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THE PRESIDENT’S HEALTHY FORESTS

INITIATIVE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 30, 2003

Serial No. 108–3

(

Printed for the use of the Committee on Agriculture

www.agriculture.house.gov

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia, Chairman

LARRY COMBEST, Texas

JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio

Vice Chairman

RICHARD W. POMBO, California

NICK SMITH, Michigan

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

DOUG OSE, California

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

CHARLES W. ‘‘CHIP’’ PICKERING,

Mississippi

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska

MIKE PENCE, Indiana

DENNIS R. REHBERG, Montana

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

MAX BURNS, Georgia

JO BONNER, Alabama

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama

STEVE KING, Iowa

CHRIS CHOCOLA, Indiana

MARILYN N. MUSGRAVE, Colorado

DEVIN NUNES, California

CHARLES W. STENHOLM, Texas,

Ranking Minority Member

COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota

CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina

BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina

BARON P. HILL, Indiana

JOE BACA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas

ANI ́BAL ACEVEDO-VILA ́ , Puerto Rico

ED CASE, Hawaii

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana

FRANK W. BALLANCE, JR., NORTH

CAROLINA

DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia

EARL POMEROY, North Dakota

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

KEN LUCAS, Kentucky

MIKE THOMPSON, California

MARK UDALL, Colorado

RICK LARSEN, Washington

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

WILLIAM E. O’CONNER, JR., Staff Director

KEVIN KRAMP, Chief Counsel

STEPHEN HATERIUS, Minority Staff Director

CALLISTA GINGRICH, Clerk

ELYSE BAUER, Communications Director

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C O N T E N T S

Page

Goodlatte, Hon. Bob, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth

of Virginia, opening statement ............................................................................ 1

Gutknecht, Hon. Gil, a Representative in Congress from the State of Minnesota, opening statement ................................................................................... 4

Janklow, Hon. William J., a Representative in Congress from the State of

South Dakota, opening statement ...................................................................... 5

Stenholm, Hon. Charles W., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Texas, opening statement ................................................................................ 3

Smith, Hon. Nick, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan,

opening statement ................................................................................................ 6

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6

WITNESSES

Bosworth, Dale, Chief, U.S. Forest Service ........................................................... 10

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 48

Hardesty, James, U.S. director, Global Fire Initiative, the Nature Conservancy, Gainesville, FL, ........................................................................................ 34

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 54

Helms, John A., professor emeritus, forest science, University of California

Berkeley ................................................................................................................ 30

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53

Koehn, Steven W., State forester, State of Maryland; chairman, Water Resources Committee, National Association of Foresters ..................................... 28

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 61

Rey, Mark, Under Secretary, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture ....................................................................................... 7

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 48

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 68

Rousspoulos, Peter J., Director, Southern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, Ashville, SC .................................................................................................... 12

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 48

Walls, James K., executive director, Lake County Resources Initiative, Lake

County, OR ........................................................................................................... 32

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 64

Watson, Rebecca, Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management, U.S.

Department of the Interior .................................................................................. 8

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 48

SUBMITTED MATERIAL

Moore, W. Henson, president and chief executive officer, American Forest

and Paper Association, submitted statement .................................................... 73

Society of American Foresters, ‘‘Forest Health and Productivity, a Prospective

of the Forestry Profession’’ .................................................................................. 74

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THE PRESIDENT’S HEALTHY FORESTS

INITIATIVE

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, Washington, DC

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1300

of the Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Bob Goodlatte (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Smith, Lucas of Oklahoma, Moran, Jenkins, Gutknecht, Ose, Hayes, Osborne, Putnam, Janklow, Burns,

King, Nunes, Stenholm, Peterson, Holden, Etheridge, Hill, Baca,

Case, Alexander, Ballance, Scott, Marshall, Boswell, Lucas of Kentucky and Thompson.

Staff present: Brent Gattis, Kathleen Elder, Kevin Kramp,

Callista Gingrich, clerk; Sam Diehl, Elyse Bauer, Kellie Rogers,

and Andy Baker.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB GOODLATTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH

OF VIRGINIA

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. This hearing of the Committee on

Agriculture to review the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative will

come to order.

We appreciate you taking the time out of your schedules to join

us this morning to talk about the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative. It is very appropriate that we have this discussion at this

juncture in the month we celebrate Earth Day, and as we face another season with higher than average risk of forest fire in many

parts of the country.

The Chief of the Forest Service made a very interesting point in

a speech he delivered on Earth Day when he said there are great

issues and great diversions. Great issues are matters that cry out

for public attention and resolution. Great diversions are relatively

unimportant matters that take up a lot of our time and effort.

Healthy forests and how we create them is a great issue.

There are 747 million acres of forested land in the United States,

across all boundaries, covering Federal, State and private lands.

And many of these forests are in good healthy condition, but 190

million acres are at elevated risk of catastrophic fire. After the devastating fire season of 2000, the agency’s task with taking care of

these lands collaborated with the States, the counties, and many

conservation and environmental organizations, along with interest

groups, to develop the National Fire Plan. And everyone agreed,

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and still agrees today, that many of our forests are in grave danger. They are not in the state to be sustainable for future generations or even the present generation. Many of these forests are not

only a danger to themselves, but a danger to the communities they

surround.

A great thing happened when the National Fire Plan was developed. The agencies, communities, environmental groups, and industry groups all coalesced around one idea: Our forests need help.

The plan has identified the forests at risk and the communities at

risk, and now we need to find a way through the maze of laws, regulations, and policies that communities and forest managers must

find their way through without getting lost in the process or perpetually tied up in litigation—not litigation aimed at protecting our

forests, but litigation aimed to protect the desires of one interest

group to the detriment of all others involved and impacted. We

need to bring people to the table who care about our forests and

who want to play a constructive role in restoring them.

To get back to what the Chief talked about on Earth Day, I see

two real issues facing us today: the health of our forests and the

health of our communities, especially, our rural communities. From

rural communities in Virginia to rural communities in Oregon and

Washington State, there is a need to restore fragile economies,

many of whom depend or previously depended on natural resources.

The community of John Day in rural eastern Oregon has a population of approximately 3,000 people and is a classic example of

where management policies on Federal lands have impacted not

only the national forests, but also the local community, businesses,

schools, and the way of life. John Day is surrounded by 1.6 million

acres in the Malheur National Forest. The John Day School District has been on a 4-day school week since 1996 in an effort to stay

within their budget. The current management plan the forest is

working under proposes a yearly timber harvest of 185 million

board feet, but in the past 5 years, less than 10 million board feet

have been sold annually. Thus the situation remains, little Federal

timber harvest causing local industry to be idle, creating high unemployment, business shutdowns, and 4-day school weeks for the

children along with much larger class sizes. This situation could be

largely remedied by returning to a balance in Federal lands management.

We are not talking about the boom and bust economy of the turn

of the last century, another great diversion, but a stable, sustainable economy supported by good stewardship and sustainable forest

management; not a management plan of 100 years ago, but a 21st

century community’s idea of restoring a forest and sustaining a

rural economy. What we have are rural communities struggling to

survive in horrible economic circumstances in many places surrounded by forests bursting at the seams with overgrowth, in desperate need of management, with no way out.

How much sense does it make that we have people in communities in desperate need of employment when we have forests in

desperate need of management? Unfortunately, we have a few powerful groups holding both the forests and the communities hostage

with their misleading messages and rhetoric. Look around at our

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Nation’s forests and look at the plans the agencies have for management. Of the 190 million acres of land at elevated risk to wildfire, the agency only has plans to treat approximately 1 percent

this year. The goal is fundraising and fear works. Scare someone

into thinking the Forest Service is about ready to slick off all the

trees in the land, and you have a great diversion and a great fundraising hook. And as an added bonus, you can help mold policies

that will have absolutely no foundation in science, let alone good

science, and have a devastating impact on the health of our Nation’s forests and on the health of rural economies. That is a good

example of a great diversion.

It has been a very successful tactic for diverting attention away

from the real issue of creating healthy, sustainable forests, and

good at diverting attention away from the real issue of the economy

of the rural communities. Let us focus on the real issue of creating

sustainable economies in rural areas and healthy, sustainable forests. Let us bring people together to work constructively on projects

in our forests to reduce the fire hazard, to reduce the impact of infestations of insects and diseases, and to make the process manageable so we can have a positive impact on the environment.

The agency developed a report entitled ‘‘Process Predicament’’

where they examined the existing process and identified the problem areas. Where is the process failing? The Healthy Forest Initiative identifies solutions to some of these problems. I welcome you

all before the committee today and look forward to hearing from

you about the Healthy Forests Initiative, and it is my pleasure to

recognize the Ranking Member of the committee, the gentleman

from Texas, Mr. Stenholm.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES W. STENHOLM, A

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Mr. STENHOLM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling

this hearing today to address the catastrophic wild fires and the

management question of our forests that have literally destroyed

millions of acres of private and public forests in recent years.

Last year, 23 firefighters lost their lives and taxpayers spent about $1.5 billion to contain record-setting fires. In the rural communities nearest to the forest, tens of thousands of people were

evacuated from their homes, thousands of structures were destroyed, and tourist dependent economies suffered significant financial losses. The bad news is that our national policy has been

and is a part of the problem. For the last century, public land managers have suppressed all forms of wildfire, including natural small

scale burnings that restore forest ecosystems. These natural small

scale fires burn at ground level at relatively low temperatures, allowing some trees to survive and renewing the forest. Suppression

of these natural small scale fires has resulted in an accumulation

of fuel that supports wildfire of unnatural intensity. These catastrophic fires burn hotter, spread faster, and cause long-term severe environmental damage, sometimes even sterilizing the soil.

As land managers have tried to address this accumulation of

fuel, they have been hamstrung by red tape and legal challenges.

The good news is that by streamlining the implementation process

for forest health projects, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act will

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allow Federal land managers to restore our forest to a more natural balance while maintaining tough environmental requirements.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for your attention to this important

issue. I will be proud to cosponsor the Healthy Forest Restoration

Act when it is introduced this week, and I encourage my colleagues

to support the bill, and I encourage those who continue to oppose

good management, sound science, to take a good look at your philosophical ideas and see whether or not you cannot also come around

to supporting this act this year and seeing that it gets to the President for his signature.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman for his very concise and

well thought out comments, and also, for his support of the legislation that we will be addressing this week.

Mr. STENHOLM. In complete disclosure, your promise not to muck

around with my mesquite trees has been very helpful in bringing

me back.

The CHAIRMAN. Well noted.

I am now pleased to recognize the gentleman from Minnesota

who is the chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over our

forests. The gentleman from Minnesota.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GIL GUTKNECHT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit for the

record a written statement. Because I want to hear from the witnesses, I will shorten this. For the benefit of the Members, I will

say this, that Adam was told to tend the garden, and in some respects, we are charged with the responsibility of tending these forests, and I think any objective observer would have to conclude

that the Federal Government has not done as good a job as they

should be doing. So I want to thank you for having this hearing

and I want to thank the President for his leadership in the Healthy

Forests Initiative.

Let me just share with the members some numbers here. The

Forest Service own estimate show that planning and assessment

compromised 40 percent of the Forest Service workload and eat up

approximately 250 million of the taxpayer dollars. The same estimate suggests that this cost could lowered by $100 million a year

simply through better management and elimination of the redundant and excessive requirements.

Now, I will just cut right to the chase. I think that this is an

issue whose time has come. It really calls for common sense, and

it seems to me that the proposals are being brought forward today,

and hopefully, what we will be acting on in the future are the right

remedies for this issue. Again, I congratulate the chairman, the

staff, and the administration for their leadership on this issue. I

yield back my time.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. Are there other opening

statements? The gentleman from Michigan’s statement will be

made a part of the record and the gentleman from South Dakota

is recognized.

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OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH

DAKOTA

Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am thankful you called this hearing. And also, the people in the State that

I come from that have bronchitis, and the people that have lung

cancer, the people that have emphysema, the individuals in my

State who are newborn babies whose lungs are still developing, the

citizens who breathe the air in South Dakota, we thank you for

holding this hearing.

You see, in the last five major fires in the Black Hills over the

last 31⁄2 years, 20 percent of the Black Hills of South Dakota have

burned down, costing tens of millions of dollars. In addition to that,

over the last 3 years, 17 million acres of forest in this country have

burned down in fires; 8.4 million in 2000; 3.6 million in 2001; and

6.9 million in 2002. The cost of fighting those fires from the Federal perspective is over $4 billion. $4 billion, a huge portion of

which could have gone into things like schools, education for our

children, conquering disease, solving problems of hungering, or fixing problems with forests.

The State foresters of this Nation aren’t all idiots. They all understand what is going on in the forests in their States, and we

don’t listen to them in Washington. No one listens to these local

people that have the expertise and have the sound science behind

them. I congratulate Mr. Bosworth, Mr. Rey, the President, this administration, for the bold initiative they have taken in the face of

the kinds of criticism they are receiving with respect to the forests.

If I can show you, Mr. Chairman, a picture in this book, the picture on your left is a picture of the Black Hills National Forest

when General Custer’s expedition was out there. The picture on the

right is what that identical spot looks like today. You can see far,

far more trees. There were no trees in the Black Hills area, in that

particular area, when the picture was taken when General Custer

was out there. But the key thing with respect to these forests is

that they have been driven for at least the last decade by political

management—for several decades. It isn’t just the last decade—by

political management, and not the expertise in how you run the

forest.

Foresters that work for the Federal Government have been given

direct orders from Washington as to the decisions they ought to

make with respect to their discretion under the law. The rules are

so Byzantine in how you get a forestry program approved, there are

some instances where there are 800 different steps that Federal

agencies have to take in order to get a process approved within the

National Forest. That is unbelievable, it is immoral, it is wrong,

Mr. Chairman. So I thank you for conducting this hearing and I

look forward to the testimony these witnesses will give because

they will assist in enlightening all of us as to one of the worst

things that we can do to the environment. There is no worse environment than to be cold, and hungry, and unemployed. And as a

result of the fires in the West and the way they are burning down

and managing the forest, we have people who are cold, hungry, and

unemployed. Thank you.

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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. I understand the gentleman from Michigan does have a brief statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. NICK SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Mr. SMITH. Just as part of my total statement that I wanted to

introduce for the record, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that in

order to protect our forests more comprehensively, that any healthy

forest initiative provide programs that address, also, the disease

and insect infestations. In Michigan, we have been invaded with

the emerald ash borer that is now threatening 700 million ash

trees in Michigan. It is spreading into Ohio. The Department estimates that there is a potential 2 percent loss of total lumber in the

United States if this is allowed to continue to spread, with an estimated cost of $20 to $60 billion.

So fires and what happens in that fire management is important,

but also, what happens with disease and insect infestation is also

important. Thank you.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. NICK SMITH A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM

THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

I want to thank Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Minority Member Stenholm for

holding this hearing to review the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative. I applaud

the administration and the various agencies represented here today that have been

working within the current system to address the problems that face America’s forest ecosystem. As we have heard today, catastrophic wildfires have decimated our

forests over the last several years and will continue to do so if we do not act to

streamline the procedures by which fire prevention strategies are implemented. Removing some of the bureaucratic red tape for performing fire prevention measures

is not only environmentally friendly but also fiscally responsible, as fire prevention

costs American taxpayers approximately one-fourth of what it costs to fight catastrophic forest fires.

In addition to fires, disease and insect infestations are also detrimental to our forest ecosystem. In southeast Michigan, we have been combating an exotic beetle

known as the emerald ash borer which has been destroying our ash tree population.

This invasive pest has resulted in the quarantine of all ash products in six counties

in southeastern Michigan. With 28 million ash trees in the six quarantined counties,

an estimated 700 million ash trees in Michigan, and findings that the pest is

spreading into Ohio, the magnitude of this problem is apparent. Preliminary data

from the Forest Service estimates that the potential national impact of the emerald

ash borer is a loss of up to 2 percent of total timber and a value loss of between

$20 to $60 billion. Thus, in order to protect our forests more comprehensively it is

important that any healthy forest initiative provide programs that address problems

of disease and insect infestations as well as streamline procedures for implementing

fire prevention strategies. I thank the chairman for supporting the inclusion of our

Michigan emerald ash borer problem in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, and you will be pleased

to learn that the legislation coming forward does specifically address the emerald ash borer. Now, I am delighted to welcome our

first panel.

The Honorable Mark Rey, Under Secretary of Natural Resources

and the Environment of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the

Honorable Rebecca Watson, Assistant Secretary for Lands and

Minerals Management with the U.S. Department of the Interior;

Mr. Dale Bosworth, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service; and Dr. Peter

Roussopoulos, Director of the Southern Research Station of the

U.S. Forest Service of Ashville, North Carolina.

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Mr. Rey, welcome. We are pleased to have your testimony. We

would ask all of our witnesses to limit their statements to 5 minutes, and their entire statement will be made a part of the record.

STATEMENT OF MARK REY, UNDER SECRETARY, NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

AGRICULTURE

Mr. REY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As this is our first appearance before you since you became chairman, I want to start by congratulating you and expressing our desire on the part of the Department, the Department of the Interior as well, to work closely

with you during your tenure. I also wanted to express my appreciation on behalf of both departments and the President for your leadership and that of Mr. Stenholm in introducing the Healthy Forest

Restoration Act.

We have one statement for the record, which has been submitted

on behalf of both departments. Each of us will summarize. I will

talk a little bit about how the 2002 fire season went, what we have

done to restore our lands and prepare ourselves for the 2003 season

and how that, we think, is shaping up. Secretary Watson will talk

about the administrative elements of the Healthy Forests Initiative. The Chief will talk about how we are moving to implement

the stewardship contracting authority that you granted us in the

omnibus appropriations bill. And Dr. Roussopoulos will talk about

insect and disease infestation problems and what we are doing to

address them.

The 2002 fire season, by the time it was over on November 19, 2002, burned 7.2 million acres nationwide. We expended $1.6 billion, making it the most expensive fire season in history. We had

wildfires reported in each of the 50 States, so this is not a regional

issue by any stretch of the imagination. We spent 62 days at preparedness level 5, the highest level of preparedness. That is 22

days longer than we spent at that level in 2000, our worse fire season in the last 100 years.

Nevertheless, 99 percent of all of the wildfires were stopped during initial attack due to the extra resources and coordination provided by Congress and developed through the National Fire Plan.

We used additional firefighting assistance from a mobilized U.S.

Army battalion and from firefighters from Canada, Australia, and

New Zealand, countries with whom we have reciprocal relationships. Nevertheless, the larger fires did have devastating effects on

watersheds, wildlife habitat, air quality, tourism, soil erosion, and

even old growth forests.

We are now in the process of doing the advanced restoration

work to address the impacts of those fires. The majority of work

that is still needed will be to respond to the six to eight worst fires.

Through our Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation Program, the

Department of Agriculture has spent $72 million to that end, and

the Department of Interior has spent $78 million. We have carryover funds in the 2003 budget runs for another $50 million in restoration work. We have also reviewed over the course of the off season our preparedness and cost structure for firefighting. We have

reviewed aircraft safety and developed new safety standards for

contract firefighters. We have assisted over 11,000 communities in

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prevention work and provided over 5,000 rural and volunteer fire

departments with training or equipment, including the New York

Fire Department, the Fire Department of New York City. As part

of their training in the incident command system, they will be participating with us this summer in some wildland fires. I think we

will be able to pick them out by their accent probably.

The costs of last season also spurred an interagency accountability team to review expenditures on large fires and establish new

cost containment procedures and clearer financial accountability for

incident commanders. And we are also implementing new systems

to assure real time accrual of expenses from all large fires.

What I would like to do in the last minute, with the assistance

of a map which someone I hope will put up here shortly, is to talk

about what the 2003 fire season looks like. It is shaping up as longterm drought persists and is expected to intensify over much of the

interior west. Unless weather patterns change dramatically, 2003

has the potential and will in all likelihood be an above normal fire

season in portions of the Pacific Northwest, the northern and central Rockies, and northern Great Lakes. The areas in Crosshatch

Red are areas where we expect above normal fire risks for 2003.

The areas with Crosshatch Green are where we expect lower than

normal fire risks as we enter this fire season. So there is good news

and bad news on that map. The good news is in the Southeast,

where the drought has been broken, and that will allow us to do

a lot of prescribed burning this summer, which we were unable to

do last summer. The bad news is in the northern Rockies, and Oregon, and Washington, where we expect above average fire risks.

That will conclude my statement, and I will turn the podium to

Secretary Watson.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Secretary Rey. Secretary Watson,

welcome. We are pleased to have you with us today as well.

STATEMENT OF REBECCA WATSON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY,

LAND AND MINERALS MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

THE INTERIOR

Ms. WATSON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. The Department of Interior is honored to be here to

work with Secretary Rey and discuss the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative. In August 2000, the President introduced his

Healthy Forests Initiative, which seeks to address the dense,

unhealthy condition of forests, rangelands, and woodlands in Federal ownership so that they can be resistant to disease, and insects,

and catastrophic wildfire. As a predicate to the administrative

changes that I will quickly walk through, I want to show you some

photographs to demonstrate why the President has shown leadership in this area.

The first is a photograph from the area I come from, Montana.

This is the western side of Montana in Bitterroot. Similar to the

picture that the Representative from South Dakota showed us, a

little bit later than General Custer, this is a photograph in 1895

that showed the forest as open and dominated by fire tolerant

trees. By 1980, the picture in the middle, you see that the trees

have formed a dense thicket around this cabin. They are prone to

disease and vulnerable to drought and wildfire. 2000 is the afterVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
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math of the fire season we experienced there. The cabin was

moved, which is an option not available to most homeowners, but

the trees have been burned and only a few trees are left.

