This two and a half hour hearing included testimony from an interior Department Official and deputy chief of the u. S. Forest service. Receive testimony on 15 bills pending before the public lands Forest Service and mining subcommittee. Because of the large number of bills on todays agenda, im not going to go through all of them right now, but the complete agenda will of course be included in the record. I want to know they have a former member of the committee here, senator landrieu with us in the back and weve got members who will be joining us shortly have another Committee Assignments at the moment. We have others who will be joining us by telephone i believe. I also want to begin by recognizing that a staggering loss of life that has occurred and embed it within what has shaped up to be a really horrific wildfire season. More than 36 people have perished in the inferno is raging over it towards the westn United States. Dozens more are missing. In oregon, my colleague, senator wydens, home state of thousands of lost homes and evacuated. Elsewhere we have wind driven fires that continue to spread across our federal, state, tribal and public lands. With all these wildfires raging through the west we are thrilled to see we would be receiving testimony on legislation to address the management of our federal forests. I strongly believe that the fires we are watching on tv could have in many instances been prevented if only active Management Practices have been implemented. As many of you are probably aware, forests have been shaped and have been influenced by fire for certainly as long as our species has been around even longer. Cycles are burning and we regrowth are completely natural. They are not a new feature of current climate conditions as some would have us believe. The fires were not unpredictab unpredictable. They were predictable and in fact they were predicted. We could have prepared for them, but the management of the forests has regrettably become hamstrung partly by regulations promulgated by regulations with hundreds of thousands of miles away from the land they were in charge of administering. For example, regulations under the Clean Air Act seeks perversely and most likely unintentionally worked to discourage the practice of letting fires burn especially in those areas that have air pollution levels that exceed permissible standards. In these instances, they may favor reactive shortterm Fire Suppression of the expensiveand longterm risks. When congress imagined activities like prescribed burns or removal of some trees, congress didnt foresee a regulatory byzantine labyrinth that led to litigation at every turn, in many instances that would end up forestalling taking precautionary measures and ultimately could lead to fires that occurred lead to the loss of life and environmental catastrophe. Management of the forests has moved away from productive measures largely out of fear quite legitimate wellfounded fear of being sued. This in turn has led to bigger fires threatening greater numbers of lives, livelihoods and homes in many cases it has also resulted in additional and worse air pollution than would have otherwise been the case had prescribed burns and allowed to occuitto her or forest overgrowd eliminated. Research tells us between 44 millio44,000,011. 8 million as burned each year in prehistoric california between 1982 and 1998, californias agency land managers burned on average about 70,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, the number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres of. That is a tremendous gap between the natural cycle and what our Forest Management efforts have provided. Now i am grateful that we have skilled Emergency Personnel who helped prevent tragedy from forest fires. These brave women and men put their lives on the line during the course of their work and do so on a regular basis and quite heroically. They are in necessary part of the Forest Management strategy. We can do more to ease the burden that they face with targeted control burns and removal of excess fuel that builds up within the forests. With these burns, people can plan ahead to make it out of town, so a filter in their home, make a plan to meet their needs. Furthermore, if the Fire Suppression of military style of firefighting can be more environmentally destructive in some cases been controlled burns or some rare instances from the wildfire itself suppression tactics often include cutting down bulldozing a and gliding high severity fires to control the fire behavior. I believe a large portion of this could be prevented if local agencies and federal partners could sidestep illogical regulatory barriers to the hearing agenda today are a member of bills related to the proper management of the lands including the miracle mountain designation act which ive introduced in the senate. This bill memorializes the events surrounding the fire of 2018, fastmoving wildfire not unlike the explosive inferno as we have seen in oregon and california of late. This fire of 2018 is one that nearly incinerated the community of elkridge city in utah. Defying all logic, the advancing fire unexpectedly stopped along an unnamed mountain barely 2 miles from homes and from evacuation grounds. The mountain earned the nickname miracle mountain by utah. Elkridge city was blessed, but elsewhere around the country come a year after year, families are forced to evacuate their homes. Better Forest Management can reduce the severity of wildfires and reduce the risk to fire prone communities. We need a range of management tools to cut the tape into curved part frivolous litigation that assault the reduction projects and efforts to remove dead and dying trees from the poorly managed federal land. Its timely today that we will hear testimony, the emergency wildlife and Public Safety act the bill sponsored by senator feinstein and senator james the purpose is to accelerate the prevention projects across the cottonwood state. Senator feinstein has joined us to provide a few remarks about her bill. Senator udall and senator whitehouse wilwhitehouse will ag statements about their bills on todays agenda and