00:00Thank you Senator Wyden. Chief Schultz, I was thrilled by the announcement made by
00:08Secretary Rawlins about the rescission of the 2001 roadless rule. The roadless
00:13rule prohibits, as the name implies, road construction and it also prohibits
00:21effectively timber harvesting on nearly 59 million acres of National Forest
00:26System lands, including 60% of the Forest Service land in Utah. By the way that 59
00:33million acres represents nearly 10% of the total federal land footprint. This is
00:39a significant amount of land. Now while the intent of the original roadless rule
00:45may well have have been to preserve the environment, in practical effect in many
00:52many ways it's done the opposite of that. The practical effect of it has been
00:57environmental disaster. It's been devastating to forest health and to
01:03wildfire mitigation efforts. It's also added to the demise of our domestic timber
01:09industry. Last year I asked your predecessor, a person who held this job
01:14and in the previous administration, if the roadless rule had helped or hindered
01:20wildfire mitigation efforts. And he said quote, I don't think it was designed to
01:25help wildfire mitigation. Certainly a true statement and vastly understated in my
01:34opinion. Would you say that the roadless rule has helped or hindered wildfire
01:41mitigation efforts over the last two decades? Senator Lee, I would say the
01:47roadless rule and what we see in terms of the data sets, there's about 24 and a
01:51half million acres of roadless areas that are within the wildland urban
01:55interface within one mile of the wildland urban interface. So by not being able to
01:59have areas that we can go into and manage or be able to put the fires out, that is a
02:03problem. So it doesn't help for sure and it definitely hinders. And what you'll find
02:07out too is that many roadless areas are in fact roaded. So it's sometimes it's a
02:11misnomer. I was in Montana last week on the Helena Lewis and Clark Forest. There's a lot of
02:16road and roadless. That same thing on the Lolo 4. So to suggest that roadless areas
02:21are truly always roadless, that is not the case. In many cases, historically, we're
02:25roaded. No, I get that but that's not the point. The point is just whether it's
02:28helped or hindered. It's not helped. Good. So what is the rescission of the roadless
02:34rule mean then for for land management, for timber harvesting, and for wildfire
02:40mitigation on Forest Service land going forward? What does that look like? Chairman,
02:45so the rescission, what that will look like is we will begin a, this fall, we will have
02:49a rulemaking process that we will go through that process to repeal the rule officially.
02:54There are two states that we will not be repealing the rule. That's Idaho and Colorado that have
02:57their own unique road to this rule. So those rules will not be impacted. But we will repeal
03:01the rule through our rulemaking process. We'll have public input in that process. And then
03:05ultimately we would have to amend forest plans to adopt that that strategy and those forest
03:09plans. But that's what we started this fall. Thank you. Well, I'd like to discuss briefly
03:15the revisions to the Manti-LaSalle National Forest Management Plan. The 2023 draft of that
03:24plan included 122,780 acres of recommended wilderness areas. Now, to be perfectly clear,
03:33these areas do not meet the Forest Service's own standards for wilderness or for recommended wilderness.
03:41The recommendations also appear to conflict with the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984, which designated
03:49wilderness areas in exchange for the assurance of no future Utah wilderness designations. That
03:54agreement was seemingly ignored by the Biden administration. Will you commit to working with the state and with
04:01local cooperating agencies to reevaluate and remove these recommended wilderness areas before the final land
04:09management plan is complete? So, sir, yes. We have received those comments in the state. They're being reviewed
04:15right now. We will definitely working with the state in that review of that process and reconsidering those
04:19those recommendations in the draft. Thank you. And I hope you'll reach out to me as you do that in any way I can be
04:25helpful. I'll be kept apprised of that. Now, timber harvesting is a critical component of responsible forest
04:33management. It helps maintain healthy forest density, removes hazardous fuels by preventing fuel buildup for
04:45the fires, and supports rural economies across the country. Since 2000, just the last 25 years alone, the average
04:53annual harvest from forest system lands has been just 2.3 billion board feet, far below both historic and
05:03average averages, and allowable quantities. Now, just last week, we took a huge step in the right
05:10direction by enacting new timber harvesting provisions in the big, beautiful bill passed by
05:16Congress and signed into law by President Trump to help restore our forests and revitalize the domestic
05:21timber industry. What do you see as the biggest remaining barriers to increasing timber production on federal
05:28lands, you know, now that this bill has been passed? And how do we cut through red tape and provides a
05:35degree of certainty for our timber and our sawmill industries? Mr. Chairman, I think you hit a lot of the good
05:42points. The biggest thing that the sawmills are looking for is certainty and predictability, right? So the
05:48biggest thing is the Forest Service needs to do what they say they're going to do. So when you talk about, you know, our
05:52sustainable supply and what we're doing, if we deliver what we're saying we're going to do, that's what the
05:57industry is looking for. In terms of barriers that are out there, we know litigations are barriers. But in terms of
06:02funding things, we're looking at other ways. You mentioned the long-term contracts that are identified in the
06:07reconciliation bill. That's something we will be looking at. We actually just signed an agreement with the state of
06:11Montana just last week to do a 20-year agreement where the state would come in and assist in managing
06:15federal lands. And that's something that we actually have some initial discussions with Utah to look at that and other
06:21states in the west as well. So we see that being an opportunity where the states can kind of step in and help us in
06:26managing those resources on a go-forward basis. So that's it. I mean, we're looking at other mechanisms for
06:31contracting. We're looking at working with partners on a go-forward basis. Litigation is something, and I know there are
06:37provisions and other statutes and laws you are looking at right now to help with some of that. We've talked about the
06:42Cottonwood decision many times, but that is one that is out there that still creates some hurdles for us, the litigation piece.
Comments