Works subcommittee will address options to address the wild fires and Forest Management. This includes testimony from an interior Deputy Department official and deputy chief of the u. S. Forest service. Good afternoon, everyone. This subcommittee will come to t order. The purpose of todays hearing is to receiveands testimony on i bills pending beforece the publo lands force and mining subcommittee. Because of the large number of t bills onhe todays c agenda, it going to go through all of them right now. But the complete agenda will, of course, be included in the record. I want to note at the outset weve got a former member of our committee here, former senator from louisiana, longtime member of the senate and this committee is in the back. Weve got members who will be at t who have tly another Committee Assignment at the i moment. E. We have others who will be d eme joining us dtelephonically. As i want to recognize the staggering loss of life that has occurred embedded within what has raped up to be a really horrific wild fire season. More than 36 people have perished in infernos raging through the western United States this year. R. Dozens more are missing. In oregon, my thousands have lost their homes. In my home state of utah and elsewhere in the west weve got winddriven fires that continue to spread across our federal, state, tribal and public lands. E with all these wild fires raging throughout the west, i was addrs thrilleds to see that we would e ceiving testimony on legislationi to address the management of our federal ny ins forests. I strongly believe that the megafires were watching on tv could have, in many, many instances, been prevented if only active Management Practices had been implemented. N 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 and even longer. Cycles of burning and regrowth are completely natural. Onditi they arent a new feature of current climate conditions, as some would have us believe. They these fires werent unpredictable. They were predictable. P and inrepa fact, they were ttaby predicted. We could have prepared for them. But the management of our forests has regrettably become ham strung, partly by regulations promulgated by exae bureaucrats, operating many miles away from the lands theyre in charge of t likely administering. Unr example, regulations under thein Clean Air Act perversely d most likely unintentionally worn to discourage the practice of letting fires burn, especially s in those areas that have, air pollution levels that exceed permissible standards. In these instances, they may favor reactive shortterm Fire Suppression at the expense of heightened longterm risks. When congress imagined activities like prescribed burns or removal of snag trees, congress did not foresee a regulatory byzantine labyrinth that led to litigation at every other turn. Litigation in many instances tec would end upou forestalling thes taking of precautionary measures and ultimately could lead to fires that could, in turn, lead to the loss of life and environmental catastrophe. Management of our forest has moved awau from proactive fiasures, largely out of fear, quite legitimate and elihoods wellfounded fear of being suedn this has led to bigger fires, threatening greater numbers of lives, livelihoods and homes. Cases, it has also e had resulted in additional and wor e air pollution than would have otherwise been the case, had ree priored burns been allowed to occur or forest overgrowth been eliminated. Research tells us that between 4. 4 million and 11. 8 million ifr acres burned eachni yeara in prehistoric california. Between 1882 and 1892, the land managers burned on average about 30,000 ache rs a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that thmber dropped to an annual 13,000 acres. E that is a tremendous gap between the natural cycle and what our a Forest Managementve efforts havl provided. P now, im grateful that we have skilled Emergency Personnel whoa helpnd prevent tragedy from fort fire. These brave women and men put their lives on the line during the course of their work and do so on ath regular basis and qui heroically. Theyre a necessarywe can d par burest management strategy. We can do more to ease the etedc burdenon that they face with bus targeted control burns and with removal of excess fuel that ns,p buildseo up within our forests. With these burns, people can plan ahead and get out of town, install a hepa filter in their homes, make a plan for their needs. Olled military style of Fire Fighting environmentallylywild destructive in some casess than controlled burns or in some rare instances than the wild fire itself. Suppression tactics often include cutting down large snags, bulldozes miles of ridge tops and lighting high severity fires to control the fire eral behavior. I believe that a large portion of this could be prevented if local agencies and federal toryb partners could side step illogical regulatory barriers and address the obvious problems that lead to catastrophe. I hope that today we can make Real Progress in addressing the needs of communities put at risf by poor Management Practices. Additionally on the agenda today act w are a number of bills related to proper management including the miracle mountain designation act. This bill memorializing the events surrounding the bald ke e mountain fire of 2018, a fastmoving wild fire not unlike the explosive infernos weve. Seen in oregon and california of nete. And this fire, the Bald Mountain fire of 2018, is one that nearly incinerated the community of elg ridge city in utah. Defying all logic, the advancing fire unexpectedly stopped along an unnamed mountain barely two miles from homes andmo from the evacuation routes. Ah mountainn quickly earned the nickname miracle mountain. Elk ridge city was blessed, but elsewhere around the country y year after year, families are forced tohometter