Contributors to the books from democracy to freedom and no wall they can build. Watch coverage of the 2017 baltimore book festival saturday starting at noon eastern on cspan2s booktv. Wildfires in the west where the focus of an environment and Public Works Committee hearing in the senate yesterday. Members served on Forest Management experts on the impacts wildfires have had on the environment and the economy. From capitol hill, this is about an hour and 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good morning, i called his hearing to order. So far in 2017 as all the guests on our panel know, in 2017, fires have burned more than 8 million acres in the United States. We need to find solutions to address this threat to our communities and wildlife. Today the committee will hear testimony and three bills related to catastrophic wildfires across the west. Senator daines introduce the litigation relief for Forest Management projects acts which would address conflicting Circuit Court decisions and prevent costly delays in Forest Management as a result of duplicative requirements. The committee will hear testimony on senator hatchs bill as 1417, the mule deer Habitat Conservation and restoration act of 2017, 1417 would allow removal of juniper trees which are Invasive Species that lead to wildfires and compromise habitat for mule deer across the west. We have senator thunes bill, the Forest Management improvement act which provides the for service with a series of tools to address the evergrowing wildfire threats in forest filled with dead and dying trees. Each of these bills address a different but important part of Forest Health and Fire Prevention. Decades of Fire Suppression and rapid decline in active management have led to overly dense forests susceptible to disease and pest outbreaks. Sleeves fixed and of dead trees which are poor habitat for iconic species that depend on vibrant forest ecosystems. The dead trees affect watersheds as well as there are no longer leaves or needles to hold snow to build winter snow pack. These dead forests are much more prone to catastrophic fires. These hard, fastmoving fires are unpredictable and cause significant damage to the ecosystem and surrounding communities, the obvious impacts from these fires, we have a poster board showing bambi running from a wildfire, wildlife flea to burn, homes and habitats are lost, smoke billows into the air. Smoke and ash travel miles spreading fear among those who already face respiratory challenges as this poster shows, a woman and her child walking with masks over their faces because of the impact of smoke from the fire. It is not uncommon to see people including children and the elderly wearing face masks, coughing, sneezing and watery eyes, all that wildfire smoke damaging my health. On september 11th the National Radio article highlighted these concerns and i will submit a copy of the article for the record. 2017 alone schools in oregon, montana and florida have canceled classes to keep children inside and away from the smoke. Smoke and folly as dispersed quickly but other impacts remain for years to come. Catastrophic fire is distinguished by wildland firefighters or early snows, forest ecosystems lose their topsoil. Hot fire sterilize the soil and without a strong root system to hold it back these landscapes experience massive erosion. Dirt, stand and other stilt quickly accumulates in creeks and streams devastating aquatic life and clogging water systems. High sediment levels raise water temperature and a cause of widespread fish kills. Our federal land managers could mitigate significant portion of these risks. Fires and historically important part of the ecosystem, these large, unnatural, catastrophic wildfires are not. To address the threat we need to actively manage forests with success deadwood. Large stands of dead trees need to be removed in a timely fashion so we are not facing another 8 million acres of burned lands. We must act quickly to address the risk to human health, infrastructure and valuable ecosystems. There are millions of acres of federal land, forest land in dire need of thinning restoration and other attention. Last you for service estimated up to 100 million acres are at risk of wildfire. Today we will hear about bills that address bureaucratic processes that delay proactive Fire Prevention and ecosystem management, bills that could save lives, property and protect our forests and wildlife. Before we move to sponsors and cosponsors of the bills for their remarks i turn to Ranking Member carver. Thank you for putting this together. Welcome to our colleagues, delighted to be holding this hearing, an important one for all of us. Our country has experienced a number of significant natural disasters this year, increasingly destructive hurricanes, catastrophic wildfires, these disasters disrupt, endanger peoples lives, homes, health, safety and livelihoods, wildfires and hurricanes destroy habitat and imperil our wildlife. I agree with the Government Accountability office changing contributes to making these more severe. They are becoming more common and more destructive, more expensive, more expensive with each passing year. At the start of every congress, gao publishes their high risk list, do so to call attention to areas in the federal government, a high risk due to their vulnerabilities, spending a lot of