chairman murkowski will also join us to speak about her alaska native claims sentiment amendments to expand services and resources for overly alaskan tribal members. I look forward to hearing more about each of these built into the other bills on todays agenda. Senator wyden thank you very much mr. Chairman and i appreciate you holding this hearing. I also note the presence of the chair, senator murkowski on one of the aspects of service ive most enjoyed was when i was chair and she was the Ranking Member and weve continued it was kind of efforts in the years ahead and i think her for her courtesy as well. What i can tell you is the scores of fires have hit my home state harder than a wrecking ball. Many of them are still going on. These are not your grandfathers fires. They are bigger, harder, more dangerous or powerful and i never conceived growing up of fires leaping over rivers. We had fires in our part of the country who reduced whole neighborhoods to. There was nothing left of cars, just picture what it means to the melting automobiles. There is a connection there was a bill that i introduced in the Community Empowerment and act. This is extraordinarily important. It attracts thousands of visitors each year and it is the poorest in my state and one of the counties hardest hit by the coronavirus. Its about two things. The. It is a way of life as an economic engine growing the local economic engine and also protecting the absolutely gorgeous places that are part of this region. Im going to go into the bill just briefly in a moment. I just want to come back to the relationship to the fire for just one moment. If the fires teach us anything, and at the chair and i went through this this morning because this is going to be a watershed moment with respect to this whole fire debate. If the fire is teach us anything, its the people that need jobs can and should be put to work restoring our public lands, preparing homes for fire resiliency and shoring up Rural Communities against encroachment of the pandemic and this includes jobs for the restoration of the million acres of wheat infested public lands in the county. Ive appreciated the comments of my friend from nevada over the years with respect to her public land. Her public lands are a bit different than our public land. But in both cases, we need to do a lot of restoration work. They can put people to work and we can spare ourselves catastrophes. The only other point is the senate and working on these issues is to step up its pace and we talked about that this morning. Contingent of the family ranchers came to dc to and asked for a meeting with me and i was a little shocked because i was stunned they were coming to meet with me and asked to work with me on a big project. I was under the impression i would be probably the last person they would come and talk to. I asked them why you favor there ithey were therein the office, t really say. Finally i said i think youve come because you believe im the only one crazy enough to get in the middle of trying to work out an agreement that has been sought for decades in this part of the world between the ranchers and environmental folks and the like. When i said that they all smiled and imagesetter yet thats why we are here. We are here because we kind of think yo youre the only one cry enough to be willing to try to get in the middle of this thing and try to sort it out and its a fabulous area. Senator heinrich, my great friend, knows a lot about it and what i said when we started working on this at th that point impossible undertaking, senator murkowski and i had been there for, like we are going to protect this way of life. We are not going to let anybody trample all over the farmers and ranchers. But also we are not going to throw the environmental laws in the trash can. They are not just going to eviscerate the environmental laws. Everybody knew those priority is putting forward. And there was widespread agreement about fire prone weeds putting the land at risk if they are ranchers dealing with visitors to follow their gps because it was risking their life to dangerous places they said they were going to have to have some roads to facilitate the safe visits to these wonderful sites without compromising them and we went round and round and listen to scientists and educators and people who love the land and farmers simply put pencil to paper and the bill we are hearing today represents the spirit of compromise. Nobody got everything they want, but everybody got Something Better than they have right now. And ive als i would also tell y colleagues from the historical standpoint, they a lot h [inaudible] isnt that far away from where we have the wildlife takeover. So theres been some challenges in this part of the world, and i cannot credit that community enough because they said we are going to find some compromise. Nobody thin seemed to get everyg they want. The bill ensures the management can adapt to changing circumstances like Climate Change and drought by establishing new citizen led communities to support transparent realtime management of the land. The certainty for land users by setting a set of agreedupon range. Karen cheng range processes that are eligible for streamlined Environmental Review. The bill sets aside just over a million acres of land which was previously managed without the flexibility of the rangeland improvement. We moved away while protecting the environmental law from the fullblown analysis. If you are talking about moving your irrigation troughs of it away from a river and i will just conclude by way of saying now there are a lo a lot of reinsurers that say this is something i can build my future around. This is an opportunity for my kid, my grandkids to have a future, and a lot of environmental folks have said that they can live with this bill and eithe neither side coue done it. The last point id make because when i started on this legislation, the chair was very gracious and i told her that this was really important to me in a personal way because our staff are who had been with before a quartercentury had been working on this for ages and ages. When i went to visit her in her