Mike Collins Asks Expert: Can 'We Educate The Public About The Importance Of Federal Forest Management?’

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During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing before the congressional recess, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) questioned witnesses about forest management education.

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00:00The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Collins, is recognizing the rest of five minutes.

00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate y'all being here today. I want to start out by saying

00:09that I grew up, my parents are in the trucking business, and we hauled logs for a living.

00:16And so from this aspect, especially from forestry lands, I've been affected by the fact that they

00:22changed how they sold off timberland. They always said they had timberland for sale

00:26in our national forest, but they would sell them on such small plots that it didn't make it

00:31profitable for anybody to actually go in there and log it. And so I want to focus on some things

00:37here with Georgia. As a matter of fact, and Mr. Weiner, I'd love to start with you. Georgia has

00:42faced a substantial increase in wildfires just this year, more than 1,600 fires burning upwards of 14,000

00:50acres. And that's a 20 percent increase on fires and 50 percent more land that has been burned

00:57just this year over a five-year average here for Georgia. You have said that federal and state

01:02agencies' emphasis on fire suppression has led to dangerously high fuel loads in our woodlands,

01:09especially those near woodland urban interface communities. In fact, the Forest Service has

01:15recently warned that the public that even rainfall only slightly moderates fire conditions in areas

01:22like the Chattahoochee Oconee National Forest. How has a strategy of reacting to fire rather than

01:30proactively managing our lands led to these extremely hazardous conditions?

01:35Well, thank you, sir. I live in Tennessee, so we've noticed a growth in wildfire risk there,

01:43and I will say that the fire exclusion regime that we've had for over 100 years of putting out fires

01:51before they necessarily need to be put out—obviously we did that for important reasons in a lot of cases—has

01:56left us with a landscape that cannot adapt to fire in this new reality, right? And so what we need to do

02:02is get into a proactive posture to get in there and manage the forest more effectively. I think this is increasingly

02:07important in states with emergent fire risk, like Georgia, right? We have states like California,

02:14Oregon, and others have been dealing with this problem for a really long time and have had the

02:17benefit of being able to learn how—learn from their mistakes, learn from their successes, and build

02:22a system over decades. Other states are going to have to jump a lot of hurdles really quickly to catch up,

02:28and so I think this presents an opportunity for us to get— Well, in that nature, then, how do we educate the

02:32public just about the importance of federal forest management so that they can get in on making sure

02:37that we're doing practices like thinning and prescribed burns? Yeah, I think part of it is

02:42helping people understand that not all fire is bad. The southeast region is very good at prescribed fire

02:47in a lot of ways compared to the rest of the country, so it's funny. When I'm down in the south,

02:51we hear from a lot of folks who are much more comfortable with the idea of prescribed fire than we

02:54do out in the west, but generally speaking, we need a new approach to Smokey Bear, if you will, that

03:00we need more fire on the ground. Not all fire is bad, and we need to embrace that. Right, thank you.

03:05Chief Muncy, you wrote in your testimony that as a firefighter, I often question why we wait for

03:12wildfire destruction before taking action. Why do we wait for wildfire destruction before taking action?

03:21Well, I think as a local government, we are taking action, and so in reference to that quote,

03:25I was really looking at the line fire on the national forest. I demonstrated just before that

03:31in the 1930s, the road, the network was there, the control lines were there, but because of policies,

03:38those roads were reclaimed by vegetation. Well, in your 2003 project to remove hazardous timber and

03:45unmanaged fuels within forest areas, what federal agencies did you coordinate with,

03:52and why did you pick those? Yeah, nearly all of them, but the U.S. Forest Service was the biggest

03:57partner, the EPA. We actually had written an EPA grant based on air quality to be able to do that

04:03work, which was helpful. Fishing game, certainly, and Army Corps of Engineers. Okay. What challenges did

04:11you face in coordinating with those agencies, if any, and were they resolved, or how were they resolved?

04:16So we were able to, at the time, have a declaration of federal emergency, which really helped us

04:22get through some of those challenges, and then taking the interagency approach. What was interesting

04:27is local government took the leadership on this role because it wasn't clearly defined

04:31who was going to take the leadership from the federal or the state. The biggest challenge was

04:37bringing everybody together, and then cutting through the bureaucracies. I think we did 10,000 different

04:42plots in order to remove 1.1 million trees. Initially, every federal agency needed to be on site.

04:48They needed to inspect the plots. Eventually, we were able to defer some of that authority to other

04:54agencies. We were quickly able to go through the different processes, the regulatory environment. I think

05:01today we can do it even better and more efficient with using technology. To the insurance, you know,

05:07looking at the top down, there's technology that can use AI that you can stand, an individual can stand,

05:12a homeowner can stand with their camera, and AI can tell you what good looks like and verify that

05:17for the insurance industry. Why could we not do that same thing for the permitting process?

05:21Right. So what would you say you were able to accomplish in that project?

05:25We saved our forests. When you go and you look at the San Bernardino National Forest now, you don't see a bug

05:31kill. 1.1 million trees and millions of tons of biomass were taken away over a 10-year period.

05:38It took an immense amount of leadership. The gentleman that ran that program, I have now brought

05:43back to an earlier described the interagency approach to land management. I've asked him to

05:50lead that approach and then teach the newer generation and then institutionalize it by policy

05:56into who we are, not just local government, but state and federal government, so that we maintain that

06:01rhythm so 20 years doesn't go past and now we're in the same environment we were.

06:06So y'all are still continuing the project, the coordination with the agencies?

06:10That particular project ended in 2010. Today, 15 years later, we're starting to see the overgrowth

06:17that led to that bark beetle kill. The trees per acre is a large reason why that-

06:22I'm sorry, I don't run out of time and I forgot we're voting.

06:25I yield back. Sorry, Mr. Chairman.

06:31Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the witnesses for being here.

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