. REY. Where there is a prevailing wage for these kinds of activities under Davis-Bacon, the Federal Service Contract Act will 

require that the contractors pay those. There are some instances 

where the activities that are being contracted for do not have a prevailing wage under Davis-Bacon, and so the Service Contract Act 

would not apply. 

I would also, however—

Mr. TOM UDALL. Where would those areas be? 

Mr. REY. Those will be—it won’t be geographic so much as functional. There are some land management functions which do not 

have a Davis-Bacon prevailing wage established for them, some of 

the general contracting functions. But for others, including the 

ones that are most common, there is a Davis-Bacon prevailing 

wage, and that would be required in these contracts. 

I do, however, want to take slight issue with the proposition that 

we have failed to fully fund the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. 

The authorization in Title I of the Act calls for $760 million in authorization to carry out, one, activities authorized under the Title, 

and two, other hazardous fuel reduction activities of the Secretary, 

including making grants to States, local governments, Indian tribes 

and other eligible recipients for activities authorized by law. 

As we put together the Fiscal Year 2005 budget, as we often do 

when Congress enacts new legislation, we put together a cross-cut 

of what the Department of Interior and what the Forest Service 

52

were spending for all of the activities described in this authorization. And in 2005 we requested a total of $761 million or thereabouts. This year we are requesting—an appropriation, I am 

sorry—of 867 million. So whether this is enough or not enough, or 

too much or too little, or in the right places or the wrong places, 

is a discussion we can and will have probably at this hearing and 

during your budget oversight hearing, but we have provided a responsible response to the authorization level of the Healthy Forest 

Restoration Act is something I think that we have done. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. You talked a little bit about tribes in your testimony. A study by the Center for Watershed and Company Health 

by the University of Oregon, I believe, found that the Native American tribes needed increased access to training, to funding, resources and technical assistance for fire protection and fuels reduction. What is the Forest Service doing to improve getting these resources to Native American tribes? 

Mr. REY. We are working with the tribes now through the authorization provided in the Tribal Forest Protection Act that the 

committee passed last summer to begin to work with tribes to design fuels reduction projects in areas of joint tribal and Federal 

ownership. Part and parcel of that is going to be to work with the 

tribes to design the project to retain tribal members and contractors to do the work and to train them to do the work as we go forward. 

Ms. WATSON. I would add that we also had a series of training 

meetings throughout Indian country in about three or four different 

places, in Spokane, in New Mexico, and then there was a recent 

one in California, to train tribes in biomass utilization. This is a 

strong interest of theirs that combines the interest in taking care 

of their timberlands at the same time as providing a source of renewable energy. So that is another training effort that Interior, Agriculture Department and BIA have worked on together. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. PETERSON. [Presiding] The gentleman from Arizona is recognized. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Watson, Mr. Rey, thanks for coming. 

I am glad to see my friend from Pennsylvania in the chair. I was 

going to address my remarks to the gentleman from Oregon. 

And Ms. Watson, I thought it was rather ingenious to bring those 

projects that happened to be in Oregon. I, as you might suspect, 

have a little more interest in Arizona, and I wonder if you could 

elucidate more on the status of work there. 

Ms. WATSON. I don’t have any specific examples on Arizona. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. Oh, gee, well—

Ms. WATSON. I am sorry. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. That is OK. Actually, Mr. Chairman, I have a 

good report from today’s Arizona Republic, and I have it right here. 

A new wildfire plan calls for thinning and burning higher density 

stands of ponderosa pine and smaller vegetation spread across 

thousands of acres of the Kaibab National Forest. The plan is primarily a blueprint for what could happen if the State or Federal 

Government were to award funds under the Federal Healthy 

Forest Restoration Act. The plan’s drafters, which include the City 

53

of William, several fire districts and the State Land Department. 

The proposal reaches across almost 250,000 acres of primarily public land. 

So there is a little good news I can add from the home State 

paper if you will, and of course look forward in writing, we will get 

some more projects there. 

But I wanted to thank you. I know Mr. Rey always keeps up 

with the projects around. 

Ms. WATSON. They manage a little bit more land in your State 

than my agency does. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. A little bit more land, yes. Indeed. 

Mr. REY. What you will see in the spreadsheet that I am giving 

you for each national forest is that all of the national forests in Arizona have a number of projects under way. Probably the most significant, in addition to the one that you mentioned on the Coconino 

is the large-scale landscape-scale stewardship contract that was 

signed on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest last October to 

treat about 150,000 acres over a 10-year period. That is one of the 

contracts with a long time span that is resulting in some increased 

infrastructure investment to utilize the low value material that is 

being produced to treat those acres, which are for the most part 

acres that have been identified and selected through community 

based fire protection plans within the wildland-urban interface for 

the towns of Show Low and the nearby communities. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. Speaking of Show Low, and in the wake of the 

Rodeo-Chediski fire, now several years ago, and as Co-Chair of the 

Native American Caucus, I was pleased to hear about the efforts 

made with the various tribes, because what we learned in RodeoChediski as the fire approached Show Low, really the treatment 

done by the White Mountain Apaches knocked down that fire. The 

treatment there on their tribal lands, in stark contrast to where we 

had seen by injunction and other edicts a failure to see the same 

type of treatment carried out on non-reservation lands, the contrast 

could not have been greater. So I am hearted to hear, and as you 

offered in your testimony, the involvement of the tribes and coordination from your respective agencies with the tribes. 

A couple of things that transpired here, and perhaps it is more 

philosophy of government, my friend from New Mexico asked about 

Davis-Bacon and prevailing wages. When we are trying to summon 

and make dollars go further and stretch things, are Davis-Bacon 

requirements, such as they exist, an impediment or is there a way 

to estimate the cost involved vis-a-vis what work is really done? In 

other words, however noble the intent of Davis-Bacon legislation 

may be, does it eat up resources that could otherwise be used in—

Mr. REY. I don’t think we have seen it to be an impediment so 

far. In those categories where the Department of Labor has developed prevailing wages under Davis-Bacon, particularly general construction categories, you are competing in a broad wage pool for 

workers. You are not going to get very far, I don’t think, trying to 

shave off the rate that you would pay because you are just going 

to be competing against other sector contractors for that. 

Now, much of the land improvement work that goes into these 

stewardship contracts involves things that the Department of 

Labor hasn’t established a prevailing wage for, so Davis-Bacon 

54

doesn’t apply. But where there is a prevailing wage, I don’t think 

it has been a great impediment to us. 

Mr. HAYWORTH. Good. Thank you for the insight there, and 

again, I appreciate very much your testimony. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you. 

Mr. DeFazio from Oregon? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Rey, I am just curious in looking at the data provided, the 

Healthy Forests Report, December 6. The total utilization was—

you said you were going to give us the forest by forest breakdown 

on the utilization of HFRA. I appreciate that and I will look forward to that, but I am curious. There were 107 projects where it 

was used for EA and EIS authority. How many projects total were 

conducted last year? That is probably about, is that 10 percent or 

less of the projects? 

Mr. REY. That is about 10 percent. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK, because I was looking at the acreage. That is 

about 10 percent of the acreage. 

Mr. REY. That is about right, and you will see as we go on an 

increasing percentage consumed by HFRA and HFI authorities. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. But obviously then, 90 percent of the projects 

which didn’t utilize the EA and EIS exemptions were still able to 

go forward? 

Mr. REY. Eventually. Those projects—

Mr. DEFAZIO. Will you be able to show us, say, date first proposed? I mean will you be able to give us some sort of a chart on 

that that will show? 

Mr. REY. Yes. As we get a larger data base of HFRA and HFI 

projects, one of the things we will want to show you is whether the 

HFRA and HFI authorities have shortened timeframes to bring a 

project to completion. I think by this time next year we will have 

a data base large enough to be meaningful. Right now it is so small 

I think it may be unrevealing insofar as the number of projects are 

concerned. 

Remember, most of the projects that were carried out in 2004 

were projects that were designed in 2003 or 2002 or 2001, well before HFI and HFRA were even in existence. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. You heard the previous panel and the discussion that they felt with proper planning prioritization we could 

productively spend larger sums, up to 1.4 billion a year for a number of years to try and get ahead of the problem, and they said the 

kind of expenditure levels they think maybe we are keeping even 

or falling behind in terms of fuel accumulation. I know you have 

your OMB masters probably listening, but can you comment on 

that? 

Mr. REY. Yes. I think whether my OMB masters are listening or 

not is probably not that important because there is a merit to this. 

The merit is that we have to do three things in order to be successful in attacking this problem. 

First is we have to establish clear priorities of what the right 

treatment, the right time and the right place is and agree on that. 

And second, we have to be able to reduce our unit costs for doing 

55

these treatments. And then third, we have to continue to increase 

our investment in this area. 

The first of those, as the GAO also indicated, is something we 

are now completing, and as a result of the confusion between what 

they were suggesting and what they meant, which they clarified, 

I think we will be easily in a position within the next couple weeks 

to give you a timeframe for when we are going to complete the cohesive strategy and the underlying LANDFIRE and forest planning 

analysis components that have to go into that cohesive strategy. 

I think what you will see in that timeline is that we agree with 

GAO that that is important to submit as part of the budget request 

and something that we can submit as part of the 2007 budget request. Once we have that completed, then we will know that we are 

treating the right acres in the right place in the right time. 

Second, with another year’s experience, we are going to know 

what our unit costs are looking like. One area in particular that 

we have to continue to look at is why are mechanical treatments 

in the wildland-urban interface still so expensive? If everyone 

agrees that the wildland-urban interface should be treated, then 

arguably we ought to be able to look at our planning and analysis 

costs and begin to step back from some of those in the interest of 

getting more of that treated. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. If I could, we are about to run out of time. You 

pointed out though that the early attack, suppression activities had 

tremendous cost/benefit ratio or savings this year. I am very supportive of early attack efforts. Are you going to develop any measures similar in terms of potential avoided costs in determining 

where to prioritize the money, wildland-urban interface versus 

more distant resource protection? 

Mr. REY. We can develop avoided costs from the standpoint of our firefighting costs, and that is what I gave you with that $22 

million savings. The avoided costs we can’t give you because it 

would purely speculative, are damages associated with fires and escape. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. One other, and I realize my time has expired, but 

in terms of the fleet, there are two follow-ups I would like to hear 

and we don’t necessarily have time now, but if you could follow up. 

I know last year we were looking at the potential for an expanded 

fixed-wing fleet with some potential retirement of P-3s where we 

did have military—they had been with one entity and we did have 

service records. I would like to understand where we are in that. 

The other thing is I met some people from Evergreen in Oregon 

last weekend, and they are completing certification testing of a 747 

tanker, which obviously would—you are not going to be flying it up 

narrow canyons, but it could have some applicability in certain 

areas, and I would also be curious what discussions are ongoing 

there, whether they will be eligible to contract or not with you. So 

perhaps you could follow up, have your staff or something follow 

up at my office afterwards. 

Mr. REY. Sure. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. And then finally, Mr. Chairman, if I could, I have 

yet not figured how to be in more than one place at a time, despite 

my tenure in Congress. I want to apologize in advance to the next 

panel, and particularly to Ms. Tucker from my home town of 

56

Springfield, because I do have to go to another meeting, and I will 

miss her testimony, but she met with my staff and I will be kept 

apprised of what other issues she raises. 

Thank you. 

Mr. WALDEN. [Presiding.] Thank you. Thanks for those questions. 

I would be interested, too, as well. I think all of the committee 

members were on the questions Mr. DeFazio raised. 

Just a heads up. We do have a third panel, and we are expecting 

votes any time, and I am led to believe there may be as many as 

four—four or five. 

Mr. Peterson? 

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you. I would like to welcome both of you 

and thank you for your participation today. I especially want to 

thank Mark for your trip to the ANF recently. It was appreciated. 

Communities were happy to see someone from your level come and 

view the Allegheny National Forest and its particular needs. 

I know you have tried to realize the Healthy Forest Initiative to 

assist. In 2003, the last two years, I mean, the problems in the 

East are much different than the problems in the West. It is a 

hardwood forest—basically, cherry, oak and maple are the major 

species—predominantly cherry on ANF, very high concentration, 

and we’ve had now two of the wettest seasons maybe on record. 

And our water table is as high as I’ve ever seen it. I mean, our rivers are running bank full most of the time, streams bank full, and 

we just keep getting rain. In fact, last week we lost most of our 

snowpack, and so there is water everywhere. 

But the vulnerability of a hardwood forest is—especially the 

cherry—is these trees are approaching 90 to 100 years in age. They 

don’t live to be 1,000 years old. They don’t live to be 500 years old. 