The next picture shows San Bernardino in California. This is an

example of why we have such tremendous costs in fighting fires in

the wildland-urban interface. The wildland and urban interface is

quite close in this picture, as you can see. The houses are

intermixed among the trees. The trees are red because they are

filled with disease and they are dying. Again, to get to a point that

was raised by another representative, the insect infestations are

difficult and time is of the essence, which is why we have put these

administrative reforms in place. For example, in San Bernardino,

in August 2002, 100 acres were infested with insects. By October,

60,000 acres were infested. By January 2003, 151,000 acres were

infested. And then just 3 months later, in April of this year,

350,000 acres. So these insects move fast and we have to be able

to deal with this in a more timely fashion than we have been.

San Bernardino isn’t the only place. Areas of Boise, ID have

similar growth of the urban interface. New Mexico and Colorado

face an outbreak of the IPS beetle that is spreading rapidly. What

we propose to do is to address this situation. This is a picture

showing how fire reacts in an unthinned forest. It leaps to the

crown, travels very fast, throwing out embers miles in front of the

fire front. And the front of the fires can be huge, like we saw in

Arizona and Colorado, presenting challenges to fight them.

This is the aftermath of a fire like we saw in the crown fire,

burned trees, nothing really left in its aftermath. The next picture

shows how fire reacts in a healthy forest, in a treated forest. The

fire drops to the ground and can work through, clearing out the underbrush and adding nutrients to the soil, not damaging the soil.

That is our goal, is to get fire to operate in that fashion. The aftermath in a thin forest is this. This forest was burned, but it doesn’t

look like it was burned. It was thinned, the fire dropped to the

ground, and trees survived.

I think a most dramatic representation of this is in this last photograph, which shows the Rodeo Chediski wildfire. This demonstrates areas of burn. The red is the most severe burn, the yellow is a less moderate severity, and the green represents areas that

weren’t burned. It also represents areas that had been thinned.

And you can see the impact of thinning on that forest. I just quickly want to talk about the administrative changes that the administration has proposed or enacted. First, in the area of the National

Environmental Policy Act, we have proposed two categorical exclusions; one for hazardous fuels reduction and the other for post

wildland fire restoration. They are narrowly crafted to only apply

to areas that have less sensitive environmental concerns. They are

informed by other 3,000 similar projects, and we have received

some 39,000 comments on those proposals.

The third NEPA proposal we have is the model environmental

assessment, and this is guidance that was put out by CEQ on how

to do the paperwork for NEPA in a more expeditious fashion. We

have 15 projects testing that. Both agencies have proposed administrative appeals process changes to encourage meaningful public

participation at the beginning and the design of the project and to

10

address appeals first at the head of the list, so these appeals get

heard quickly to reflect the emergency situation we have.

We have also made changes to how the Endangered Species Act

is processed so that we do it in a more intelligent and expeditious

fashion, working collaboratively between Fish and Wildlife Service

and the action agency designing projects ahead of time to avoid

species, and then doing projects in a bunched fashion. And the finally, Chief Bosworth will talk more about the stewardship contracting authority that we requested in legislation and which was

given to us in the appropriates bill. We think these tools will allow

us to get more work done on the ground in a timeframe that is

meaningful to citizens and to the health of the forests and rangelands. We look forward to working with the committee on legislation. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Secretary Watson. Chief Bosworth,

we are pleased to welcome you to the committee as well.

STATEMENT OF DALE N. BOSWORTH, CHIEF, U.S. FOREST

SERVICE,

Mr. BOSWORTH. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to

be here. Our goal at the Forest Service is healthy forests in some

cases that is going to mean that we need to do restoration work

so we can get the conditions that we need to have in the forests

in order to have them be healthy.

For example, we have been very successful, as people have mentioned, at suppressing wildfires over the years. But because of that,

and because of our inability to do some of the necessary thinning,

we have some conditions of overstocked stands or stock forests that

are leading to the situation that we are faced today. The ponderosa

pine forests are a really good example, I think, particularly in the

West. The ponderosa pine forests in the West are great examples

of how that fuel built up and fire dangers increased.

The central focus that we have at the Forest Service is of what

we leave on the land, what conditions we need to leave on the land,

the right number of trees, the right size of trees, the right species

of trees, so that we can have those healthy conditions. That is

much more important than the arguments about what we take

from the land. I believe there is some serious threats facing our

Nation’s forests and grasslands and I would like to just mention

three of the four that I think are the most serious are going to be

facing us over the next 20 years.

Fire and fuels is No. 1 in my viewpoint. It is a continued concern

and the best way to address that is through active management to

restore healthy forests. Number 2 is invasive species. It is a big

problem and it contributes to unhealthy forests, and I am talking

about insects, diseases, and plant species that are spreading

throughout the country. Invasive weeds, for example, cover an area

that is one-third larger than the State of California. And then the

third one I would like to mention is habitat fragmentation through

land conversion that contributes also tot his critical issue and affects our ability to have healthy forests and clean water. And that

is also a great threat to wildlife and losing our ecological integrity

in the land.

11

And I would like to commend the Agriculture Committee for

helping address that issue through programs that will allow economic incentives for keeping blocks of land undeveloped. Things

like the Farmland Protection Program, the Grassland Reserve Program. The administration is also addressing this issue by proposing

a large increase in funding for the Forest Legacy Program that was

authorized by the Agriculture Committee in the 1990 farm bill and

we appreciate that.

We also have issues with our processes that have grown to the

point where paperwork impairs our ability, I believe, to act in a

timely manner. In our desire not to make any mistakes on the

land, we are making a huge mistake of doing nothing. The administration’s proposed actions, I think, would allow us to update our

procedures and to modernize the procedures so we can act in a

much more timely manner while providing appropriate environmental review and protection.

So now I would like to also commend the committee for the support on the Stewardship Contracting. The inclusion of this authority and the Omnibus Appropriations Act I believe will be really

helpful and useful for the agency in focusing on resource conditions

as outcomes of projects. So some of the things that we are doing

we have already undertaken in the Forest Service, at least, have

had the authority for a few years, and we have undertaken in the

Forest Service a lot of resource work under the 1984 pilot projects

that were previously authorized. We have successfully engaged in

local collaboration on these pilot projects and we in the Department

of Interior will be doing the same as we expand the use of this tool.

We have already conducted listening sessions with the Department of Interior to engage the public as we expand on issues and

will continue to involve the public in developing guidelines. The

agencies will exercise authority over the design and the implementation of these contracts, and I read in the newspapers that we are

simply proposing to turn over the management of these forests and

rangelands to private industry. That simply is not the case. We will

still be following all the environmental laws, we will still be administering contracts like we have always administered contracts. This

is going to be just a different tool that we will use in order to accomplish the desired condition on the land. We plan to engage a

broad array of partners and projects and will include multi-party

monitoring of the effectiveness of this authority. I believe that in

10 years, we are going to have strengthened our capacity significantly for community based forestry, though, more on local capacity

for collaboration, and will have increased the constructive involvement of the public in forest management decisions.

I thank you for the opportunity to be here, as I said, and I am

looking forward to answering any questions. Now Dr. Roussopoulos

will continue on.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Chief. Dr. Roussopoulos, welcome.

We are pleased to have your testimony.

12

STATEMENT OF PETER J. ROUSSOPOULOS, DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN RESEARCH STATION, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, ASHEVILLE, NC

Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning.

And thank you for inviting me from your neighboring State to the

south to be a part of this distinguished panel.

We want, before we close today, to address another issue that we

deem to be serious that is facing America’s forest and rangelands,

the spread of invasive species and native bark beetles. Forest insects, fungi, and parasitic plants have always been an integral part

of our forest ecosystems and rangeland ecosystems in the United

States, and they play critical roles in the succession of the species

composition, structure, and function of our systems on our

wildlands.

Though they have been with us for a long time, they are behaving differently today than they have in the past, or some of them

at least are, and this is due in part to changes in the structure,

composition, and dynamics of the forests themselves, due in part to

lack of active management, and to prior exclusion for such a long

period of time. And of course, introduction of non-native exotic species has exacerbated some of the problems that we are experiencing, particularly, the pathogens and insects that are affecting our

forests today. And of course, the drought conditions that our entire

Nation has been experiencing over the past 3 or 4 years tends to

make our forests more vulnerable to invasion and damage by these

pests that are performing in nontraditional ways or nonhistoric

ways.

Large insect and disease outbreaks know no boundaries. They do

not respect jurisdictions, they do not respect political lines on a

map. They affect Federal, State, and private landowners. When

these outbreaks occur, local managers try to assess the situation,

and where they can, do what they can immediately to minimize the

potential losses of those situations. Many cases, however, require

extensive environmental analyses, and often—has been referenced

earlier this morning, often, the opportunity to effectively act to protect our resources is lost in the interim. An example that comes to

mind for me is southern pine beetle in the Cherokee National Forest in eastern Tennessee, where an inability to act in a timely fashion has very seriously diminished the pine resource in eastern Tennessee on the Cherokee National Forest and beyond.

Two comprehensive strategies have been developed by the Forest

Service to address southern pine beetle and western bark beetles.

The goal of those strategies is to treat ongoing infestations and reduce the likelihood of future large infestations. Suppression of an

epidemic, of course, is only the first step in the long-term process

required to establish and maintain forests and rangelands that can

withstand—or will be less susceptible to future attack.

Public and landowner education programs and continued research in support of suppression, prevention, and restoration activities are key to these strategies. We are currently in the process of

developing a comprehensive strategy for the broader range of

invasive pests that have been discovered and we expect to be discovering. The interesting thing about these threats is that we have

to start from scratch in understanding them. Very little is known

13

in their areas of native habitat, or very little is documented about

them, and they operate differently when they come to a new environment here.

We conduct research in the Forest Service on native and invasive

insects, pathogens, and plants at our network of experiment stations across the south. We collaborate with a large number of agencies and institutions in doing so, and that work has led to many

of the policies that are in place today in dealing with gypsy moth,

emerald ash borer, Asian longhorned beetle, hemlock woolly

adelgid, sudden oak death, and so forth. For example, some of the

fundamental biological work that is guiding quarantine policies for

the Asian longhorned beetle and sudden oak death stemmed from

Forest Service research programs in collaboration with the many

folks we work with.

It is not just forests, but rangelands, also, in particular, become

havens for herbaceous non-native species. An example, I guess, is

cheatgrass in the West that also has an interesting kind of interaction with fire in that it is an extremely flammable species and

propagates itself substantially in the wake of wildfires, so you get

a cycle developing where the presence of cheatgrass encourages

fires, that encourages the growth of cheatgrass, and you have got

an ever-widening spiral of degradation.

We deem these issues to be critical threats, these biological

agents that we are experiencing on our forests, to be critical

threats to the health and productivity of our forests and rangelands. We are pleased to see that measures to accelerate research

and management activity to address these threats are being considered by the Congress today, and we thank you for your interest in

these matters. I believe we stand ready for questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rey, Ms. Watson, Mr. Bosworth,

and Mr. Roussopoulos appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate all of your comments this morning. It is clear, I think, to most people, that

unhealthy forests have not only an economic, a devastating economic impact, but also, a devastating environmental impact; especially, when forest fires result from the overload of fuel, and that

manifests itself in a number of ways, not just the absolute destruction of these forests, not like a healthy forest fire that drops to the

ground and burns the undergrowth and so on, but just destroys the

entire forest, may not regenerate for years, if not generations. but

it has other impacts as well. It clearly destroys the habitat for various wildlife.

There is no doubt that in the past few years, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of acres of habitat for spotted owl have been

destroyed. Notwithstanding, all of the, in my opinion, misguided efforts to try to protect that species in ways that have caused more

harm to it than good for it. Degradation of streams and fish in

those streams, and in an area that I raised in a hearing last year—

Secretary Rey, I know you were with us then—that I think is repeatedly overlooked and which the gentleman from South Dakota

alluded to in his comments, about the concern for the health of his

constituents from respiratory illnesses and other effects of air pollution. It seems to me that when you burn 7 million acres of forest

land, a billion or more trees, that the air pollution impact of that

14

must be absolutely devastating and must be in some way quantifiable.

And I know that there is research under way by the Department

to accomplish that. I wonder if you can tell us, Secretary Ray or

Chief Bosworth, if you have made any progress in that regard and

elaborate on the types of impact that we have seen over the past

few seasons during these catastrophic events?

Mr. REY. We are undertaking some research now to be able to

project what kinds of emission loads are generated from wildfires.

There is a fair number of variables in terms of when the fires burn,

what kinds of areas they are burning through. But we do know

some things that are pretty straightforward. We know that the particulate size that is emitted from a wildfire is of a particular concern to EPA for human health reasons because it does have significant human health effects in areas where we have those fires. We

also have a visibility impact that occurs over an even larger area

and diminishes the vistas that we have in some of our wildland

areas as well. We had a little bit of that here last summer, getting

some of the smoke from the fires that were burning in Quebec during several days last summer when we had less than ideal visibility.

We also have an impact on some non-attainability areas so it

complicates EPA’s regulatory program in areas where air quality is

already impaired as a consequence of industrial or mobile sources.

So those are all significant impacts. They occur both from wildfires

and from prescribed fires. The difference is that with a prescribed

fire, you can control the time and to some extent the duration and

intensity of the smoke that is going to be generated, and you have

a much less severe result. But that underscores the fact that there

is a limitation in the use of prescribed fire that has to be accounted

for when we put together our burning plants.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Chief Bosworth, does anybody else

want to add to that?

Mr. BOSWORTH. I would only add one brief thing. It just makes

sense that when you do a certain amount of thinning and remove

some of the material and make use of some of that smaller diameter material, that you are going to have less—less is going to go

up in smoke. And we are working very hard through our forest

products lab in Madison, WI to develop more and more uses for

small diameter materials so that we can make use of it rather than

leaving it in the forest to burn through wildfire or through prescribed burning.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. In my opening statement, I mentioned one community as an example of the impact that forest

management has had on the fabric of communities, and I know

that there are similar stories in many other towns. How will the

Healthy Forests Initiative affect these communities? Secretary

Watson and anybody else who wants to answer.

Ms. WATSON. I think that one of the things the president emphasized in the Healthy Forests, he titled it Healthy Forests and

Strong Communities, and the idea here is in addressing our forest

health, to also address the health of our communities by looking for

ways that we can work collaboratively with communities, giving

them the equipment to help us suppress fires, but also, more imVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
15

portantly, involving them in how we improve the health of forests

and rangelands. So that is a very strong component. That is why

Stewardship Contracting is something we at the Department of Interior are looking forward to utilizing and developing. We think

that that gives us an excellent opportunity to involve communities

in economically sustainable rangeland and forest restoration activities.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Does anybody else want to comment

on that?

Mr. REY. I think the important thing to focus on with the

Healthy Forests Initiative is that we are primarily interested in the

quality of the forest we leave behind. But within that primary objective, there still is going to be a large amount of material that

is going to be removed and the contribution to the economic well

being of those communities is going to be finding ways to utilize

that material, to provide it on a sustainable basis, and then to utilize it to generate economic activity.

The CHAIRMAN. One last question. Earlier this week, a District

Judge in Montana, substituting his forest management knowledge

for that of professional forest managers, ordered the stoppage of all

activity on the Lolo National Forest. If the bill being considered in

the Resources Committee today had already been enacted, could it

have changed the outcome of that decision, Secretary Rey?

Mr. REY. I believe it well could have. Let me start by saying it

is our hope that as the Judge reviews the full record in that case,

that he will reach an alternative conclusion than the one indicated

in his preliminary injunction order. But by the same token, section

107 of the bill that you have introduced and that many of your

have cosponsored, provides direction to the courts when they are

evaluating the wisdom of preliminary injunctions to look at both

the short-term effect of the activity that is proposed and the longterm impacts of inaction. In this particular case, the analysis that

we did on those restoration projects strongly indicates that the

long-term impacts of inaction are going to be far more severe from

an environmental standpoint than the effects of the activities in

question.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Secretary Rey. The gentleman from

Indiana, Mr. Hill.

Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to thank

you for holding this hearing on a very important issue. I represent

southern Indiana, and the bulk of the Hoosier National Forest is

in my congressional district. I also represent Indiana University,

and there are many people connected to the University in the city

of Bloomington who are in contact with me on a regular basis

about what you are proposing, Mr. Secretary, and they are adamantly opposed to it. They call your description of the President’s

Healthy Forests Initiative laughable in terms of its definition. Why

are they wrong and you are right?

Mr. REY. Well, I hate to generalize, because that usually does a

disservice to the people who you are generalizing about, but there

are two competing points of view, at least, two general competing

points of view at large in this debate. One point of view is that

these systems will fix themselves, and that if we are just simply

patient enough, that nature will take care of itself, and that interVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
16

vening in that is a bad thing. Now, I don’t agree with that point

of view, but I respect the fact that people have it.

And the contrary point of view, which is the one I hold, is that

we know enough science, and we have enough technology and wisdom, to be able to provide some assistance to bring these forests

back into a sustainable situation which they are not currently in.

Fire is a natural part of most North American forest systems. The

fires that we are experiencing today are not natural fires from an

historical or ecological sense. But if you hold the former view, that

everything will be fine if we just let nature take its course, then

nothing I say is going to sway you with regard to what is needed

to be done to improve the health of the forest.

Mr. HILL. Well, but nature taking its course has kind of been our

policy for a lot of years. Why, suddenly, do we need to change that

policy?

Mr. REY. Well, we actually haven’t been letting nature take its

course for the 100 years because we have been suppressing fires

and allowing this fuel buildup to continue, and that increased fuel,

the difference in the pictures that both Secretary Watson and Congressman Janklow showed you, are what is fueling these large, intense catastrophic unnatural fires. My view is that we have a responsibility to correct mistakes that have been made in the last

100 years, and we have to do that in a way that is sensitive both

to the ecological needs of these systems, but also reflective of the

fact that things change. We have a lot of people living among these

forests now, and just stepping back and letting nature take its

course isn’t going to be too attractive to them if their homes are

in the way of the fires that are going to burn.

Mr. HILL. Let me ask you this then, Mr. Secretary. These same

people that have expressed their concerns about your plan are also

concerned that this proposal that you are making would lead to a

lot less public comment. Assuming that you are right and they are

wrong, they feel like this bill gives them less of an opportunity to

point out their point of view. Would you disagree—does your proposal do that?

Mr. REY. No. I think that the proposal provides the opportunity

for public comment and tries to make that comment occur when it

is most likely to be useful to decide how to proceed with a particular project or group of projects. What we are trying to do is to

change the public dialog so that it is more collaborative, it is occurring earlier in our decision making process, and it is less prone to

confrontation. Right now, the public comment process that we have

is far too prone to be coming an adversarial process with a too

heavy emphasis on appeals and litigation. It is our hope that as we

modify the public comment techniques that we use and build a better sense of collaboration, more people will come together and we

will find some common ground or commonsense management

changes that need to be made to help these forests and rangelands

out.

Mr. HILL. What, specifically, are you proposing that you want to

modify then, in terms of the public comment period? What are you

doing?

Mr. REY. Well, let me give you a fairly straightforward example

in dealing with the changes to our appeals process. The Forest

17

Service, unique among agencies, has an appeals process that

doesn’t require an appellant to participate in the public comment

process while a decision is being made and before it is completed.

So if you are determined to stop an activity from occurring, it is

in your interest not to apprise the agency of your concerns while

the issue is still before the public for review. You are better off to

wait until the decision is final and then spring your appeal so that

you can ambush the agency. That is debilitating to the people who

are doing the work on the ground to get the project done. It is unfair to the people who participate in the development of the project

on a good faith basis and it is ultimately unproductive.

What we are changing in our appeals process, if we are giving

our land managers the authority to involve the public earlier in the

process and we are imposing a requirement that if you want t

thereafter be an appellant once a decision is reached, you have to

have participated in the public comment period when the project

was proposed and open for public comment. Some people are characterizing that as eliminating their rights of appeal. Well, it is not.

It is putting everyone on an equal footing, that if you are concerned

about a project, we want to talk to you while we are formulating

it. We want to hear what your concerns are so that we can address

them if we can and talk about them at least if we can’t, and thereafter, if you are still dissatisfied, you get to file an appeal, but only

if you participated to begin with.

Mr. HILL. Okay. I see my time has expired, so thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from

Michigan, Mr. Smith.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, with all the other great things about

Michigan and our superiority in different areas, you might not

have realized that Michigan ranked between 10 and 15 in terms of

the top States in the Nation in terms of forest production. We have

about 5 million acres of forest land, about half are owned by Government, either State or Federal, and so the forest problem is always real. One of my questions deals with the insects, the beetles,

the invasive species. Throughout history, we have always thought

that we were doing the right thing. We always thought that we had

the scientific knowledge to do what was right for forest lands, and

now in review from the early concerns of fire and whatever, the

1905, 1910, through the 1920’s, we decided we are going to put out

all fires.

How do we now know—I guess, first, on the invasive species, is

there any relation to what we have done in the past that is causing

increased problems with insects, and disease, and invasive species?

Mr. REY. I don’t think the growth in invasive species is a function of mistakes we have made in the past so much as it is a reflection of the globalization of trade, technology, and travel today. And

because of that, we have a far greater opportunity to introduce new

species in areas where they previously didn’t exist and into systems

that aren’t as adapted to deal with them, and that, I think, is why

we are seeing the more rapid spread of invasive species today.

Let me also correct a misapprehension I think I may have made

with one of my previous answers. Putting out all fires at the turn

of the last century was not a mistake when viewed in the contemVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
18

porary context of that time. We had to show that we could actually

bring some semblance of control to the open range and to open fire

systems in order to make the forestry a sustainable proposition in

the first place. So it wasn’t a mistake then, but it obviously is

something we have to remedy now.