for evacuate t due to wildy fire. As previously mentioned, better Forest Management can reduce ths severity of wild fires and reduce the risk to fire prone no communities. We need a range of management tools too cut the red tape and curve frivolous litigation that has stalled fuel reduction projects in efforts to remove m dead and dying trees from poorle managed federal land. Its timely today that well hear testimony on the emergencyd wild life and Public Safety actt a bill sponsored by senator feinstein and senator danes. It proposes to accelerate wild s projects across the cotton wood state. Senator feinstein has joined usa tond provide a few brief remark about her bill. Today senateak senat senator about senator udahl and murkowski will also join us. I look forward to hearing more about each of these bills and the otherag bills on todays agenda. With that, i would like to turn to senator wyden whos the Ranking Member on thisis commite for his remarks. Senator wyden. Thank you very much mr. Thechairman, and i appreci you holding this. I also note the presence of our chair, senator murkowski, one of the aspects of service i most ec enjoyed was when i was chair and she was the Ranking Member and weve continued those kinds of efforts in the years ahead. And i thank her for her courtesy this morning as well. What i can tell you, colleagues, is scores of fires have hit my state harder than a wrecking ball. Many of them are still going on. These are not your grandfathers fires. L and i they are bigger, they are hotter, theyre more dangerous, theyre more powerful. I never conceived growing up with fires leaping over rivers. And we had fires in our part of the country who reduced whole neighborhoods to ash and actually melted cars. Therest nothing left there of car. Just picture what it means to get so hot that youre just melting, you know, automobiles. And there is a connection there between fire and bill that ive introduced 2828, Community Empowerment act. This is extraordinarily important in rural oregon. H actually the poorest in my state. Co counties hardest its hit by the coronavirus. The bill is about two things. A y its about preserving ranching and ag may of life as an economic engine, growing the ceh local economic engine and also protecting the absolutely gorgeous places that are part of this region. Just extraordinary. Now, im going to go into the bill just briefly in a moment. And i just want to come back to the relationship, to the fires for just one moment. If the fires teach us anything and the chair and i went through this this morning because this is going to be a with respect to this whole fire debate. If the firesng, it teach us an its that people who need jobs , can p 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 a million acres of weedinfested public lands ii the county. And i really have appreciated e thear comments of my friend fro nevada over the years with to her public lands because her public lands are a t bit different than our public rn lands. But in both cases, we need to dw a lot of restoration work, and we can put people of restoratiok and we can put people to work and spare ourselves catastrophes. The only other point is the senate, and working on these issues, has got to step up its pace. We talked about that this morning. Two years ago, a contingent of family ranchers came to d. C. And they asked for a meeting with me. I was a bit slack jawed because i was just stunned that they were coming to meet with me and asked to work with me on a big project. I was under the impression that i would be probably the last person they would come and talk to. I asked them why they were there in the office and they didnt really say. Finally, i said i think youve come because you believe im the only one, senator murkowski, 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 it, they all pretty much smiled and said yes, thats why we are here. We are here because we think you are the only one crazy enough to get into the middle of this thing and try to sort it out. It is a fabulous area. Senator heinrich, my great friend, knows a lot about it. What i said when we started working on this at that point impossible undertaking, senator murkowski, you and i have been there before. Is look, we are gonna protect the way of life. We will not let anyone trample over the farmers and the ranchers and that way of life. I also said were not going to throw the environmental laws in the trash can. We will not just eviscerate the environmental laws. Everybody knew those priorities Going Forward. There was widespread agreement about juniper and fire prone weeds that were putting the lands at risk. We heard ranchers dealing with visitors who would follow their gps because it was risking their life and dangerous places. We said we will have to have some loop roads to facilitate the safe visit to these wonderful sites without compromising them. We went round and round and we listened to scientists and educators and people who love the land and farmers. We put pencil to paper and the bill that we are hearing today represents the spirit of compromise. Nobody got everything they wanted, but everybody got Something Better than they have right now. I would also tell my colleagues, from historical tech standpoint, the ahwahnee isnt that far away from the area where we had the wildlife takeovers. So theres been some challenges in this part of the world. I cant credit the community and now because they said we are going to find some compromise. Nobody will get everything they want it. The bill ensures Land Management can adapt to changing circumstances like Climate Change and route by establishing new citizen led communities to support transparent realtime management of those lands. There is certainty for land users by setting a group of agreed practices that are eligible for streamlined environmental