This is a tree that matures maybe 90 to 100 years and then starts 

to deteriorate. And what we are finding with the very shallow root 

structure of a cherry tree, when it is as wet as it is, they are very 

vulnerable at just tipping over. And then, right now, if we would 

get heavy wins, we would have a lot more of the Allegheny 

National Forest on the ground. We have a lot of it on the ground 

from 2003, and I guess our frustration has been is what we need 

to do to somehow, in the future, be able to harvest that that ends 

up on the ground because I know of one cherry tree on private land 

that blew down that netted $29,000. Cherries bring in about $3 a 

board foot, and this was a tree that had four veneer, high-quality 

veneer logs in it, which is very unusual, it is an exception, but it 

is not uncommon to have logs worth many thousands of dollars. So 

it is a high-value forest. It is our resources lying on the ground 

being consumed by the insects rather than—

Do we need a special initiative for Eastern hardwood forests that 

are a whole different species? 

Mr. REY. Well, what we attempted to do in spring of 2004, in response to the 2003 blow-down, was to look at whether we could use 

some of the categorical exclusions that were developed in the 

spring of 2003, under the Healthy Forests Initiative, to do some of 

the treatments on the Allegheny. 

We did work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to vet and resolve some Endangered Species Act concerns involving the Indiana 

bat and I think succeeded in modifying the treatments that we 

57

were going to do to resolve their concerns and thereafter use the 

categorical exclusions. Unfortunately, the use of those categorical 

exclusions and the projects that were scheduled to be carried out 

under them are now in litigation, and we will have to do our best 

to justify our approach and to prevail in the litigation. 

Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the likelihood is, 

by the time the litigation is complete, our victory will be pyrrhic 

because, as you indicate, the value of particularly veneer-quality 

cherry deteriorates once the material is on the ground and particularly once the insects begin to work it over. So I doubt, by the time 

that we move these trees, if the courts agree with us in the utilization of this authority, that we will be getting $5 a board foot for 

the quality of material that we are going to extract, and that is unfortunate because that is a waste of a valuable resource that would 

have been a substitute in the general market for tropical hardwoods because that is what cherry basically is. It is a high-quality 

veneer that is used in the same application as mahogany, teak and 

all of the other things that are being pulled out of the Amazon 

Basin or any other part of the world in the tropics where forest 

management is not practiced with the kind of sensitivity that we 

do it, but that is the way it is. 

If we win this lawsuit, then we will sustain our position, and perhaps if you have another blow-down this winter, which is probably 

likely, given the amount of rain that you have had, it will not take 

winds much in excess of about 25 miles an hour to start knocking 

down trees. Perhaps we will be able to do a better job on this year’s 

blow-down, but that is the sense of it. 

Beyond that, given the authorities that we have, that looked to 

be the best mix available, but you have correctly identified a fairly 

generic problem on that forest, which is that the age class of the 

forest is reaching the age at which cherry begins to deteriorate. It 

is a predominantly cherry forest. It will not be 20 or 30 years from 

now a predominantly cherry forest. Left to its own devices, it will 

change over to maple or, on the drier sites, oak because that would 

be the natural progression of things. 

Mr. PETERSON. We have had trouble regenerating oak. Oak is not 

generated as well. That has been one of our problems. The original 

forest was beach and hemlock. Unfortunately, we are losing our 

beach as we speak. With the beach bark disease, we are just basically losing our beach. So I do not know what it will end up being, 

a lot of it very, species not very desirable. It has been very frustrating to the communities that—and I guess the value of it as a 

Federal Government that could be receiving funds to further fund 

the treatment in the West. I mean, it is a very valuable resource 

and to just not be able to take those dollars and put them in the 

Treasury doesn’t make a lot of sense. Nobody really wins, in my 

view, but we appreciate your personal attention to it and look forward to working with you. 

Mr. REY. With all due respect to your Western colleagues, the 

Allegheny National Forest has the most valuable trees in the system because of the value of high-quality, of veneer-quality cherry, 

and it becomes something that we can use on a sustainable basis 

to replace teak or mahogany. 

Mr. PETERSON. That is right. Thank you. 

58

Mr. WALDEN. Clearly, he has forgotten we, also, have oversight 

over his budget. A 25-mile-an-hour wind, where I am from, is hardly noticed. It is a breeze in the Columbia Gorge. 

Mr. Udall, you are our final questioner. 

Mr. MARK UDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for 

being late. I know this is some important testimony, and I want 

to welcome both of you here today. Mr. Rey, I do have to note that 

Mr. Walden and I are much more comfortable up here asking you 

the questions, unlike the situation in which we found ourselves 

three weeks ago, where you were asking us the questions. 

More seriously, that was a very well-attended, as you know, and 

I think important event, commemorating 100 years of the Forest 

Service. 

Mr. REY. Thank you both for participating. 

Mr. MARK UDALL. I am not sure everybody in my family appreciated seeing us on C-SPAN over and over again, but our timing 

was right. 

I am going to be brief because I know the next panel has some 

important information to share with us, so I had one question I 

wanted to direct to both of you. 

We are going to hear in the next panel from Dr. Gregory, Lisa 

Gregory, who is a Coloradan, and who works on these issues for 

the Wilderness Society. And she says that a budget line item for 

collaboration would help in implementing that part of the new law. 

What, Ms. Watson and Mr. Rey, do you think of that proposal? 

Ms. WATSON. Well, I just got back from a day-and-a-half in New 

Mexico meeting with NGO’s, including a colleague of the next witness from the Wilderness Society, and others speaking about collaboration and what we can do better, and we left that meeting 

considerably more optimistic on how we can improve our collaborative process in the National Fire Plan. 

Some specific items we agreed to were taking a look at our performance measures, to improve those, to enhance collaboration, 

looking at the WFLC meetings that we have—the Wildland Fire 

Leadership Council—to open those up, make those more transparent. And I think that there are some things that we can do. 

In my remarks, I likened collaboration to it is another form of 

communication, and we know in our own marriages and in our 

work relationships that communication is always a problem, and it 

is something that needs constant nurturing and a constant 

attention. And I think here we have built a good process the GAO 

identified in its report that we have really improved the collaborative relationship, but we need to do better. And we left that 

meeting committed to doing better. I had a number of folks come 

up to me afterwards from the NGO community feeling that they 

had been heard and that things would improve. So that would be 

my response. 

Mr. MARK UDALL. Your sense, then, it would be helpful to at 

least consider a line item that focuses on collaboration so that we—

Ms. WATSON. I think more it is a focus of folk’s attention, I think, 

performance measures. I don’t know that a line item would be the 

appropriate way to do it. I think performance measures, where 

individual Federal employees’ performance is measured on their 

attention to collaboration might be a better motivator, honestly. I 

59

think that is a better way to do it. And at the SES level, at the 

DOI, our top managers are managed and rewarded on their collaboration of their attention to ‘‘Four C’s,’’ and I think that motivates individual folks. And if we could bring that down to fieldlevel staff, in the context of the National Fire Plan, I think that 

would work. 

Mr. REY. What we could do for the Subcommittee is just ask our 

program people to parse out what they think we are spending on 

collaborative activities and submit that to you for the record so you 

get a sense of what the investment has been. 

But the Forest Service as well, we do establish a priority on collaboration in the selection of projects. That is one of the guides that 

we use to select priority projects, is there a collaborative mechanism that the project came forward from. It is also something that 

we put into performance reviews for senior managers, and it is 

something that we provide a reward structure for when it is done 

successfully. 

Mr. WALDEN. Well, a follow-on to Mr. Rey and Ms. Watson would 

be to make the suggestion that you have a single point of contact 

in each agency to look at collaborative opportunities, and it sounds, 

in part, you are already doing that, but maybe that is another idea 

to put in the mix. 

I know when I travel in the mountainous regions in my district, 

which are not insignificant, representing Clear Creek, and Grand, 

and Eagle and Summit, as well as Gilpin Counties—half the ski 

areas, for example, in Colorado are in my district—in those subdivisions that are now tucked away in a lot of these mountain 

areas, there is immense interest in those groups moving ahead 

with the kind of support that might be available to them. And anything we can do to continue and encourage that, I would urge you 

to take a look at. I know it is a part of collaborations, and what 

we are talking about is working with groups that have the expertise like the Wilderness Society, but this is another form of collaboration as well. 

Thank you, and I look forward to working with you on this important issue as it unfolds. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. I want to thank our panel for not only 

your work within the agencies, I know it is difficult, but you are 

making great progress, but also for your work with this committee, 

and we look forward to continuing this conversation on this and 

other issues affecting the health of our forests and range lands. We 

have a lot of work to do, we are doing a lot of work, but there is 

obviously more. So thank you very much. 

We will now move on to our third panel and hopefully at least 

get the testimony from our panelists before they call us for votes. 

Our third panel, we have James Cummins, Executive Director of 

the Mississippi Fish and Wildlife Foundation; Lena Tucker, Society 

of American Foresters from the great State of Oregon; and Lisa 

Dale Gregory from The Wilderness Society. 

Let us go ahead and at least start on testimony. If you can go 

ahead and take your seats, we will start with Mr. Cummins. 

Welcome. That bell you heard, that terrible buzzing sound, 

means we are going to have to go for votes. Perhaps we can get 

through at least your testimony, if not, perhaps, one other. 

60

Go ahead. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES L. CUMMINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

MISSISSIPPI FISH AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION 

Mr. CUMMINS. Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Udall, and 

members of the committee, I certainly appreciate the opportunity 

to be here today and speak to you on behalf of the Healthy Forests 

Restoration Act and, specifically, on one of the titles that deals 

with private lands. 

We have worked hard in assisting Congress in passing this legislation, and, Chairman Walden, we certainly appreciate your efforts, 

and many of us in the conservation community are very glad with 

what you have done for the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. 

Mr. WALDEN. We couldn’t have done it without your help. 

Thank you. 

Mr. CUMMINS. Thank you. 

I am here today as a certified fisheries biologist, a certified wildlife biologist, as well as a private landowner. I spent last weekend 

doing some controlled burning on our own family’s land that has 

been in our family since 1833. 

In the Southeast, healthy forests comprise much more than just 

forest management and fire prevention on public lands. According 

to the Forest Service, nationwide public forests compromise 42 percent of our land mass, and private forests comprise 58 percent. Private forests, also, provide 89 percent of our Nation’s timber harvest, and the South alone provides 60 percent of this, making it the 

largest producer of timber of any other country in the world. And 

while our Nation depends so heavily on these private forests for 

wood products, we also depend on them to provide many other 

services, such as Habitat for Threatened and Endangered Species 

and carbon sequestration. 

We expect a lot from private forest landowners, but we rarely 

think about how they can afford to continue to provide these services. It is a cost that usually can only be recovered through selling 

timber or divesting of land. And while this may be possible for 

some landowners, many small-and medium-sized ones find it impossible to provide this habitat in these other services. It is for 

these reasons that the Healthy Forest Restoration Act included 

Title V, the Healthy Forest Reserve Program. 

It is estimated that private lands provide 90 percent of our Nation’s listed species. And as I came in the door this morning, I saw 

three panels outside listing the 1,264 species that are found here 

in the U.S. 

Nationwide, the South has the largest percentage of these listed 

species. Eight of the top ten States and territories with the most 

listings are in the South. They include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, 

North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Puerto Rico. There 

are many rare forest ecosystems that exist largely on private lands, 

and they require financial incentives for restoration. The States 

with the greatest forest ecosystem laws are Florida, California, Hawaii, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, Virginia, 

Alabama and Tennessee. You may notice that this almost mirrors 

the list with the most listed species. 

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To give you a good example of what I am referring to, across the 

Southern Coastal Plain, the longleaf pine ecosystem once covered 

approximately 80 million acres. Now, it covers only 3, and this ecosystem is one of the most diverse ecosystems in North America, 

with over 20 federally listed species. Each of you should have a 

copy of our Longleaf Pine Management Handbook, and it will give 

you a practical example of how the Healthy Forests Reserve Program should work. 

Many years ago, in 1934, Aldo Leopold, who is regarded as the 

Father of Wildlife Management, stated, ‘‘Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interests.’’ The Healthy Forests Reserve Program 

does just that. It combines some of the most successful components 

of programs like the Conservation and Wetland Reserve Program 

that this Congress has passed, and they help pay and provide incentives to landowners for habitat restoration. 

I am pleased to see that the Natural Resources Conservation 

Service will administer the Healthy Forests Reserve Program. 

Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries will, 

also, be involved. NRCS has strong outreach capabilities in all of 

the States, especially in those with the greatest forest ecosystem 

laws. There is an office in almost every county or parish, and they 

are very experienced in delivering private land conservation programs. 

Eligible lands for this program include designated forest types 

that contain candidate threatened or endangered species that can 

be recovered and can be recovered is a very key component. They, 

also, include a safe harbor agreement, a type of agreement that 

was pioneered by some of my good friends at Environmental Defense that will help protect landowners once the agreement has 

ended. 

The program will be promoted to private landowners. Contracts 

will be awarded to the highest-ranking applications, and then an 

easement payment of up to 99 years will then be paid based on the 

appraised value of that easement. The restoration plan will then be 

developed and implemented. It may include a variety of things, 

such as tree plantings, prescribed burning, removal of fish barriers, 

placement of fish screens and eradication of invasive species, to 

name a few. 