Mr. SMITH. I mean, there could be a disagreement. I disagree

with that, but in terms of the right balance, for example, in fires.

How do we know what the right balance is between allowing Mother Nature and fires to some extent, so whether we are talking

about the Kirkland warbler or anything else that results from that

balance, how do we know it is the right balance? Maybe just a

quick response from each of our witnesses, and then I will——

Mr. REY. The balance we are trying to achieve is to reintroduce

fire into these systems in a way where fire can play an historic and

natural role of keeping vegetation reduced, and the result of that

will be systems that are sustainable and adapted to fire, as opposed to systems which have too much cellulose fiber, such that

when fire does ignite, it has catastrophic effects.

Mr. SMITH. And maybe Chief Bosworth, if that gets down to you,

also, give the committee an idea of where we have gone as far as

timber harvesting on Federal forest lands over the last century.

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, in terms of timber harvest, we restarted to

increase the amount of timber harvested from the National Forest

after World War II, and we reached a peak of probably about 12

billion board feet a year during the 1980’s, and then began to reduce that amount to where we sell about 2 billion board feet a year

now. A lot of that has to do with social values, what people wanted

from the national forests. Every administration, both Democrat and

Republican administrations with bipartisan support through those

years, supported in some cases increased timber harvest for a variety of different reasons.

But today, we look at the forests in a little bit different way because social values and people’s desires of the national forest have

changed. But the main thing we are trying to do right now then

is to try to have healthy forests, and again, I believe that in order

to have that, we need to do active management, particularly in

these dry pine forests, so that we can get fire back into those fire

dependent ecosystems in a controlled manner.

Mr. SMITH. Can Mr. Roussopoulos give us a short response, Mr.

Chairman, to the questions, and maybe Secretary Watson?

The CHAIRMAN. Please, without objection.

Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. Thank you. I guess I would rise to the challenge of responding in an abstract way on this one. It seems to me

it comes down to what people value from their forests, and that is

central to the notion of sustainability. I believe the balance that

you are seeking is the balance that will provide for the values that

people want from their forests today and in a way that ensures

that future generations can derive their values as well. Now, that

implies some understanding of how these natural systems or systems affected by humankind will respond to the way that we manage them or don’t manage them and how that translates itself into

production of the values that people want from them. And it is

going to be a different answer in every part of the country and in

every social institution that you seek advice from.

19

Ms. WATSON. I would just add to that what everyone else has

said. I think the role of science is an important one in achieving

that balance. The USGS, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Department of Interior, together with the Bureau of Land Management, work together on these questions. We don’t have all the answers, we will never have perfect knowledge, but I think we have

improved knowledge over what we have had in the last 100 years

to try and achieve a balance. And we can’t go back to the time of

Adam and the Garden of Eden and let nature work. We have to

put our values as a society and what we want, and our values have

changed over the last 30 years, what is important to us, and we

need to manage our forests and rangelands to recognize those values, introduce national processes, but at the same time, recognize

that the West has changed. People live now in the forest and natural fire would be unacceptable for some of the reasons that Representative Janklow laid out, health reasons.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from

North Carolina, Mr. Ballance.

Mr. BALLANCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a good bit

of forest, private and public, in North Carolina. And it seems to me

that management sounds good. In my mind, I think the public is

interested in what is going to happen to the private logging and is

this change going to mean a substantial increase in going into our

forests and just cutting—whoever can help me out on that?

Mr. REY. Well, I will take a stab at that. Depending on where

you are at and what the forests look like, making the forests

healthier with regard to fire is inevitably going to result in some

material being removed. Now, there are forests that are not in fire

regions where fire is that frequent, and in those cases, you are

probably not going to see a lot of that. But in the areas where we

have frequent fires and we have stands of trees that are unnaturally dense, where we have thousands of trees per acre, where historically, there might have been like 20 or 30 trees per acre, there

is only one way to get from a couple of thousand to 20 or 30, and

that is to remove the ones that you need to remove in order to

bring that area back into some semblance of balance so that fire

can thereafter burn through those stands in a low intensity fashion

that is not destructive.

So yes, while our primary objective is to improve the health of

the forest, and the quality of the forest, and the integrity of the

systems that we leave behind, this will mean, inevitably, some

more material being taken off.

Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Chairman, a follow-up. Is that where the rub

comes in between those folks who may be opposed to this legislation and those who support it? I can’t think that people—if you

have unhealthy trees, that doesn’t seem to be a problem. But if you

have healthy trees, and they are sitting in the forest, and people

want to go and look at them, and hug them, and then those trees

get cut down, some people are going to be upset.

Mr. REY. That is where the rub comes in, and the difficulty is

that it is not always apparent or always a matter of immediate

agreement as to what is healthy and what is not. A stand of trees

in an area that is characterized by frequent fires, that has small

land that are densely packed trees, there are a couple thousand per

20

acre, may have trees that are green and healthy looking, but inevitably, they are going to become drought stressed because there are

too many of them there, and as they become drought stressed, they

will be more subject to insect infestations. That, in fact, is why we

have fairly rapidly moving insect infestations in many parts of the

South and the West. And as the insects work them over, they are

going to be more susceptible to fire.

Mr. BALLANCE. One final question, I think, Mr. Chairman. Will

this be one national policy, or can the folks in North Carolina, Doctor, look at our forests and have input and make some decisions

on what North Carolina, or define what North Carolina values are

on those trees?

Mr. REY. This will be a policy that will have to be driven by the

local needs of the forest systems in question. The same approach

isn’t going to necessarily work in the southern Appalachians as will

work in the Ponderosa Pine Forest of Arizona and New Mexico because they are different systems with different ecological needs. So

it is going to have to be a locally based—even if we weren’t trying

to involve the local public to a greater degree in coming to some

agreement on what needs to be done, which we are trying to do—

but even if we weren’t trying to do that, it would still have to be

locally based because the same procedures, the same prescriptions,

the same changes aren’t going to be equally applicable across the

country.

Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. May I offer comment? I believe your district

is in the coastal plain of North Carolina. Is that correct?

Mr. BALLANCE. Yes, eastern North Carolina.

Mr. ROUSSOPOULOS. Very little of the forest land within your district is in Federal ownership. It would almost all be in private ownership, largely, occupied by long leaf pine in the past century, and

probably largely in loblolly pine today, I think characterizing Mr.

Rey’s description of much more densely stocked forests than would

have been Savannah under the natural condition and much more

susceptible to pine beetle attack than the natural ecosystem would

have been. But unless my understanding is incorrect, the private

land policies and practices would not be directly affected by this

measure. Am I right on that?

Mr. REY. That is correct.

Mr. BALLANCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Minnesota, the chairman of the Forestry Subcommittee, Mr. Gutknecht.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In listening to some

of the earlier discussion, I am reminded of the story that most of

us know about the preacher who came out and visited the farmer,

and it was a beautiful farm. And at the end of the little tour, the

preacher turned to the farmer and he said, God has blessed you

with a beautiful farm. And the farmer thought about that for a

minute, and he said, well, yes, He has, but he said, you should

have seen it when He had it all to himself.

It seems to me that that is where we come back to this. If you

view the responsibility of we, the Federal Government and the people, to manage the forests, it seems to me that you come to the logical conclusion to use commonsense and go about this

21

I want to come back to some examples, because I think we

haven’t really talked about the problem. And let me ask Mr.

Bosworth—I understand that the Forest Service manages 155 national forests, and each must complete a forest plan periodically.

On average, how long does it take to complete one of these plans?

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, in the past, it has been taking anywhere

from 4 to about 10 years, probably averaging around 8 years and

increasing, and that doesn’t count the appeal and litigation process

that we go through sometimes. So the problem is that it is taking

us, by the time we have worked our way through, 8 to 10 years to

do a 15-year forest plan to get it completed.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. And share with the committee why it takes so

long. Now, I just want to know, for the benefit of the committee,

we won World War II in less than 5 years.

Mr. BOSWORTH. I think President Kennedy said that he wanted

to put somebody on the moon and return to the earth, and it took

less time than it takes us to do a forest plan. I think the reason

is the reason that was mentioned a little earlier, that Representative Janklow mentioned that it takes almost 700 or 800 different

steps to make a decision through our processes these days. And we

have done some fairly intensive evaluation of our decision making

process through our forest plans as well as our projects, and it really is a number of processes that have added on over the years to

try to assure that we are never going to make a mistake. And then

also, to try to assure that we can win in an appeal or in litigation.

So what happens is you get additional case law. It kind of raises

the bar for the amount of analysis that we are going to do because

you have a new decision in court, and then another one, and then

another one, until finally, we have ended up stocking on so many

things that it takes an extremely long time to get the job done.

Now, we have proposed some new regulations for planning that

I believe would modernize the process. They are out in draft right

now. We will be making some—evaluating the public comment, but

the objective there is to get the timeframe back down to 2 or 3

years. My belief is that a member of the public, if somebody wants

to be involved in forest planning process and decisions, you have

to be a paid person in order to be able to sustain it over 10 years.

So the person down the street who cares, who just wants to be involved, can’t do it; not when it takes 7, 8, 9, 10 years to work your

way through the process.

So we need to be able to involve people up front, do it in a short

period of time, and then move forward to implement these forest

plans.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Can you talk a little bit about environmental

impact statements? It is my understanding that you continue to do

assessments even on plans which you probably are never going to

implement, and that adds an enormous amount of bureaucratic red

tape to all of this.

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, our process, for any process we use for all

projects, everything we do, and there is different degrees of analysis as well as documentation that we are required to do. Everything from what we call categorical exclusions, which exclude us—

we are excluded from the requirement to document an environmental impact statement, we still do analysis, clear up to the more

22

complicated projects where we do environmental impact statements. And those are the ones that take the longest time, take the

most work.

What we are trying to do is find—there are some projects that

we do, that we do repetitively. We do them over and over again,

and we evaluate and monitor, and we see that we are not having

any significant effect on the environment. Well, after you have

done some of those projects a few hundred times or a few thousand

times, and find that you are not having any significant effect, it

seems reasonable that you could lower the bar in terms of documentation, and that is where the categorical exclusions come in. So

it is our effort to try to invoke more of these categorical exclusions

for projects that we know through experiences and through monitoring they are not going to have significant effects, to reduce the

amount of time and energy and cost for getting these projects done.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. But what we are really talking about is eliminating the possibility—well, not eliminating, but making it more

difficult for people to just throw sand in the gears year after year

after year to keep us from properly managing the forests. Isn’t that

what this is really all about?

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, I think in part that is what it is about, but

in part, it is to try to bring people together in a more collaborative

way. In part, it is to get people to come together up front, to participate in the decisions and in the analysis. I mean, the best way

to come to agreement is to get people out on the ground. The second way is to work in a conference room. And the last, the worst

way, is to do it in a courtroom. We need to get more people out on

the ground looking at the condition of the land, and try to come in

a collaborative way to come to an agreement what the desired future is, and then discuss the ways to achieve that desired future.

And we need to have processes that are incentives for working that

way rather than distancing us, and that is what we are really trying to do.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. All right. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Case.

Mr. CASE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am afraid to my State probably ranks 50th among the States just in terms of timber management and these issues. Nonetheless, I guess that gives me complete

objectivity in my questioning. Just some pure science questions. I

think there was a picture there of the Bitterroot, as I recall, from

100 years ago versus recently, and the 100 years ago showed pretty

open spaces under the trees. Was that because of the evolution of

just natural processes from fire or had there already been in that

situation controlled burns or any kind of intervention nationally?

Ms. WATSON. Well, I think that something that a lot of people

don’t remember is that man has been on this continent for a long

time, and the Native Americans used fire as a management tool for

game, for clearing areas for agriculture, and so I can’t say in particular as to whether or not the Bitterroot had that influence, but

I suspect it did because there were native peoples living in the Bitterroot. And also, the natural fires would have made the forest look

like that. There has been a lot of research on the history of fire

that has been done by some scientists and have demonstrated that

23

fire, both introduced by man and natural, made the forest patchy

and open, sunlight for grasses.

Mr. CASE. I guess I think where I am trying to get to is I think

that an observation, the people who are skeptical of the bill seem

to acknowledge that there is a need in the urban interface, perhaps, for streamlined procedures to allow for culling out the undergrowth. But the fear is that the initiative goes too far to the other

direction in, essentially, exempting these processes from legitimate

environment controls and converting the use of the forest through

a purely economic perspective.

I think where I am trying to go is if we were to just say that

we were narrowing this down to the urban interface, and that we

were going to provide the exemptions in the bill, and the Stewardship Contracting, and the rest of the tools that you want, what percentage of the overall forests would we be talking about, just overall? How much of the problem is immediate to where we live comes

into contact with where these forests are and how much is kind of

beyond that pail and should be left to perhaps the natural processes?

Ms. WATSON. I guess I would like to address the predicate of

your question before I address the percentage, and that is that the

problem is only around the wildland-urban interface. This isn’t just

a problem of people and their property. It is a problem of disease,

for example, and insects. You look at the statistics. I talked about

how it grew from 100 acres to 350,000 acres infested by insects in

less than a year. Treating around the wildland-urban interface

won’t address insect infestation.

Mr. CASE. But from a science perspective, I guess, isn’t the natural evolution, the natural course of things, just allowing fires to

take place, isn’t that a form of insect control in the forest?

Ms. WATSON. I think that is a pretty harsh system of control.

Again, given the modern force that we live in, people now live in

these forests. People that live there are susceptible to lung impacts.

People have homes in the forest and the other thing to think about

is in the West, our water supplies come from the national forests

and from public lands. If we only treated in the wildland-urban

interface, we wouldn’t address the fire and the sediment impacts

that happen to the municipal water supplies that are far distant

from the wildland-urban interface.

Mr. CASE. But I guess by that measure, we should, basically,

allow—I mean, you talk in your testimony, it is very nice testimony, about kind of priorities, you now, we are going to work our

way into this, and of course, we want to take care of the urban

interface first, and we have got some concerns with the insect control, which I grant you are legitimate. And in order to accomplish

this, we want, essentially, expanded authority to waive some of the

environmental controls and to allow for private utilization of the

undergrowth or the resources, cull it out, take some of the valuable

timber to help pay for that. And I guess by your—and the dilemma

here policy-wise is that makes a lot of sense in the urban interface.

But by your argument, that would really apply to, really, anyone

of our forests because, as you say, there is going to be some interaction with people no matter where we are. So is there any kind

of dividing line where we can say here we are just going to let natVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
24

ural processes run their course, which is a part of the scientific debate that other people hold to, but here we have no choice but to

control it around towns in southern California or wherever they

might be?

Ms. WATSON. Yes, and I think there is a dividing line. First, the

National Fire Plan and direction from Congress has focused our efforts in the wildland-urban interface. We have been given direction

to spend 60 percent of the dollars that you have given us on

wildland-urban interface, so that is a direction that we are continuing forward with. The second thing is that the use of wildland fire

is integral to how we are addressing this problem, and that is referred to as natural fie. There are areas where we will use wildland

fire and the form of prescribed fire to burn and take its natural

course, clearly, in areas like wilderness areas; national parks have

frequently used that tool. So yes, there are dividing lines.

Number 1, Our focus will always be on saving lives. That will be

our prime focus. I would just conclude by saying that we are not

asking to waive any environmental laws. All environmental laws

are going to be complied with. What we are asking is to use some

of the tools that the National Environmental Policy Act already

gives us to expedite processes. But we are not proposing to waive

the Endangered Species Act, or the Clean Water Act, or the Clean

Air Act, so that will conclude my answer.

Mr. CASE. I just think that probably needs to be a little more

clear, because in the under-rumblings of people that have some

form of dissatisfaction with the proposal, if there are those kind of

misconceptions, they definitely have to be cleared up.

Mr. BOSWORTH. Could I just add one thing to the discussion

here? An awful lot of these fires, these catastrophic fires that we

saw in the year 2000 and 2002, started back outside the wildlandurban interface and burned to the communities. We also have situations where the watersheds have been, the municipal watersheds,

have be been affected. It would be outside the so called wildlandurban interface, but when you look at the Heyman fire outside of

Denver, a good portion of that is outside of what a lot of people define as a wildland-urban interface, but it is in that municipal watershed and it is going to cost a huge amount of money to clean

up that watershed that produces an awful lot of the water for the

city of Denver.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. The gentleman’s time has expired.

The gentleman from South Dakota.

Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I could, Mr. Rey, you

talked—I believe it was you that talked about the fires in Quebec

affecting Washington, DC’s opacity level, visual level. How far is

Quebec from here?

Mr. REY. Over 1,000 miles, in any case.

Mr. JANKLOW. And these fires that burn in the West, that start

in Idaho, Utah, California, Oregon, Washington, et cetera, the prevailing winds blow west to east, generally. What is your experience

as to how far it takes particulates and really affects the air quality,

for how great a distance when these huge configurations are going?

Mr. REY. Last year, our fires in the southwest had some visibility

effects in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. And in 2000, the city

of Chicago was affected by the fires.

25

Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, given the nature of the condition these forests

are in, in the West, and I am only familiar with the West. I am

not familiar with other forests. I don’t know them on the east coast,

Hawaii, elsewhere. Would just an urban interface aspect solve the

problem with respect to air quality, water quality, safety to human

beings, safety to endangered species, and those types of things?

Mr. REY. No. The best dividing line about whether to treat a forest or not is not whether it is in the wildland-urban interface, but

rather, whether the forest is in a condition that makes it susceptible to the kind of fire that is going to have the sort of air quality

effects that we are talking about, or the water quality effects that

we have observed, or the impacts on threatened or endangered species. That is the dividing line.

Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Bosworth, are you familiar with that Illinois

court decision by the Federal District Court years ago that involved

CEQ? Are any of you folks familiar with that decision?

Mr. BOSWORTH. That would be the Hartwood decision?

Mr. JANKLOW. Yes. Now, as I understood it, how large is that national forest down there in Illinois? Do you know?

Mr. BOSWORTH. Shawnee National Forest, it is a relatively small

national forest. I don’t know the number of acres. My guess would

be less than 500,000.

Mr. JANKLOW. Now, as I understand it, tell me if I am incorrect,

we have a national forest in Illinois, a small one, a relatively small

one at least as forests in the West go, and a lawsuit was filed

against the EQ regulations. A single Federal Judge ruled the CEQ

regulations illegal and a decision was made by the then administration not to appeal that decision to the Court of Appeals, and ultimately, the Supreme Court. And once the time for appeal ran,

and by the way, the Federal Judge in that case made his decision

binding nationwide. So didn’t we end up with a decision where a

single Federal Judge, basically, on a reg lawsuit where no appeal

was filed at the appellate level or higher, ended up making a decision nationwide as to what the law was or wasn’t for this country

with respect to aspects of the regulations of the Agriculture Department? Have I got that about right?

Mr. REY. That is essentially correct.

Mr. JANKLOW. Some people say some of this stuff is laughable.

Is there a way that we could adjust the statute so that we could

let people vote in areas, and those that think it is laughable can

leave their forests like they are, and those of us that don’t think

it is laughable, we can have our forests worked on so our people’s

homes quite burning, and our babies lungs can develop a little better, and our people with emphysema don’t die earlier, and our

water quality that we drink is better, and we don’t have as many

carcinogens in the water as the water mixes with these ashes after

a fire. Is there a way we could separate these out in a practical

way in the legislation?

Mr. REY. I doubt it. And of course, this is a question that, with

all due respect, you are better equipped to answer than I am. But

historically, we have not passed laws that applied differentially to

the individual national forests.

Mr. JANKLOW. Right. Let me, if I can, ask you this. Mr.

Bosworth, have you been a firefighter in the past?

26

Mr. BOSWORTH. Yes, I have. I started when I was 17 on a fire

crew.

Mr. JANKLOW. And you are familiar with, I think you showed

there, or somebody explained how fires can spot forwards. Isn’t

that correct?

Mr. BOSWORTH. Somebody was talking about that, but the fires

during these very difficult fire seasons——

Mr. JANKLOW. Where you have a forest fire raging in a forest,

towering inferno, high plume, what is your experience as to how far

forward that fire can spot to endanger other property, and more

importantly, to endanger firefighters and people trying to deal with

the fire?

Mr. BOSWORTH. Well, let me say first, since we are talking about

from my experience, my experience at throwing dirt and being out

on the fire line goes back a few years, and we saw nothing in those

days like what our firefighters are faced with today because of the

buildup of fuels. And so while I have been out observing fires in

the more recent years, they are much—they move further, faster,

and they are much more intense than the ones that I was out on

the fire line dealing with.

Mr. JANKLOW. Can I ask one more question?

Mr. BOSWORTH. I would like to get some better information, specifically. I know of half-a-mile, mile, and maybe farther out where

fire spots, depending upon the wind conditions, the fuel conditions,

and whatnot.

Mr. JANKLOW. Let me ask you one more question, sir, with permission. You are familiar with the Jasper fire that was in the

Black Hills?

Mr. BOSWORTH. That is correct, yes.

Mr. JANKLOW. Am I correct that that fire, given the climatic conditions, the nature of the forest, and that fire, it moved approximately 10 miles in 1 day?

Mr. BOSWORTH. I believe that is right, yes.

Mr. JANKLOW. No further questions. Thank you.

Mr. GUTKNECHT [presiding]. We have approximately 10 minutes

remaining before the vote and I am going to yield to the gentleman

from California, Mr. Thompson. It is his turn to ask questions.

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. We are going to have to recess and move quickly to get over to vote on the rule.

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of

questions. I can’t ask them in the 5-minute time, but I would like

to get through some of them and submit the other for a written response if I could. And I am very concerned that people up in my

part of California and up into Oregon are equally as concerned

about how this legislation would impact fisheries. And specifically,

sedimentation in the rivers, and any areas where there is going to

be additional roads constructed, how this will provide for fish

friendly road construction. And I think I am safe in saying, as it

is written now, it doesn’t. So I guess I would be more interested

in hearing how you would propose that we could amend that to address those concerns.

