Chief and others at the National Association of counties legislative Conference Held here in washington dc earlier this year. Homework can just be homework. Cox connects to compete. A Public Service along with the other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Mandy moore is the chief of the service discussing management and wildfire was little and see and resiliency. It is responsible for managing more than 190 million acres of National Forest. Could have good morning. Good afternoon and welcome to the public land summit on wildfire resiliency. My name is todd and im the chair of the committee. Todays summit will be bringing together those from federal agencies to discuss how we can improve cooperative efforts and how to best communicate threats and opportunities to residents and visitors. Investments in recent years, congress has given Agencies Authority and investments. To support and make landscapes more fireproof. We are honored to have randy moore as our first speaker. He will discuss how his agency is working with local communities. Lessons learned from the 2018 and ways to improve treatments by building. Please welcome chief randy moore. [applause] randy now i can hear it. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here and more importantly, thank you for giving me the opportunity to have a conversation with you all about some of the things that we are going through. When i think of collaboration, your close collaboration with the agency will continue to be central in making our forests healthy. All of us here have a tremendous responsibility to communities that have been affected by the wildfire disease, drought, and some of those activities that have created catastrophic wildfires. I want to start by talking about the wildfire crisis strategy. You are at the county level. You play a Critical Role in how we treat the communities that we serve. To work to reduce the strategy landscape is our top priority in the agency. Through this strategy, we will be doing this in the right places, at the right time, at the right scale. You have witnessed already. We have taken traditionally the money that began, that we tried to treat a lot of different areas, and we do treat a lot of areas, but the level and skill of treatment that we provide does not match the level and skill of the fires that are taking place on the landscape. This wildfire crisis strategy allows us to scale up, if you will, treatments in a way that will have a positive impact on the landscape. I had as i was looking i am hoping that we have the opportunity for some q a, to billing talk about those things that are important because i have enough paperwork that i could talk for the next two hours and im not sure i would be on port on point. I want to say a few words and then wait for our turn to open it up, to see how i could be most useful to you in the room. Elected officials, you have a duty to the constituents that elected you as the chief. And i have a duty to you and how you are trying to work to help protect the communities that you serve. There are a couple things that happened. It is really great. When i look at the production inflation act, we have opportunities we have not had in history of the Forest Service. It really looks at getting trees back in the ground in areas that have been affected by disease. This is going into our second year. The first year, we had to get organized, and in doing so, we sent money out to begin to start that work. We had to develop a baseline. If you look at where we have been, we have lost employees. We will not go back, but we want to hire 4000 and leverage the other 4000 through working with others to create health and resiliency in the landscapes. Some of you may be experiencing what we are in the agent. We hired 3300 employees and it was really good. We lost 2500 through attrition. What we gained was 800 new people to add to the capacity that we had. There is an amount of time where you need to be training people as well. The other thing a lot of the people that we hired, a High Percentage of them have left the agency, and we do not know if that is the new labor pool, but we are experiencing a 45 reduction. We do not know if covid in the workforce. That is a conversation that i would like to have with you all, but we are managing through that. Nevertheless, we have been successful with this first year, and i think we are set up to be even more successful. You all know that the secretary, i accompanied him in arizona and we made the announcement of 10 landscapes. We have added another 20 landscapes that we will be focusing on. This is the area that is highly likely. The fire sheds are about our scientists are telling us that if we are able to treat between 20 to 40 of fire shed, we would have a positive outcome we are moving in that direction and we have positioned ourselves to send out a billion dollars this year, looking at project work. We have a collaborative restoration project. We also have additional joint chiefs projects looking at trying to Work Together across to do restoration work as well. As we move into this next year, hopefully you will begin to see a lot of work that is taking place on the ground. We have about a billion dollars to look at how we bring new innovations, particularly in small, rural communities. Rather than looking at those facilities going out of business, how do we bring a new innovations and new Job Opportunities so that we keep people in these communities that we all live and work in. That is another piece that we are very positive and hopeful about. We are getting ready to send out proposals to the tune of about 41 grant proposals. You would like to hear from the counties on what kind of things they might be interested in for innovations. I will tell you quickly and then i will move onto the next person to jump in. We are excited about new opportunities that we see taking place. As billy there are a number of facilities across the country. Through