For Fiscal Year 2005 and 2006, it was suggested that $25 million be incorporated in the President’s budget for a pilot project. 

The project would have focused on recovering the gopher tortoise 

in the longleaf pine ecosystem and also focused on salmonids in the 

Pacific Northwest, specifically the Umpqua cutthroat. Many other 

conservation organizations were very disappointed to learn that no 

funds were included in the Healthy Forests Reserve Program in the 

President’s budget in either year. 

For the record, I am providing a letter from 47 conservation organizations and 10 U.S. Senators demonstrating the need for funding 

this very valuable program. I would like to request that this Subcommittee support at least a pilot program. You might consider one 

on private lands around military bases to assist in recovering 

species that impair training operations, while, also, reducing base 

encroachment. 

62

This type of proactive approach that the Healthy Forest Reserve 

Program offers, when funded, will help remove species of our Nation from their respective lists. It will, also, aid a species before it 

is listed, making it unnecessary to do so. Working with private 

property owners and enabling them to conserve habitat on their 

property is the kind of proactive strategy that can head off a regulatory crisis, while improving the environment and providing opportunities for economic growth. It represents the best mechanism 

to increase landowner participation, reduce conflicts and optimize 

the environmental benefits of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. 

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Udall, this concludes my remarks. I will be glad to respond to any questions that either you 

or other members may have. 

Thank you for the opportunity to be here. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cummins follows:]

Statement of James L. Cummins, Executive Director,

Mississippi Fish and Wildlife Foundation 

‘‘Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who 

conserves the public interest.’’

ALDO LEOPOLD, CONSERVATION ECONOMICS, 1934

Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Udall, Members of the Committee, thank 

you for the opportunity to appear before you today to speak on the Healthy Forest 

Restoration Act (HFRA), specifically one of the titles that concerns private lands. 

We worked hard to pass this legislation. Many of you have spent a lot of time on 

it as well and a lot of us in the conservation community appreciate it. 

I am James L. Cummins, Executive Director of the Mississippi Fish and Wildlife 

Foundation. I am a certified fisheries biologist, a certified wildlife biologist and a 

private landowner. Our family’s 140 acres has been in the family since 1833, during 

that time it has undergone many changes from cotton to cattle/corn to timber/wildlife today. Some of our more significant accomplishments include conceptualization 

of the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, helping pass the Grassland Reserve Program and developing many of the components of the Wetland Reserve Program. Regarding public lands, we worked to develop the Holt Collier and Theodore Roosevelt 

National Wildlife Refuges as well as the Sky Lake Wildlife Management Area, 

which contains the largest stand of ancient cypress in the world. 

Background 

Healthy forests comprise more than just forest management and fire prevention 

on public lands. According to the USDA Forest Service (USFS), nationwide, public 

forestlands comprise 317 million acres (42.38%) and private forestlands comprise 

431 million acres (57.62%), predominantly in the eastern United States. And although in many ways these private lands are a model for achieving healthy forests 

through active management for multiple uses, it is also important to recognize the 

challenges to maintaining and improving the health of these privately owned 

forests. 

Private forests provide approximately 89% of the nation’s timber harvest. According to the latest data from the USDA Forest Service, specifically the Southern 

Forest Resource Assessment, nationwide, the South alone provides 60% of the nation’s timber supply, making it the largest producer of timber compared to any country in the world. Furthermore, more board feet of timber are annually harvested 

from the National Forests in Mississippi than all of the National Forests in the Pacific Northwest combined. Although many factors affect these seemingly lopsided 

statistics, the primary reason that private forests produce so much timber is that 

they are being actively managed. 

And while our nation depends so heavily on these private forests to produce the 

thousands of wood products we need every day, we are also depending on these 

same forests to provide many other services that benefit society, for most of which 

landowners never receive compensation. These free services to society include producing oxygen, sequestering carbon dioxide, filtering air and water, providing fish 

and wildlife habitat, including that for threatened and endangered species, improving the aesthetic beauty of the natural landscape and providing opportunities for 

recreation and solitude, just to name a few. 

63

We as a nation have come to expect all of this from private forest landowners 

while rarely giving thought to how they can afford to provide these services ‘‘free 

of charge,’’ when these services cost landowners. It is a cost that can only be recovered through the selling of timber, or by divesting of the land. In other words, we 

depend on private forest landowners to invest in land and timber management activities, often with a 50 to 100 year investment time frame, in hopes that the eventual timber value will be sufficient to offset the cost of owning and managing the 

land. 

And while this may be possible for some private landowners, many small and medium-sized landowners continue to find it difficult, if not impossible, to invest in active and sustainable management of healthy forests over such a long time. Add to 

this the uncertainty of regulations that might limit land management options, as 

well as the misinformed, but ever-increasing, campaign against the use of wood 

products, and it is easy to see why more and more private forest landowners are 

choosing to divest of their lands. These lands are rapidly being developed and broken into smaller units that cannot sustain many of the benefits and services society 

depends on from these lands. It is for these reasons that the Healthy Forest Restoration Act included Title V, the Healthy Forest Reserve Program, to address various concerns on private forestlands. 

While private forest lands are generally in better condition than public lands, according the to Southern Forest Resource Assessment, there are substantial opportunities to reach out to the Nation’s private, forest landowners with incentives that 

will assist them in better protecting and managing these resources. 

It is estimated that private lands provide habitat for 90% of our Nation’s endangered species. The South has the largest percentage of listed species in the nation. 

For example, eight of the top ten states/territories with the most listings are in the 

South; they include: Alabama (115), Florida (111), Georgia (66), North Carolina (63), 

Tennessee (96), Texas (91), Virginia (71) and Puerto Rico (75). Mississippi has 38. 

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been effective in preventing some species 

from becoming extinct; however, it can be significantly improved by incorporating 

new recovery efforts. As long as the status quo of not increasing habitat, therefore 

not increasing populations, is maintained, the full recovery and delisting of populations of many species will not happen. 

Landowners need the encouragement, financial support and backing of federal 

and state governments to undertake projects to restore rare forests and the declining, threatened and endangered species they support. Incentive-based programs provide the basic operating framework to accomplish this objective. When funded, the 

Healthy Forests Reserve Program (HFRP) will encourage the formation of constructive and cooperative alliances with federal and state agencies to implement fish, 

wildlife and forest conservation on private lands. It represents the best mechanism 

to increase forest landowner participation, reduce landowner conflicts and thereby 

optimize environmental benefits of the HFRA. 

There are many rare forest ecosystems in the United States that exist largely on 

private lands that require active forest management for their restoration and will 

require substantial financial incentives for their ultimate restoration and conservation. Examples include the once great longleaf pine forest of the southern coastal 

plain, fire-maintained, natural southern pine forests, southwestern riparian forests, 

Hawaiian dry forests, Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forests, mature Eastern deciduous forests, California riparian forests, old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, mature red and white pine forests of the Great Lake states, fire-maintained 

ponderosa pine forests and southern forested wetlands. 

The states with the greatest risk of forest ecosystem loss are Florida, California, 

Hawaii, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and 

Tennessee. This list almost mirrors that of the states with the most listed species. 

For example, across the southern coastal plain, the longleaf pine ecosystem once 

covered some 74-92 million acres from southern Virginia to central Florida and west 

to eastern Texas. Each of you should have a copy of a handbook that we prepared 

in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It will provide you a practical example of how the HFRP should work. Longleaf pine currently covers less 

than 3 million acres, much of which is highly degraded. The longleaf pine ecosystem 

is characterized by open-canopied stands and is one of the most biologically diverse 

temperate forest ecosystems in North America. Over 20 federally-listed species (candidate, threatened, endangered) inhabit the longleaf pine ecosystem. The longleaf 

pine ecosystem also makes significant contributions to biodiversity and carbon 

sequestration. Moreover, longleaf pine produces superior solid wood products, including saw timber, utility poles and other high value products. 

The restoration and enhancement of degraded forest ecosystems to conditions as 

close to natural is emphasized through the creation of the HFRP. The HFRP’s phiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:37 Mar 30, 2005 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 J:\DOCS\98808.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
64

losophy is to work proactively with private landowners for the mutual benefit of declining Federal trust species and the interests of the landowners involved. 

An Incentive-Based Approach 

The Conservation (CRP) and Wetland (WRP) Reserve programs pay property owners for implementing conservation practices. Many conservation groups consider 

them the most broadly popular and successful conservation programs ever passed 

by Congress. Waterfowl populations and many other birds have increased due to 

these programs. These programs are demonstrating that wildlife population declines 

are reversible by habitat restoration. They have also stimulated rural development 

through increased expenditures for wildlife-associated recreation, which further 

stewardship and improve rural economies. 

These types of habitat restoration approaches, and those that include cost-share 

for conservation practices like the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program and the 

Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, present an opportunity to solve many problems associated with the recovery of threatened and endangered species in a manner that will maintain a strong economy and respect private property rights. The 

approach described herein will help make the Endangered Species Act (ESA) more 

effective. 

Habitat for threatened and endangered species, improving biodiversity, slowing 

urban and military base encroachment and sequestering carbon can all be accomplished by encouraging property owners, through financial assistance, to develop 

and maintain conservation programs that meet national and international standards. The current Farm Bill does not provide enough incentives to allow for significant population recovery. Problems exist with CRP due to its limited enrollment period (10-15 years) and problems that could occur after the contract expires. This is 

a key to meeting the Nation’s international commitments and better safeguarding 

the Nation’s heritage in fish and wildlife. 

While there are now programs under the ESA that address rare species before 

they are listed under the law, more needs to be done to keep species off the list by 

acting early and proactively. The HFRP should concentrate on improving forests, 

therefore a species’ habitat, before the species reaches a threatened or endangered 

status (i.e., rare, peripheral and special concern). 

Administration and Implementation 

I am pleased to see that the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will 

administer the HFRP. Since the NRCS currently has strong outreach capabilities 

in all of the states with the greatest forest ecosystem loss (an office in almost every 

county/parish) and are very experienced in delivering private land conservation programs, they will be very effective and efficient in delivering the HFRP. The USFS 

should assist the NRCS in administering and implementing the program. Other appropriate state and federal agencies and non-profit organizations may be consulted 

with in carrying out the HFRP as the legislation allows. 

The NRCS and the USFS, in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 

(USFWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries Division, shall describe and define forest ecosystems and the associated species 

targeted to recover. Both the USFWS and the NOAA will be in a position to provide 

constructive solutions to aiding in recovery efforts. 

The NRCS and the USFS should promote the program to private landowners. 

Other appropriate state and federal agencies and non-profit organizations may also 

conduct outreach activities at their expense. As authorized, NRCS may employ technical service providers as it does with the conservation provisions of the 2002 Farm 

Bill. 

Interested landowners should make application at a local NRCS or USFS office. 

Ranking criteria for each state and forest ecosystem of concern should be developed 

through a committee similar in function as the State Technical Committee. All applications should be scored and ranked. Contracts should be awarded to the highestranking applications for each state. 

The USFWS, USFS and NOAA should aid the NRCS in providing technical assistance and developing restoration plans. A State fish and wildlife agency, State 

forestry agency, State environmental quality agency or any other State or non-profit 

conservation agency/organization could assist in providing the technical assistance 

for the development and implementation of a restoration plan or financial assistance 

to aid in the cost-share. The restoration plan should maximize the environmental 

benefits per dollar expended. 

Landowners can voluntarily sell development rights to their forestland. Eligible 

lands for this program includes designated forest types that contain federally-listed 

threatened or endangered species or a designated candidate species and that can be 

65

managed through a safe harbor agreement, candidate conservation agreement with 

assurances or similar, voluntary incentive-based programs. NRCS should conduct an 

appraisal of these rights as it does with the Wetland and Grassland Reserve programs. 

To participate in the program, landowners should enter into forest restoration 

agreements with the NRCS to carry out activities appropriate to their property, 

forest types and restoration needs of the species to be recovered. Agreement terms 

will be 10-years, 30-years or 99-years in duration and should provide landowners 

with maintenance payments for such activities as prescribed fire, natural regeneration, planning, restoration and other activities. Landowners will receive cost-share 

assistance for the activities. 

For each forest type, the NRCS, USFS, USFWS and NOAA should develop a series of stewardship activities that could qualify as eligible forest restoration activities. Each forest type would have a unique series of activities. For example, eligible 

activities for the longleaf ecosystem might include planting longleaf pine on former 

longleaf sites, use of prescribed fire, hardwood control, restoration of native vegetation, control of invasive species, natural regeneration planning or other activities. 

Where landowners are undertaking stewardship activities that directly benefit endangered and/or threatened species and where the USFWS determines that such activities will result in a net conservation benefit for the species, the USFWS will provide safe harbor assurances through Section 10(a)(1)(A) or Section 7 of the ESA that 

ensure that landowners will not be subject to additional regulation as a result of 

their stewardship commitments. 