Mr. REY. Neither of the administrative initiatives that we have

proposed nor the provisions of the bill that has been introduced

27

would allow any expedited procedures to be used in a project that

involves new road construction. So the issue of constructing new

roads is off the table as far as these initiatives are concerned.

Mr. THOMPSON. In the areas that don’t allow that now?

Mr. REY. Correct.

Mr. THOMPSON. But in the areas where there would be, would

you be amenable to provide in some protection to make sure that

these are, for lack of a better term, fish friendly?

Mr. REY. We are engaged, both of our departments are engaged

in a long-term effort to look at our existing roads and to right-size

the culvert so that we have better fish passage.

Mr. THOMPSON. And you would be willing to work with me and

the——

Mr. REY. Absolutely.

Mr. THOMPSON [continuing]. In the bill to craft that amendment?

And then I am concerned about the thinning that would take place

along the watershed. It seems to me that we could put in some sort

of—and there is precedent for doing this in other areas—put in

some sort of buffer zones around the 1’s, 2’s, and 3 class streams

that would prevent any type of sedimentation problems or any upslope problems that would add to the sedimentation of the fish concerns, and I would be interested in hearing if you would be willing

to work on that, also.

Mr. REY. I think what we would like to do is to sit down with

you and talk about how these projects are laid out, and then we

can evaluate whether the projects are a risk for sedimentation or

whether inaction is a bigger risk.

Mr. THOMPSON. So we will be able to see a forest by forest look

at how this plan would come into play?

Mr. REY. Sure. I think we can sit down with you on your forest,

in particular, and walk through some projects.

Mr. THOMPSON. The other area where I had concern is there

seems to be some disparity between the biomass title and the watershed forestry assistance title, where the latter allows for, or I

guess engages more public input in regard to this area, and it

seems to me that we should have the same thing for the biomassing component as well.

Mr. REY. I think that the biomass title is more or less value neutral in terms of public participation. It is more of an authorization

to give, for us, if money is appropriated to make some biomass

grants, but certainly, in the course of undertaking that authority,

we would follow normal public involvement, public participation

procedures, or we could look at the other title and see whether

there is something we want to draw from it. That certainly would

be——

Mr. THOMPSON. It just seems to me that it is in everybody’s interest to engage the public as much as possible.

Mr. REY. Absolutely.

Mr. THOMPSON. And clean water is very important. Don’t take

this the wrong way, but the biomass stuff and the thinning aspect

of the bill is equally as important to large components of the public.

I think we should bring them in. And I want to just touch on something that Mr. Case had mentioned about the urban interface and

the watershed stuff. It seems to me that you can achieve both—adVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
28

dress both his concerns and achieve your goals if you want to reduce fire protection and you want to reduce the ramification of

burning forests in regard to health, that you can achieve that in

areas that are important to watershed areas and the urban interface areas so you still get the cleaner air, you do the fire protection,

plus you protect more of the public, plus you protect the public’s

water sources. And it would seem to me that that would be a priority over other areas. And just to say that we are here to thin the

forest, to make the air cleaner, and reduce fire value, you can do

the same thing in areas that would have a second bang for your

back, and I think that should be somehow prioritized.

Mr. REY. We have been expressed throughout in identifying the

wildland-urban interface as a priority, but we have also been

equally expressed in saying that there are important ecological values that occur outside the wildland-urban interface that justify

treatments there as well.

Mr. THOMPSON. I appreciate it. I will submit the other questions

that I have, and will you get in touch with me, Secretary Rey so

we could work this stuff out?

Mr. REY. Yes.

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, the gentleman’s time has expired and

there may be some other questions that Members would like to

submit, but I will formally release this panel. We will come to the

next panel when we come back from the vote. The committee

stands in recess for approximately 20 minutes.

[Recess]

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will reconvene

We would now like to welcome our second and final panel. Mr.

Steven Koehn, State forester of Maryland, on behalf of the National

Association of State Foresters of Annapolis, MD; Dr. John Helms,

professor emeritus of forest science of the University of California

Berkeley, representing the Society of American Foresters; Mr.

James Walls, executive Ddrector of Lake County Resources Initiative in partnership with Sustainable Northwest, he is from Lake

County, OR; and Mr. Jeff Hardesty, U.S. director of Global Fire

Initiative for the Nature Conservancy of Gainesville, FL.

Mr. Koehn, we welcome you and remind all of the panelists that

their entire statement will be made a part of the record and we

would ask you to limit your comments to 5 minutes. Starting with

Mr. Koehn, welcome.

STATEMENT OF STEVEN W. KOEHN, STATE FORESTER, STATE

OF MARYLAND, CHAIRMAN, WATER RESOURCES COMMITTEE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE FORESTERS, ANNAPOLIS, MD

Mr. KOEHN. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members

of the committee. My name is Steve Koehn, and on behalf of the

National Association of State Foresters, I am pleased to testify in

support of the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative. I am representing NASF in my role as chairman of the Resource Committee, and we strongly believe that the concepts of healthy forests

and healthy watersheds are intertwined.

29

NASF has been deeply involved in development and now implementation of the National Fire Plan. We support the recent administrative efforts to facilitate implementation of the 10-year strategy

and we support legislative efforts that are consistent with the 10-

year strategy and implementation plan. We believe that the

Healthy Forest Restoration Act introduced by you, Mr. Chairman,

and members of the committee, support these efforts.

State foresters recognize the urgency of reducing hazards to communities at risk of catastrophic fire. We must address hazards

within the wildland-urban interface, but we must also look at the

larger landscape and address the forest health and watershed

issues on all ownerships.

NASF recommends including the Watershed Forestry Assistance

Program in any Healthy Forest legislation. Because of my long involvement with the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort, I am particularly supportive of this program. It was considered last year as

part of the farm bill, where it received bipartisan support in the

Senate. The Watershed Forestry Assistance Program brings a national emphasis to the Healthy Forest Initiative.

Although ownership patterns and local conditions differ greatly

between regions, the protection and management of watersheds for

the production of clean water is of critical importance everywhere.

In the eastern United States, where I live and work, this is particularly true since 90 percent of the forest land is privately owned.

The private forests of the Northeast and Southeast, together,

produce two-thirds of the water we need for recreation and for fish

and wildlife habitat. They also provide the drinking water supply

for millions of Americans in the East. In addition to environmental

benefits, these same private ownerships produce 50 percent of the

Nation’s wood and paper products.

The health of eastern forests is threatened by invasive pests and

exotic species, uncontrolled fire, overstocking, poor regeneration,

and land use fragmentation. The conservation, restoration, and

stewardship of healthy private forest land is viewed as crucial to

watershed health in the United States.

In the West, the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program is no

less important. For example, it can provide assistance to landowners for the rehabilitation and restoration of burned watersheds

to limit soil erosion and benefit community drinking water supplies.

NASF also supports forest biomass utilization as a tool to help

reduce unnaturally dense fuels and the risks to communities and

watersheds. Using forest biomass could be an effective way to reduce the cost of treating hazardous fuels. Using noncommercial

wood products can bring environmental benefits, including renewable energy, lower risk of fire, and reduced carbon emissions.

Enhancing research programs to address forest pests will also

help carry out the Healthy Forest Initiatives on all lands. Providing additional assistance to implementing pest management strategies would be helpful for all landowners while serving the public

interest.

For example, Maryland has been dealing with hemlock wooly

adelgid for several years now. If left unchecked, naturally occurring

stands of hemlock, which are important in helping to maintain cold

30

water fisheries, will be impacted with the same detrimental effects

seen in adjacent mid-Atlantic States. Many other forest pests significantly impact our Nation’s forests, from the southern pine beetle to the non-native emerald ash borer in the Midwest, to sudden

oak death in the West, just to name a few. Accelerating the work

to address these and other forest pests is critical to improving the

health of our Nation’s forests.

Legislation that will enhance the ability of the public and private

land managers to improve forest health and provide for healthy

watersheds will benefit both the public and the environment.

On behalf of the National Association of State Foresters, I urge

the committee to include all of the above programs in legislation

to carry out the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative. In particular, the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program will provide benefits nationwide. The improvement of watershed conditions on private forestlands will complement the other goals of the Healthy

Forest Initiative by enhancing water quality generated from our

Nation’s forestlands.

Our abundant and magnificent forests helped to build our great

Nation. Wise and sustainable forest policy will help to assure its

continued strength.

I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to testify

today and I would be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Koehn appears at the conclusion

of the hearing.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Koehn. Dr. Helms, welcome. We

are glad to have your testimony as well.

STATEMENT OF JOHN A. HELMS, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF

FOREST SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY,

SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS, BERKELEY, CA

Mr. HELMS. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name

is John Helms and I am professor emeritus of forest science at the

University of California, Berkeley. I am here today representing

the Society of American Foresters. The Society has about 17,000

members dedicated to advancing science, technology, education,

and the practice of forestry in the United States for the benefit of

society at large. One of our core values is sustaining forest resources by simultaneously meeting environmental, economic, and

societal goals and constraints, and I am very pleased to have this

opportunity to testify on this important topic of forest health.

Now, I would like to address 8 points. The first one is that forest

health is very difficult to define. The concept is imprecise, it is

value laden, and it is very controversial. And there are at least 18

different definitions of forest health in the literature. The Society

of American Foresters holds the view that forest health is a perceived condition, involving consideration of many ecosystem components.

Consideration of forest health also involves what constitutes a

forest. More precisely, we should decide whether we are really concerned about the health of trees, the health of stands, or the health

of forests. And this is we need to decide the spatial scale over

which health is being considered. For example, an individual tree

31

or a stand of trees could be deemed unhealthy, but the forest as

a whole could be viewed as healthy.

And similarly, and equally importantly, we have to consider the

temporal aspects, whether health is being considered at one point

in time, over a period of decades, or over centuries. For example,

following a windstorm or following insect attack, a particular forest

may be perceived as unhealthy, however, a decade or two later it

could regain the attributes of health. And basically, tree health,

stand health, or forest health, in a similar fashion to the consideration of the health of human individuals, or human communities,

or human regions, is basically a function of the resilience to withstand stress or the capacity to recover from disturbance.

The second point is that forestland in the United States is owned

by a mix of Federal, State, industrial, family, tribal, and trust institutions. And each of these owners has different objectives and responsibilities for land management, and therefore, their forests

have different structural attributes. And consequently, forest

health issues commonly differ among ownerships and require individual professional analyses and prescription.

Third, forest health is a very complex concept and it is interpreted differently by different people, depending upon their viewpoint. It is, therefore, imperative to agree on which definition or

which interpretation is to be used before one can conduct meaningful discussion or even craft satisfactory legislation.

The fourth point, of all the characteristics of forest condition, the

dominant factor determining vigor is stand density or the number

of trees per unit area. In dense, unmanaged stands, or as the result

of fire exclusion policies, trees are often very close together, have

small crowns and very small root systems. And consequently, these

stands are very low in vigor, are susceptible to drought, insects,

disease, and catastrophic fire.

The fifth point is that natural stand development from regeneration to maturity includes a period that is commonly many decades

or a century, depending upon site quality, that is characterized by

high, natural tree mortality and a reduction in the number of trees

from many thousands to less than a hundred. This is a high risk

period. In modern times, when our forests are fragmented, contain

dependent rural communities and other assets, and have intrinsic

values for wildlife, aesthetics, and recreation, it is not acceptable

to allow them to remain in an unhealthy overstocked and high risk

condition.

Sixth, it has been demonstrated that prudent forest management

and stewardship can lower the risk of unacceptable loss of property

through judicious thinning and prescribed burning. A healthy forest is a sustainable forest.

Seventh, prudent forest management leading to healthy, sustainable forests requires investment in research and monitoring, and

increased research effort is critically needed to obtain a new knowledge on how to develop and maintain healthy forests.

And finally, there are certain actions that we believe Congress

and the administration can take to give forest managers the tools

to improve conditions on national forests and private lands while

maintaining both environmental protection and public participation. Many of the laws that apply to Federal forest management

32

are outdated and need revision to ensure consistency with court decisions and other factors. Changes are also needed in a number of

regulatory measures that often cause unnecessary delays to time

sensitive management projects. And we are encouraged by the efforts made through the 2002 farm bill, Healthy Forest Initiative,

and other mechanisms. However, a long-term solution that would

change both regulations and laws is needed on both public and private lands, and the Society of American Foresters will continue to

offer support among these concerns.

So Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I thank you for

the opportunity to appear.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Helms appears at the conclusion

of the hearing.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Helms. And now we have Mr.

James Walls. Mr. Walls, I want to welcome you, also, on behalf of

your own Congressman, Greg Walden, who is no longer a member

of this committee but is vitally interested in the subject matter. So

we are glad to have you with us.

STATEMENT OF JAMES K. WALLS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

LAKE COUNTY RESOURCES INITIATIVE, IN PARTNERSHIP

WITH SUSTAINABLE NORTHWEST, LAKE COUNTY, OR

Mr. WALLS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and fellow committee

members. I am from Lakeview, OR, Lakeview County, much like

John Day that the chairman talked about earlier today, a very

small community in Oregon, where 75 percent of our lands are

Federal lands, and that is made up, primarily, of the Forest Service

and BLM. Our forests are comprised of ponderosa pine, lodgepole

pine, white fir at he higher elevations, and juniper. At one time we

supported five mills in the county, and now we are down to one.

Through fire suppression and high grading of ponderosa pine, we

have created a dense, disease susceptible, highly fire prone forest.

In a study we just completed with the University of Washington,

we found that the Fremont National Forest is 63 percent in the

high to moderate fire hazard category. We growth model projections out 30 years and the moderate climbs very rapidly to the

high, creating even more disastrous conditions in the future.

The tool we utilized in doing this is a state-of-art tool, done by

Yale University, University of Washington, and Pacific Northwest

Research Station, Landscape Management System, LMS. It allows

us to plan a forest for ecological and economic objectives over 100

plus years. We did simulations of what it would take to remove

that fire threat and thin it down. We found that we couldn’t just

take real small diameter material, 9 inch or less, or even just 12

inch and greater material. It takes a combination of both small and

some large to open up that canopy to really reduce the fire threat

and make a more natural condition.

As we looked at this and what we want to do, what would it take

to accomplish this goal over 20 years. We found that it would create 150 to 250 direct jobs in Lake County and twice as many indirect jobs. That is substantial when you consider our workforce is

only 3,300 people. It would mean removing approximately 250,000

to 350,000 tons of biomass per year. We can do this, and what we

also showed in this simulation, we can do this while we restore our

33

forest to more natural fire regimes, more natural species and structure characteristics that we would have found common 100 years

ago, and thus, we feel creating a win-win for the environment and

the economy.

But when you consider the size of material off these dense stands

that have accumulated over the past 50 years and the volume to

get them more back to natural conditions, what are you going to

use that material for? We believe, depending on the size of the

community, a small 5 to 25 megawatt power plants are definitely

a part of that solution. The problem is that these plants need approximately 6 cents a kilowatt hour to break even and current

prices don’t substantiate that. Unlike large power plants, the

smaller plants do not have the cash flow to operate under these low

market conditions. It needs sometimes subsidy to make it work.

In the farm bill you have looked at 10 tons and it didn’t pass,

now there is 20 tons. I do caution you when you look at this to look

at biomass, not just a subsidy to that one, because that could be

a favor against other industries, but to look at the subsidy to remove thinnings and not just a particular industry. Another thing

we might want to look at is green energy credits are a premium

on that at the price of 5 to 6 cents. Or possibly, the emerging carbon market that has already reached $4 billion internationally this

year with projections to $10 billion in the future.

The problem we have in our county is the Forest Service is

spending the funds on fires and very little on thinning. On the Fremont-Winema National Forest, we have over 20,000 acres of

thinnings NEPA approved and on the shelf and no money to thin

them. In thinning, when you look at small diameter, it may cost

you $345, but let us look at what the cost of doing nothing is. In

Washington and Oregon we looked at fires from 1992 to 2002; the

cost of fighting fires ranged from $271 an acre to $564 an acre, and

the loss of timber value ranged from $978 to $2,022 an acre. This

does not include regeneration costs, lost property costs, loss of life,

and other associated costs.

Considering all these costs, investments in thinnings and reducing fuel loads is wise, both economically and environmentally. Considering cheaper treatments versus watching the West being devastated by catastrophic fires is a good investment. Lake County has

one person per square mile, a population of 750. We just finished

fire refresher training for private contractors and their employees;

over 145 attended. I find it sad that firefighting is becoming our

largest industry, and I can tell you that is not sustainable forestry.

What I have briefly brought to you today is a way that we can

boost our economy, create jobs, improve forest health, and just

plain do the right thing for our families, our communities, and our

forests, and I thank you for your time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Walls appears at the conclusion

of the hearing.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Walls. And now I would also like

to welcome Mr. Jeffrey Hardesty. Mr. Hardesty.

34

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY HARDESTY, U.S. DIRECTOR, GLOBAL

FIRE INITIATIVE, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY, GAINESVILLE, FL

Mr. HARDESTY. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

thanks for the opportunity to provide testimony today. I am the

U.S. director of the Nature Conservancy’s Global Fire Initiative. I

have worked in a variety of capacities for the Conservancy for 11-

plus years, including collaborating with a diversity of partners to

restore damaged ecosystems across the United States.

A little personal anecdote. In my family, fire has both personal

and professional implications. My great-great grandfather and

great uncle died while fighting the big Idaho fires in 1910 that Gifford Pinchot used as leverage to create the National Forest Service.

My father fought wildfires in Oregon and Idaho for the CCC’s during the Great Depression. So with a bit of irony, it would seem I

have spent the last 11 years of my career promoting fire across the

United States.

The Nature Conservancy is dedicated to protecting the diversity

of life on Earth. The Conservancy has more than 1 million individual members and over 1,900 corporate sponsors. We currently have

programs in all 50 States and 30 nations, and to date, we have protected more than 160 million acres around the world. The Conservancy itself owns and manages some 1,400 preserves in this country. Our conservation work is grounded in sound science, strong

partnerships with other landowners, and tangible results at local

places.

For thousands of years, fires played a vital role in shaping North

American ecosystems. Nearly all terrestrial and many wetland systems experience fire at some interval, and many include plants and

animals adapted to or dependent on fire. When key attributes of a

fire-adapted ecosystem are altered, for example, by fire exclusion,

fires will burn unnaturally, resulting in long-term damage to ecosystems and sometimes to human communities.

In the United States, altered fire regimes are the result of more

than 100 years of fire suppression, often coupled with incompatible

forestry and grazing. We will not fix that problem overnight. Years

of active restoration, adaptive management research, and citizen

involvement will be required to protect human communities while

also restoring ecosystem health. It is imperative that we commit to

learning from both our successes and our missteps so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The Nature Conservancy has identified more than 107 million

acres of critical lands where altered fire regimes are seriously

threatening biodiversity. The problem is particularly acute in areas

where natural fires would occur frequently in a low intensity, such

as ponderosa pine in the West or longleaf pine in the south. The

trend in such areas is toward fires of increasing intensity and severity that threaten ecosystem health as well as life and property,

especially, now in the wildland-urban interface.

For the past 40 years, the Nature Conservancy has engaged in

a wide variety of ecological management activities, including managing thousands of prescribed fires to restore ecosystem health at

hundreds of sites across the United States. In doing this, we have

developed a conservation framework that relies on adaptive manVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
35

agement, including working from a landscape scale perspective,

working collaboratively with communities, setting measurable ecological goals and desired future conditions, monitoring to ensure

that those goals are being met, and when they are not, adapting

practices as necessary.

So based on this on-the-ground experience, we have these five

recommendations. First, the agency should prioritize hazardous

fuel reduction projects within the wildland-urban interface and

water supply areas. These areas should be narrowly defined, however. Although projects will be selected based on public safety, they

also can provide important lessons for managing larger landscapes.

Second, the agency should carry out a small number of fuel reduction demonstration projects beyond the wildland-urban interface. These areas should be selected based on the need for ecological restoration and their value in demonstrating how agencies,

communities, and scientists can work cooperatively in planning and

implementing fuel reduction on a landscape scale. Expedited approval practices are not necessary or appropriate in these areas.

Third, in all of these projects, agencies must use adaptive management so that it can learn from our actions to inform and then

guide future efforts. At a minimum, adaptive management must include clear ecological objectives and thoughtful cost-efficient monitoring of results.

Fourth, Congress needs to devote significantly more resources to

appropriate treatment and restoration of altered fire regimes. The

more that funds are diverted for suppression, the higher the longterm cost ecologically and financially.

Finally, Congress should consider some form of subsidy to develop facilities to utilize small diameter biomass. In the long run,

the absence of markets for millions of tons of small diameter trees

that currently have little economic value will be a major barrier to

restoration of larger landscapes. Where thinning is ecologically, scientifically, and socially desirable in concept, we support offsetting

the cost of services of marketable byproducts of restoration, especially, where these activities support small businesses and local job

creation.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the

opportunity to share our views.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hardesty appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Hardesty, and I thank all the

members of the panel for very helpful presentations. I promised the

gentleman from Georgia that I would yield to him first since he did

not get to participate in the first round, and I am doing so now.

The gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. BURNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I appreciate

the committee, and appreciate the opportunity to be here and understand more fully the issues that we are dealing with our national forest. I have the eastern part of Georgia. We have the Chattahoochee National Forest. We have the whole northern end of our

State that connects up to the Appalachians, and we have a huge

forest industry in Georgia.

