During Tuesday’s Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) questioned Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment Nominee Michael Boren about wildfire preparation.
00:06I know you grew up, you mentioned with your dad, working in the Forest Service.
00:10I know you've got exposure to the forest risk or the fire risk that we're all dealing with.
00:18In Colorado, there's huge amounts of concern about how dangerous things are.
00:26I have a lot of concern about what the purpose of the Trump Administration's decision to move fire suppression out of the Forest Service is meant to accomplish at a moment when the last thing we need, I think, is to make it more confusing, especially when we're thinking about the current wildfire season that we're facing right now.
00:52It wasn't clear from your answer to Senator Klobuchar whether you supported that change, whether you said you had some questions of your own.
01:00I have some questions.
01:01I wonder what questions you do have about how to do it, because I'm not sure.
01:06I mean, I think maybe there's a philosophical view out there in the world that separating fire suppression from mitigation and from wildfire restoration, all that stuff, is a good idea philosophically.
01:21On the ground, I'm not sure, especially in a world where people have come to work together so well with local communities, volunteer fire departments, the work that your dad did at the fire center out there.
01:35Could you talk a little bit about that in this context and how you're going to, when you become in charge of the Forest Service, the degree to which you'll pay attention to the question of whether this is a good idea or not a good idea, I guess?
01:52Senator, thank you.
01:53Senator, thank you.
01:54I guess the answer is I'm certainly willing to look at that idea and consider it, and I can understand on my own without getting into details or being told by anyone in the administration yet, and since I'm not there, I haven't been.
02:09I can see reasons why it's a good idea to have an agency that's focused on fire where there's a person at the head of the agency that can be held fully responsible.
02:20And to be clear, responsibility is a good thing.
02:23Consequences are a good thing.
02:25They help shape our decisions.
02:27And so I can see where there's maybe some value and hope in that, and that might be part of what's driving it.
02:34But I have to say I just don't have the facts yet to really understand all of the reasons behind it.
02:41However, I will commit to you that managing fire so that it doesn't cause so many health problems and economic problems to our country and problems to the forest is very important to me.
02:55It will be a major focus.
02:57And I think it's, I do think, thank you, I appreciate that.
03:01And I think it's important for the American people and the taxpayer to understand that fighting these fires costs six times or nine times more than doing the restoration on the front end, doing the mitigation on the front end.
03:16These are, in that sense, they're related questions because, I hate to say it, but given the conditions, we may find ourselves paying one way or another, which is why it is so important, I think, to coordinate this work.
03:29And it is very important for the people, I think, for the people that are suppressing the fires to be able to understand and give advice to the people that are doing the work on the front end as we think about how to take care of these landscapes and protect the infrastructure and our water infrastructure in particular.
03:54Can you just respond to that or comment?
03:57Yeah, I think that's a really insightful comment, Senator.
04:01And I think it's, you're actually underestimating when you say six to nine times because you're talking about the tangible costs.
04:09And the health costs to America of the wildland fires that we've had is ridiculously high and overlooked.
04:16And I can tell you it's, I've read some of the studies on that from university professors and other organizations and the health risk to Americans, especially young Americans, is very high.
04:27The health risk to our cattle herds is very high and none of that's in your six to nine times number.
04:34So it's a really expensive thing.
04:36It's much better to be proactive to take care of our forests so that we don't end up with the results of firefighters.
04:43And here's another thing that isn't included in those costs, the damage to our watersheds, which is amazingly huge.
04:51And I see it firsthand in our neighborhood because we've had some really big fires.
04:55We've had pristine wilderness rivers that haven't recovered in 20 years.
05:00Yeah.
05:01Well, that's my major concern.
05:03Every single watershed we have is downstream of these forests.
05:08I mean, downhill and downstream.
05:11And that means that every single farm and ranch is downstream, every single community, no matter how big and no matter how small.
05:19I mean, really, the entire American West, the entire American, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the entire American West is at risk.
05:29And we can't undo lots of decisions that have been made up until this moment, I suppose.
05:36But we are going to have to find a way to work together in an urgent way to mitigate the risk that we are facing.
05:45And I completely agree that I think we've got to make important investments on the front end to try to mitigate not just the costs of fires,
05:55but the destruction that they can cause to our watersheds.
05:59Because without those watersheds, we don't have a Colorado.
