With wildfires already raging through the West, House Republicans took a chainsaw Tuesday to federal regulations that have created a fire-friendly environment on public lands by slowing forest-thinning and dead-tree removal.
The House Natural Resources Committee passed the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017, moving to combat the rise in catastrophic wildfires by reversing what sponsors described as the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management’s “anemic forest management efforts.”
“As we debated this bill, dozens of wildfires continue to burn in the Southwest,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman, Arkansas Republican and the bill’s sponsor.
The Brian Head Fire in southern Utah, the largest of 21 major wildfires currently burning in the West, has razed 21 buildings, 13 of them homes, across 50,000 acres and forced the evacuation of 1,500 residents.
“Our forest health crisis can no longer be neglected,” said chairman Rob Bishop, Utah Republican. “Active management is needed to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and improve the health and resiliency of our forests and grasslands. More money alone is not the solution.”
The bill, H.R. 2936, comes with support growing for tree-cutting to reduce wildfire risk after years of opposition from environmental groups. Last week, the House passed on a bipartisan vote a bill to clear overgrown vegetation on federal lands near the electrical grid.
Backers argue that the devastating wildfires have increased as timber-cutting has plunged. The U.S. timber industry has been decimated by endangered-species rulings, starting with the 1989 spotted-owned decision, combined with a steady stream of lawsuits aimed at stopping sales on federal land.
“Beginning in 1996, the average amount of timber harvested from federal forests fell to between 1.5 and 3.3 billion board feet,” said the House committee memo, citing Agriculture Department figures. “Conversely, since 1996, the average annual amount of acres burned due to catastrophic wildlife totaled over 6.2 million acres per year.”
As a result, Forest Service staff at the national forests devote more than 40 percent of their time to “conducting planning and analysis instead of actively managing our federal forests,” said the memo. “Meanwhile, more than 50 percent of the FS budget is spent fighting catastrophic wildfire.”
Opponents of H.R. 2936, including green groups and some House Democrats, argued that the measure would endanger key environmental protections and blamed unhealthy, fire-prone forests on climate change, wrongheaded fire-suppression tactics, and the bark-beetle infestation.
Read more at Washington Times
If we dont thin out the trees then their ripe for a big time fire and then all those spieces that supposedly depend upon old growth timber will lose their habitat the same spieces the granola bar munchers and tree huggers will be still lying about it all
I have to ask the environmentalists ” How do endangered species survive a fire?” They don’t. But a massive out of control disaster is free advertising for climate change.