00:00Is there further discussion on the bill? Hearing none, it is now in order to consider
00:05amendments to H.R. 178. I recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. McClintock, for the purpose
00:10of offering an amendment in the nature of the substitute, designated McClintock 58-A-N-S.
00:16Without objection, the amendment is considered red and open to amendment at any point.
00:21You recognize? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I said,
00:23this simply extends the provisions to all the land management agencies in addition to the Forest
00:27Service. Gentleman yields back. Is there further discussion on the ANS?
00:35Ms. Lajer Fernandez, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Right now, 325 brave men and women in my
00:42district are fighting the Laguna Fire near Guyana, New Mexico. The Forest Service lost control of this
00:49actively managed fire after it jumped the fire line two weeks ago. The fire has burned over 16,000
00:55acres of the Santa Fe National Forest, killing and maiming livestock of Forest Service permittees in its
01:02path. As a managed fire burned out of control, local permittees did not receive notice in time to protect
01:08their herds. The fire has devastated the lively herds of the permittees who have grazed cattle on these
01:15lands for more than a century. People who grazed kettles on these lands when they were part of land
01:25grants, historic land grants, before they ever became part of the United States. Just three years ago,
01:32as we've heard, the Forest Service lost control of two prescribed fires that started the Hermits Peak
01:37Calf Canyon Fire, the worst wildfire in New Mexico's district. So it's no surprise that communities in
01:43northern New Mexico have completely lost trust in the Forest Service's wildfire decision making.
01:50We cannot allow history to repeat itself like this every wildfire season. But I want to be clear,
01:56I'm not against prescribed or managed fires. These are important tools for thinning our forests and
02:03preventing catastrophic fires. In fact, in this room, we had a hearing on the use of tribal ecological
02:11knowledge about using fire to protect the forest. Wise lessons that we could learn from here.
02:21But the Forest Service does need to improve its practices with how it conducts prescribed and
02:26managed fires. We need to find solutions to make sure the Forest Service has resources it needs to
02:33properly manage fires and the policies in place to hold the agency accountable when it falls short.
02:39I do appreciate that Mr. McClintock's bill today includes my amendment from last Congress that
02:46instructs the Forest Service to use infrared technologies to monitor prescribed burns and
02:51updates the agency's prescribed burn fire policies with the lessons learned after the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon
02:59Fire. I demanded and we did receive a report on how to improve those management practices. And
03:07Mr. McClintock, Representative, I do appreciate that those are in this bill. I would like to continue to work
03:13with you, Representative McClintock and with the Chairman to make further improvements to this bill.
03:19I'm offering two amendments today to help the bill better serve our communities out west. My first amendment
03:26would make sure the Forest Service employs the necessary number of wildland firefighters before this bill's
03:32policies take effect. And my second amendment is heartbreaking when I will discuss it later.
03:39But it would require that the Forest Service compensate permittees who lose livestock or structures
03:46due to prescribed burns that burn out of control. I have a couple of other concerns that in reviewing the
03:55bill you know stuff pops up as you go look at it again and you read it again you read it again. And one is with
04:01regards to the use of backfire. I spent months and months and years meeting with people who lost so
04:11much during the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Fire and several of them told me how those firefighters showed up
04:18and they did the backfires and they saved their structures. So structures are not included as in a
04:26possibility. So that's like an example of where we can continue to work on improving this bill before it is ever
04:32before it comes to the floor is an area that I would like to continue a discussion.
04:36But with that as noted, I do appreciate the improvements to the bill and the inclusion
04:43of my amendments from last year. And I do appreciate the discussion
04:50because I think it is very important that we're having today and this bill addresses some of those
04:55concerns. So thank you very much and I yield back. Is there further discussion of the amendment?