Practices/Activities 

The practices of the HFRP should include, but should not be limited to: fencing 

for habitat protection; prescribed burning, restoration of wildlife habitat and corridors; forest stand improvement to include site preparation, tree planting, direct 

seeding, firebreaks, release and site preparation for natural regeneration, installation of water control structures in forested wetlands to provide beneficial habitat for 

wetland wildlife; installation/construction of nesting structures; restoration of hydrology; removal of barriers for aquatic species; establishment, management, maintenance, enhancement and restoration of grassed waterways and riparian areas; 

stream bank stabilization; installation of in stream deflectors; placement of fish 

screens; control or eradication of invasive exotic or competing animal and plant species; restoration of rivers and streams; removal of fish barriers; placement of fish 

screens; installation of low water weirs and in stream deflectors; fencing for habitat 

protection; augmentation of flows; best management practices and other activities 

approved by the Secretaries. 

Other Contributions 

On February 15, 2002, the Administration announced the Climate Change Initiative, which includes carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is designed to meet 

the carbon-offset objectives of companies by reducing greenhouse gases. The HFRP 

can positively impact clean air and can be used to restore natural ecosystems 

through biodiversity restoration and have other positive environmental impacts such 

as reducing water pollution. There should be an emphasis on reforestation and 

forest management efforts so that it is done in a manner that both sequesters carbon and at the same time encourages biodiversity. By doing so, the United States 

can achieve benefits in other national and international commitments. To date, the 

U.S. Department of Interior has been a leader in working with energy companies 

to reforest lands of the USFWS in a biodiverse manner. The Southeast and the Pacific Northwest are the two most effective areas in North America for the sequestration of carbon. 

With the strong concern by the public about forestry being conducted in a sterile, 

monoculture fashion, the HFRP should have a strong commitment to restoring and 

sustaining natural ecosystems that are in a state of crisis. Of course, there should 

be flexibility to customize projects to meet a geographic need. The HFRP can be conducted in a manner that sustainable resource management is done in a manner that 

is profitable and at the same time encourages biodiversity. By doing so, the United 

States can achieve benefits in other national and international commitments. The 

United States and Central American Heads of Government signed the Central 

American-United States of America Joint Accord (CONCAUSA) on December 10, 

1994. The original agreement covered cooperation under action plans in four major 

areas: conservation of biodiversity, sound use of energy, environmental legislation 

and sustainable economic development. On June 7, 2001, the United States and its 

Central American partners signed an expanded and renewed CONCAUSA, adding 

disaster relief and climate change as new areas for cooperation. Biodiversity will 

66

promote such public benefits as improved water quality, reduced soil erosion, fish 

and wildlife habitat, restoring habitat for declining, threatened and endangered species and outdoor recreation. These improved environmental assets will be quantifiable and may be marketable, thus providing an additional economic incentive to 

continue environmental enhancement and further improve rural economies. 

One of the most significant factors affecting our landscape is the continued breakup of family-owned forestlands. Family-owned forestlands are affected by changing 

economics and the increasing tax burden on property owners. Passing on family 

forestland to the next generation is a time-honored tradition. This occurs near both 

urban and suburban areas and near military bases. As the demand for specialized 

training, such as training that occurs in total darkness, the greater the need to 

maintain buffers around bases. The HFRP can be utilized to limit incompatible land 

use or to recovery species to preclude restrictions for threatened and endangered 

species that might otherwise interfere with military operations. 

Budget/Appropriations 

For Fiscal Year 2005, it was suggested that $25 million be incorporated in the 

President’s Budget for the Healthy Forest Initiative for a pilot HFRP project. The 

pilot program would have focused on recovering the gopher tortoise in the longleaf 

pine ecosystem of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia ($18 million). Restoring longleaf pine will 

accomplish this. There is a great opportunity to recover this species in less than 10 

years. The pilot program would also emphasize recovery of one or more salmonids 

in the Pacific Northwest through forest restoration ($7 million). The Umpqua cutthroat and the Northern coast coho were two proposed target species (Oregon). I and 

many other conservation organizations were very disappointed to learn that no 

funds were included in the HFRP in the President’s Budget. To demonstrate support, I am providing a letter from 47 conservation organizations and 10 U.S. Senators demonstrating the need for funding the HFRP. Please include those letters as 

part of the record. 

I request that this Subcommittee support at least a pilot program. You might consider one around military bases to assist in recovering species that impair military 

training operations while also reducing encroachment onto lands adjacent to the 

base. The HFRP is not only very much needed, but is does not duplicate other federal programs. 

Summary 

The type of proactive approach that the HFRP offers, when funded, will help remove the threatened and endangered species of our nation from their respective list. 

It will also aid a species before it reaches a status of endangered or threatened, 

making it unnecessary to list a species. Working with private property owners and 

enabling them to conserve habitat on their property is the kind of proactive strategy 

that can head off regulatory crises, while improving the environment and providing 

opportunities for economic development. 

As this full Committee considers modernizing and updating the Endangered Species Act, I urge you work with your colleagues to fund the HFRP and work with 

the House Agriculture Committee to utilize the conservation provisions of the Farm 

Bill to assist in recovery. Furthermore, any legislation should include a strong 

invasive species control and threatened and endangered species recovery utilizing 

incentives, including tax-based ones, for private landowners to voluntarily participate. I think you will find that both industry and conservation groups in my part 

of the world will help implement conservation measures to avoid listings, recover 

species that are listed and do this in a manner that we work with private landowners versus against them. 

Landowners in the South, and particularly Mississippi, have done a very good job 

of conservation of habitat for all species, no matter whether they are listed under 

the Act or not. 

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Udall, this concludes my remarks. I will glad 

to respond to any questions that either of you or other members of the Committee 

may have. 

Thank you. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, and we will be following up with the 

appropriate individuals to make sure that all titles of the Healthy 

Forests Restoration Act are utilized appropriately, recognizing our 

67

budget constraints on all titles, but there should be more than 

nothing. 

Mr. CUMMINS. Thank you. 

Mr. WALDEN. We will work on that. 

Ms. Tucker, thank you for being here. Why don’t we go ahead 

and take your testimony, and then I think we will have to cut it 

off because we have about eight minutes before we have to be over 

voting, and then we will come back. My apologies. 

Please go ahead and start. 

STATEMENT OF LENA TUCKER, OREGON SOCIETY OF 

AMERICAN FORESTERS STATE CHAIR ELECT AND DISTRICT 

FORESTER, OREGON DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY, 

SPRINGFIELD, OREGON 

Ms. TUCKER. Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, 

thank you for inviting me to testify on the progress of Community 

Wildfire Protection Plan development implementation in Oregon 

and the many opportunities and challenges for professional 

foresters that this process presents. 

For the record, my name is Lena Tucker. I am currently a district forester in the South Cascade District of the Oregon Department of Forestry. My district provides fire protection and forestry 

technical assistance on approximately one million acres of private 

and public forest land in the Cascade foothills, in the Southern Willamette Valley. I am here today as a professional forester, representing the Society of American Foresters, the Nation’s largest 

professional society for foresters. The over 15,000 members of SAF 

around the country are committed to sound stewardship of our 

forest resources through sustainable forest management. 

Community wildfire protection planning presents great opportunities for professional foresters to help communities become better 

prepared to address wildfire threats and, at the same time, help 

educate communities and private landowners about the need to address other forest management issues through a landscape level 

planning approach. This is why last year SAF joined with the 

National Association of State Foresters, the National Association of 

Counties, the Western Governors’ Association and the Communities 

Committee to develop and distribute a guidebook designed to help 

communities put together these plans in compliance with the 

guidelines in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. 

To date, over 6,000 copies of the handbook have been distributed 

to Governors, State and local Government leaders, professional 

foresters, interested citizens across the country and in Canada. We 

estimate that Community Wildfire Protection Plans have been developed for over 600 communities around the country and, to date, 

you will note that I have just counted about 64 Community Wildfire Protection Plans now in Oregon. So, from your visit a year ago, 

Mr. Walden, we have really got on the ball and got some things 

going there. 

Mr. WALDEN. Congratulations. 

Ms. TUCKER. I am excited about that. 

Working with CWPP’s community fire planning under the 

National Fire Plan for several years now, I have witnessed some 

really extraordinary, unprecedented opportunities that the process 

68

creates, just valuable opportunities for communities, allowing them 

to identify their own local priorities for community protection and 

resource management and economic benefits. 

My experience with the Oregon Department of Forestry and 

National Fire Plan implementation has helped shape my perspective on the usefulness of CWPPs. And while working in the Eastern 

Oregon Area Office in Prineville, from 2001 to 2004, I was charged 

with developing an implementation plan for our Department’s use 

of Fire Plan grant funding. Foresters utilize the National Fire Plan 

funding to start fuels reduction projects and high-risk, wildlandurban interface areas in Central Oregon, Southeast Oregon and 

Southwest Oregon. These individual treatments around homes in 

high-risk areas were linked together to provide community fuel 

breaks around subdivisions. 

In many areas, like Sumpter, Canyon City near John Day, Crescent, Gilchrist, Sisters, just to name a few, Federal agencies or 

Federal partners were able to complete fuels treatments on the outskirts of the high-risk communities. Over time, the strategic mitigation projects in the interface, combined with landscape-level 

treatments on adjacent Federal lands will help restore the declining forest health in areas of Oregon. 

I would like to show you a couple of slides. 

The first one. This is near Bend, Oregon, the Fall River estates. 

This community got on board with fuels treatment probably about 

a year-and-a-half ago, a cluster of homes surrounded by BLM and 

Forest Service lands. 

Next slide. 

This is treatment, again, kind of on the boundary line outside of 

Fall River Estates. This is shown probably into the Federal lands, 

where the Federal agencies were able to actually do some fuels 

mitigation treatments. 

Next slide. 

Again, before fuels treatment on Federal lands. You can see just 

the density of brush, ladder fuels, a lot of ladder fuels in this lodge 

pole pine stand. 

Mr. WALDEN. You know, I hate to do this to you, but we are now 

under five minutes, and I was never a star athlete, by any stretch 

of the imagination. So what I may do, and I apologize, but it is the 

course of the voting around here, if you could hold the rest of your 

testimony—because I would really like to be able to see these 

slides, and I am kind of it right now—and then we will resume and 

allow you to finish your comments, and then we will go to Ms. 

Gregory so we can hear hers as well. 

Now, here is the good news for you. You have time to get lunch 

because we have two 15-minute votes, two 5-minute votes, a 10-

minute motion to recommit. So we are looking at probably about 

an hour in legislative time. So that is what I would anticipate is 

50 minutes to an hour we will be back here to startup and, again, 

I apologize for interrupting you. 

Ms. TUCKER. Not a problem. We can do that. 

Mr. WALDEN. We have to do what we have to do. We are in recess. 

[Recess from 12:55 p.m. to 1:55 p.m.] 

69

Mr. WALDEN. I am calling the Subcommittee back to order. We 

timed that pretty close to what I thought it would be—wasn’t it 

five till? I apologize for the interruption. I hope you all got refreshed while we were over voting. 

Lena, why don’t you return to where you were and talk about the 

slides that you are showing us there, some of the work, which I 

have seen, by the way, on the ground—not necessarily specifically 

there, but I have been on a couple of those forestry tours and pretty impressive the good work that is being done to make that forest 

healthier. 

So I am going to turn it back over to you. Go ahead an take 

whatever time you need to finish up, and then we will go on to 

Lisa. 

Ms. TUCKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just kind of summarize these couple of slides here, and then I will go into my summary, and we will be done. 

Back to this particular area, which is in Fall River Estates, south 

of Bend. This is kind of a before fuels treatment project on the 

Deschutes National Forest there. It would be adjacent to Fall River 

Estates. There is, also, BLM land adjacent to Fall River Estates, 

and this is a case where the community was doing fuels treatment 

within their community and started working with the Federal 

agencies there to see if the Federal agencies could do their fuels 

work right next to the community. And planning, everything 

worked out right, and they were able to do fuels treatment. This 

is a before. You can see the debris and the ladder fuels. 

The next slide will show the same photo point cleaned up. Give 

us a little bit of time, and rain, and snowpack, and then there will 

be herbs, and forbes, and wild flowers. 

Mr. WALDEN. So that is the same location as the prior slide? 

Ms. TUCKER. It is the exact, same location. You can just see that 

the ladder fuels have been reduced. It is thinned out a little bit. 

This is a lodgepole pine stand. Again, the ground is looking a little 

bare, but given some time there will be no native plants coming 

back into there. 

The next slide. 

This is probably one of my favorite projects. This did happen before HFRA and Community Wildfire Plans, but it is a great example of a community getting together and working on creating defensible space around their homes. This is in Sumpter, Oregon, between Baker City and John Day. And so this shows a cabin there—

you know, the big, old large pines. They created defensible space 

around the cabin. 

