'Carry It Out Or Nature Will Burn It Out': Tom McClintock Touts Bill To Increase Timber Harvesting

5 months ago

During a House Natural Resources Committee markup meeting before the Congressional recess, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) spoke about a bill to incentivize timber harvesting.

Transcript

00:00I recognize the gentleman from California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the

00:04committee for marking up this bill today. In this session, it was folded into the

00:08Fix Our Forest Act, which the Senate has yet to act upon. I'd like to get this

00:13freestanding bill over there in hopes it will present a simpler option for

00:16consideration, if that helps. It's simpler because it proposes not a new

00:21policy, but simply extends an existing law that was passed with bipartisan

00:27support and signed into the WIN Act by President Obama in 2016. That law

00:33provided a categorical exclusion from the National Environmental Policy Act for

00:37forest-thinning projects up to 10,000 acres under certain conditions, but it

00:41had to be limited to the Tahoe Basin Management Unit because of amendments in

00:46the Senate. Under NEPA, a simple forest-thinning project requires an average of

00:52four years of environmental studies. It produced reports often exceeding 800

00:56pages. They cost millions of dollars to produce, often more than the value of

01:01the timber we're removing. Federal timber auctions that once produced millions of

01:05dollars to the federal government now cost money, so not a lot of it gets done.

01:09As I pointed out earlier, federal timber harvests in the Sierra have declined 80% as a

01:15result, while acres destroyed by fires increased concomitantly. There are only

01:20two ways for timber to leave our forest. Either we'll carry it out or nature will burn

01:23it out. The Lake Tahoe categorical exclusion has now been in effect for nine years. It's

01:30taken the review time for thinning projects from four years down to less than four months.

01:36It's cut the reports from 800 pages down to a few dozen. Under this authority, the Tahoe

01:42Basin Management Unit has increased the removal of excess timber from one million board feet a

01:47year to an average of nine million board feet a year. Treated acreage in the Tahoe Basin has now

01:55tripled. When the Caldor fire broke out last year, it was out of control. It was bearing down on the

02:01city of South Lake Tahoe. But the fire hit a tract on the pioneer trail that had been treated under this

02:07new authority. It lay down and the firefighters were able to stop it. South Lake Tahoe was saved.

02:13The town of Grizzly Flats wasn't so lucky. It's next door in the El Dorado National Forest. For more

02:19than a decade, land managers have tried to thin the trestle project that everyone knew was a clear

02:25threat to Grizzly Flats. It was held up by environmental laws and the endless litigation arising from them

02:31and still had not been undertaken when the same Caldor fire hit that densely overgrown tract,

02:37exploded, and incinerated the entire town. Mr. Chairman, as the Forest Service used to say,

02:45only you can prevent forest fires. Maybe not all of them, but I can say with confidence that this bill

02:51will minimize many forest fires and save many communities from the catastrophe visited on towns

02:57like Grizzly Flats. The Forest and the Tahoe Basin Management Unit are now slowly returning to

03:04health and fire resiliency. We need to extend those same proven practices to the rest of our federal

03:12lands, and I think we should not waste any more time. So with that, I'll yield back and ask for adoption of the bill.

'Carry It Out Or Nature Will Burn It Out': Tom McClintock Touts Bill To Increase Timber Harvesting

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