hospice bed, whole wall was full of maps. The whole wall was filled with maps. Max. She was talking to people and trying. That is what she stood for and people with talke talk to her ae would say you know, im going to be hes going to stay at this thing until he gets both sides together, the ranchers and environmentalists. We get them together thats going to be because of mary. I want to get this bill passed and we are all going to dedicate it to mary. Sure murkowski from the day mary passed even in our corner on a lot of things that we just want to say thank you. Thank you, senator wyden. We have several members that have joined us to speak about their respective bills. We are going to start with the chairman, senator murkowski and the people that senator manchin beyond that. They have a fair number not only those of us on the bias but they also have friends of the energy committee. I have a small bill i want to speak to you briefly about before i do i want to share my thoughts and prayers and my sincere hope for rain and recovery for so many that are facing the horrendous wildfires out west in oregon and in washington of course they are looking at it very carefully and of course in california. To you, senator, you have my heartfelt condolences for the loss of life. Loss of property, environmental damage that your states are enduring currently. I know its not just my thoughts that are reflected that so many of us share in a real sense of loss for what you are experiencing right now. Right now there are thousands of men and women that are working on these fires, briefly working on putting out these devastating fires. They are putting their lives at risk morning, noon and night in the midst of pathetic on top of all of this and so our hearts and prayers are with them and their family members. Alaskans are certainly thinking about them and hoping that they are safe because we have a good group of alaskans, some 400 plus that are in your states, whether it is in california, oregon, colorado we escaped some significant fires this year so i think you have some folks that are fresh that have come to you and we have also sent concept but knowing we are in this fight with you is important to us to ask wha me keep you all in our prayers. I want to thank you for being here to provide testimony today including on senator feinsteins bill she has seeking to reduce the risk of wildfires and protecting our communities. Senator feinstein comic and i ei had an opportunity on the floor for me to thank you for your continued work on this. I want to acknowledge the work of my friend from rhode island. I have had much time to speak about that and i also want to recognize the chairman david of a former chair. Since you are here representing the department of the interior i want to take a moment to recognize and congratulate the department on its recently completed review from the office of government ethics. At the Ethics Program including additional training, new staff and a consolidated consistent approach across all of its bureaus and agencies. The agency offered no new findings or recommendations for improvements and anderson has never happened before a duty officer and to all in the department that have rebuilt the Ethics Program. I think the report is a testament to this significant multiyear effort and you are to be commended on this effort. Briefly, mr. Chairman, here are a few words about s. 2533 that ive introduced. Its very simple. It prevents alaskan native elders from becoming ineligible for federal needsbased programs because of benefits that they receive from the settlement trust. These are an important source of support for many of the legendary remote areas but not for any sorfor any to combat pod healthcare challenges so i have a stack of letters in support for the bill i would ask unanimous consent to be included as part of the record and i want to thank you for holding this hearing lots of good bills on the agenda today. We also have more than we would like to hear before the end of the year. We hope that we would be able to schedule one more subcommittee hearing likely early on provided that we are able to do that, but i thank you for this expeditious review of so many significant matters and i thank the committee for its time to get hispanic thank you madam chair. We will now turn to senator manchin. Thank you for connecting villageconnecting thelegislativh is a important and im glad my good friends, senator whitehouse, who weve had many conversations with and senator udall i think is here virtually senator feinstein for being here. We are so glad to have them. Also its good to see senator Mary Landrieu and good friends of ours is someone i enjoyed working with him has been a good friend of her i appreciate her being here. This represents the priority of many members of both sides including several members of the committee as you know many of these bills reflect years of work to get to this point and im pleased to see them included in todays hearing. Id like to take a moment to recognize qualifiers that many of the states are facing in our heart goes out to each and every one of you and all of your constituents in your state. Its unbelievable. And this year, the states throughout the west are experiencing an extraordinary number of very large wildfires called mega wildfires that are each over 100,000 acres in size. They require intensive staffing that due to the concerns at the beginning of the season, firefighters testing positive during the season, exhaustion and the sheer size of these fires ar, Staffing Levels to fit the fires are far lower than normal and lower than where they need to be. Im told we need 5,000 firefighters to adequately be able to do the job that needs to be done. Given six of the 20 largest wildfires in, forget history are burning right now, right now in senator feinsteins home state. I look forward to hearing from her directly about the needs of the people in her state and how we can help. Immediate action is needed to respond to the fires and in addition, we need to recognize this is a perennial issue that is worsening every year and so we need to be thinking about short and long