And the next slide, you will see a fence line. Now, to the right 

of the fence line is that cabin and the private land and to the left 

and out into the landscape is national forest. Here is a case where 

the ranger district there was able to put their fuels treatment 

money right adjacent to this community near Sumpter and do 

thinning, mechanical treatment, and treatment, hand piling. 

And I believe the next picture is a prescribed fire that they were 

able to do in there as well. So, again, great collaboration on the 

part of the community and the Federal partners there. 

I believe that is all I have for pictures. 

70

Just to sum this up, I would like to say that community wildfire 

protection planning is very much a work in progress, and it is 

going to take time and leadership from everybody who is 

involved—Congress, all levels of Government, professional 

foresters, as well as concerned stakeholders and citizens. Maintaining a consistent level of funding and technical assistance for hazardous fuels reduction projects through HFRA or the National Fire 

Plan is integral to helping communities be successful in carrying 

out their newly developed CWPPs. That is really what we want. 

We want to help communities help themselves. 

A commitment must be made to allow communities and stakeholders easy access to the information and resources they need to 

develop their Community Wildfire Protection Plans. They are not 

going to do it if we make it too difficult for them. We need to keep 

it simple. 

A concerted nationwide effort needs to be made to help make 

these resources available to the low-capacity communities, those 

communities who do not always have the resources or the expertise 

available to start a collaborative planning effort, and Sumpter 

could be one of those communities. I mean, they are small. They 

are away from a lot of the services the bigger towns receive. 

Congress and the Administration also need to support monitoring 

and evaluation efforts. How can we assess the success of the process and enable the application of lessons learned here? We could 

apply them to other areas of forest management. 

Building on the concepts in HFRA, we, as a Nation, need to continuously seek opportunities to work across ownership boundaries 

in partnership with all landowners, manage our forests comprehensively and in a timely manner. I mean, the fuels issue is real. It 

is here. It is now. It is today. We need to deal with it in a timely 

manner. 

Community Wildfire Protection Plans begin to create this comprehensive strategic approach, and we urge similar partnerships 

and collaborations for forest management and restoration across 

the country. We are looking, again, at the bottom-up approach—

communities getting out there, defining what is unique to their 

community, what is important, what their values are. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I would be 

happy to answer any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Tucker follows:]

Statement of Lena Tucker, Oregon Society of American Foresters State 

Chair Elect and District Forester, Oregon Department of Forestry, 

Representing the Society of American Foresters 

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, Thank you for inviting me to 

testify on the progress of Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) development 

and implementation in Oregon and the opportunities and challenges for professional 

foresters this process presents. I am currently a District Forester in the South Cascade District of the Oregon Department of Forestry. My district provides fire protection and forestry technical assistance on approximately 1 million acres of private 

and public forest land in the Cascade foothills, in the Southern Willamette Valley. 

I’m here today as a professional forester representing the Society of American 

Foresters (SAF), the nation’s largest professional society for foresters in the world. 

The over 15,000 members of SAF around the country and throughout the world are 

committed to sound stewardship of our forest resources through sustainable forest 

management. 

71

Community Wildfire Protection planning presents great opportunities for professional foresters to help communities become better prepared to address wildfire 

threats and at the same time, help educate communities and private landowners 

about the need to address other forest management issues through a landscape 

planning approach. This is why, last year, SAF joined with the National Association 

of State Foresters (NASF), the National Association of Counties (NACO), the Western Governors’ Association (WGA), and the Communities Committee, to develop and 

distribute a handbook designed to help communities put together these plans in 

compliance with the guidelines in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. 

To date, over 6,000 copies of the Handbook have been distributed to governors, 

state and local government leaders, professional foresters, and interested citizens 

across the country and in Canada. Numerous workshops have been held to help 

community leaders put together these plans, with foresters and other planning experts providing guidance to help them through this process. We estimate that community wildfire protection plans have been developed for over 600 communities 

around the country. This represents a significant change in thinking about wildfires 

that involves the communities and the people that live in and around our forests 

and are most at risk from wildfires. 

Benefits of CWPP Process 

Working with CWPPs and community fire planning under the National Fire Plan 

for several years now, I’ve witnessed the unprecedented opportunities this process 

creates. Below are some general observations of how CWPPs have improved the way 

we help communities reduce their risk from wildfires: 

• CWPPs are offering many valuable opportunities to communities, allowing them 

to identify local priorities for community protection and resource management. 

• HFRA is complimentary to the development of CWPPs as communities can use 

local priorities for fuels mitigation to shape management decisions on public 

lands surrounding them. 

• ODF, federal partners, county partners, fire departments, and extension 

foresters are encouraging CWPP development and helping to facilitate local discussions about fire protection issues. 

• Communities are taking ownership in development of CWPPs and utilizing federal and state agency technical assistance in fuels mitigation strategy, structural risk mitigation, and landscape level forest health treatments. 

• CWPPs ultimately belong to the community and reflect the local discussions of 

a diverse range of interest groups. Collaboration is a key component to the success of CWPP development. 

• Stakeholder surveys are a useful tool in assessing a community’s ideas on the 

issues and actions needed to improve overall wildfire safety in the wildlandurban interface. This also actively engages stakeholders in the process of CWPP 

development. 

• The Preparing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan template developed by 

NASF, SAF, WGA, NACO, and the Communities Committee is being used extensively by communities in Oregon as they development local CWPPs. 

• The Preparing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan template meets HFRA requirements, provides concise, step by step instructions and provides opportunities for public involvement through public meetings. This is a good template for 

communities to use if they want to meet HFRA requirements and they are in 

a county that has already done the FEMA wildfire chapter. 

• Most importantly, the CWPP process is allowing foresters to do their job, applying the proven practices of silviculture to ultimately achieve forest health and 

other forest management goals on both public and private lands. The CWPP 

process is facilitating fuels reduction and forest health treatments across the 

landscape and helping to meet the goals of HFRA and the Healthy Forests Initiative. 

CWPP Success stories from Oregon 

To demonstrate the above observations, I’d like to share some specific examples 

where CWPPs helped communities deal with often controversial issues and in the 

end, helped better protect themselves for fire risk and better manage their forested 

landscape. 

My experience while working with the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) on 

National Fire Plan implementation has helped shape my perspective on the 

usefulness of CWPPs. While working in the Eastern Oregon Area ODF office from 

2001-2004, I was charged with developing an implementation plan for the Department’s use of National Fire Plan grant funding. Foresters with the Oregon Department of Forestry utilized NFP grant funding to start fuels reduction projects in high 

72

risk wildland-urban interface areas in Central Oregon, South East Oregon and 

South West Oregon. Individual treatments around homes in high risk areas were 

linked together to provide community fuel breaks around subdivisions. In many 

areas (Sumpter, Canyon City, Crescent, Gilchrist, Sisters to name a few) federal 

agencies were able to complete fuels treatments on the outskirts of high risk communities. Over time, these strategic mitigation projects in the interface combined 

with landscape level treatments on adjacent federal lands will help restore declining 

forest health in areas of Oregon. 

Today, foresters are assisting the public and communities with preparing Community Wildfire Protection Plans to further increase the effectiveness of creating defensible space around homes as well as treating the larger forest landscape. The collaborative efforts of foresters from the federal and state agencies, rural fire departments, private landowners, local governmental agencies, volunteer organizations, 

and concerned citizens who live in the wildland-urban interface have resulted in the 

development of approximately 64 CWPPs throughout Oregon. 

From Southwest Oregon (Jackson and Josephine Counties): ‘‘Fuels treatment and fire prevention efforts are all around us. It is a great time to get people 

involved. The big fires of 2002 and 2003 have brought fire protection into our living 

rooms. As a result, little groups are springing up everywhere and are receiving education and assistance to help them understand what they can do to create defensible 

space in their communities; they are providing a lot of energy to the CWPP effort. 

In some cases we are seeing projects accomplished even when grant money isn’t 

available. People are now spreading out, away from their homes, and modifying 

fuels beyond the immediate defensible space area. Success is not just the development of a document; it is the connections that those in the forestry/fire professions 

are making with non traditional partners in their communities.’’

From Northeast Oregon: ‘‘What we have gained from this experience is something you can’t capture in a written document. We have enlightened the public 

about our roles (all agencies) in wildfire protection and what they (the public) can 

do to help themselves. The public understands what fuels reduction means and how 

collaborative efforts with all the agencies can help to reduce the risk of fire in the 

interface and at the same time increase the resiliency of the forests in which they 

live. It is difficult to report the success of community planning efforts B you can’t 

measure the public’s appreciation of the efforts that foresters and fire experts have 

put into helping them create defensible space around their homes and working towards longer term forest health improvements.’’

From the Crescent/Gilchrist area: ‘‘Our CWPP steering group received a wonderful compliment from the private sector in one of our high risk, high priority 

areas. They were proud to be involved with a group that is so well represented by 

ALL agencies and interests, even industrial timber land owners. They couldn’t believe that so many people have come together to give so many volunteer hours for 

the cause of Community Wildfire Protection.’’

From Lane County in the Southern Willamette Valley: ‘‘In Lane County an 

extensive working structure has been established for developing a county-wide 

CWPP. The plan development process involves bringing together local, state and 

federal fire agencies as well as public and private landowners to contribute to the 

plan content. Local fuel reduction strategies and public outreach programs already 

in place will be identified and documented as well as opportunities for implementing 

new ones. 

On a smaller scale, the Oregon Department of Forestry is working with rural fire 

departments, foresters from Willamette National Forest, and community officials to 

develop individual CWPPs for the Upper McKenzie River area and the Oakridge/

West Fir communities. These smaller scale CWPPs will specifically target the 

wildland-urban interface fuels treatment needs on private land as well as identifying key fuels treatments on adjacent federal land. USFS officials are working collaboratively with state foresters and stakeholders in the communities to identify key 

issues, and concerns on wildfire risk that exists on federal lands. The extent that 

the Willamette National Forest can obtain funding for fuels management projects 

adjacent to these communities, will ultimately demonstrate that the goals of HFRA 

and the CWPP process are being met.’’

Recommendations 

Community Wildfire Protection Planning is still very much a work in progress 

and will take time and leadership from all involved, including Congress, all levels 

of government, professional foresters, and concerned stakeholders to make it successful. Maintaining a consistent level of funding and technical assistance for hazardous fuel reductions projects through HFRA or the NFP is integral to helping 

communities be successful in carrying out their newly developed CWPPs. 

73

A commitment must be made to allow communities and stakeholders easy access 

to the information and resources they need to develop CWPPs. The Oregon Department of Forestry is taking the lead in developing a website where CWPP templates, 

examples, grant opportunities, risk assessment information, and technical assistance contact information would be readily available for communities starting the 

CWPP process. A concerted, nation-wide effort needs to be made to make these resources available to low-capacity communities who don’t always have the resources 

or expertise available to start a collaborative planning effort. 

The Pacific Northwest Region National Fire Plan Strategy Team is a partnership 

consisting of representatives from agencies or organizations in Oregon and Washington that have a role in implementing the National Fire Plan. This team of professionals has a key role in providing technical assistance to help communities build 

capacity; implement and provide oversight to the Healthy Forest Restoration Act; 

work with state and county governments to ensure community interests and needs 

are taken into account when funding NFP projects; and promoting regional and local 

level collaboration. This Team will help in getting the needed information and resources to communities in the PNW region. A similar approach could be taken in 

other areas. 

In addition to this, Congress and the Administration need to support monitoring 

and evaluation efforts of the CWPP process to assess the success of the process and 

enable application of lessons learned to other areas of forest management. 

While SAF is supportive of the increased emphasis through HFRA and the 

Healthy Forests Initiative on forest health and wildfire risk reduction, there is still 

a need for greater reforms within the federal agencies to address the need for better, 

more comprehensive management and restoration of our forests. Building on the 

concepts in HFRA, we, as a nation, need to continuously seek opportunities to work 

across ownership boundaries, in partnership with all landowners, to manage our 

forests comprehensively. CWPPs begin to create this comprehensive approach, and 

we urge similar partnerships and collaborations for forest management and restoration across the country, not just in fire-prone forests. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I’m happy to answer any questions 

you might have. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much. We will get to those in a 

moment. 

Lisa, thank you for being here. Sorry to delay your testimony, 

but we are delighted that you were able to stick around for it, and 

we look forward to it. 

Thank you. 

STATEMENT OF LISA DALE GREGORY, PH.D., NATURAL 

RESOURCE POLICY FELLOW, ECOLOGY AND ECONOMICS 

RESEARCH DEPARTMENT, ON BEHALF OF THE WILDERNESS 

SOCIETY, DENVER, COLORADO 

Ms. GREGORY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to 

testify. I am Lisa Gregory. I am with the Wilderness Society in our 

Four Corners Office in Denver, Colorado. I am here to talk to you 

primarily about recent research done by the Wilderness Society 

that highlights several significant obstacles with the implementation of the National Fire Plan. And since these problems are related to funding protocols and the use of performance measures, 

they are also equally matters of concern for the implementation of 

HFRA. 