money. Once again in 2017 gao noted Climate Change presents a significant financial risk to the federal government and we are seeing that across the country from fires out west to devastation in puerto rico and the virgin islands. The federal budget deficit this year climbed passed 700 billion, among other things we need to reduce the risk of future disasters, plan for response costs. When it comes to planning Severe Weather events an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We look forward to hearing from our colleagues and witnesses how best to manage the threat posed by wildfires. We need to take appropriate steps to prevent wildfires from occurring and ensure First Responders at federal agencies, local governments have the tools they need to combat more frequent wildfires. I agree with my colleagues environmental laws should not be unduly impeding preparation for response to these unprecedented wildfires, do not believe environmental laws are to blame for their occurrence, factors contributing to the severity of wildfires, homes and other developments along with Climate Change as i mentioned and other factors as well. We need to be careful about making sweeping changes to the endangered species act particularly when existing authorities, more targeted changes, inadequate funding, we must also adopt budgets that provide protective proactive Forest Management and firefighter activities, Budget Constraints may prevent the Forest Service from using existing authorities to respond to fires and mitigate their risks and the problem is having worse which in 199516 of us for Service Budget was dedicated to Fire Suppression in 1995. The for service spent more than half of its annual budget fighting fires. According to secretary purdue firefighting activities will consume two thirds of the Forest Service budget by 2021. I hope this will lead to more thoughtful discussions into a growing bipartisan consensus in the days ahead to build greater resilience and enable us to costeffectively address the increase in expensive natural disasters we have been witnessing in our country in recent years. In closing i ask unanimous consent to enter several letters and documents and we think our colleagues for doing that. Thank you very much, senator carver. We are fortunate to have joining us senator hatch, senator tester and senator daines. I look forward to your comments and your statements, you have additional commitments, once you have a chance to share information about your bills, though sponsoring or cosponsoring, get to the remainder of your schedule. Lets start with senator hatch. Thank you, mister chairman. The meal dear Habitat Conservation and restoration act, this particular legislation would streamline important Vegetation Management projects to conserve and restore the habitat of sage grass and meal dear in a way that carries added benefit of reducing fuel loads for catastrophic wildfires. I was eager to join senator heinrich in introducing this legislation because across the west especially in our home states of utah and new mexico and elsewhere, wildlife populations are suffering from dangerous encroachment of invasive pinyon and juniper trees. What is worse, these burgeoning forests increase risk of wildfire, threatening homes, property and human lives because sage grass and meal dear share similar habitats, senator heinrich and i worked to create a solution that would restore sagebrush habitat and support these iconic western species. As the fish and Wildlife Service would agree, invasion of pinyon and juniper trees destroys sagebrush habitat and provides artificial nesting sites for predators and sage grass. In the face of this challenge, responsible tree removal curtails damaging expansion and carries widespread ecological benefits. Wildlife managers have long worked to convert pinyon and juniper to sagebrush because doing so increases forage and soil water availability which improves wildlife carrying capacity, reduces wildlife risk and benefits big game populations particularly mule deer. Three expansion is a natural process normally controlled by wildfire, Fire Suppression efforts over the years have allowed expansion to go unchecked. As a result, trees have spread to areas they have not historically occupied because wildfire which threatens wildlife, private property and human lives is no longer a viable option for combating forest expansion. Effective alternatives are needed for damage caused by invasive trees. Federal Restoration Projects have proven successful in replicating the benefits of wildfire while avoiding its associated damage to natural habitat, adjacent property or human neighbors. Our legislation helps build on these successes by moving lengthy Environmental Review processes for Vegetation Management projects. The benefit, sagebrush ecosystems, targeting removal, seemed to be a common sense priority, senator heinrich and i found responsible Management Experts by federal agencies are frequently delayed by needless bureaucratic impediments. To help safeguard and reinvigorate sage grass and meal dear habitats, we agree to accelerate management projects by giving the bureau of Land Management expanded tools to aid in sagebrush restoration efforts. As i mentioned earlier this is a bipartisan effort and a Diverse Group of stakeholders to come out in support of reasonable measures contemplated in