Harriet Hageman: ‘A One-Size-Fits-All Approach’ Does Not Work For Forest Management And Wildfire Prevention

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During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing before the congressional recess, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) questioned witnesses about forest management.

Transcript

00:00Thank you. I filed a lawsuit in 2001 challenging the roadless rule. I was

00:07hired by the state of Wyoming to do that and there's a few more points that I

00:10think are extremely important because again this is the source of many of the

00:14problems that we're dealing with in terms of forest management. I believe

00:18that the roadless rule is one of the most destructive regulations ever

00:22adopted in the history of the United States in terms of being able to manage

00:26and protect our forests our watersheds and our surrounding lands and in fact at

00:31the time that the roadless rule was adopted the Forest Service and the

00:34Department of Justice defending it knew that it was going to be destructive and

00:38I'll just give you one quote from the attorney who was handling the case in

00:42defense of the state defending it against the state of Wyoming's lawsuit when we

00:48pointed out that there were separate management plans for every forest

00:52throughout the United States that it was inappropriate to treat all roadless areas

00:56the same that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work especially

01:01when you're talking about forest management I will never forget what the

01:05US Attorney said when she got up to defend the roadless rule she said we

01:09recognize that in certain areas the roadless rule is going to be ecologically

01:14devastating that was the term that she used ecologically devastating but it is

01:20more important that we have one rule and one regime coming out of

01:24Washington DC to manage these acres than protecting local particular areas when I

01:31went through the administrative record one of the things that I focused on were

01:34the comments that were received by the local foresters the good men and women who

01:39actually work in the states work in the national forests they submitted thousands of

01:44comments the vast majority of which opposed the roadless rule and what they said is

01:49please please do not do this to us please do not prevent us from being able to manage our

01:57national forests please do not do this we are going to have horrific insect

02:02infestations and we are going to have catastrophic forest fires you are going to

02:07destroy the resource if you adopt the roadless rule keep in mind the national

02:11forests are 192 million acres strong they were created within the Department of

02:17Agriculture they are supposed to be managed as a commodity for a continuous supply supply of

02:22timber and a continuous supply of water they are not a national park and they are

02:26not within the Department of Interior so the adoption of the roadless rule again is

02:31why we are facing this circumstance the Fix Our Forest Act which passed the house

02:38expanded the permissible use of the good neighbor authority to include

02:43reconstruction repair and restoration of roads on non-US Forest Service lands to

02:48support forest management project projects and it did a whole variety of

02:52other things and I'm very very pleased that our panel today seems to be unanimous in

02:57supporting our Fix Our Forest Act Mr. Weiner I would like to refer to you it is my

03:02understanding that there are some in the Senate who have proposed removing certain

03:08aspects of this bill could you please speak to the benefit of the

03:12authority that I just described that is expanded in the Fix Our Forest Act and

03:17what that would do to our ability to have active management yeah around good

03:20neighbor authority yes please yeah good neighbor authority is a really

03:23important tool to help build capacity for states to do some of this work on the

03:27ground state and local partners right and and I think that even if you take a

03:31step back from the current funding and workforce crisis that we're facing right

03:35now at the Forest Service we're nowhere near on track to meet our goals we

03:39need to come up with creative ways to fund these kinds of projects and expanding good

03:42neighbor authorities critical to doing that I appreciate that and and chief Muncie

03:47from your duty to provide community protection can you explain why access to the

03:52ignition point is critical and how good roads and infrastructure enable this

03:57capability that's a simple answer is that fires are going to double in size

04:01every four minutes or so if we can't make access these fires are going to continue

04:07to grow now there's other things that are important besides access this early

04:11detection that's both terrestrial and celestial such as low earth and earth

04:17orbiting satellites and I think that this ecosystem is critical having the

04:21ability to detect wildfires and an example I can give you is you have a

04:25lightning that starts a smoldering fire it may not produce any smoke nobody sees it but

04:30this fire smoldering could burn several acres and then when the wind kicks up and

04:35it becomes hotter and drier now you have a well-established fire so that early

04:38detection is just as critical as that early access secondly is looking at

04:43technology on how we suppress wildfires two weeks ago in San Bernardino we

04:47piloted a fully autonomous Black Hawk helicopter with a company called rain it

04:53used early detection in this case cameras using AI to find the fire and it

04:59doesn't have to be visible smoke with some of the spectrums it automatically

05:03launched that helicopter that flew pilotless and dropped water on that fire

05:08doing the fire behavioral modeling return reloaded with water and made drops this is

05:13the future early detection early response not necessarily humans on the on the

05:17ground followed by control using robotics and then truthing it out with boots on

05:23the ground regardless even using technology in overgrown forests using

05:30helicopter and aviation you're not at times going to be effectively able to

05:34control fires you need to get people there hand crews heavy equipment there the

05:39only the way that we can do that is having good access so I very much

05:43appreciate those comments one last thing I realize that I'm out of time but I

05:46think it's important for everyone to understand the National Forest Service

05:50created the Fraser Experimental Forest in northern Colorado many many years ago I

05:56believe it is going on over a hundred years in terms of being an operation and

06:00the Fraser Experimental Forest is something that I would I would recommend

06:05everybody study and go see they have studied everything from water development

06:10through forest management they look at treating the north side of ridges versus

06:16the south side what that does they have done every study that you can possibly

06:20think of in relation to forest management I don't know how much they do in

06:25terms of fire suppression but in terms of management of the actual resource

06:29itself we have massive amounts of data and information and we know how to

06:35manage these forests effectively it is things like the roadless rule and bad

06:39policies and regulations coming out of Washington DC and an obsession with

06:44global warming and climate change that is preventing us from doing this

06:47adequately please go to look at what the Fraser Experimental Forest has to offer

06:53in terms of giving us the tools to better manage these resources thank you and I

06:57yield back the gentleman gentleman from good old Arizona mr. Eli Crane is

07:02recognized thank you mr. chairman for holding this very important hearing

07:06today and I want to thank you guys for all coming to testify I'm pretty

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