A "Healthy Forests" Primer - Speech before U.S. Senate by Senator Jon Kyl, R-Az

A "Healthy Forests" Primer - Speech before U.S. Senate by Senator Jon Kyl, R-Az

Sept. 17 2002

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would like to speak
directly to the issues raised both by the majority
leader and the Senator from Montana; specifically,
with respect to how we are going to resolve issues
related to the health of our forests. 
I know the discussion has greatly focused on fires
and the catastrophic results of fires this year. I am
going to talk about that to a great extent. But I
would like to make a point at the very beginning which
I hope we don't lose sight of; that is, fire is merely
one component of the problem we have to deal with.
What we are really talking about is the health of our
forests, both for the protection of people from
catastrophic wildfires and also for the ecological
benefits that a healthy forest provides. It provides
wonderful recreation for our citizens. It provides
habitat for all of the flora and fauna we not only
like to visit and like to see but to understand that
it is very important for ecological balance in our
country. It protects endangered species. It provides a
home for all of the other fish, insects, birds,
mammals, and reptiles we would like to protect,
whether they are endangered or not.
In order to have this kind of healthy forest, we
have come to a conclusion, I think pretty much
unanimously in this country, that we are going to have
to manage the forest differently than we have in the
past.
What the debate is all about is how the Congress is
going to respond to this emergency, not just from the
catastrophic wildfires but from the other devastation
of our forests that has created such an unhealthy
condition that it literally threatens the health of
probably somewhere between 30 and 70 million acres of
forest land in the United States. 
The administration has come forth with a
far-reaching proposal that will begin to enable us to
treat these forests in a sensible way. We have
legislation pending before us--an amendment by the
Senator from Idaho--that was put in place as a means
of being able to discuss this. And we have been
trying, over the course of the last week or so, to
negotiate among ourselves in the Senate to be able to
come to some conclusion about what amendment it might
be possible to adopt as part of the Interior
appropriations bill so that it will be easier for us
to go in and manage these forests. 
I am sad to say that so far our efforts at
negotiation have not borne fruit. I think, therefore,
it is necessary today to begin to recognize that
unless we are able to reach agreement pretty soon, we
are going to have to press forward with the kind of
management approach that I believe will enable us to
create healthy forests again.
Let me go back over some of the ground that has
been discussed but perhaps put a little different face
on it in talking about my own State of Arizona. 
Some people may not think of the State of Arizona
as containing forests. They may think of it as a
desert State. The reality is, a great deal of my State
is covered with some of the most beautiful forests in
the entire United States--the entire world, for that
matter. We have the largest Ponderosa pine forest in
the United States. Ponderosa pines are enormous,
beautiful trees, with yellowing bark. It is not
uncommon at all for them to have a girth of 24 inches
and above in a healthy forest. They are a little bit
like if you want to think of the sequoia trees in
California--not quite as big but coming close to that
kind of magnificent tree.
One hundred years ago, the ponderosa pine forests
in Arizona were healthy. These trees were huge. They
were beautiful. There were not very many per acre; and
that, frankly, was what enabled them to grow so well.
They were not competing with a lot of small underbrush
or small trees for the nutrients in the soil, the Sun,
the water, which is relatively scarce in Arizona, and
they grew to magnificent heights.
Several things happened to begin to change the
circumstances. First of all, loggers came in and,
seeing an opportunity, cut a lot of these magnificent
trees. Secondly, grazing came in, and all of the
grasses that grew because of the meadow-like
conditions in which this forest existed were nibbled
right down to the base in some cases. A lot of small
trees, therefore, began to crop up and crowd out the
grasses, and pretty soon there was not any grass.
There was simply a dense undergrowth of little trees
that began to crowd out what was left of the bigger
trees, as well.
Then came the fires because these little trees were
so prone to burning. It is a dry climate. They are
crowded together. Instead of having maybe 200 trees
per acre, for example, you might have 2,000 trees per
acre or more. But they are all little, tiny diameter
trees that are very susceptible to fire. And the big
trees that are left, of course, are susceptible to
fire as well because when the lightning strikes, it
sets the small trees on fire, which then quickly crown
up to the larger trees, creating a ladder effect,
going right on up to the top of the very biggest
trees. It explodes in fire, as you have seen on
television. That kind of environment is what we are