05:04Mr. Ranking Member, go ahead. Go ahead Mr. Hoffman. Yeah. Thanks Mr. Chairman. So I appreciate the majority
05:11made some efforts to clarify the bill through the ANS, but what is proposed really does nothing to address the
05:18concerns that have been expressed by the Forest Service and frankly it doesn't address my concerns. The amendment would still
05:25remove critical firefighting tools from local land managers, returning us to the counterproductive full fire
05:32suppression in all cases policy of the past. And concerningly, the proposed amendment would expand this
05:40antiquated policy to other agencies under the Department of Interior, meaning all of our federal lands
05:47would now be under a full suppression policy. The science is exceedingly clear. Decades of full suppression
05:56brought us dangerously high levels of hazardous fuels, allowed them to accumulate in ways that caused
06:03terrible fires in the West to burn hotter, longer and more intensely and put American communities
06:09increasingly in harm's way. If my colleagues are serious about addressing the wildfire crisis,
06:15please listen to the Forest Service. Don't take away a key tool needed to reduce fuel loads. Listen to the scientists who tell
06:23us that we must invest in critical hazardous fuels reduction and beneficial fire practices when it's safe to do so and under the
06:32right conditions. And let's get to the bottom of what happened in the Grand Canyon. Let's hold the Trump administration accountable for
06:40the failure in judgment, the failure in communication, the breakdown in resources that should have informed
06:47that judgment. Something went terribly wrong with the Grand Canyon and we should not let this administration
06:55do what it does whenever it's asked to provide transparency and accountability. Blame Obama or cover it up like
07:04like the Epstein files. We have to demand real transparency and accountability in this case. And let's listen
07:11to the Wildland Fire, the Wildland Fire Commission, which told policy makers to leave full suppression policies
07:20in the past where they belong. Let's not mandate an outdated policy that may superficially sound like a good
07:27idea, may in the moment seem like good politics, but in practice only fuel future catastrophic wildfires. I urge a no.
07:35Vote and I yield back.
07:37I yield back. Gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Stauber. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to yield my time to
07:43Representative McClintock.
07:52In response to the ranking members death grip on discredited practices of the Forest Service,
07:58practices that our local and state firefighters have been warning about for years, practices that have proven
08:05themselves utter and complete failures. Again, losing a quarter of our national forests to a catastrophic
08:14fire in the last 10 years, that is a direct result of the policies that the ranking member continues to
08:21defend. He keeps clinging to policies that have proven themselves to utterly failed our responsibility
08:26to protect our forests and to ignore the practices that have worked. And one of the most fundamental and
08:33basic practices is that you put out a fire when it is tiny and can be easily extinguished. You put them
08:40out the moment that they are spotted before they can explode out of control. That sounds like a good idea,
08:46Mr. Ranking Member, because it is a good idea and for many, many decades it worked. I'd also point out that
08:54we lost some of the most iconic sequoia in the Sierra Nevada just a few years ago as a direct result of a
09:03prescribed burn that was deliberately set by the state of California and was allowed to get out of
09:09control. And we've seen this time and time again. In addition, one of the complaints that was brought to
09:14me by local firefighters during active fires were teenaged fire crews acting independently and
09:23indiscriminately setting backfires. In one case in the Caldor fire that they then abandoned and destroyed
09:29nearby homes that could have otherwise been saved. This bill addresses this reckless problem as well by
09:36requiring the fires backfires to be approved by the incident commander and not by some teenager in the
09:43field. But to the question of staffing levels, it makes no sense to me to delay implementation of
09:51this bill until we increase staffing. The whole point of this bill is that it takes far fewer resources
09:57to put out one little fire than to wait until it explodes out of control into a major conflagration
10:04that requires a massive marshalling of resources. One helicopter drop can put out these fires when
10:10they're first spotted. Waiting requires literally thousands of helicopter and airdrops and hundreds
10:18of thousands of man hours to combat, not to mention the enormous damage both to our forests and the
10:26surrounding communities. So we shouldn't be waiting to marshal or to restore this proven policy of forest
10:36fighting. And with that, I yield back. I thank the gentleman for his time. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
10:42I mean, yield back. Is there further discussion on the A&S? There's no further discussion.
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