that innovation, about 1600 buildings have been built, are being built or are in the design phase to be built using certain materials that have been serving as kindling for fires across the west, in particular. The other piece, we have seen a lot of positive things and what is exciting about this is when we began to observe, there is also opportunities to combine that with other opportunities, in terms of carbon credit and applying it in other types of lands across the country. Those are some of the things that we are excited about. We are looking at this to occur for the next 10 years. As long as the bipartisan infrastructure, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act moneys. We are off to a good start. I met with a group this morning. They have been able to leverage the money that we have divided by a tune of 71, a great return. We are excited about what the future holds and we are looking for more opportunities. With that, i will turn it back to you. Question and answer for the chief of her here. I want to touch on your employee issue. What we have seen in our area is the requirement that you have to have resume diversification of working in different spot. It has worked against the local people that one to put down in this area. You have to be able to work up to the ranks. That is randy that is the way that we have built. You will see that we have been promoting more people to stay in place. In the past, in order to move up , you have to go to a new location. We have recognized that and we are no longer requiring Different Levels of experience. We do not turn that away. In fact, you will see people staying in place and people being promoted in place without having to move and uproot their families. It is no secret. A part of that pattern was that people moved around. It is no longer true and it is not desirable or wanted anymore. I know that from my own experience in the agency. My very first job was in north dakota. The plus is that i got to meet people that i never would have met otherwise. I gained an appreciation for different cultures and a different way of doing business and existing. Those are some of the values that we still have in the agency when you are able to move around. It is not necessary anymore that if a person is that is something that we have stopped doing. People are being promoted and do not feel like they have to approve their families. Rosemary, gateway tell Yosemite National park. Thank you for the projects. I worked with the Forest ServiceSierra National forest. Because of the joint chiefs project in our area, you saved the community in 2018 with the ferguson fire, and i think again last year. Thank you very much for that. Im sure you know that they are embracing the recognition process with considerable enthusiasm. I think it is essential that they take responsibility. My question is for those like jersey dale and about four other communities in my district, they are surrounded and my question is, is the Forest Service looking at how we can Work Together around those communities . If so, how do i access that . Randy thank you for raising the question. We have been working diligently to protect communities. My answer is that the only way to move forward is to collaborate with the counties moving forward. If you do not feel like you have an opportunity to work with personnel, we are saying is the only way to move forward. Hopefully i will try to come up with all these great ideas and we want to have a little bit of a different approach. Lets sit down together and decide what needs to happen. How can we throw our resources together to make it happen . . A question on the right. We appreciate the efforts Going Forward with these critical areas that need to be cleaned up. It is going to be a long road. My question relates to after the fire. We had another one in 20 that ran into the 2013 fire. They need some help to start with. The point of the question is, there is so much in those watersheds from those fires that is critical. We will we have talked to several members. What is the plan for this . There has to be some carbon coming off of that. There is no way it will sit there for years before it can be printable. Is there any kind of strategy after the fires . Randy i am glad that you brought it up. I am very familiar with the situation in colorado. Here again, the short answer is that colorado no longer has an industry to speak of. A part of that, there are a lot of different reasons. There is just nothing there. I believe the west slope is where you have the closest facility. We are trying to create opportunities to start some type of industry there. You do have a lot of dying material in colorado, particularly around the i75. So how do we begin to take advantage to create a new opportunity and some of these areas where you no longer have facilities there in that part of the country . We want to be a part of that and we want you to be a part of that. How do we Work Together to stimulate business to operate . One of the things that we have heard. We will probably talk about this in a little bit. We have lost a lot of facilities. How do we start something new . Without getting made of the old . We need those facilities in place, and we also need to improve the number of those facilities that we currently have in place. When we look at new products, that would is as strong as steel. Looking at that technology, as we move into a new era and opportunity that we have, we are open to suggestions. We look at opportunities and we are open to grant businesses to study that and have startups. We have invested about 200 million so far. We have another 800 million that we are looking at investing in those opportunities. I bring this up because you know more about what the opportunities are in your communities than we do. I want you to take this and challenge us to work with you to create new Job Opportunities. We have a question in front. Thank you, chief. I want to thank