I have received a number of calls saying they are concerned

about this initiative, the Healthy Forest Initiative. How would you

36

respond to constituents who say we should leave the environment

in its natural state, and let nature take its course, and not provide

intervention measures? Dr. Helms.

Mr. HELMS. Well, the current forest structure is quite different

from the way it was before Europeans or even Native American Indians have been interacting with that forest, and the current situation today is that our forests are very fragmented, and we have

communities and assets distributed right in amongst the forest.

And the forest will take care of itself in a natural condition given

time, which might amount to decades or even long. But this is a

very high risk period, and I think if we take the attitude that you

suggest, we would be subjecting communities to this uncertainty

and high hazard condition for an extremely long period of time, and

I don’t think that is tenable. On that basis, we need to be able to

reduce stocking levels to make these stands more healthy and not

so risk to fire.

Mr. BURNS. Mr. Koehn.

Mr. KOEHN. Yes. The landscape that we are talking about have

millions of people in it now as opposed to what occurred or what

was there prior to colonization of the North American continent. So

we have lots of people in the landscape, lots of infrastructure in the

landscape, interactions with people and the resource tend to be

problematic in terms of fire starts, and we have a lot of improvements that are at risk. I believe that if we take the more or less

do nothing approach, or mother nature will take care of itself, it

is akin to wishing to go back to buckskins and knives, and I don’t

think we have the ability to do that here, especially, in the populated east. And with a heavy dose of forest product industry operations, and I am familiar with a little bit of eastern Georgia, having spent some time there right after college. Most of your pine

stands are heavily managed. There are pine plantations. In some

cases they are posing a significant risk to fire, and they also harbor

things like southern pine beetle and other things. So I think that

the do nothing option in a lot of cases with a heavily populated

landscape is really not an option.

Mr. BURNS. We have a huge manifestation in the southern pine

beetle in our region and we are suffering because of that. Would

you categorize our forest now as natural growth forest? Are they

planted, managed forests as far as the dominance is concerned?

The majority of the forests that we see out there right now, how

would you classify those?

Mr. HELMS. I would make a comment that before answering that

question, I would want to make it clear that the forests of the

United States are owned by a very, very diverse array of owners.

And as I mentioned in my testimony, that the structural attributes

of these forests vary depending upon whether the forests are owned

or managed by public agencies, or State agencies, or private individuals, or industrial groups. So it would be very difficult to make

a general statement that would cover all of these conditions.

Mr. BURNS. Private landowners tend to be more oriented toward

reforestation practices? Is the Federal forest more natural growth,

natural regeneration, or do you see that as an issue? Mr. Walls.

Mr. WALLS. Thank you. The Federal forests in my area are

unmanaged, but not more natural, because when we did log, right

37

or wrong, we high graded the big ponderosa pine out of it and then

we prevented fires. And the growth that we see, if you look at the

old pictures in the 1940’s and stuff, you will see cars driving

through the Ponderosa Savannah Forest. It was very open. That is

how they got wagon trains through into this country, through the

trails. Now it is dense, dense stuff, and that is not a natural condition. And by the fact that we prevent fires, I would even call it

maybe a managed situation, but it is unmanaged.

Mr. BURNS. When I was growing up, it was traditional to, as we

used to say, burn the woods, and that was a common practice. It

would happen every year, every other year, and then over the last

probably 30 to 50 years, we have ceased that practice, and so we

do have that dense undergrowth. We do have—mercifully, in the

South, we don’t see the size fires and the major devastation that

you see out west that Mr. Janklow and others in the western

States see, but we still have the manifestation of disease, and insects, and those things that challenge us in our forestry management practices. Certainly, I think we all have the same objective,

and that is to make our forest more viable and more healthy. I get

no more joy than spending my time in the Chattahoochee National

Forest, but I am concerned that that forest must be protected and

effectively utilized for the public good. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, and I recognize the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Gutknecht.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the

witnesses for testifying, and I apologize that our membership is not

as dense as it perhaps should be, but there are a lot of meetings

going on and we do appreciate your coming here today. I want to

talk to Mr. Hardesty for just a few minutes and get a few more examples because I have been an admirer of the work that the Nature Conservancy does.

Mr. HARDESTY. Thank you.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I don’t always agree with everything they do,

but I know in Minnesota that they have been very helpful in helping to acquire land and protect lands and forests. But I want to

come back to something that I am not sure we are in agreement

here. In your management recommendations, I didn’t exactly hear

you say that you thought it was a good idea to thin these forests.

Mr. HARDESTY. I think the reason I didn’t say that is because

what I did say was that management should be based on clearly

stated scientifically credible ecological objectives.

The Nature Conservancy would say if the outcome of that is

thinning, then we would support that. For example, on some of our

own properties, we have actively thinned as an initial step in reestablishing fire regimes. However, I will say that, again, thinning

has to be based on ecological objectives both at the landscape scale

and at the project or stand scale. One size doesn’t fit all when we

talk about thinning.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Are any of you familiar with the situation we

have up in northern Minnesota, up around the Boundary Waters

Canoe area where we had a terrible blow down a few years ago?

I mean, we are very concerned that sooner or later—I mean, it is

not a matter of whether, it is a matter of when we are going to

have an enormous fire event in northern Minnesota. Are any of you

38

familiar with that? Can you talk about it and any recommendations you might have?

Mr. KOEHN. Well, the only familiarity I have with it is talking

with my colleague from Minnesota State Forestry in Minnesota,

and you are right. There has been thousands of acres of the northern portion of your State that has been laden down by wind event,

and just to reiterate your comments, they are very concerned about

the coming fire problem that they are going to have. And I think

just the things that we have talked about today, some salvage harvesting in some cases, some thinnings in some others, some reintroduction of prescribed fire in others. It is going to be a combination

of prescribed fires, civil cultural treatments, and mechanical treatments. I think all three need to come into play. But the acreage

we are talking about in northern Minnesota is so great that we

probably will only be able to dent it before this event eventually

comes about.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, my sense is it is sort of like the engineer’s

manual for the Union Pacific Railroad, where it said in one of the

passages that if two trains should approach each other on the same

track, both shall come to a complete stop and neither shall advance

until the other has passed. And it seems to me, we have got a lot

of these various agencies just sort of staring at each other, and

nothing is happening, and we know that this is going to be a huge

event, and we hope that there won’t be a lot of loss of human life.

But we have got a lot of campers who love to go in there, and if

this should happen when you have got a lot of people in there, it

will be very difficult to get them out because we don’t have any

roads, it is a canoe area. I am very concerned about what is going

to happen. But beyond that, it doesn’t see, with the exception of

this legislation we are talking about today, that too many people

have a serious plan of how do you deal with these kinds of things

in the future to keep them from winding up in a situation where

you are going to have this huge, huge, very hot fire. Comments?

Mr. WALLS. That is very true. In your area I did take Boy Scouts

from Oregon out there, and had a great week in the Boundary waters. That is a terrific trip. And it is sad with the blow down. We

are facing much of the same stuff throughout the West with beetle

kill in other areas. And we need to get to planning and moving forward. And we can do that and do it with the environmental community blessing, also. And what we do in the Landscape Management System tool that we have, is we design the future out first.

Say where do we want this forest to be in 100 years, and then we

do the prescriptions to get there. And we do it with visualizations

and other techniques. We have industry on our board, we have environmental community on our board. That gets the buy-in to get

moving instead of the mistrust that we have that seems to stalemate everybody.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from

South Dakota, Mr. Janklow.

Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Koehn, you are with the State Foresters?

Mr. KOEHN. Yes.

Mr. JANKLOW. You represent them here today?

39

Mr. KOEHN. I do.

Mr. JANKLOW. Are there any foresters in your association as far

as you know that disagree with the testimony that you have submitted here?

Mr. KOEHN. As far as I know, we ran that testimony past not

only our executive committee, but our legislative committee, and

we have concurrence as far as I know.

Mr. JANKLOW. And your organization, as you said, consists of all

50 States’ territories, but all 50 States, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, left and right, geographically, the

four corners of this country?

Mr. KOEHN. NASF supports the position that I iterated today.

Mr. JANKLOW. The question with respect to blow down, in the

Black Hills we have had the same problem, huge areas of blow

down, millions and millions of trees. A lot of it just blows the tops

off, snaps all the tops off the pines. Some people make the argument that one of the reasons that happens is the forests are so

thick, the trees are so weak, that it is a net result they can’t withstand traditional types of winds, these peaking periods of winds.

The gentleman next to you, I can’t read his name, I am sorry, from

UCLA?

Mr. HELMS. Helms.

Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Helms, I am sorry. Do you agree with that

type of—is one of the ways the trees blow down are the tops snap

off in high winds?

Mr. HELMS. Well, it is very difficult to generalize, but if I can

generalize, the most wind-prone trees are those that have grown up

in a well spaced environment, and the most wind-prone trees are

those that have grown up in a dense stand and then that stand has

been opened up a little bit, either through another wind, or insect

disease damage, or some other interference. Those trees are very

susceptible to either being blown off or the tops being broken out

of them. So the way to maintain stands in a wind-prone condition

is to keep the trees individually healthy, which means giving them

some space to grow.

Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Koehn, the gentleman from Georgia asked the

question about some of his constituents are suggesting leave the

trees in their natural state. Isn’t it fair to say that almost every

place over the last century where we found insects coming in, we

have tried to get rid of them? We haven’t let nature take its course

with the forest. We have sprayed the insects as opposed to letting

them do their work on the weaker trees, and in most instances not

affecting the stronger trees, putting out the fires when they start.

It has never been acceptable public policy to let a forest fire rage

out of control so they try and put them out. The net result is the

more human beings have gotten around forests, the more they put

the fires out, the more the forest grew, and nature didn’t take its

course. Let me ask you, sir, do you agree with the testimony of the

gentleman from the Nature Conservancy?

Mr. HELMS. I support the views of the Conservancy. The one

comment I might make is the remark regarding using ecological

criteria for stand development. I think in addition to that, one has

to apply societal goals and needs in addition to ecosystem issues.

40

Mr. JANKLOW. What about you, Mr. Koehn, do you agree with

this testimony?

Mr. KOEHN. More or less. The thing I most strongly agree with

is the fact that I think I heard the gentleman on the end of the

table say, more or less, that a cookie cutter approach will not work

in every case, and that just one way of dealing with the issue, let

us say, thinnings, per se, would be the best or the only way. I think

that as I said earlier, a combination of things, whether they be civil

cultural treatments, mechanical treatments, prescribed fire, involving the public, all these things in a greater fashion will have to be

brought to bear.

Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Hardesty, as I read your testimony, sir, tell

me if I am accurate. I got the impression that with respect to the

areas near the urban interface, your organization suggests being

far more aggressive, but then it also does support other types of

projects away from the urban interface in a demonstration mode in

several areas. Did I read that correct?

Mr. HARDESTY. You did, but let me follow up. I would agree with

a number of the points made by the gentlemen on the panel, that

you need to consider something like ecosystem health or ecological

health from several different perspectives. One is ecological, the

other is social; it is not a simple definition. We would support aggressive—assertive maybe is a better term—reduction of hazardous

fuels in the urban-wildland interface, but a caveat for us is that the

agencies and the community engaged in that, need to use that as

an opportunity to learn. Right now, the agencies are not monitoring, they are not really doing it adaptively, except in a few places.

They are typically less contentious areas to reach resolution about

how the larger landscape should be managed. It is better to make

mistakes in the urban-wildland interface where they have less ecological impact. We do support, if landscape scale analyses support

active treatment, active management, in larger landscapes, we

would support that, but not as you can’t generalize. It is going to

be different everywhere.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from

Iowa, Mr. King.

Mr. KING. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. No questions. Well, that leaves me then, I guess.

Mr. Walls, in your testimony, you mentioned the need to conduct

thinnings by a basal area presumption as opposed to identifying

trees that need to be cut by imposing a diameter limit. How can

we better communicate the need to thin and conduct management

based on the end results without getting bogged down in debates

over diameter limits and artificial boundaries, such as wildlandurban interface, that shift the focus away from what is scientifically and ecologically appropriate for a particular area?

Mr. WALLS. I think that Chief Bosworth said it best, and that is

getting them out on the ground. And in Lakeview, we have got the

Lakeview Stewardship Group, which is an informal group, but on

it is the local mill, is the defenders of wildlife, is the wilderness society, and community leaders. And we are using the approach that

we go out, just as you just mentioned, and design and look at what

we want in the future for that forest and design to get there. But

they are on the ground doing it. They are working with us in these

41

collaborative units. And that is the only way I can see—to me it

has been more of not where we want to go but more of a trust

issue, and that is how you build up the trust. And when we got the

Federal sustained unit we authorized, it was through this group.

And over those years since 1998, that is the trust that built up. We

just got—we are burning 40-plus thousands of acres in my county

every year the past few years, and our sales this year so far have

gone straight through NEPA without any opposition due to that

collaborative effort. The one sale is already out and gone from burn

last year. Before that never happened, so it is that collaborative

type thing, I think, is part of that answer. You have got to involve

all those stakeholders and help. You come to an agreement on

where you want that forest to go, and then you start managing to

get there. I hope I answered that.

The CHAIRMAN. You did, indeed. Thank you. Mr. Hardesty, I, too,

want to express my appreciation not only for your testimony but

for the Nature Conservancy. They are quite active in my Congressional district. In fact, on Monday I had the opportunity to hike on

a new acquisition that you have, a kind of a centerpiece for you

folks. You have just acquired 9,000 acres from the Virginia Hot

Springs Company, of privately owned land, and I had the opportunity with members of the Natural Resource Conservation Service

and the Soil and Water Conservation Board members in my area,

to hike it with Linda Crowe of your Charlottesville office, and it is

a beautiful tract of land, and we are pleased that you are managing

it.

In your testimony, you stressed the importance of working at a

landscape level to address the issue of forest health. In fact, the

Conservancy works in this way on the lands under its care. However, there seems to be some contradiction when the discussion

turns to the wildland-urban interface. How do you marry the concept of conducting landscape level projects with the restrictions to

conduct them in the wildland-urban interface?

Mr. HARDESTY. First of all, we are not advocating restricting active management in the wildland-urban interface. What we are arguing is that—and I would agree with the gentleman to my right,

Mr. Walls, that through good upfront collaborative engagement of

stakeholders, scientists, managers, people of different opinions,

that over the long term we will be able to manage effectively in the

larger landscape, you don’t need to relax requirements—you can do

it under current NEPA. So we are advocating, in fact, over time,

where appropriate, moving into a larger landscape.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Let me direct a broader question to

the other members of the panel. In Congress there is debate going

on, on whether we should focus our hazardous fuels reduction in

and around this wildland-urban interface, and let me ask everybody. Should fuel reduction be done only within a specific distance

from that interface to maximize protection of communities?

Mr. WALLS. Could I start?

The CHAIRMAN. Sure, Mr. Walls.

Mr. WALLS. In Lake County, there are more cows than people.

We don’t have too much of an urban interface. And so that—and

I understand the environmental community’s concern over doing

that, but that wouldn’t leave us much. We have a monitoring proVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
42

gram, a third-party monitoring program going on in the forest, that

we do through scientists. And we have got some plots in old growth

forests, and these same forests are dying for the same conditions

we are talking about today, and that is the lack of the natural fire

regime. And if I am only going to rely—so that is one point. We

can’t just let these forests continue to die because of the suppression of fire that we have done. The other point I want to make is

an economical one. If I am only going to rely on tourism, at the

rate we are going, and the burns we have had, and if these

droughts keep going, I don’t get tourism in Lake County looking at

black trees. But I think we can accomplish all these goals outside

the urban interface if I live up to my commitment to Mr. Hardesty

and the other community, that we will look at what is environmentally right to take these forests to those long-term conditions

that the public wants. We can manage that way scientifically, and

I think we can do that. So I would be reluctant to have just the

urban interface, because that would leave Lake County out of it

and I would watch my forest just keep going the way it is today

and that would be wrong.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Well, it seems to me that if we have

this problem with the fuel buildup, yes, that kind of catastrophic

wildfire that we are getting that takes the whole forest and not

just burns on the ground is obviously going to be given a high priority when it is getting close to an urban area. But it is going to

destroy the forest. It is not a natural fire, whether it occurs close

to an urban area or whether it occurs far from them. And in either

case it is going to cause air pollution, it is going to destroy wildlife

habitat, it is going to damage streams, and it is going to permanently damage in very detrimental ways the forest itself if it becomes so hot, so intense, that it destroys the entire forest, sears the

ground, and does this type of damage. I wonder if Dr. Helms or Mr.

Koehn would like to respond to that?

Mr. HELMS. I would just comment on your earlier remark that

when you have an enormous problem and you have limited resources, it makes obvious sense to apply those resources to the

most sensitive areas, which are the urban-wildland areas. However, the problem is huge and the welfare of society depends upon

the health and welfare of the forests throughout the watershed. So

as soon as possible, we have to find the resources and the manpower to address these issues on a larger scale.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it always a money losing proposition when we

do this type of thinning, or can it be, as I have seen it done in some

places, an economically sustaining activity to improve the forest by

thinning and other activities at the same time that you are generating revenues because of the value of the wood fiber being taken

from the forest to sustain the economic activity and then carry it

on into the next area. I have seen that on some demonstration

projects out in California, where they had a natural ponderosa pine

forest, but fir trees had grown up, very large fir trees in the midst

of this, and then debris on the ground. So when you had a fire, you

had the stair step process of taking the whole forest. The contract

was to leave the ponderosa pines completely alone, go in and take

out all of the naturally occurring fir trees, and then introduce fire

on the ground to clear out the brush. The contract to pay for that

43

project was several millions of dollars for a couple of thousand

acres. If that were replicated over and over again in places around

the National forests, it would seem to me that you would both have

a significant environmental improvement to the forest at the same

time that you had some economic sustaining activity that would

help the communities around them and pay for the cost of making

these environmental improvements.

Mr. HELMS. Your statement is fundamentally correct, however, it

would vary markedly depending upon the size, class, distribution,

and the value distribution within the particular stands that you

are talking about. So there would be some stands where the statement is correct. There may be other stands where currently there

may be no market or little value in the material that must be removed. But overall, the project should be self-sustaining.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me let Mr. Koehn get in.

Mr. KOEHN. If you don’t mind, I would agree with the statements

of my colleagues as far as whether some of the thinning could be

commercial as opposed to always noncommercial. I think that there

would be commercial opportunities and it would be economically

sustainable in a lot of cases. But your earlier comment about

should we concentrate our efforts in wildland-urban interface type

areas, in a lot of cases I found, to my way of thinking, the

wildland-urban interface is not always a well definable kind of

area. There is more or less a continuum from rural to exurban, to

suburban, to well developed areas, so it is not always easy to decide where, exactly, you are going to set up your line of defense,

if you will, when you are going to do your fuel treatment or whatever you are going to do.

To my very straightforward way of thinking, the woodcutter that

I am, to build a moat around a town or any area that you think

may be fire prone, in essence, a ‘‘moat’’. And I say that in quotes,

and then hope that a rapidly advancing flame front is going to be

held at check by such a way of doing business, that is putting a

lot of hope on things, and hope is not a terribly good strategy when

it comes to the fire business. I think what we ought to be doing

is working out on the landscape where ecologically and socially it

is acceptable. We don’t want to lose all the resource value, whether

it is tied up in the timber, or the watershed, water quality and

water quantity type benefits that we get, or whether it is habitat

or what have you. And the same thing goes for insect and disease

problems, whether it is a fire problem that originated from dense

stands of timber, or whether it is bug killed timber that has caused

the predisposition of fire, we need to be out there on the landscape

trying to deal with that as best we can in a comprehensive way so

that we don’t depend on our ‘‘last line of defense’’ when it comes

to protecting these communities at risk.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Dr. Helms, in your testimony you

mentioned tree health, stand health, and forest health as a function of resilience to withstand stress or capacity to recover from

disturbance. To what extent do invasive species affect tree, stand,

or forest health and their ability to withstand that stress, what

about wildfire, and what is the best way to ensure that our trees,

stands, or forests can stand up to these various types of disturbances?

44

Mr. HELMS. I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that

question.

The CHAIRMAN. We are going to give you first shot.

Mr. HELMS. The impact of invasive species, as Chief Bosworth

mentioned, is enormous, and it is increasing all the time. It is pervasive right across the country. And I also need to mention that we

have got to recognize invasive species as including plants, and animals, and fish, insects, diseases, et cetera. And the difficulty here

is that many of these invasive species out compete the native vegetation, or the native fish, or the native whatever population. So we

have got to address how to manage these stands, and I think this,

basically, depends on the development of public and political will

and the allocation of resources. And in dealing with any issues

such as this, I think the longer you leave it, the more difficult, and

therefore, the more expensive it is going to be. But we need to take

action on noxious invasive species of all stripes and colors.

The CHAIRMAN. In addition to the Healthy Forest Initiative,

which I take it from your comments this by itself is not going to

solve our problems. What other aspects of forest health should be

addressed?

Mr. HELMS. The most immediate issues that we commonly talk

about are stand density, and fuels, and fire. But issues of forest

health or stand health involve a much broader array of ecosystem

attributes, and I am particularly concerned about the spatial and

temporal components of the issue, because these are much more

difficult to deal with. And so I believe that we need to put a lot

more emphasis on research and monitoring to understand the way

in which ecosystems function, and we need to address the factors

that are perhaps limiting our ability to deal with these issues. And

I think a lot of this concerns the inconsistency among the many

statutes that govern the way in which land is managed. Many of

these statutes are 20–25 years old. Many of them are inconsistent

with court decisions. They probably don’t take advantage of research over that period of time. And they many not even be consistent with public attitudes. So somehow or other, I think we need to

cut through this maze and try and make the legislation that we are

working with much more efficient and effective. And from the Society’s standpoint, we would probably like to see much more emphasis given to incentive rather than regulation in addressing the

issue.