In my testimony, today, I would like to highlight three of these 

areas of concern: hazardous fuels reduction, collaboration, and 

agency accountability. The research is primarily about the Forest 

Service. 

In relation to hazardous fuels, my research project was tracing 

Forest Service funding from the appropriations process down to the 

Washington office, to Region 2, which is the Rocky Mountain ReVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:37 Mar 30, 2005 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00077 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\98808.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
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gion, down to two national forests along the front range. And I, 

also, traced the money as it went to the Colorado State Forest 

Service and from there to State and private entities as needed. 

There were several results that came out of this following the 

money that are relevant and interesting. The first one that I will 

talk about is the huge difference in the cost per acre to treat fuels 

on two national forests that are adjacent to one another, in very 

similar terrain, with very similar amounts of wildland-urban interface. They were able to burn, as opposed to mechanically thin, 

roughly, the same proportion, and yet on one forest the cost per 

acre was more than double that of another forest. 

Explanations for this are varied, and it maybe suggests the need 

to conduct a little bit more research into factors that influence 

costs because it doesn’t have to do necessarily only with terrain or 

type of treatment. And that example shows that there are other 

factors that might be worth exploring as we seek to stretch our dollars to accomplish work. 

Mr. WALDEN. Can I interrupt you? Did you say that each forest 

burned rather than mechanical? 

Ms. GREGORY. Approximately, the same proportion. 

Mr. WALDEN. I was trying to figure out if one did mechanical and 

one did burning. 

Ms. GREGORY. They did, proportionately, about the same. 

Mr. WALDEN. So it was similar sort of treatment methods. 

Ms. GREGORY. Yes, they were very similar. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. 

Ms. GREGORY. So the costs should have been very similar, and 

they weren’t. So there is something else at play there. 

One forest was able, as a result, to accomplish nearly three times 

the work with just about 60 percent more funding. So maybe there 

is something that forest is doing right that we could then copy and 

emulate in other forests. 

The second result that I would like to discuss of following the 

money, when I followed the State and private line items through 

the Colorado State Forest Service, and we have heard this today 

in the testimony from others, that there is, undoubtedly, insufficient money that is being made available to protect communities. 

Other research suggests that up to 85 percent of the land at risk 

is located on private land, and yet the Fiscal Year 2006 budget 

that just came out allocates 3 percent of fire money to those lands. 

So there is a disconnect there, and that again is worthy of attention. 

A second component of the research that I would like to highlight 

is collaboration, and this was raised by Mr. Udall earlier. The Wilderness Society is very supportive of the collaborative approach as 

a way to build consensus on fuels reduction and other forest management. It is happening, but it is happening very unevenly across 

the country. And the reasons for such an uneven success with collaboration come down to three things: there is little or no funding 

for the effort, there are not very good performance measures used 

to encourage managers to use a collaborative process, and the 

national guidance is very weak, and there is a great deal of confusion out there. In particular, many forest managers are confused 

about the difference between interagency coordination and commuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:37 Mar 30, 2005 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00078 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\98808.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
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1 An executive summary of this report is enclosed. The final report will be posted on The Wilderness Society’s web page (www.wilderness.org) by the end of March. 

nity collaboration. And so the numbers that are being reported are 

mixed and don’t necessarily accurately reflect genuine collaboration 

on the ground. 

The third component of my testimony is the need for greater accountability within the Forest Service. This has long been reported, 

especially by the GAO, in terms of fiscal accountability. My research confirmed that. Following the money was a Herculean task 

within the Forest Service. And I, also, found similar types of reporting and accountability problems in the reporting of performance measures. For example, we see, and we have heard all day 

today, number of acres treated, and that is being used as a benchmark of success of the implementation of HFRA. Many of these 

acres have been double- or even triple-counted. So, for example, a 

single acre may be thinned one year, then burned the next year, 

and then we come back the third year and monitor and clean it up, 

and each year that acre gets reported as treated, so that the total 

number of acres treated doesn’t adequately reflect the percentage 

of lands that have actually been improved. And there are several 

other examples in my written testimony that speak to the accounting and reporting difficulties. 

I see that I am nearly out of time, and that does somewhat—

Mr. WALDEN. Go ahead and finish. 

Ms. GREGORY. That is OK. Those are my three major remarks, 

the points that I wanted to make. We believe that the implementation success of HFRA really depends on cleaning up some of these 

protocols, reporting procedures and funding misallocations. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Gregory follows:]

Statement of Lisa Dale Gregory, Ph.D., The Wilderness Society,

Denver, Colorado 

INTRODUCTION 

We appreciate this opportunity to testify on the implementation of the Healthy 

Forests Restoration Act (P.L. 108-148). HFRA remains a controversial law. However, this testimony will not address areas of concern related to environmental procedures and safeguards. Instead, The Wilderness Society welcomes this opportunity 

to discuss three substantive areas of broad agreement: HFRA’s attention to community protection, its emphasis on collaborative processes, and the need for improved 

performance measures and reporting procedures if these objectives are to be 

achieved. 

A forthcoming report from The Wilderness Society, entitled Following the Money: 

The National Fire Plan, Performance Measures, and Funding in the USDA Forest 

Service 1, offers empirical data tracing appropriated money as it moves through the 

Forest Service system and ultimately enables work on the ground. The report also 

traces performance measures and explores the role of incentives embodied there. Although HFRA is not formally considered part of the National Fire Plan, certainly 

the legislation was designed within the context of fire management and is intended 

to reduce risks to communities. As such, the research behind our report is both relevant and important for better understanding the challenges facing effective implementation of HFRA. In particular, we would like to identify three major problems 

in the implementation of HFRA and the National Fire Plan: • Funding for hazardous fuels reduction is overshadowed by the many problems 

associated with suppression spending. Additionally, within the hazardous fuels 

program funding disproportionately favors federal land, even though fire does 

not obey ownership boundaries. For communities to be made truly safe, substantially more funding must be devoted to the State & Private Forestry line 

within the Wildland Fire budget. 

76

• Despite policy guidance to utilize a collaborative process, neither funding nor 

the incentives created from performance measurement support this practice. As 

a result, fire managers are ill-equipped to establish the recommended long-term 

collaborative relationships with stakeholders. • Reporting practices are deeply flawed in the Forest Service. Our research shows 

that cost per acre estimates are very difficult to predict with accuracy, publicized hazardous fuels treatment numbers are exaggerated, and the degree of 

success reported for collaboration is simply impossible. Public trust depends on 

improved agency accountability. 

BACKGROUND 

Our analysis of Forest Service funding and performance measures begins with the 

assumption that the allocation of federal money within the agency reflects national 

and political priorities. In other words, the distribution of scarce resources to carefully chosen public land management programs is purposeful—not random—and 

based on strategy-setting at a number of levels within the government. The use of 

performance measures as a tool to enhance accountability and data collection at the 

field level is designed as a way for money to be directly tied to outputs; that is, 

through the use of this mechanism the public should be able to track what it got 

for its tax money, the executive managers should be empowered to redirect funds 

to places in greatest need, and accountability ought to be improved at every level 

of the agency. Perhaps most importantly, performance measures function as powerful incentives for agency behavior. It is impossible to understand the flow of money 

from the Washington Office downward without also tracing accomplishments as 

they are reported upward. 

Empirical data in the report, used for illustration in this testimony, comes from 

Fiscal Year 2003 (FY03), since that is the most recent year with complete and final 

data. In particular, data was obtained from the Washington Office of the USFS, 

Rocky Mountain Region 2 and two National Forests in Colorado, the Arapaho-Roosevelt and the Pike/San Isabel. The Colorado State Forest Service provided statelevel information. Other sources of data include federal budget documents, reports 

from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), extensive interviews of agency 

staff and outside experts, and a comprehensive review of the literature. 

IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES FOR HFRA 

This testimony responds primarily to Title I of HFRA, the section that seeks to 

expedite processes for vegetation treatments on and adjacent to federal lands. Two 

critical implementation challenges stand out: achieving the desired hazardous fuels 

reduction treatment acres, and creating legitimate collaborative processes to expedite those outputs. For each of those categories, I will discuss funding issues and 

the role of performance measures. 

I. Outputs: Acres Treated for Hazardous Fuels Reduction 

A. Funding 

As this committee is certainly aware, the biggest problem plaguing effective funding of long-term wildland fire management goals is the cycle of suppression appropriations, over-spending, borrowing, and partial repayment. With suppression funding accounting for approximately 70% of all Wildland Fire Program (Title IV of the 

Forest Service’s budget) dollars spent, many have identified it as a primary source 

of concern. Current incentives do not encourage cost savings, and fire managers on 

the ground have something of a ‘‘blank check mentality’’. For example, in FY03, 

which was a relatively mild fire year, the FS was appropriated a total of $351.9 million for suppression, including Congressionally authorized emergency appropriation 

funds. Still, suppression expenditures for that year were $1,023 million, leaving a 

$671.1 million shortfall which was covered only by transferring money out of other 

National Forest accounts. As the GAO noted in a recent report, when money is 

transferred out of other fire accounts, projects are frequently delayed or cancelled. 

Since HFRA does not authorize suppression-immune accounts, the suppression borrowing pattern is likely to interfere with HFRA-related hazardous fuels reduction 

money reaching the ground. 

Secondly, effective planning requires realistic cost estimates for the work, but the 

current method for estimating costs is deeply flawed. Most cost estimates are given 

in a cost per acre format, even though costs in the southeast are vastly different 

from those in the west. Estimates in the literature range from $31-$2500, making 

any average essentially meaningless. Even two forests located along Colorado’s 

Front Range, the Arapaho-Roosevelt (ARNF) and the Pike/San Isabel (PSI), show 

highly variable costs. In FY03, the ARNF was allocated approximately $3.6 million 

for hazardous fuels reduction treatments; they treated nearly 5,000 acres, 87% of 

them in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), and were able to use prescribed burnVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:37 Mar 30, 2005 Jkt 088533 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 J:\DOCS\98808.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: KATHY
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ing for 63% of the work. By contrast, the PSI got $5.8 million (60% more than the 

ARNF), treated 18,869 acres (280% more than the ARNF) with similar WUI and 

prescribed burning percentages as the ARNF. The bottom line of these wildly different outputs is that it cost the ARNF $736.74 per acre, more than double the 

$311.14 it cost the PSI. As a result, the two neighboring forests are able to accomplish a vastly different amount of work with only slightly different pots of money. 

Explanations for this disparity have been many and varied. Some insiders have 

suggested that the use of discrete dollars was more efficient in the PSI for administrative reasons, specifically the hiring of more new field staff instead of planners. 

Others interpret the results to be the inevitable result of the somewhat different 

terrain within each forest’s boundaries. This explanation is based both on the PSI’s 

perceived ability to treat larger areas at one time, and its harvesting of greater 

value product to help offset costs. Whatever the reason, these two forests are located 

in very similar forest types, have extensive Wildland-Urban Interface areas, and are 

able to burn as opposed to mechanically treat approximately the same proportion 

of acres; the difference in cost/acre highlights the tremendous variability in costs 

and accomplishments even within a limited geographic area. More research must be 

devoted to understanding the factors that influence costs, and thereby increase the 

agency’s ability to accomplish more work with limited funds. 

Finally, effective implementation of HFRA will be hampered by the limited funding devoted to the State & Private Forestry line. In 2001, federal planners identified 

11,376 ‘‘communities at risk’’ (66 FR 751-777) as an indication of the extent of the 

land ownership problem facing fire managers. Since fire doesn’t recognize ownership 

boundaries, private land must be integrated into landscape-scale problem definition 

and fire management planning. State forest officials therefore have a fundamental 

role to play in ensuring that public fire managers work across ownership lines. The 

development of cooperative management relationships to achieve these goals is of 

utmost importance, and the passage of money from the federal level to the state is 

a critical building block toward that end. 

HFRA policy and implementation documents clearly state the critical importance 

of working across administrative boundaries, but those words simply cannot be 

matched by action unless funding backs intention. Policy objectives are only as 

meaningful as the resources assigned to support them. Federal reluctance to take 

responsibility for private actions is in many ways understandable, as it is rooted in 

American attitudes concerning private property; still, skyrocketing suppression expenditures suggest that taxpayers already foot the bill for private landowners who 

haven’t taken the necessary steps to protect their properties. Funding hazardous 

fuels reduction exclusively on federal lands is incomplete and will ultimately undermine program success. The President’s FY06 budget actually decreases funding allocated to State & Private Forestry, reducing it to a mere 3% of total money in the 

Wildland Fire Program. The Forest Service estimates that 59 million private acres 

in the ‘‘community protection zone’’ are at high risk, but the agency is powerless 

to address fuel treatment needs there with such limited funds. Increasing HFRA 

funding to state and private entities will go a long way toward communicating commitment, reducing fire risk and building capacity to bridge the public-private divide. 