you. I think we finally have hope again with a lot of trying to reestablish a biomass and being able to use absolutely everything. In that case, thank you. The Forest Service has been a great partner to work with, and we have a great relationship. It is exciting to hear. That is exactly where our mindset is as well. I wanted to bring up one other topic. We have gone through and set ambitious standards. It is a huge amount, a huge opportunity and one challenge i am looking at, the Greenhouse Gas inventories is trying to make an environmental argument for these projects, according to emissions data. There is not an accepted scientific formula that when we go in, we leave a healthier forest. We can bring that back and say not only did this create jobs and make people safer, but also, be are able to reduce the risk of fire that is one of the highest amount of emissions. That land will be more productive. We lack the ability to do that, even though there is all kinds of data out there. One final bit is that we had a report come out that one year of fire eliminated most 20 years of carbon emission that the state has undergone. I think it is something that we are talking about, but we could use your leadership so that we can tell policymakers. Randy well said. That seems more like a statement than a question. We do want to be a part of that. I think that is where certain parts of the country are leaning , and we want to lean in that direction with you. One of the things that we are beginning to see is that there are a number of things that the communities are experiencing that are really negative. Insurance companies are dropping Insurance Coverage. Can you imagine how devastating that would be to not be able to have insurance . In california, we are trying to work with a number of partners, including the Insurance Industry to save. If you are removing Insurance Coverage from people who live in a fiery fire danger area, are you willing to reassure them, if they are willing to reduce the hazards associated with that fire said, so that homeowners can begin to have hope that they are insured again. There is nothing more frightening to than to live in an area like that and not have Insurance Coverage. With our approach, just looking at how to bring the community together, we are looking at creating a little bit of stability in some of these communities that are at risk for these wildfires. We want to be your partners. Its particularly challenging because we have no land on the far service has the lab. Have you considered ways where you can and hands your existing housing, add more density to the areas we do have . As you brought up earlier on the military model, one thing we dont have enough of our barracks on those particular areas so consider having that and we can keep these people in our communities and have Career Growth there. We certainly can. We are in kind of a Pilot Project in colorado on the white river where we are trying to work out some Creative Solutions to have Affordable Housing. That includes barracks and includes places for employees and others to live at an affordable rate. I think its for 50 years, thats the pilot so if there is an investment, thats enough time to recoup the investments. We are piloting that and trying to look at what other opportunities we can get like that. If you have some ideas as well about how we can do that, we are all years. It is a significant problem for not only our employees but also yours as well to live in these communities in Affordable Housing or have a landbased to have homes. We want to be Good Neighbors and we want to be a good partner with you and we want to invite you to help us be strategic help be our thinking partners. Together, we will get much further than we will separately like weve been doing for so long. Weve got a question to your right way in the back. Thanks for being here area we want to thank your field officers who helped us in the dixie and fish Lake National forest. I will try to turn it into a question like jeopardy. [laughter] we have very few private industries left that are willing to take the wood out of the forest and sounds like you want to get it out, but that you hold onto it like its meat in a lions mouth and therefore, no industry can shoot up so we are trying to get, for example, in beaver, utah, i talked to the owners of one of the few little mills left, fish lake lumber, but they cannot at the Forest Service to just give them the wood. They will process it and turn it into laminates or turn it into mulch or whatever but its almost like you want to give it up so you dont have to do the work and private industry is willing to do the work for you, but you wont let them go get the wood even in an environmentally sensitive way. There is the question. Would you help us with that . That would be awesome. Its easy for me to say yes but i dont know the specifics. Or the particulars about the areas you are referring to. I want to be clear about this we want to work with you. We have the best opportunity we have had in the last 117 years. We dont have all the answers nor do we want to if you have an opportunity there, lets sit down and talk about what that opportunity is and what will be required to implement that opportunity. Like the sign says, we are open for business so lets look at some opportunities and projects and see if they are doable. We do want to make this thing work because we know weve got a tough situation out there on the landscape area we have said we want to clear restore 20 million federal acres but another 30 million private, tribal and other lands. Thats a lot of work that we are trying to commit to and we want to be smart and strategic and the challenge, no matter where we go, there are places we didnt go that will feel left out. In terms of priorities and how we choose these and what is the criteria for these priorities, thats where we can use some help. No matter where we go or how we get there, there will be some