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. Mr. Koehn, I understand that the

State Foresters work closely with other State agencies in the Federal Government to provide assistance to non-industrial private forest landowners. Can you explain how the Maryland Forest Service

assists in the conservation of private forest land?

Mr. KOEHN. Sure. Back in our State, we work very closely with

other agencies both within the State of Maryland and within my

particular agency, the Department of Natural Resources. The closest sister agency that I work with on more or less a day-to-day

basis is the Maryland Wildlife and Natural Heritage Service. We

work very closely with them on habitat restoration projects. We

have been working very closely with that group and other groups

like Ducks Unlimited and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to implement the Conversation Reserve Enhancement Program which

45

we found very useful in installing such practices as riparian force

buffers and grass waterways to protect water resources on private

lands. We also work very closely, hand-in-hand, with the management of our State Public Lands, our State Forest Management System, and our Wildlife Management Areas. We also work in conjunction with other agencies, other departments within Maryland, the

Department of Planning, the Department of the Environment when

it comes to water quality issues.

If I may, to add a comment to the question that you had asked

earlier about what things do we need to address, that this is not

a panacea and a catchall, I would like to say that I agree, that

things like overstocking and the general lack of management is

something that we need to address. However, I think, also, equally

as important is this whole issue of land use fragmentation and how

things are laid out spatially in the landscape, whether that is development versus agriculture versus forestland, or whether it is the

actual structure of the forestland within a particular hunk of forest. I think if we don’t address some of these things, whether it is

from a fire aspect or whether it is from clean water and watershed

protection aspects, or wildlife habitat aspects, that we are going to

be missing the boat. And I think it is really important that at some

point in the future we have a dialog about these kinds of things.

And I know that has been occurring in Maryland and it has been

occurring in a lot of other mid-Atlantic eastern States, and I hesitate to say, but I think it is true that these kinds of issues will be

visited by other States here in the very near future.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Tell me about the preparedness of

the States and local fire services to prepare for the challenge ahead

of them. Obviously, we are going to try to help reduce excess fuels

on the ground, but these fire departments are going to continue to

play a critical role. How well prepared are they for that?

Mr. KOEHN. Well, as you well know, the volunteer fire service is

critical in most States, along with the State Forestry agencies,

when it comes to responding to natural fuel cover fires. I will say

that as you also probably know, that a lot of the States, mine in

particular, and I know others, are dealing with severe State budget

shortfalls, and in some cases it is several billions of dollars. So it

is going to be difficult to make sure that the volunteer fire service

and other firefighting agencies stay adequately equipped. But I do

believe programs like the Federal Excess Personal Property Program, the Volunteer Fire Assistance Program, the State Fire Assistance Program, all work fairly well in helping to maintain a relatively decent level of response capability.

However, I will say recent changes in the Federal Excess Personal Property Program put State Forestry agencies in the U.S.

Forest Service at a disadvantage in that we are not on the

frontlines of the screening process and that we have to take a second seat to, let us say, other law enforcement type agencies. And

I believe that one of your colleagues from Arkansas has submitted

legislation that would hopefully correct that, and that would put us

on a level playing field again. Because this program, the Federal

Excess Personal Property Program, is a major source of relatively

decent firefighting equipment, and along with the Volunteer Fire

Assistance Program, which is grants to these fire companies, they

46

are allowed the use of some funds to equip those pieces of rolling

stock, and we can get more brush units out there and ready to do

the job when we do have a fire occurrence.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. We will take a close look at that.

Well, Governor Janklow, you are the sole survivor on the committee, and because of that, we will give you the right to ask the last

question if you have one.

Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a few questions. With respect to the fire issues in my State, we have two paid

fire departments and 554 volunteer fire departments. When we

have a fire in the Black Hills, and that is the only place the Federal fires occur, our State is 450 miles long, 250 miles wide. We are

dragging an awful lot of people to an awful lot of fires in the Black

Hills for a long period of time. It is not going out there for 3 or

4 days. It is sometimes weeks. These are the same people that own

farms and ranches, and work in schools, and lord knows what else,

everything you can possibly imagine. They can no longer continue

to do this.

The fires in our State have cost our State millions and millions

of dollars that are unreimbursed even when they originate as a

Federal fire, because huge amounts of land in the National forest

are privately owned, State owned. We have the second largest

State park in the Nation out there. And federally owned. It is

where the fire starts as to who is responsible for it, initially, but

everybody pays in proportion to the land that is burned. So the

Feds, because of the way they manage their forest have the fire,

but all the rest of us have to pay these exorbitant amounts for

fighting the fire because we are defending maybe 30 percent of all

the land, defending our State and privately owned properties with

no reimbursement other than FEMA funds. And the State has a 25

percent match for that, as you know. The State people really know.

The point that I am making with this is there isn’t enough

money in the world to continue to fight the fires. And certainly,

when you are $400 billion or so out of whack on a budget, there

is not enough money to go out and just start paying people to thin

tens of millions of acres of forest, which means it is either going

to burn down, eventually, or it is going to be a combination of burning down, and some type of commercial thinning, and some type of

paid thinning.

Let me ask you, Mr. Hardesty. As a general proposition, is your

organization opposed to the multi-faceted approach of those three

aspects?

Mr. HARDESTY. No, not at all. You mentioned volunteer fire departments. We are working with a number of volunteer fire departments around the country to, during the times when they are not

fighting fires, these are both paid and volunteer firefighters. During the times when they are not fighting fires, they are actually

doing prescribed fire, particularly, in fire prone areas. I think as

you may know, it typically costs a fraction of the amount of money

to do a prescribed fire, even in relatively complex situations, as it

does to fighting a fire in the same situation when the situation is

completely unstable and uncontrolled.

So part of it is actively engaging—part of the solution, particularly, in the Black Hills, is actively engaging landowners and the

47

State and Federal agencies in introducing much more prescribed

fire on the ground. The approach of some subsidy of volunteer fire

departments, as we said in our testimony, of subsidizing small diameter biomass removal, again, where there is good community

consensus and good science backing that up, which I believe in the

Black Hills there would be. And then last, doing it adaptively. I

can’t stress this enough. Right now there are dozens, hundreds,

thousands, of projects that are occurring on the ground, where we

are thinning and we are burning—collectively, the Federal agencies, States, and private citizens—are thinning, and burning, and

treating different ecosystems in a variety of different ways. But because we are not doing it thoughtfully in many places, we are simply not learning. There are great lessons to be learned with a little

bit of upfront thinking about how to put treatments in the landscape, how to work with the scientific community to do monitoring,

as I think Mr. Walls has pointed out in Lake County, as we have

been able to demonstrate in many of the places where we work

around the country, including big landscape scale projects. Right

now, for example, the Conservancy is working on some landscape

scale projects that total about 60 million acres, where our intention

is to, eventually, move to that scale. Those are public and private

ownerships mixed, generally. So doing it adaptively, doing it with

good science, some subsidy from the Federal Government from taxpayers is going to be essential to do that.

Mr. KOEHN. If I may, a comment that Mr. Hardesty made, there

may be something I can add to the discussion. The comment about

volunteer fire companies when they are not fighting wildfire may

be involved in prescribed burning operations. Anecdotally, we have

a couple of people in Maryland that are trying to form any number

of ‘‘contract prescribed burn teams’’ where they would go around

and work with private landowners and use money from the Forest

Land Enhancement Program, a new program through the farm bill,

to do warm season grass burns or prescribed fire type things for

habitat, or for site preparation, or hazard fuel burns. The problem

is in those cases, there is interest, there is a market, there is

money to be had. The landowners are willing to do the cost sharing. But from time to time, these folks come back to me as the

State Forester and say I have a dickens of a time getting insurance. I can’t find liability insurance. Somehow they figured out how

to do this west of the Mississippi. Contract prescribed burn teams

are relatively common. For whatever reasons, at least in my neck

of the woods in the central mid-Atlantic type area, it is very difficult for people that think there is a market, think they can make

some money doing this.

It would certainly help not only me, wildlife objectives, and timber management objectives, but also, this whole issue of overstocked stands and fuels loads. There is actually markets there, but

in some cases it is a simple thing of being able to get insurance

that holds the process back.

Mr. JANKLOW. But in the area of the country, and again, I am

being parochial, where I live, you can’t really do prescribed burns

anymore of any substance because the fuel loading per acre is 20

to 30 tons. The ladder fuels are unbelievable with the millions of

trees that have had their tops broken off. I mean, I used this book

48

this morning to make a point, but I mean, I have page after page

of, literally, photographs that were taken by General Custer’s folks

when they came to the Black Hills on August 11, 1874 is this particular picture. This is the same photograph, or a photograph from

the same spot today. This is the way God did it and this is the way

we do it. The difference is we killed 23 firefighters last year, destroyed hundreds and hundreds of homes in America, did billions

of dollars worth of damage in terms of firefighting, and that is just

the initial cost.

Now nobody is adding up what it costs to go and deal with all

these stands of trees that are now destroyed that are terribly insect

prone, and the quantity of insects that will come deal with these

dead trees really now will go destroy the viable trees in the interface area around it, what it is doing to the watersheds. We took

40 percent after the Grizzly Gulch fire in the Black Hills, NRC, the

National Resource Conservation Services, allocated 40 percent of

its budget of discretionary funds to doing emergency measures so

the town of Lead and Deadwood wouldn’t have a second multi-million dollar mudslide that came roaring through the community

after they had 2 inches of rain in the Black Hills. They were concerned about subsequent ones. This is insanity, the way we are

doing it.

And so, Mr. Chairman, again, thank you today for this hearing.

Thank all of you gentlemen with your diverse views for coming.

One thing I get out of all of this, and I probably came with a preconceived notion with it, every panelist that has appeared here

today agrees the way we are doing it isn’t working. We have got

to do something different than the way we are doing it now. Thank

you.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman for his contribution, and

I thank all the members of this panel for very valuable insights

into what can and should be done.

I want to also take this opportunity to recognize somebody who

has helped me greatly for the last 2 years. Kathleen Elder has

served the Agriculture Committee and the subcommittee that I had

the opportunity to chair until this year, giving us her expertise on

forestry issues, and we will miss you, and hope you will come back

and help us through the rest of this legislation and give us your

help in the future as well. But we wish you well with your family

and your future plans.

Without objection, the record of today’s hearing will remain open

for 10 days to receive additional material and supplementary written responses from witnesses to any question posed by a member

of the panel. And I know that at least one member of the committee is submitting some questions in writing and we will ask that

members of this panel and the previous panel respond to those.

This hearing of the House Committee on Agriculture is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:03 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]

STATEMENT OF MARK REY, REBECCA WATSON, DALE N. BOSWORTH,

AND PETER J.ROUSSOPOULOS

Chairman Goodlatte and members of the committee:

49

We appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today to discuss the President’s

Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) and other related issues. Before we begin, we would

like to congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, on assuming leadership of the Agriculture

Committee. We look forward to working with you and have very much appreciated

the interest and support you have given to important natural resource management

issues.

The need for action to restore our forests and rangelands to long-term health has

never been greater. The presence of large amounts of hazardous forest and rangeland fuels poses a threat to public and private natural resources and to people. Additionally, millions of acres of forest and rangeland ecosystems are under relentless

attack from native bark beetles and non-native invasive species, including highly

flammable plant species, displacing natural forage and native habitat.

For most of the 20th century, wildland fires were suppressed as soon as possible

to reduce their negative effect. Aggressive fire suppression was effective but had an

unintended consequence. The frequency and intensity of today’s wildfires appears to

have increased due to the buildup of fuels such as dead and dying trees and dense

growth of flammable vegetation. Fire exclusion resulted in woody species encroachment into shrublands and grasslands, altered wildlife diversity and populations

through habitat modification, and increased disease and insect infestations. This

build up of fuel, coupled with other factors such as drought, have raised increasing

concerns about the overall health of forests and rangelands.

In May 2002, working with the Western Governors’ Association and a broad crosssection of interests including county commissioners, State foresters, tribal officials

and other stakeholders, we reached consensus on a 10-year Comprehensive Strategy

Implementation Plan to reduce fire risks to communities and the environment. The

plan sets forth the blueprint for making communities and the environment safer

from destructive wildfires. The plan calls for active forest and rangeland management focusing on hazardous fuels reduction both in the wildland-urban interface

and across the broader landscape. Active forest management includes: thinning

trees from over-dense stands that produce commercial or pre-commercial products,

biomass removal and utilization, and prescribed fire and other fuels reduction tools.

We want to thank Congressman Pombo for initiating and the members of the House

of Representatives for passing House Concurrent Resolution 352 endorsing the 10-

Year Comprehensive Strategy during the 107th Congress.

THE PRESIDENT’S HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE

Consistent with the belief that public land policies need to be based on common

sense and common ground, this past August the President announced the Healthy

Forests Initiative in order to help reduce the risks of catastrophic wildfires to communities and the environment, and to restore to health forest and rangeland ecosystems that currently suffer not only from the devastating effects of wildfire, but

also from disease, insects and noxious weed infestation. The Healthy Forests Initiative seeks to address the dense, unhealthy condition of Federal forests and rangelands by giving Federal land managers the tools they need to restore these lands

to a condition where they can resist disease, insects, and catastrophic fire.

The President further signaled his intentions to make this issue a top administration priority in his 2003 State of the Union message. The Healthy Forests Initiative

builds on the fundamentals of sound science and resource management principles

that have guided the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management since

their formation. These principles embody conservation and a balanced approach to

the use of natural resources that remain valid today as these Federal agencies work

together with local communities, States, Tribes, and other Federal agencies. The

Healthy Forests Initiative will help implement core components of the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan, enhancing and facilitating the work and

collaboration agreed to in those documents, and will guide the restoration of

healthy, viable ecosystems in our forests and rangelands.

The administration has proposed a combination of legislative and administrative

actions to implement the Healthy Forests Initiative.

Legislative Proposals. Last year the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior

transmitted a legislative proposal to the Congress which would authorize emergency

hazardous fuels reduction projects in priority areas of Federal forests and rangelands outside wilderness areas. This proposal would allow timely treatment of public

lands at risk of catastrophic fire and those that pose the greatest risk to people,

communities, and the environment. Our top priorities would include the wildlandurban interface, municipal watersheds, areas affected by disease, insect activity,

windthrow, and areas subject to catastrophic reburn. We would select projects

50

through collaborative processes, consistent with the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan.

USDA believes section 322 of the Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 1993 (commonly known as the Appeals Reform Act) limits

the Forest Service’s ability to work collaboratively with the public. The proposal

would repeal of section 322 which would enable USDA to develop an administrative

review process that would better allow collaboration with local communities and

other interested parties before a decision is reached. Repeal would thus stimulate

up-front discussions and promote open relationships.

The legislative proposal also contained new standards for injunctive relief for activities necessary to restore fire-adapted forest and rangeland ecosystems. This provision would ensure that courts consider the public interest in avoiding long-term

harm to ecosystems, and give deference to an agency finding that the public interest

in avoiding the short-term effects of such action is outweighed by the public interest

in avoiding long-term harm to such ecosystems.

Stewardship Contracting. The recently passed Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003 (PL 108–7) contains stewardship contracting authority. This provision

allows the BLM and the Forest Service to enter into long-term stewardship contracts with the private sector, non-profit organizations, local communities, and other

entities. Congress has entrusted agency land managers with a critical tool to implement projects to achieve land management goals. In implementing this authority,

the primary objective of these projects will be to improve forest or rangeland health;

restore or maintain water quality; improve fish and wildlife habitat; and reduce hazardous fuels that pose risks to communities and ecosystem values. The focus is on

what we leave behind—an improved land health— not what we take out. We will

work with local communities and others to implement this authority to create jobs,

and develop new business opportunities. These efforts will help the agencies and

their State, Tribal, and local partners to better implement the President’s Healthy

Forests Initiative and the National Fire Plan.

The Bureau of Land Management will implement stewardship contracting on a

limited basis in FY 2003 while guidance for long-term implementation is developed.

The Forest Service will implement stewardship contracting much as it did during

the pilot program. Implementation is authorized on all units. Lessons learned from

the pilots will be incorporated into the program. The agencies are preparing joint

guidance for utilizing the new stewardship contracting authority that will be published in the Federal Register for public comment.

We want to emphasize that stewardship contracting is a tool to implement

projects on which the appropriate National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) processes have been completed. In addition to NEPA, all environmental laws will apply

to projects. Projects will be consistent with applicable land use plans and, where applicable, would be subject to agency appeal procedures. The agencies will approve

project design and maintain project control. We are committed to third-party program monitoring.

Administrative Actions. The President’s Healthy Forests Initiative directs the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior, together with Council on Environmental

Quality Chairman James L. Connaughton, to: improve procedures for collaborative

selection and implementation of fuels treatments and forest and rangeland restoration projects; reduce the number of overlapping environmental reviews; develop

guidance for weighing the short-term risks against the long-term benefits of fuels

treatment and restoration projects; and develop guidance to ensure consistent NEPA

procedures for fuels treatment activities and restoration activities. The Secretaries

have taken several administrative actions to accomplish these objectives which include the following:

PROPOSED CATEGORICAL EXCLUSIONS (CE) FOR FIRE-RELATED ACTIVITIES

On December 16, 2002, USDA and DOI published a notice seeking public comment on the proposal to add two new categorical exclusions under NEPA which

allow some hazardous fuels reduction activities and post-wildfire natural resource

and infrastructure rehabilitation to be conducted without the preparation of an environmental assessment or and environmental impact statement. The proposed CE’s

will provide the departments with identical management tools that will improve

consistency, timelines and cooperation among the Federal agencies. A categorical exclusion is a method for addressing environmental documentation provided for under

the implementing regulations for NEPA. The proposed categorical exclusions are

based on a field review and analysis of over 3,400 projects that were found to not

have a significant effect on the environment. They are crafted to exclude such sensitive areas as wilderness, Wilderness Study Areas where actions may impair eligiVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
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bility, wetlands, and impaired waters and archeological sites ESA-listed species critical habitat, and the construction of any permanent roads.

COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY (CEQ) MEMO & MODEL ENVIRONMENTAL

ASSESSMENT (EA) PROJECTS

CEQ Chairman Connaughton issued guidance clarifying the policy on the preparation of environmental assessments for fuels treatment projects. The clarification addresses the purpose and content of an Environmental Assessment, incorporation of

information by reference, and analysis focused on potentially significant effects. The

guidance asserts the need for active public involvement and concise documentation

of project analysis. We believe this is a critical step in alleviating a part of the process predicament which has kept us from doing the Nation’s work. While this policy

is being applied initially to seven DOI and five Forest Service projects, we have high

expectations that lessons learned in developing these projects will be shared widely

within the Forest Service and Interior for application throughout the lands we manage.

Appeals Process Reform (Revision of 36 CFR 215). On December 18, 2002, the

Forest Service published a proposed rule which would revise its implementing regulations under the Appeals Reform Act. Proposed changes are designed to encourage

early and meaningful public participation in project planning. These changes will

enable the decision maker to time a request for comments earlier in the project

planning process, when those comments will be of most benefit to the public and

the decision maker. To further encourage early and effective public participation,

the proposed revision to the regulation stipulates that a person must have provided

substantive comment during the 30-day comment period to be eligible to appeal.

This again allows the decision maker to address issues and concerns during project

planning, rather than hearing about them after the EA is complete, or in an appeal,

after the decision is made. A final rule is likely to be published this spring.

Similar modifications to standing requirements to encourage early participation

are proposed to the Bureau of Land Management’s administrative appeal rules. The

Office of Hearings and Appeals and the Bureau of Land Management have published a proposed rule to amend existing regulations governing hearings and appeals to simplify proof of service, to codify rights of appeal, and to expedite review

of wildfire management decisions. The rule would also make BLM wildfire management decisions effective immediately.

Endangered Species Act Guidance. On December 11, 2002 two guidance documents were issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and NOAA Fisheries to

facilitate and improve the design, review, approval and implementation of HFI

projects, and they currently are being used by agency personnel. ‘‘Alternative Approaches for Streamlining section 7 Consultation on Hazardous Fuels Treatment

Projects’’ emphasizes the grouping of multiple projects into one consultation. ‘‘Guidance on Evaluating the Net Benefit of Hazardous Fuels Treatment Projects’’ provides direction on how to fully consider and balance potential short- and long-term

beneficial and adverse impacts to endangered species when evaluating such projects.

HFI projects are being done in a more comprehensive and streamlined manner to

achieve local and national HFI needs and meet endangered species goals. The goal

is to recognize that project-specific, short term adverse impacts need to be weighed

against the longer-term watershed level benefits such projects will achieve.

Proposed section 7 Counterpart Regulation. The FWS, NOAA Fisheries, Bureau

of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service and Forest

Service are developing section 7 joint counterpart regulations under the ESA for

projects that support the National Fire Plan. They anticipate proposing a draft rule

in the Federal Register notice this spring, for public review and comment. The proposed regulations would provide an alternative, in some situations, to the existing

section 7 consultation process by authorizing the action agencies to make certain determinations without prior consultation with the FWS and NOAA Fisheries. This

proposed delegation would be authorized after appropriate training is completed and

would be subject to periodic monitoring by the services. The purpose would be to

meet all ESA obligations for species and habitat protection while encouraging determination and consultation processes to work more efficiently, utilizing expert professional biologists in all effected agencies.