B. Performance Measures 

To improve tracking of progress toward policy goals, the 1993 Government Performance Results Act (GPRA) requires federal agencies to integrate performance 

measures into their strategic plans. In the case of HFRA, the desired fire-related 

outcomes mirror those in policy documents in the National Fire Plan: ‘‘to reduce the 

risks of damage to communities, municipal water supplies and federal lands from 

catastrophic wildfire.’’ But measuring risk reduction is complex and long-term; indeed, most outcomes, like the ones quoted above, tend to be programmatic and 

large-scale and, necessarily, difficult to assess. Outputs, on the other hand, are incremental steps toward outcomes; for example, if the outcome is reduced risk from 

fire, one output is ‘‘number of acres treated for hazardous fuels reduction.’’ The implicit assumption, of course, is that the measurable output is an acceptable indicator 

of progress toward an un-measurable outcome. But The Wilderness Society’s research suggests that, in fact, fire program outputs and outcomes rarely line up well. 

Linking annual outputs to long-term outcomes is exceedingly challenging in any 

policy-making area. The many intervening variables between agency inputs and 

long-term outcomes are commonly called the ‘‘black box’’ of policy making. That is, 

differentiating the impact of one policy from other natural and planned phenomena 

that also have an impact is often impossible. In the case of land management, there 

are additional layers of complexity. For example, the desired outcomes themselves 

are oftentimes invisible; identifying ‘‘forest health’’, for example, has eluded scientific consensus in part because there are simply too many variables at play. Furthermore, the time horizon for ecological outcomes is oftentimes so long (decades, 

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generations, centuries) that annual outputs are rendered distant contributors. In 

short, ecological realities lend unique problems to land management agencies’ attempts to implement GPRA. 

The way the Forest Service currently measures hazardous fuels treatments is 

flawed. The measurement and reporting of acres treated has become something of 

a hallmark for demonstrating HFRA success to audiences both within the agency 

and to the public. Forests report the number of acres they treat, and track these 

acres both by method of treatment (prescribed fire or mechanical means) and location (priority Wildland-Urban Interface, or ‘‘other’’). This measure is intended to 

demonstrate increased activity on public lands, more active management, and a concerted effort to reduce the risk from fire. The assumption is that reducing fuels will 

reduce fire risk, but this assumption is an excellent example of the confusion between outputs and outcomes. Does reducing fuels equal decreasing fire risk? An exhaustive search of the scientific literature reveals a scant number of studies on the 

topic, none of them conclusive. It is likely that reducing fuels is but one factor that 

contributes to landscape-scale, long-term effective fire management. Other program 

components, including fire use in appropriate locations and enhanced cooperation by 

private landowners, are equally critical for success. Still, the ‘‘acres treated’’ measure is widely used and is considered the primary proxy for assessing success in the 

highly funded (and highly publicized) hazardous fuels component of the fire program. 

One way that the inclusion of performance measures influences activity on the 

ground is through incentives. Since so many key functions of the Forest Service’s 

work defy easy quantification, managers operating under a system where their success is indicated by performance targets are drawn to performing those tasks that 

produce measurable outputs rather than those tasks that might be more important 

yet less tangible. Any agency that depends on a limited number of measures to define its ability to meet target goals will go to great lengths to demonstrate success. 

For performance measures to guide fire management effectively, they must be understood not merely as reporting tools for work that has already been completed, 

but as incentives to influence what work will get done in the first place. Likewise, 

policy-makers should bear in mind that a manager who chooses to perform a given 

activity, like fuels reduction, does so only by also choosing not to perform other necessary work that is either less well funded or less easily captured by performance 

measures. The opportunity costs of incentive-driven behavior are real. Performance 

measures must be constantly reviewed and adjusted to produce the best results. 

Lastly, this heavy reliance on performance measures as indicators of HFRA implementation success places a lot of pressure on managers to report their work consistently and accurately so that it may be included in national level totals and reported 

to the American public. Research conducted by GAO, Forest Service employees, and 

The Wilderness Society comes to identical conclusions: the agency is still struggling 

to measure and report with necessary rigor. Prominent among the many data collection problems is the protocol whereby forests report acres as ‘‘treated’’ when they 

go under contract, not when the acres have actually been burned or thinned according to prescription. Defenders of this practice point out that it is the job of the USFS 

to develop contracts and negotiate with private entities to get the work done, not 

necessarily to do the work themselves. Once a parcel of land has successfully gone 

under contract, the money is placed in an ‘‘obligated’’ category and considered effectively spent in that fiscal year despite the many months or years that will likely 

transpire before the actual work is complete and payment is made. 

For example, in FY03 the Arapaho-Roosevelt reported having treated 4,957 acres. 

However, of those, 1,505 (30%) were merely contracted to outside entities. Nearly 

2/3 of the work was accomplished internally and therefore verified as completed; the 

rest of the work was almost certainly not done by the end of the fiscal year, but 

since the contract administration for the job was, it was recorded as complete. These 

practices may make sense administratively but are quite misleading for the public. 

In Washington DC, acreage numbers are consolidated and loudly reported as annual 

accomplishments; these accomplishments are then used to tout success and justify 

continued funding for the program. For example, to demonstrate the success of the 

Healthy Forests Initiative in treating hazardous fuels, the Washington Office announced that the agency had treated 335,000 acres in 2004, and of those 126,300 

were in the high-priority WUI. If the above 30% rate is consistent throughout the 

agency, then in fact only 234,500 acres were actually treated that year. 

Other data collection habits are equally problematic. For example, forests track 

acres treated by location, type of treatment, and more recently have also begun to 

record fire regime and condition class changes. In many cases, acres get counted 

twice or even three times. A single WUI acre might be thinned one year, burned 

the next, and contribute to a landscape-scale condition class change. Most readers 

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of the data would easily conclude that three times as much terrain had actually 

been treated, since the treatment of that single acre would appear in several columns over two different years. If the agency seeks to improve public trust and 

strengthen accountability within its own ranks, then reporting practices must be 

tightened. 

II. Collaboration (Process) 

Direction for the Forest Service’s use of collaboration in the implementation of 

HFRA comes specifically from the 10-year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation 

Plan. Facilitated by the Western Governors Association and created by a stakeholder group in 2000, the Strategy was the first place to codify the term ‘‘collaboration’’ in a formal policy document. In that piece, the authors include collaboration 

not only in the title, but in the short list of ‘‘core principles.’’ The framework for 

collaboration presented there stresses the importance of communication ‘‘across public and private lands, administrative boundaries, geographic regions, and areas of 

interest’’ and reminds readers that ‘‘successful implementation will include stakeholder groups with broad representation.’’

The 2001 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy, often considered to be the 

backbone of the National Fire Plan, also weighs in on collaboration. The Policy notes 

that ‘‘uneven collaboration’’ has contributed to unsuccessful implementation of the 

1995 Fire Policy. Likewise, the Government Performance and Results Act, the law 

that guides agency planners to integrate performance measurement into its strategy, requires ‘‘consultation’’ with stakeholders. Similar guidance on process is 

present in each of the policy documents associated with the National Fire Plan. 

There is widespread consensus that an inclusive collaborative process is integral to 

the implementation of HFRA and essential for its success. 

A. Funding 

If collaboration is so prominently featured in policy documents, one might expect 

there to be a line item in the budget to support the enactment of this ideal. At the 

very least, the agency’s commitment to collaboration should be visible in investments in capacity-building. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The USFS’s National 

Partnership Office has one employee, reflecting less than wholehearted financial 

support for the development of better collaborative tools. This Partnership Office Director reports that at the national level, interagency cooperation is strong and thriving like never before. These relationships, though, are more ‘‘partnerships’’, characterized by the building of coalitions among entities with similar interests. Building 

inter-agency relationships is absolutely critical, and these recent cooperative efforts 

are worthy of accolades. 

True collaboration, however, is the building of coalitions among entities who often 

harbor different interests and objectives. At the local level, there are some collaborative success stories. Forests in many areas regularly foster long-term advisory 

panels consisting of local citizens. HFRA asks communities to prepare ‘‘Community 

Wildfire Protection Plans,’’ thereby bolstering opportunities to connect local governments, fire planners, and interested citizens. Stewardship Contracting also encourages this kind of group formation in its ‘‘multi-party monitoring’’ requirement, a provision that encourages the formation of stakeholder groups to help determine where, 

when, and how projects will be conducted. These developments, too, have the full 

support of The Wilderness Society and represent significant progress in the implementation of the collaborative ideal. 

One missing link is regional level collaboration. The gap is significant and represents a missed opportunity to engage regional interest groups and citizens at the 

ecologically important landscape-scale. A rare example of progress in this arena 

comes from an example close to my home: Colorado’s Front Range Fuels Treatment 

Partnership was hailed last year by Montana governor Judy Martz as ‘‘the best example [in the state] of cross-jurisdictional collaboration, planning and implementation on forest health.’’

At all levels, agency planners are torn between investing limited dollars on collaboration efforts or spending them on treating acres. Citizens are burdened by the 

time and resources needed to maintain community organizations dealing with fire. 

Perhaps most critically, the preparation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans is 

outside the capacity of many low-income communities; as a result, the land management agencies implicitly prioritize the protection of more well-to-do areas that are 

able to furnish their own funding to support this type of planning. For collaboration 

to succeed, financial support must back the policy ideals. 

B. Performance Measures 

The 10-Year Implementation Plan tried to provide land managers with guidance 

by matching its stated goals with performance measures. However, measuring collaboration is elusive and the Plan offers nothing specific to guide participants. There 

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is only one performance measure which even comes close to assessing collaboration 

success: Goal 4, to ‘‘promote community assistance’’ seeks to improve community capacity and suggests counting the ‘‘% of communities at-risk that initiate volunteer 

and community funded efforts.’’

The current wildland fire management program offers scant opportunities to assess managers’ success at establishing lasting collaborative processes. It may be argued that collaboration is not an end in itself, and instead should be seen as a way 

to achieve more substantive work which is then measured. But one of the unfortunate results of this gap in performance measurement is a fire management administration that is understandably reluctant to invest in such an expensive and time 

consuming activity as collaboration. Performance measures thus function as powerful incentives for decision-making, in this case by omission. Agency personnel will 

respond to incentives by directing limited resources toward places where efforts will 

be recognized and away from places where investments are invisible. 

Recently released performance data for the USFS presents some confusing data 

on this issue. Under Goal #1 of its long-term Strategic Plan, to ‘‘reduce the risk from 

catastrophic wildfire’’, the agency lists the following performance measure: ‘‘Number 

of acres of hazardous fuels treated in the wildland-urban interface and percent identified as high priority through collaboration consistent with the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan.’’ As discussed in this testimony, the Implementation Plan directs planners to include all manner of stakeholders, including community groups as well as state, local and national government entities. In response 

to this measure, the USFS reports that in 2002 (their baseline year) they had nothing short of 100% success at meeting this collaboration target. Is the agency truly 

claiming that every one of the 764,367 acres they treated that year was identified 

as high-priority through collaboration? This cannot be true. Copious evidence suggests that gaps in collaboration implementation are widespread. To publish inaccurate data is to compromise trust-building and hamper implementation success. 

After all, if current collaborative efforts are achieving 100% of desired targets, then 

there is no room for improvement. 

In sum, the lack of funding for collaboration, lack of national-level guidance, and 

lack of effective performance measures all contribute to incomplete implementation 

of the collaboration ideal. 

CONCLUSIONS 

With funding for hazardous fuels reduction already unstable due to overflowing 

suppression spending, it is perhaps not surprising that there isn’t money left to support the inclusion of private landowners at risk and the development of better collaborative processes. But such funding must be made available if HFRA’s policy 

ideals are to be implemented. 

Funding streams are rightly matched with accountability structures like performance measures. Indeed, incentives are nearly always embedded in policy direction. 

Those who develop such incentives must re-double their efforts to tighten the link 

between what is being encouraged, the opportunity costs of those management actions, and the overall policy goals. The first step is to identify which measures work 

and then eliminate those that are either not being tracked successfully or result in 

undesirable outputs. From there, policy makers can craft new measures to better 

capture the wide variety of activities under the fire management umbrella, carefully 

monitor how well they are working, and continue to update them indefinitely. Too 

much tinkering will result in measures that are not comparable across years, and 

to the degree possible consistency should be sought. As measures are tightened, 

agency planners must rigorously keep in mind the difference between outputs and 

outcomes. The difference between the two speaks to the need for more funding devoted to research that can help support links between individual projects at the 

forest level and over-arching land management objectives. Separating the two will 

also help agency communicators better reach both internal and external audiences, 

and thereby build trust with the public. 