this bill. I am confident passage of this legislation will bolster Ecological Health for most sustainable populations of wildlife species that depend on sagebrush habitat. Our bill reduces the risk of costly catastrophic wildfire in accomplishing this goal, i believe we can benefit communities throughout the west that rely on sportsmen and Natural Resource development as economic drivers while sending a clear message we are serious about sound environmental stewardship. Mister chairman and members of the committee, it is critical we get this legislation signed into law and i appreciate the opportunity to speak to the merits of this bill. I think the chairman and members of this committee im eager to work with in moving this bill forward and appreciate these points. Welcome to the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of the bill, senate bill, Forest Management improvement act. We have heard the saying that nero fiddled while rome burned, this was in a. D. 64, 6 days and 7 nights citizens of ancient rome watched helplessly as their city burned. Fastforward to 2017 we have a familiar scene. Since january 1st of this year through today americans have watched 49,000 fires burn more than 8. 4 million acres of forest land. According to the u. S. Forest Service Since 2000 wildfires have burned 6. 9 million acres every single year. After nearly a quarter century of handsoff management Fire Suppression costs have grown from 16 of the annual appropriated budget in 1995 to 52 of the annual budget in 2015. We must take immediate steps to improve the health of the nations forest land by being more aggressive and proactive when it comes to Forest Management. Because forest fires are occurring on largescale across the western United States proactive management must be initiated on largescale. I believe my bill offers Commonsense Solutions that would solve declining Forest Health. In short my bill would increase current exclusions from 3000, 10,000 acres to allow the Forest Service to rapidly salvage dead and dying trees after wildfires, ice storms or wind events, expedite the Environmental Review process, create a single Good NeighborAuthority Policy and clarify congressional intent on stewardship contracting and provide much greater certainty for project level decision through litigation relief. Proper management of forests make them resilient and better able to withstand fires, pests and diseases. We must allow expanded use of 21stcentury techniques by Land Management professionals and not cave to the direct specialist and litigators whose misguided efforts resulted in disasters in our forest land. We can restore americas cherished landscapes to natural conditions and we should waste more time there is no more time protecting the nations forest landscape. I urge my colleague to support this bill, senate bill 1731 and inviting me to speak on behalf of this legislation. Welcome to this committee. Thank you to all the members on the committee, a pleasure to talk about this important legislation. I think my colleague senator daines for sponsoring this bill. We are experiencing a historic wildfire season. A change in climate, historic drought, longer summer, crippled Forest Service resulting in lack of Forest Management turning montana into a 10 year box and all it took was Mother Nature to layup and she did. 1 million acres of montana has burned and we are not out of the woods yet. Dangerous and costly wildfire season force the Forest Service to burn through much of their budget and start fire borrowing process. It is 2015, the Circuit Court of appeals could continuously update forest plans to protect endangered species. Even if it has consulted with fish and Wildlife Service, even if it updated his forest plan and continues to consult with the agency for project under this plan. This means the Forest Service actively from watershed restoration could be put under an injunction for years while the plan is updated and no guarantee the plan wont need to be updated again and again and again as new species list of or habitat areas changed. All the while the forest goes unmanaged. The division led to injunctions on 5 Vegetation Management project in montana alone. One of those, the stonewall mitigation project involve fire mitigation work and part of it burned this summer as well. At least 80 projects are at risk. This bill is a bipartisan fix to this court case, we need to support the recovery of endangered species, no doubt about that. Management across the board wont help our forests. This legislation you will consider today, litigation relief for Forest Management act will address important issues for our Forest Service, put saws in peoples hands, mitigate wildfire hazards, restore habitat, strengthen the timber economy and maintain our forests. It will ensure requirements to forest plans make sense and the Forest Service will get started on their project instead of being stuck in constant bureaucracy and endless litigation. It will cut red tape and allow the for service to spend more time in the woods and less time on courtrooms, this legislation will help good forest project move forward, and they are carefully designed to take in fish and Wildlife Service, taken put from the public and hold up in court. The Forest Service to get the job done and when in court need the resources to do the analysis. Of the Forest Servi