Wildland Fire Outlook. The 2002 wildland fire season was intense, difficult, and

historic. Long-term drought over most of the West contributed to an earlier and very

severe fire season. Fires burned in every type of vegetation from grasslands to subalpine fir and in every type of ownership, often with devastating effects. For example, the Biscuit Fire in Oregon destroyed more than 100,000 acres of northern spotted owl habitat. The Pensaco Fire in New Mexico wiped out a population of Mexican

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spotted owls. The recovery plan for these owls had recommended the forest be managed to a healthier state through appropriate thinning. —Of the 7.2 million acres

burned in 2002, only a few wildfires were the large, uncontrolled fires seen on television. Many of these were the fires that burned in and around wildland-urban

interface areas requiring extensive evacuations of communities, subdivisions, and

ranches. Fire activity was intensified by unfavorable weather conditions and in

many situations posed a safety threat to firefighters and members of the public.

The outlook for the upcoming fire season from our analysts at the National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC) in Boise, Idaho, is that nationally, the 2003 fire

season may not be as severe 2002. However, we do have the potential for an above

normal fire season in the interior west, central and southern Alaska, the western

Lake States, and northern Maine. Long term drought persists over much of the interior West. Mountain snow pack and precipitation remains below average for most

of the western States with the exception of northern and central California. The outlook for March through August calls for early snowmelt for Alaska, the Pacific

Northwest the Great Basin and northeastern California, and drought conditions

emerging in the Great Lake States. Drought stressed or insect damaged vegetation

is becoming more prevalent across the western States will increase the potential for

large, destructive wildfires at mid to high elevations.

Non-Native Invasive Species and Bark Beetles. Mr. Chairman, before we close we

want to address another serious issue facing Federal forests and rangelands today,

the spread of invasive species and native bark beetles. Forest insects, fungi, and

parasitic plants play important ecological roles. The tree mortality that results directly or indirectly from their activity drives plant succession and contributes to biological diversity. Although native insects and pathogens have been with us historically, the frequency, extent, or timing of outbreaks has changed dramatically for

some of these disturbance agents. Changes in tree stand density, composition, and

structure caused by fire exclusion and the lack of forest management are two factors

that may have affected outbreak patterns. Introduction of invasive plant, pathogen,

and insect species have also had an affect. In addition, the drought of the last four

years over much of the country has stressed forests and lowered trees’ resistance

to insects and disease.

Large insect and disease outbreaks, like other natural and human-caused events

that require immediate attention, do not respect administrative boundaries and impact forested lands of all ownerships, Federal, State and private. These outbreaks

are assessed by the land managers of forests where they occur. Where treatments

can be expedited this is done; however, most treatments require environmental

analysis before work can begin. Once the analysis is completed, National Forest, Interior, and State and private land managers can then set or revise the relative priority for response, taking into consideration all the other work that is required, the

relative urgency for treatment, and the resources available to do the work.

Two comprehensive strategies have been developed by the Forest Service to address Southern pine beetle and Western bark beetles. The goal of the strategies is

to treat the current outbreak and reduce the likelihood of future large infestations.

Suppression of an epidemic is the first step in a long term process that also includes

forest restoration to conditions less susceptible to future attack. Public and landowner education programs and continued research to support suppression, prevention and restoration activities are key elements of the strategy.

The Forest Service is now developing a comprehensive strategy for all invasive

species that threaten America’s forests and rangelands. In addition, the Emerging

Pest and Pathogen Fund was established in 2003 because of the continued high risk

of damage to forests posed by invasive species. Priority at the national level is given

to projects that protect wildland/urban interface areas, threatened and endangered

species habitat, developed sites (such as campgrounds) and high value specimen

trees, and State and private land adjacent to National Forests. Projects to eradicate

new infestations of nonnative invasive insects and diseases are also high priority

because such new pests are often very damaging and difficult to control once they

are firmly established. National priorities are combined with regional priorities to

determine overall funding priorities for treatment.

The Forest Service conducts research on native and invasive insects, plants and

pathogens at research units across the United States. We collaborate with the Agricultural Research Service, Agricultural and Plant Health Inspection Service, and

other Federal and non-Federal research organizations on such high priority threats

as the western and southern bark beetles, Gypsy moth, the emerald ash borer Asian

longhorned beetle, Hemlock woolly adelgid, and Sudden Oak Death disease. Research results include biological information that underpins quarantine of the pine

shoot beetle and acoustical detection technology for identifying Asian longhorned

beetle infested trees within a quarantine area. For Sudden Oak Death, Forest ServVerDate 11-SEP-98 15:52 Jun 03, 2003 Jkt 087393 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\1083 HAGRI PsN: HAGRI
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ice and university scientists have helped to refine quarantine regulations and their

findings supported an emergency eradication effort in California led by APHIS.

In addition to changes in the health of our forests, many rangelands became havens for herbaceous non-native species. Some rangelands have experienced more frequent wildfires due to the presence of flammable, exotic plant species, such as

cheatgrass. In turn, each wildfire has created conditions favorable for a further increase in the number and extent of exotic species. This results in a cycle of vegetation and habitat degradation and in costly, destructive wildland fires.

Previously, wildland fire had maintained rangeland by rejuvenating decadent

grasses and killing most young trees that might have expanded onto our rangelands. Fire suppression allowed an invasion of woody species such as pinyon juniper

onto rangelands, causing reductions in grass cover and increased density of woodlands and shrub lands. On some sites, the loss of grass cover has resulted in increased wind and water erosion. Erosion further reduced herbaceous cover, perpetuating the cycle of degradation. When wildfires eventually burn these sites, they are

generally severe due to increased fuel accumulation.

President Bush’s proposed Healthy Forests Initiative is based upon a commonsense approach to reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires by restoring forest

and rangeland health. Our goal is to ensure the long-term safety and health of communities and ecosystems in our care. Our responsibility is to ensure the long-term

health of our forests and rangelands for the use, benefit and enjoyment of our citizens and for generations to come. These are goals and responsibilities that we take

seriously and we fully commit ourselves, our agencies and the resources you have

provided us to fulfill them. We appreciate the continued bipartisan support we have

received from the Congress, and we look forward to working with you to implement

the President’s agenda.

We will be glad to answer any questions you might have.

STATEMENT OF JOHN A. HELMS

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my name is John Helms and I am

Professor Emeritus of Forest Science at the University of California, Berkeley. I am

here today representing the Society of American Foresters. The Society has more

than 17,000 members dedicated to advancing the science, technology, education, and

practice of forestry in the United States for the benefit of society at large. One of

our core values is sustaining forest resources by simultaneously meeting environmental, economic, and societal goals and constraints. I am pleased to have this opportunity to testify on the important topic of forest health.

1. What is meant by Forest Health? Forest health is difficult to define. The concept is imprecise, value laden, and controversial. There are at least 18 different definitions in the literature. The Society of American Foresters holds the view that forest health is a perceived condition involving consideration of such factors as age,

structure, composition, function, vigor, and unusual levels of insect and disease activity. Potentially, forest health involves considering the status of all ecosystem components.

Consideration of forest health also involves what constitutes a forest. More precisely, we should decide whether we are really concerned about the health of trees,

stands, or forests. That is, we need to decide the spatial scale over which health

is being considered. For example, an individual tree, or a stand of trees, could be

deemed unhealthy, but the forest as a whole could be viewed as healthy.

Similarly, we must consider temporal aspects—whether health is being considered

at one point in time, over a period of decades, or over centuries. For example, following a windstorm or insect attack a forest stand may be perceived as unhealthy, however a decade or two later it could likely regain the attributes of health.

Basically, tree health, stand health or forest health is a function of resilience to

withstand stress or capacity to recover from disturbance.

It is helpful to regard forest health as similar to human health. Differing interpretations can be made depending on the physiological, functional, or performance

standards chosen and whether we are concerned about the health of people, suburbs, cities, or regions and over what time scales. Similar to human health, the

health of a forest is a function of its past history and current condition. It is essential that concepts of time, age and spatial distribution be integral to any discussion

of forest health.

2. Issues of Forest Health Vary by Forestland Ownership and Management Objective. Forestland in the United States is owned by a mix of Federal, State, industrial,

families, tribal, and trust institutions or people. Each of these owners has different

objectives and responsibilities for land management and therefore their forests have

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different structural attributes. In addition, forestland is commonly fragmented with

boundaries based on usage rather than ecological entities. Consequently, forest

health issues commonly differ among ownerships as well as among forest types, climate, and past usage and are therefore commonly unique and require individual

professional analysis and prescription.

3. Precise Communication Requires Agreement on Definition. Forest health is a

complex concept that is interpreted differently depending on viewpoint. It is, therefore, imperative to agree on which definition or interpretation is to be used before

one can conduct a meaningful discussion or craft satisfactory legislation.

4. Forest Health is Primarily a Function of Stand Density. Of all characteristics

of forest condition, the dominant factor determining vigor is stand density, or the

number of trees per unit area. In dense, unmanaged stands, or as a result of fire

exclusion policies, trees are often close together and have small crowns and root systems. These stands have low vigor and are susceptible to drought, insects/disease,

and catastrophic wildfire. Under these stressful conditions, tree mortality can be extremely high.

5. Unhealthy Stands are High Risk. Natural stand development from regeneration

to maturity includes a period, commonly of numerous decades or a century depending on site quality, characterized by high, natural tree mortality and reduction in

tree number from many thousands per acre to perhaps a hundred. This is a highrisk period when the stand is very susceptible to wildfire and insect/disease mortality. In modern times when our forests are fragmented, contain dependent rural communities and other assets, and have intrinsic values for wildlife, aesthetics, and

recreation, it is not acceptable to allow forest stands to remain in an unhealthy,

high-risk condition.

6. Forest Management can enhance the Health of Forests. It has been demonstrated that prudent forest management and stewardship can lower the risk of

unacceptable loss of property and resource assets through judicious thinning and

prescribed burning. Adaptive, collaborative approaches can lead to sustainable forest

management. A healthy forest is a sustainable forest.

7. Research and Monitoring. Prudent forest management leading to healthy, sustainable forests requires investment in research and monitoring. Increased research

effort is critically needed to obtain new knowledge on how to develop and maintain

healthy forests. Investments must be made to monitor suitable indicators of forest

health to enable effective adaptive management.

8. Issues facing forest managers today. While forest health is not an easy term

to define, and it is difficult to gain consensus as to how and what should be addressed, there are certain actions Congress and the administration can take to give

forest managers the tools to improve conditions on the national forests and private

lands, while maintaining both environmental protections and public participation.

Many of the laws that apply to Federal forest management are outdated and need

revision to ensure consistency with court decisions, other environmental laws, advances in science, and changes in public attitudes and values. Changes are also

needed in a number of regulatory measures that often cause unnecessary delays

that can be detrimental to time sensitive forest management projects. We are encouraged by the efforts taken to this date made through the 2002 Farm Bill and

the Healthy Forests Initiative. However, a long-term solution that would change

both regulations and laws is needed on both public and private lands. We will continue to offer our support to address questions and concerns.

9. Forest Health and Productivity: A Perspective of the Forestry Profession. I am

leaving for your records a copy of the 1997 SAF publication Forest Health and Productivity: A Perspective of the Forestry Profession that resulted from several years

of study and discussion by the Society and remains extremely relevant to current

issues of forest health. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony and I thank you

for the opportunity to appear before your committee.

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY HARDESTY

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to

provide written testimony for the Committee’s oversight hearing on forest health.

The Nature Conservancy has a long-standing interest in abating the threats to biodiversity stemming from altered fire regimes, and I am pleased to present the Conservancy’s views on this important topic. I am the U.S. Director of the Conservancy’s Global Fire Initiative. I have worked in a variety of capacities for the Conservancy for 11 years, focusing on collaborating with a wide diversity of partners

to integrate biodiversity conservation with community values.

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In my family, fire has both personal and professional connotations. My great-great

grandfather and great uncle died while fighting the big Idaho fires in 1910 that Gifford Pinchot used as leverage to create the National Forest Service. My father

fought fires in Oregon and Idaho for the CCCs during the Great Depression. Ironically, it would seem, I’ve spent the past decade and more working with partners

to reintroduce the natural role of fire to grasslands and forests across the United

States.

The Nature Conservancy is dedicated to preserving the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands

and waters they need to survive. The Conservancy has more than 1.1 million individual members and over 1,900 corporate sponsors. We currently have programs in

all 50 States and in 30 other nations. To date our organization has protected more

than 14 million acres in the 50 States and Canada, and has helped local partner

organizations preserve over 102 million acres in other nations. The Conservancy

itself owns more than 1,340 preserves in the United States—the largest private system of nature sanctuaries in the world. Our conservation work is grounded in sound

science, strong partnerships with other landowners, and tangible results at local

places.

For thousands of years, fire has played a vital role in shaping North American

ecosystems. Nearly all terrestrial and many wetland systems experience fire at some

interval, and many include plants and animals adapted to or dependent on fire.

When key attributes of a fire-adapted ecosystem are altered—for example, by forest

management that creates large even-aged patches of forest or by fire suppression

that increases the density of fire-intolerant trees and fuels—otherwise natural fires

may burn with uncharacteristic behavior, resulting in long-term damage to communities and ecosystems.

In the U.S., altered fire regimes are the result of more than 100 years of fire exclusion, often coupled with incompatible forestry and grazing practices. The Nature

Conservancy has identified more than 107 million acres of critical lands where biodiversity values are at serious risk of degradation from altered fire regimes. The

problem is particularly acute in short interval, low intensity fire regimes. The trend

in such areas is toward fires of increasing intensity and severity that threaten ecosystem health as well as life and property, especially in the ever-burgeoning

wildland-urban interface. Nevertheless, millions of acres of ecosystems are still in

good condition, and the management goal on those lands ought to be to maintain

ecological processes such as fire.

It is critical that we address the problem of altered fire regimes by shifting our

focus from fire suppression to management of fire-adapted ecosystems. But we will

not fix the problem overnight—years of active restoration, monitoring, research,

adaptive management, and citizen involvement will be required to protect human

communities and restore the ecological health of our forests and grasslands. While

we need to address the ecosystem health problem aggressively, we must be prudent

in our actions, and commit to learning from both our successes and our missteps

so we will not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Over the past 40 years The Nature Conservancy has successfully restored and

maintained natural fire regimes on thousands of acres of our own lands and has

worked cooperatively with State and Federal agencies and private landowners to

manage fire-adapted ecosystems on hundreds of thousands of additional acres. In

doing this we have developed a conservation framework that relies on adaptive

management, including setting measurable ecological goals, monitoring to ensure

those goals are met and working at a landscape scale.

Based on this on-the-ground experience, we believe that: Legislation is appropriate to prioritize and facilitate reduction of hazardous fuels within tightly defined

wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas and water supply areas with the dual objectives of addressing immediate concerns for public safety and, through the process

of adaptive management, of learning the most effective and ecologically sound methods of reducing fuel loads.

A few large fuel reduction demonstration projects are also appropriate outside the

WUI. These areas should be selected based on the need for ecological restoration

and their value in demonstrating how agencies, communities and scientists can

work cooperatively in planning and implementing fuel reduction on a landscape

scale. Expedited approval processes are not necessary or appropriate in those areas.

Lessons should be drawn from these activities that will inform and guide future

efforts to reduce fuels and restore natural fire regimes.

Congress and the agencies should devote significantly more resources to appropriate treatment and restoration of altered fire regimes. The more funds are diverted for suppression, the higher the long-term cost, ecologically and financially.

While at some locations fuel reduction may result in products that offset a portion

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of the cost of biomass removal, priorities should be driven by public safety within

the WUI, and ecological risk in the demonstration projects. In the near term, human

and ecological risk reduction cannot be achieved without adequate appropriations.

In the longer run, the need to remove millions of tons of small diameter trees that

currently have little economic value will be a major barrier to restoration of larger

landscapes. Where thinning is ecologically, scientifically and socially acceptable, in

concept we support offsetting the costs of services with the marketable by-products

of restoration, especially where these activities support small businesses and local

job creation. To accomplish this some form of subsidy for the creation of facilities

to use biomass from fuel reduction may be appropriate. Such subsidies should be

tied to high priority areas for fuels treatment within the wildland-urban interface

or to the sites of large scale demonstration projects.

After opportunities for careful review, we would be happy to share with the Committee specific comments on proposed legislation.

III. THE NATURE CONSERVANCY AND RESTORING FIRE-ADAPTED ECOSYSTEMS

The Nature Conservancy has long recognized the critical ecological role of fire in

ecosystems in the U.S. and around the world. Over the past 40 years, Conservancy

staff have pioneered the use of prescribed fire as an ecological management tool

throughout the Conservancy’s preserve system, and have helped develop similar programs with many public and private partners. We have an active fire program with

professional staff, which adheres to strict standards and planning requirements and

has the capacity to safely perform prescribed burns on an average of 70,000 acres

per year, and to support the planning and implementation of burns on another several hundred thousand acres per year, in conjunction with our partners. We have

approximately 100 prescribed fire burn boss qualified staff and approximately 400

staff trained to participate in prescribed fire activities. Through the years, the Conservancy has gained invaluable experience in the practical, technical, scientific and

social aspects of fire use, built a cadre of in-house fire experts, and garnered the

respect of other public and private sector fire experts.

Under the auspices of the National Fire Plan, The Nature Conservancy is working

with partners to restore ecosystems and reduce hazards to communities. In 2002,

the Conservancy entered into a cooperative agreement with the USDA Forest Service and Interior agencies (BLM, USFWS, NPS and BIA) that provided a vehicle for

working collaboratively under the umbrella of the National Fire Plan. This cooperative agreement funds Conservancy professionals and other partners to assist the

agencies and stakeholders in landscape-scale fire planning, technical training and

capacity building, public education, community-based stewardship, and scientific research. This past January, The Nature Conservancy received an award from the

Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior for Excellence in Implementing the National Fire Plan.

To date, one of our most successful collaborative endeavors has been an innovative, nationwide Fire Learning Network, consisting of 25 landscape-scale projects

that include more than 200 partners and approximately 45 million acres of high priority conservation areas, plus support of another 25 projects totaling an additional

20 million acres. In each of these projects, all stakeholders—from community groups

to Federal agencies—come together to develop a shared vision of the desired future

condition of their landscape, and learn how to overcome critical challenges related

to the health of fire-adapted ecosystems. The Nature Conservancy provides expertise

in ecology and fire management, and facilitates a truly collaborative process among

interested landowners. The results to date have included community-based fire

management plans for large landscapes and several projects have begun treatment

at large scales. One of the most important goals of the Fire Learning Network is

to demonstrate that it is possible to restore ecosystems while also reducing wildfire

hazards to people.

The Nature Conservancy also co-chaired the Stakeholder Advisory Committee of

the Federal agencies—Joint Fire Sciences Program that in 2002 allocated $16 million in funding to critical research, and plays a key staff role at the national Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center. We hope that these partnerships with the

Forest Service and the Interior agencies have helped to advance the appropriate

management of fire-adapted ecosystems.

IV. REDUCING THE THREAT OF UNNATURAL FIRES—FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

A. The problem of altered fire regimes. For thousands of years, fire has played

a vital role in shaping North American ecosystems. Nearly all terrestrial and many

wetland systems experience fire at some interval.

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Many ecosystems include plants and animals adapted to or dependent on fire

(fire-adapted ecosystems). Fire-adapted ecosystems are resilient to fires occurring

within an historical range of variation. Changes in fire regimes lead to changes in

ecosystem structure, composition and function. Fire regimes are quantified in terms

of their fuel types, fire frequency, intensity, seasonality, and severity of impacts on

characteristic vegetation. Fire-adapted ecosystems include a wide spectrum of characteristic fire regimes, ranging from high frequency, low severity ground fires that

occur every 2 to 5 years in southeastern longleaf pine forests, to infrequent, large

scale, and high intensity stand-replacing crown fires that occur naturally every 75

to 200 years in lodgepole pine forests in the intermountain West.

Ecosystems with very different fire regimes often co-exist in the same landscape.

For example, Florida sand pine scrub burns with stand-replacing fires every 20 to

50 years, but is embedded in longleaf pine forests that experience ground fires every

2 to 5 years. And in many landscapes, the same fire event will have very different

effects on different ecosystems. For example, some old growth, mixed conifer coastal

rainforest ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest experience large fires only every 100

to 200 years, and only during severe drought. A single landscape-scale fire in these

systems will behave very differently depending on overall landscape character, including presence of natural fire breaks, slope, exposure, altitude, and current vegetation structure and composition; the net effect is a mosaic of varied ecosystem

types and stand ages that are a key component of these biologically and topographically diverse landscapes.

When key attributes of a fire-adapted ecosystem are altered, otherwise natural

fires may burn with uncharacteristic behavior, resulting in long-term damage to

communities and ecosystems. In the U.S., altered fire regimes are the result of more

than 100 years of fire exclusion, often coupled with incompatible forestry and grazing practices. Where fire has been excluded or fire behavior changed by management, thousands of species have been put at risk. The Nature Conservancy has

identified more than 107 million acres of critical lands where biodiversity values are

at serious risk of degradation from altered fire regimes—a conservative estimate.

More than 1,900 areas of conservation interest to the Conservancy and several entire ecoregions consist almost entirely of ecosystems with altered fire regimes.

Ecosystems with a history of relatively frequent and low to moderate intensity

fires are especially vulnerable to uncharacteristic fire effects. The trend on many of

these lands is toward fires of increasing intensity and severity. When people, subdivisions and fire-adapted ecosystems collide in the wildland-urban interface, the

consequences can be catastrophic in terms of damage to life and property. Unfortunately, the result has been an increasingly costly and futile effort to suppress fires,

in turn leading to escalating fire intensity and increasing the risks to life, property

and the health of ecosystems.

Invasions by non-native fire-adapted plants have also significantly altered the role

of fire in many ecosystems. Invasion is increasingly associated with fires occurring

outside the historical range of variation. For example, non-native cheat grass has

dramatically altered Great Basin sagebrush ecosystems, creating a devastating positive feedback loop (invasion-increased fire frequency-increased invasion) that has

eliminated sagebrush communities across millions of acres, putting at risk many

once common species such as sage grouse.