It is unlikely that any magic bullet will effectively remedy the reporting difficulties that continue to plague the USFS’s implementation of performance measures. 

Performance measures simply do not work if they are not accurately tracked and 

reported; improving accountability is only feasible if results are consistently and 

accurately communicated to a variety of audiences. 

To improve the chances of HFRA implementation success, adjustments need to be 

made not to the policy documents themselves, but to the implementation guidance 

and many supporting protocols. So many factors that contribute to our current 

wildland fire ‘‘problem’’ are largely beyond federal control: drought in the west, climate change, development in the Wildland-Urban Interface, and decisions made by 

private landowners who live in risk-prone areas. Targeting process (collaboration) 

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and outputs (acres treated) are two things we can influence. Reform of the supporting governance structures, including funding streams and incentives created 

through performance measurement, will go a long way toward realizing the potential of HFRA to protect communities from the risks of wildfire. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. I want to commend you on your testimony. Our staff has reviewed it in depth, and I have seen it and 

intend to read it more carefully on the flight to Oregon tonight, but 

it is very thorough and very helpful. You caught some things that, 

frankly, we wish we would have caught. I have to tell you, though, 

that I spent my freshman term on the Ag Committee. We had the 

Forest Service before us. That was in 1999. The General Accounting Office came in and made a presentation about the accounting 

system failures within the Forest Service, and I will always remember they said, ‘‘It is so bad we couldn’t finish the project,’’ and 

that it is as if Region 6 had a specialized piece of John Deere 

equipment, and they loaned it to Region 2. Region 2 counted it 

once, and Region 6 counted it twice. 

I mean, it was one of those, just a mess. And I remember saying, 

‘‘Is anybody held accountable?’’ when the chief of the Forest Service, then chief—I think it was Mike Dombeck was there—‘‘Anybody 

held accountable?’’

‘‘Well—’’

‘‘Anybody been reprimanded?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Anybody been fired?’’

‘‘No.’’ And I had just come off five years on a community bank 

board where, you know, you are regulated, and I was on the Audit 

Committee a while, and it just astounded me that our books were 

in that bad of shape. They would take their receivables against 

their—it was like their payments against their receivables. It was 

like you took your checkbook and just sort of ran an average of how 

far you thought you were off and applied it to the whole thing. I 

mean, it was that—these are statements out of the GAO. 

Since then, though, these agencies have brought in some of the 

best accounting minds on the planet, hopefully, and they have 

made a lot of progress. What you have identified indicates there is 

more to be done, but if you think what you found is bad—

Ms. GREGORY. I can confirm that some of the problems still exist. 

Mr. WALDEN.—you would still be looking for the first blank 

check, if you had started five or six years ago on this. So we appreciate the work you have done on it. You have raised some very 

valid points—some I have raised about how are we counting those 

acres treated? And I, also, recognize that part of a treatment regime may require multiple processes over years. 

Ms. GREGORY. Absolutely. 

Mr. WALDEN. But then we need to ID that and understand what 

we are counting and what we are not. 

Ms. GREGORY. That is exactly right. 

Mr. WALDEN. So I appreciate that and the collaborative approach 

information is very helpful as well. I put together, after this Act 

was passed, as Lena can tell you, three community forums in each 

region in my district down in Medford, in Central Oregon, and then 

up in Eastern Oregon, to bring together, you know, the people who 

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I thought would be, initially, at least putting this together—the 

agencies, the local Governments, and then had open public forums 

to tell them let us get after this. It is a really important tool you 

have been given to locally pull everybody in and try and write a 

plan that works and give the agencies some guidance. You live 

there, recreate there, let us try and get it right. 

So, anyway, I appreciate your comments and, obviously, those of 

our other two witnesses. 

Mr. Cummins, as the House Resources Committee considers 

modernizing and updating the Endangered Species Act, which is 

somewhat off-topic, but not really, do you have any suggestions for 

us? As you know, there are some broad-based interests now in taking a look at how we can make it work better than it works today. 

You mentioned I think the posters outside there. 

I think you need to turn your microphone on, though, so that the 

rest of the world can hear you. 

Mr. CUMMINS. My accent is bad enough. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CUMMINS. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act has really 

kind of set the table, especially with Title V. And in terms of recommendations, you mentioned you were on the House Agriculture 

committee, in your time serving on that committee, there are a lot 

of different programs, Conservation Reserve, Wetlands Reserve, 

Grasslands Reserve. Those programs can be tweaked, and not a lot, 

to provide some pretty significant benefits to T&E species. So I 

would encourage you to work with your colleagues on House Ag. 

I would, also, encourage you to look at one problem that is not 

addressed that much are invasive species, and whether you are in 

the West or the Southeast or New England, we have a tremendous 

amount of problems looking at incentives and especially through 

the tax code, utilizing tax credits, tax credits that can be transferred from one landowner to another. That way it doesn’t penalize 

a small landowner. Those are different types of things that I think 

will all certainly aid in recovery and really help strengthen and update the Endangered Species Act. 

Mr. WALDEN. I appreciate that, and I appreciate your reference 

to the invasive species. A number of us on this committee, in working with Senator Craig, passed some legislation. I was astounded 

to learn we are losing about 4,500 acres I think a day to invasive 

species, noxious weeds that are taking over our rangelands, and 

clogging our little streams. I mean, Purple Loosestrife is a beautiful 

little blooming plant until you realize it has choked every stream 

in your neighborhood and destroyed them. And so we have a lot of 

work to do there. 

Mr. CUMMINS. Cogan grass is a very damaging invasive species 

that occurs in the Southern Coastal Plain, and it is really damaging a lot of our forest lands, either Louisiana Pacific, International Paper, et cetera. So we are seeing a lot of that in the 

South. 

Mr. WALDEN. As you know, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act 

caps its provisions after we have treated 20 million acres. There 

are estimates of up to 190 million acres of Federal forest lands that 

need some sort of restorative work or subject to catastrophic fire 

or disease or whatever. I would just be curious, in the little time 

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I have left here, what you all think about that limit and whether, 

as we move forward, that is something we should consider expanding. 

Is there any scientific reason to keep a lid on it at 20 million 

acres, when most will tell you it is significantly more than that? 

Mr. Cummins? 

Mr. CUMMINS. Well, if I have cancer, I want all of it gone, and 

I think we need to work toward treating the acres that need treating no matter what the cap is, and I don’t think we should restrict 

ourselves either based on a certain acreage limit. Let us restrict 

ourselves based on the limit of the problem. 

Mr. WALDEN. Ms. Tucker? 

Ms. TUCKER. I think it is hard to arbitrarily set a limit on what 

you should treat. Really, we should look at priorities, and what we 

are doing now is prioritizing those high-risk areas next to the 

urban interface, and from there we work out into areas that strategically make sense to treat for the fuels load out there. It is kind 

of like how do you set the fuel break around the community? Is it 

a quarter of a mile, is it a half a mile? 

Mr. WALDEN. Right. 

Ms. TUCKER. In the face of the Biscuit fire, where fire managers 

out there saw it move nine miles in one day, you know, a quarter 

of a mile might not cut it for a fuel break or as to how far you go 

out there, so you just have to look at the fuel loading, the terrain, 

the weather, what is happening in a specific area and make a sitespecific plan for it. 

Mr. WALDEN. It sounds like that wouldn’t even be a fire pause 

let alone a fire break. 

Ms. Gregory, what is your view on that? 

Ms. GREGORY. Before we go beyond 200 million acres, I think 

we—

Mr. WALDEN. It is 20 million. 

Ms. GREGORY. Sorry—20 million. 

Mr. WALDEN. If you would like to limit it at 200, we might cut 

a deal right here and now. 

Ms. GREGORY. Before the limits of the act, as it exists, I think 

we need to focus more of the money into the wildland-urban interface by getting that money to communities as they need protection. 

We are so far from meeting those goals, the existing goals, that I 

think it is a difficult proposition to consider a real one. 

Mr. WALDEN. But would the fact that a true collaborative approach takes time—

Ms. GREGORY. Yes. 

Mr. WALDEN. I mean, I would hate to bump up against it. We 

are going to wait for money no matter what, I think, in this process. There is never enough no matter what program you are talking about. Certainly, this is expensive, but saves us long term. I 

guess that is why I am starting to think forward saying, you know, 

it wouldn’t take us that long to figure out 20 million acres, four or 

five years, maybe, and collaborative approaches and appeals can 

take that. 

Ms. GREGORY. Well, as Ms. Tucker suggested, 600 communities 

she said have completed their Community Wildfire Protection 

Plans out of an estimated 11,000 communities at risk. So the need 

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there is tremendous, and the Federal support in the form of funding isn’t there, and it is certainly slowing some communities down. 

So I would recommend that the money go toward those needs first. 

Mr. WALDEN. So not lift the cap yet. 

Ms. GREGORY. Not yet, no. 

Mr. WALDEN. All right. I have exceeded my time. 

My generous colleague, Mr. Udall? 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate having the panel here today. 

Ms. Gregory, you talked a bit about collaboration, and we all, I 

think from the West, understand the importance of it. And I think 

you mentioned that there were problems as far as policy guidance. 

Could you flesh that out a little bit more and how you think we 

could improve in that area? 

Ms. GREGORY. Yes, I could. Thank you for the question. 

There is a great deal of confusion, as I mentioned, between interagency coordination and true community collaboration, as described 

in the 10-year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan, 

which is what is referenced in HFRA as the guiding definition of 

collaboration. 

I am very perplexed by a statistic that I read in the Forest Service Strategic Plan and I heard repeated here today by Mr. Rey that 

he suggested that 97 percent, the strategic plan actually says 100 

percent of acres that were treated were done so—were identified as 

a priority under a collaborative process. That seems, to me, to be 

simply impossible that we have 100-percent collaboration success 

at this point. If we did, it would seem there is no room for improvement, and I think everybody agrees that there is, in fact, a great 

deal of room to better institute a collaborative process at all levels, 

particularly the local and regional levels of organization. To do 

that, we need to back our calls for that with both funding and guidance. 

So, for example, the National Partnership Office here in Washington has one full-time employee. From what I understand, there 

are maybe two regional offices with half-time employees devoted to 

better understanding and implementing collaborative process. We 

can certainly do better than that, and there are communities trying 

to develop protection plans. There are regional level bodies that 

could certainly use the support and guidance of somebody with 

some expertise in what collaboration is and how to do it well. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. So one of your recommendations would be to 

increase the number of personnel that actually work on forest collaboration. 

Ms. GREGORY. That would be great. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Because you are talking about very small numbers right now. 

Ms. GREGORY. If we had one person in every regional office, we 

would be looking at, what, nine people? And that would give a 

point person in every region for groups that needed some assistance or support. That would be a big step. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. In your opinion, does the Fiscal Year 2006 

budget reflect progress in the areas that you recommend, such as 

State and private forestry? 

85

Ms. GREGORY. No. As a matter of fact, the funding for State and 

private forestry has moved in the opposite direction. For the last 

five years, the average State and private forestry has represented 

about 7.5 percent of money allocated to wildland fire management. 

In the 2006 budget, it is down to 3 percent. So we are actually giving less money to communities where the need is greatest. And I 

think, as you said in your opening remarks, the money should follow the threat. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Could you just outline for us a little bit the size 

and the magnitude of the threat that there is on State and private 

land compared to, say, on Federal land? 

Ms. GREGORY. I think the numbers are a little bit uneven, depending on the source, but absolutely everybody agrees. The Forest 

Service’s own data suggests that maybe 40 percent of land at risk 

are on private land. Research done by The Wilderness Society suggests it is much higher than that. In any case, it is disproportionately underfunded compared to the amount of money going toward 

treating hazardous fuels on Federal lands. 

I strongly believe that unless we better empower communities to 

be partners in that effort, we won’t solve the fire challenge that is 

facing us, and we won’t effectively reduce risks to communities. 

Mr. TOM UDALL. Great. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I think this has been a very productive hearing today, and I appreciate it. 

Thank you. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. I appreciate your participation in it—

Mr. TOM UDALL. I thank the witnesses on the third panel. 

Mr. WALDEN.—and that of our witnesses as well, all of our witnesses. Obviously, the record will stay open in case any of the other 

Members who couldn’t come back or stay with us all day have 

questions, and we appreciate your responses to those. We appreciate the research you all have done and your counsel and guidance 

in this. 

I, also, want to recognize Richard Cook, who is with us today. He 

is a Fellow from the U.S. Forest Service helping out the Committee. This is his first hearing, so we appreciate his help. 

And it was, also, Megan’s first hearing, I am told, for the 

Minority, and we appreciate the great job she did. 

So thanks for being here. We appreciate all of the input. We have 

a lot of work to do, and we will, in this Committee, I intend to run 

a fairly aggressive operation to deal with these problems. That is 

our job and our responsibility, and I think together we can continue to find good solutions that will work for our forests and our 

future. 

With that, the Subcommittee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:20 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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