review. The bill sets aside just over 1 million acres of land as wilderness. Without the flexibility of range land improvements, we move away while protecting environmental laws from fullblown analysis. If youre talking about moving and irrigation trough away a bit from a river. I will just conclude by way of saying, now there are a lot of ranchers who say this is something i can build my future around. This is an opportunity for my kids and my grandkids to have a future in the a why he. A lot of environmental folks have said they can live with this bill and neither side would have written it. The last point i will make, just because when i started on this legislation, the chair was very gracious. I told her this was really important to me in a personal way because our staff are, who had been with me for a quarter century, had been working on this for ages and ages. When i went to visitor in her hospice bed, her whole wall was full of maps. Full of maps of the owyhee. The whole law was filled with maps. She was talking with people and trying. That is what she stood for. People would talk to her and she would say, were not ron is going to stay at this thing until he gets both sides together, the ranchers and environmentalists. And i said no. If we get it together, its because of mary kudrow. I want to get this bill passed and i want to dedicated to marry. Chair murkowski, from the day that mary passed, you have been in our corner for a lot of things. I just want to say thanks. Thank you chair. Thank you senator wyden. We have several members who have joined us to talk about their respective bills. We will start doing that. We will start with our chairman, senator murkowski. We will go to senator manchin afterwards. Thank you. I will be brief with my comments today because we have a fair number of not only, those of us who are on the diocese that are speaking today, but we also have friends to the Energy Committee that are here to speak to their bills as well. I have a small bill that i want to speak to briefly. But before i do, i want to share my thoughts and prayers and my sincere hope for rain and for recovery for so many who are facing the tremendous wildfires out west in oregon, and washington of course, and of course in california. To you senator wyden and senator feinstein, you have my heartfelt condolences for the loss of life. The loss of property, environmental damage that your states are enduring currently. Know that its not only my thoughts that are reflected, but 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 bravely working on putting out these devastating fires. They are putting their lives at risk morning, noon and night, in the midst of a pandemic on top of all of this. So our hearts and prayers are with them and with their family members. Alaskans are certainly thinking about them and hoping they are safe because we have a good group of alaskans, some 400 plus, that are in your states. Whether its in california, oregon, colorado, they are around. We escaped some significant fires this year and so i think you have some folks that are fresh that have come to you. We have also sent assets, but knowing that we are in this fight with you is important to us as we keep you all in our prayers. I want to thank mr. French and miss castor to be here to provide testimony today including on senator feinstein bill that she has with senator daines to reduce the risk of wildfires and protect our communities. Senator feinstein, you and i had an opportunity on the floor for me to thank you on your continued work on this. It is greatly appreciated. And to senator daines, i know hes coming, thank him for his critical work on this very important, important issue. I want to acknowledge the work of my friend from rhode island on his offshore act. He and i have had much time to speak about that. We will do more on that. I also want to recognize, mister chairman, that we have a former chair of the energy and Natural Resources committee here, Mary Landrieus in the back. Its always good to see mary and know that you are vigilant and staying on top of these issues. We appreciate that. Miss castor, since you are here representing the department of the interior, i want to take just a quick moment to recognize and congratulate the department on its recently completed review from the office of government ethics. Oh ge took a look at the structural improvements in the department has made to its Ethics Program including additional training, new staff and a constant guilt consolidated consistent approach across all of its bureaus and agencies. Oh gee he found that all 14 of the recommendations from its last comprehensive review back in 2016 have been fully resolved. The agency offered no new findings or recommendations for improvements. That is something i understand has never happened at the department. In fact, its rare across the whole of government. I want to pass my appreciation onto secretary bernhardt two designated Agency Ethics officer heather got tree and to all in the department who have rebuilt its Ethics Program. I think oge report is a testament to the significant multi year effort and need to be commended on this effort. Briefly mister chairman, here are a few words. Ive introduced this measure. Its very simple. It prevents alaskan native elders to become eligible on federal based needs programs because of benefits they received from the settlement trust. This is authorized under the alaska native claims settlement act. These settlement arrests are an important source of support for many elders we live in very remote high cost rural areas. But they do not displace the need for any federal support that combat the poverty and Health Care Challenges these communities face. So i have letters of support for this bill that i would ask unanimous consent be included as part of the record. Without objec