B. Fundamental Principles. We are here today because we are facing the effects

of decades of missteps regarding treatment of our public forests. The scale of the

problem posed by altered fire regimes is vast, and we need to devote substantial

government resources to fixing it. But we will not fix the problem overnight—years

of active restoration, monitoring, research, adaptive management, and citizen involvement will be required to protect human communities and restore the ecological

health of fire-adapted forests, shrublands and grasslands.

The forest health problem is also complex and we must approach it thoughtfully.

While there exists some urgency in addressing the problem, we need to be prudent

and deliberate. If we do not treat fire-adapted ecosystems using an adaptive management approach—i.e., by committing to learning from both our successes and our

mistakes—we will repeat the mistakes of the past. We cannot afford to do this. It

is imperative that management decisions recognize the differences among ecosystems and fire regimes, while incorporating ecosystem dynamics, uncertainty, historical management, current conditions, and desired future conditions. Notwithstanding the efforts of the past few years, we still have insufficient data on what

sorts of treatments help to reduce fire risk while also restoring ecosystem health.

No one type of management will be appropriate everywhere, and not all areas

should be treated until we know the most effective ways to treat them. For this reason, management must be coupled with monitoring designed to evaluate the results

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and provide guidance for future management actions. While location-specific adjustments are essential, the following general principles are widely applicable.

Large-scale suppression is a losing and very costly proposition. Over time, markedly shifting the management emphasis toward prescribed fire and wildland fire use

will be the cheapest and most ecologically sustainable option in many ecosystems.

While fire suppression will continue to play an important and vital role in protecting people and sometimes ecosystems from wildfires, we advocate a much greater

investment in fire use, including both prescribed fire and managed wildland fire

(that is, managing wildfires in wildlands to meet stated objectives where the threat

to people is low). If applied appropriately and at scale, proactive fire use will save

hundreds of millions of dollars over time while allowing fire to act as a beneficial

natural process and reducing overall risks to firefighters and communities. As was

dramatically illustrated during the 2002 fires in the West, several areas that had

been previously treated with prescribed fire suffered little ecological damage, and

a number of otherwise threatened subdivisions were protected. Similarly, during the

disastrous 1998 wildfire season in Florida, the Ocala National Forest and several

State parks, which have an extensive prescribed fire program, suffered far less damage than surrounding private lands.

Even where fire is used proactively, most prescribed fire and wildland fire use

plans lack clearly stated ecological or fuels reduction objectives. Measures tend to

focus on acres blackened not on desired ecological or hazardous fuel outcomes. Managed wildland fire and

prescribed fire are underused for a variety of reasons, including the fact that fire

suppression is first in line when resources are allocated; agencies are behind in developing wildland fire and prescribed fire plans; and managers lack appropriate incentives and rewards. In fact, perverse counter incentives exist owing to the real

or perceived career risks associated with proactive fire use.

Restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems must be driven by ecological objectives and

desired future conditions.

As Chief Bosworth has stated, management must focus on what we leave on the

land, not what we take away. Restoration objectives must be scientifically defensible

and adaptive or we risk repeating the mistakes of the past. The history of forest

and fire management in the U.S. demonstrates that management prescriptions

aimed at preventing fires in the short-term may cause more long-term harm than

good, by degrading ecosystems or exacerbating risks to people. In some ecosystems,

logging and forest thinning may actually increase fire hazards by creating even-aged

single-species stands of fire-intolerant younger trees, making forests more susceptible to windthrow, or increasing fuel flammability by allowing more sunlight on the

forest floor, while in others, thinning will be an invaluable adjunct to prescribed

fire.

Projects should be designed to facilitate learning and provide accountability via

adaptive management, including developing measurable ecological objectives and

conducting appropriate monitoring.

Management of altered fire regimes calls for humility and prudence, while the

threat of altered fire regimes calls for immediate action. Yet, the long history of forest management in the United States and around the world clearly demonstrates

that despite our best intentions we will inevitably make mistakes. Judging whether

hazard reduction and ecosystem restoration goals have been met, and learning from

missteps, requires that management be coupled with monitoring in a landscapescale adaptive management framework. For many of the reasons described above,

adaptive management is the smartest way to achieve desired end results. But few

projects include even the most basic components of adaptive management, such as

setting measurable ecological objectives or following through with simple monitoring. At present, agencies devote so little funding or other resources to monitoring,

that it is difficult to determine whether projects are leading to either significant reduction of fire hazards or improved ecological health.

What do we mean by adaptive management as applied to restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems? The Nature Conservancy has developed a conservation approach

over the past two decades that we use in landscape-scale restoration of fire-adapted

ecosystems. The approach can be applied at any scale, and in virtually any social

setting or set of resource limitations. We believe this approach meets the standards

necessary to ensure the best restoration and conservation practices possible. Among

others, key features include developing measurable objectives at landscape and

project scales; using management experiments and monitoring to learn and progressively refine alternative prescriptions and treatments; and instituting a concrete

process for measuring progress and adapting action.

This approach to adaptive management does not need to impose undue burdens

on the agencies, and in fact will save money in the long run. In our experience,

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adaptive management is not inconsistent with cost-effective restoration. First, a

well-designed monitoring program can be strategically focused on a few resources

or triggering events, and need not be overly burdensome. Second, data gathered

through monitoring in one project is often exportable, resulting in simplified monitoring requirements for projects in similar ecosystems. Third, doing restoration

right—with early community buy-in, and management adjustments based on credible data—will ensure the best chance of real restoration, which means lower management costs in the future, as well as reduced risks of unnatural fire and accompanying high costs of fire suppression.

At a minimum, we believe that agencies should adopt as standard practice in all

projects the following: • Develop objectives that are ecosystem-specific, measurable, and define restoration and fuel reduction end results. • Monitor and assess progress toward desired future condition at both landscape

and project scales.

Fire is a landscape-scale process. Treatment methods must recognize that fires

occur across entire landscapes and ecosystems, and effective fire management planning must occur at the landscape level. The size of an area that represents a landscape will differ depending on the ecosystem but is often on the order of hundreds

of thousands of acres. Even within large landscapes, there will be variations in type

of treatment depending on the ecosystem type, and in many areas, it will be appropriate to do no treatment at all.

The ongoing BLM and Forest Service Plan revision processes provide an excellent

opportunity to ensure that landscape-level fire planning is undertaken and is integrated with other factors in the planning process. Directions to design projects based

on landscape-scale analysis should also be part of the agencies’ current fire planning

efforts.ecosystems, so should objectives and treatments—in other words, one size

management will not fit all ecosystems.

In some ecosystem types, such as lodgepole pine forests that cover millions of

acres in the West, infrequent but high intensity, large-scale fires are natural events

(e.g., 1988 fires in the lodgepole pine forests of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem).

In these ecosystem types, communities would be wise to adapt building codes and

encourage rational development patterns that reflect risks and minimize the threat

to public safety, as well as take aggressive action in the urban-wildland interface.

In other ecosystems, such as ponderosa pine forests with naturally short fire return

intervals, unnaturally intense fires are the result of past fire exclusion coupled with

ecologically unsound logging and grazing practices, threatening both ecosystem integrity and human health and safety. In these systems, mimicking a known historical ecosystem structure via thinning and a natural fire regime with prescribed fire

will likely reverse ecosystem degradation, while also reducing risks to people where

altered fire regimes are adjacent to urbanized areas.

Many restoration and hazard reduction tools are available, but each has different

benefits, costs and risks. In many places, prescribed fire and ′′managed wildland

fires′′ are clearly the tools of choice, though they are greatly underused relative to

their benefits and costs. In any case, wildfires will continue to burn despite suppression efforts and many will produce desirable ecological outcomes where ecosystem

structure and function occur within the range of historical variation. Many other

places will require more costly management, including some combination of thinning

of non-merchantable small diameter trees, re-vegetation with native species, control

of non-native invasive species, and creation of fuel breaks to protect human infrastructure. As with any prescription, where and when to use thinning as has to be

informed by the best available scientific understanding of ecosystem dynamics. Unless these treatments also are coupled with prescribed fire or exposure to natural

wildfire consistent with historical frequency and intensity, costly restoration and

hazard reduction gains will quickly be lost.

Complete and adequate restoration and rehabilitation cannot be accomplished

without use of native plant materials.

Restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems will require a focus on more than just reduction of fuel loads through prescribed fire and mechanical treatments. An equal

focus on restoring native plant communities is essential to the long-term success of

these projects including the use of native seed and seedlings during fire rehabilitation, fuels reduction and ecosystem restoration projects, and following other invasive

species treatments. In order to ensure that sufficient native plant materials from

appropriate geographic locations, elevations and climatic zones are available at reasonable cost, continued support for the interagency Native Plant Materials program

through National Fire Plan funding is essential. This partnership includes Federal

and State agencies, non-profit botanic gardens, and commercial seed growers and

nurseries working together to significantly increase the native seed supply.

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Engaging local communities in collaborative planning, implementation and measuring results will yield better, speedier and more sustainable decisions and results

over the long-term. Sometimes you have to go slower to go faster.

A number of collaborative, voluntary and inclusive community-planning approaches have been developed and tested over the past decade. Many of these efforts

are landscape-scale in scope, and encompass multiple public and private ownerships

and projects under one umbrella plan. Although there are no guarantees, it has

been our experience that bringing stakeholders together to voluntarily plan across

ownerships often results in projects that are implemented with maximum buy-in

and a minimum of costly and time-consuming delays and third-party challenges.

Under a community-based adaptive management framework, planning can include

NEPA public involvement and appeal processes. When disputes arise, individual

projects or problem areas can be pulled out of larger plans for dispute resolution

and more detailed planning. Consideration of alternatives is also a tool for dispute

resolution as well as analysis.

Ecosystems, wildfires and fire hazards cross political and legal boundaries. Yet

currently, Federal land managers do not always take full advantage of authorities

(e.g., the Wyden amendment) that allow them to collaboratively plan, work on or

support cross-boundary projects with State agencies and willing neighboring private

landowners. We will not be successful at either ecosystem restoration or reducing

hazards to people if we continue to think, plan and act at small scales or only within

the boundaries of individual public or private ownerships.

Success over the long-term demands that today’s investments in ecological restoration and hazard reduction be maintained through sustained commitments of

funding and management action over the long-term.

As noted above, Congress and the agencies must devote more resources to appropriate treatment and restoration of altered fire regimes. The more funds are diverted for suppression, the higher the long-term cost, ecologically and financially.

In 2000, Federal suppression costs exceeded $1.3 billion. At the time this was

viewed as an anomaly, yet it was surpassed in 2002.

In large fire years, fire-fighting requires that Federal agencies shift funds internally from other programs to pay suppression costs. In the short-term, this means

that already approved and funded high priority restoration and hazard reduction

projects are not completed, are delayed, or in some cases are canceled for lack of

funding, further exacerbating both near- and long-term problems. Congress usually

appropriates emergency funds to replenish suppression costs, but not always the full

amount of funds expended. This approach will continue to be a major barrier to restoration until Congress creates a vehicle to protect restoration funds from extraordinary fire suppression costs. It is critical that Congress fund, and the agencies use,

adequate investments for comprehensive large scale treatment of the altered fire regime/excessive fuel load problem on forested public lands.

V. REDUCING THE THREAT OF UNNATURAL FIRES—A POLICY APPROACH

As discussed earlier, the problem of altered fire regimes has two components.

First, fire suppression and increasing fuel loads have caused risk to human communities and public welfare. Second, the same causes pose severe threats to ecosystems. As much of the recent proposed legislation recognizes, these two areas

—places where communities are threatened, and landscapes extending beyond those

places—should be addressed in separate but related ways. In our view, legislation

should prioritize hazardous fuels reduction projects where there is a risk to human

communities, and should also recognize the need to begin the methodical treatment

of areas, at a landscape scale, where the principle threat is to biodiversity. If adaptive management (including ecological objectives and monitoring) is applied to all of

these projects, we will gain valuable knowledge that will result in more cost-efficient

and effective restoration of altered fire regimes, leading to greater protection of

human lives and property as well as biodiversity.

Treatments where communities are threatened. Because of the need to do hazardous fuels reduction to protect property and life, it is important to prioritize projects

in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and areas where municipal water supplies

are threatened. If these fuels reduction projects are undertaken with the adaptive

management principles described above, we can learn important lessons about how

to manage larger ecosystems. For example, a particular project in the WUI, based

on collaborative process and monitoring, will inform how fuels reduction and ecological restoration should be done in the larger ecosystem that contains that WUI area.

Using the WUI projects to try different treatment methods, gather important data

and obtain community support will likely reduce the need for lengthy analysis and

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monitoring of projects in similar ecosystems, and will also reduce the risk of later

mistakes in those ecosystems.

Because of the need for expedited actions to ensure fuel reduction, some simplifying of NEPA procedures is appropriate in narrowly-defined wildland-urban interface

areas where communities are directly threatened.

Treatments where larger ecosystems are threatened. In some areas, landscape

scale treatments will be necessary beyond the wildland-urban interface. We recommend that the Forest Service and BLM focus strategically on a few landscape

scale areas that are critically in need of hazardous fuels reduction for protection of

communities and biodiversity. These areas should be selected based on their need

for restoration through treatment, on the level of risk posed by existing conditions,

and on the prospects for successful collaboration with surrounding communities and

other stakeholders. As with treatments in the WUI, adaptive management should

be a guiding framework, and lessons learned from these projects can be exported

to similar ecosystems in need of treatment.

NEPA procedures should apply to the planning of such projects, but careful and

collaborative goal setting, community involvement, and adaptive management

should be used to demonstrate if and how such projects can move forward in a timely way within the framework of those procedures.

Adequate funding is essential for the success of this approach. Fuels treatment

particularly within the WUI, requires adequate Federal appropriations. All evidence

suggests that such expenditures are less than the cost of fire suppression and the

damage caused by cataclysmic wildfires. While utilization of the products of fuel reduction may be able to offset some of the cost, priority setting should be driven by

risk assessment not by the value of wood that might result from thinning.

Biomass utilization can reduce public expenditures if it becomes part of fuel reduction planning. The need to remove from forests and grasslands millions of tons

of small diameter trees that currently have little economic value is a major barrier

to restoration in many places. The biggest challenges are lack of markets and the

current low value of small trees. Where thinning is ecologically, scientifically and

socially acceptable, in concept we support offsetting the costs of services with the

marketable by-products of restoration, especially where these activities support

small businesses and local job creation. Programs to subsidize facilities to utilize

biomass should be implemented in conjunction with landscape scale fuel reduction

in areas where threat assessment suggests that such projects are appropriate. Secondly, treatments themselves should be based on scientifically credible ecosystem

restoration and hazard reduction goals and not simply the desire to support local

jobs. With these caveats The Nature Conservancy supports active Federal and State

investment in research and small grant programs aimed at creating technologies

and catalyzing the efforts of local entrepreneurs.

We believe that the approach described above would provide immediate reduction

in human risks while developing the foundation in knowledge, experience and process for addressing the large scale threats of altered fire regimes.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on behalf of The Nature Conservancy. We would be happy to provide the Committee with further information or

to work with the committee on legislative solutions that would meet the critical goal

of restoring fire-adapted ecosystems to protect human lives and property as well as

to preserve the diversity of life on Earth.

STATEMENT OF STEVEN W. KOEHN

On behalf of the National Association of State Foresters, I am pleased to testify

on the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative. NASF is a non-profit organization that

represents the directors of the State forestry agencies from all 50 States, eight U.S.

territories, and the District of Columbia. State Foresters manage and protect State

and private forests across the U.S., which together encompass two-thirds of the nation’s forests.

I am representing NASF in my role as Chairman of the Water Resources Committee. In recent years, the Water Resources Committee has taken the lead in development of proposed legislation to improve management of forested watersheds on nonindustrial private lands. We believe the concepts of healthy forests and healthy watersheds are inextricably intertwined.

With approximately 190 million acres of Federal lands now at risk to wildfire, and

more than 70 million acres of all forestland ownerships at risk to increased mortality from insects and diseases over the next 15 years, it is essential that steps are

taken to improve the condition of our forest resources. Such steps will protect communities, watersheds, wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, and the quality of

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our air and water, and will ultimately reduce the costs (environmental, social and

economic) of catastrophic wildfire.

NEED TO REDUCE HAZARDOUS FOREST FUELS

NASF has been deeply involved in the development and now, implementation, of

the 10-year Comprehensive Strategy for a Collaborative Approach for Reducing

Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment, dated May 2002. This

document was developed pursuant to the conference report for the Interior Appropriations Act of 2001 and was endorsed by the Western and Southern Governors Associations. We have a State Forester serving on the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, which was established by the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior. We

have been supportive of the recent administrative efforts to facilitate implementation of the 10-Year Strategy, and we support additional legislative efforts that are

consistent with the 10-Year Strategy and accompanying Implementation Plan. We

believe that the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, introduced this week by Rep.

McInnis and others, supports these efforts.

State Foresters recognize the importance and urgency of reducing the hazards to

communities at risk of catastrophic fire. To do this, we must address hazards within

the wildland-urban interface, but I must caution that the hazards are more than

local in scope. To fully accomplish the goals of the 10-year Strategy and Implementation Plan, we must look at the larger landscape and address the forest health and

watershed issues on all ownerships. We note that the legislation introduced by Rep.

McInnis and others takes this approach.

WATERSHED FORESTRY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM PROVIDES ADDITIONAL BENEFITS TO

THE HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE

NASF recommends the inclusion of our proposed Watershed Forestry Assistance

Program in any Healthy Forests legislation. Because of my long involvement with

the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort, I am particularly supportive of this effort.

We developed and proposed the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program to improve

forested watersheds on non-industrial private forestlands. The initiative was considered last year as a part of the 2002 Farm Bill, where it received bipartisan support

in the Senate. By offering incentives to improve the condition of these forested watersheds, the program would contribute significant benefits to the Healthy Forests

Initiative.

The discussions surrounding the Healthy Forests Initiative were initiated by the

unsustainable conditions of western forests, primarily on public lands. As important

as these issues are, there are also important forest health and watershed concerns

on all forestlands—public and private, large owners and small owners—across the

country. The Watershed Forestry Assistance Program brings emphasis to the national relevance of the Healthy Forests Initiative.

Although ownership patterns and local conditions differ widely between regions,

the protection and management of watersheds for the production of clean water is

a critical issue everywhere. In the eastern U.S., where I live and work, this is particularly true, since 90 percent of the forestland is privately owned. The private forests of the northeast and southeast together produce two-thirds of the water we

need for recreation and for fish and wildlife habitat. They also provide the drinking

water supply for millions of Americans in the east. In addition to environmental

benefits, these same private ownerships produce over 50 percent of the Nation’s

wood and paper products.

The health of eastern forests is threatened by invasive pests and plants, fire, overcrowding, poor regeneration, and land-use fragmentation. Loss of forests is directly

affecting the ability of some watersheds to sustain quality water supplies. The conservation, restoration, and stewardship of healthy private forestland is viewed as

crucial to watershed health in the U.S.

In the West, the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program is no less important. For

example, it can provide assistance to landowners for the rehabilitation and restoration of burned watersheds to limit soil erosion and benefit community drinking

water supplies. Effective partnerships can address these issues before they become

more overwhelming.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF UTILIZING SMALL, NONCOMMERCIAL

WOOD FROM OVERCROWDED FORESTS

NASF supports forest biomass utilization as a tool to help reduce unnaturally

dense forest fuels and the associated risks posed to communities and watersheds.

Utilizing forest biomass from overstocked or unhealthy forest stands can also be an

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effective way to reduce the costs of treating hazardous forest fuels. Making use of

otherwise non-commercial wood products can bring environmental benefits by supporting the production of renewable energy and lowering wildfire risks, thereby reducing the amount of carbon released in the atmosphere by catastrophic wildfires.

V. IMPACTS OF FOREST PESTS ON HEALTHY FORESTS

Provisions to enhance research programs to address forest pests will also help

carry out the Healthy Forests Initiative on all lands. Accelerating efforts to address

new invasive pests and providing additional assistance to aggressively implement

pest management strategies would be helpful to all landowners and serve the public

interest.

For example, Maryland has been dealing with hemlock wooly adelgid for several

years now. If left unchecked, naturally occurring stands of hemlock, which are important in helping to maintain cold water fisheries, will be impacted with the same

detrimental effects seen in adjacent mid-Atlantic States. Many other forest pests

significantly impact our Nation’s forests, from the southern pine beetle, to the nonnative emerald ash borer that is devastating forests of the midwest, to sudden oak

death in the west, just to name a few. Noxious and invasive weeds also threaten

our forests and are in need of aggressive control. Accelerating the work to address

these and other forest pests through authorization and funding is critical to improving the health of our Nation’s forests.

Legislation that will enhance public and private land managers efforts to improve

forest health and provide for healthy watersheds will benefit the public and the environment, and is simply good management.

On behalf of the National Association of State Foresters, I urge the committee to

include all of the above programs in legislation to carry out the President’s Healthy

Forests Initiative. These measures are designed to address and improve forest

health on public and private lands, consistent with the National Fire Plan 10-Year

Strategy and Implementation Plan. In particular, I will remind you that the Watershed Forestry Assistance Program proposed by NASF will provide benefits nationwide. The improvement of watershed conditions on private forestlands will complement the other goals of the Healthy Forests Initiative by enhancing water quality

and quantity generated from our Nation’s forestlands.

Our abundant and magnificent forests helped to build our Nation. Wise and sustainable forest policy, that recognizes the importance of healthy and resilient forests, will help to assure its continued strength. I thank the Committee for the opportunity to testify today, and I would be happy to answer any questions.

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