faced with today.
The old growth has come back. We have some
magnificent, big trees, but they are being crowded out
by all of these very small-diameter trees and other
brush and other fuel that has accumulated on the
forest floor. So what happens when there is a
fire--whether man set or lightning created--is that
the fuel begins to burn. It burns quickly just like a
Christmas tree, if you can imagine, if you have ever
seen a Christmas tree burn. It quickly burns the
smaller trees and underbrush, and then catches the
branches, the lower branches of the bigger trees, and
then crowns out, and then you have a big fire.
What is the result of the big fires in Arizona this
year?
First of all, we can talk about the size of the
fires. We can talk about the size of the
Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona. It was about 60
percent the size of Rhode Island. This is simply one
fire. You can see from this map the size of the
Rodeo-Chediski fire. Here is the size of the State of
Rhode Island. If you add in other fires that have
occurred in Arizona this year, you have a size that
exceeds the size of Rhode Island. That is in my State.
That is how much has burned in my State--about 622,000
acres in this fire alone. 
Let me show you what it looks like after that burn.
And I have been there. I have walked it. I have driven
through it. I have seen it from the air by helicopter.
It is a devastating sight. Here it is, as shown in
this photograph.
The ground is gray. It burned so hot that it
created a silicone-like glaze over the soil. And, of
course, it just absolutely takes all the pine needles
and branches off the trees, so all you have are these
sticks left standing. Some of these, by the way, are
pretty good size trees. And there is salvageable
timber in here if we are permitted to go in and do
that salvaging.
But because of the glaze over the soil, the report
from the experts in the field is that when the rains
finally began to come, it did not soak into the soil;
it ran off. And what you now find throughout the
central and eastern part of Arizona is massive mud
flow into the streams. It kills the fish. It makes the
water unpalatable. It devastates the free flow of the
water, so it creates new channels and erodes the soil.
It goes around bridges, and there is one bridge that
was very much in danger.
It flows into the largest lake in the State, Lake
Roosevelt. And Roosevelt Lake is the biggest surface
water source of water for the city of Phoenix and the
other valley cities. There has been great concern that
mud flow will affect the water quality and the water
taste, as well as damaging the environment for the
aquatic life in the lake and in the other streams.
There are some other sad things about this fire.
Just to mention some of the devastation, the total of
this fire was about 468,000 acres burned. The total in
Arizona is about 622,000 acres. The structures burned
in Arizona were about 423, the majority of which were
homes and some commercial structures.
In the United States, this year alone, we have lost
21 lives as a result of the wildfires, and over 3,000
structures. The impacts on our forests in Arizona, the
old growth trees will take 300 to 400 years to
regenerate--300 to 400 years. To have a tree of any
good size takes at least 100, 150 years. 
We have endangered species in our forests, the
Mexican spotted owl, for example. The fire burned
through 20 of their protected active centers. So I
think those who claim to be environmentalists, who
want to protect a forest by keeping everybody out of
it, and rendering it subject to this kind of wildfire
have a lot of explaining to do when 20 of these
protected centers for the Mexican spotted owls were
ruined, devastated, burned up in this fire. The
recovery time for this habitat is 300 to 400 years as
well.
Twenty-five goshawk areas--this is another one of
our protected species--and postfledging areas were
impacted or destroyed. Wildlife mortalities--and these
are just those that were actually documented--46 elks,
2 bears, and 1 bear cub, and, of course, countless
other small critters. <[>
I think it is interesting that air quality is
something that is frequently overlooked when you think
of these fires. I was up there. I know because I had
to breathe it. But just one interesting statistic is
that the greenhouse gases from the Rodeo fire emitted
during 1 day--just 1 day of the fire; and this thing
burned for 2 to 3 weeks in a big way, and then longer
than that in a smaller way--but 1 day's emissions of
greenhouse gases from the Rodeo fire surpassed all of
the carbon dioxide emissions of all passenger cars
operating in the United States on that same day.
So if we are really concerned about greenhouse
gases, just stop and think, all of the emissions from
all of the cars in the United States did not equal 1
day's worth of emissions from this one fire. Of
course, there were a lot of other fires burning in the
country as well. 
Let me try to put this in perspective in terms of
the amount of area of Arizona that is subject to this
kind of fire.
We have about 4 million acres of forest in Arizona
that is classified as condition 3. That is about
one-third of all the forests in Arizona. Condition 3
is the area that is in the most danger of catastrophic
wildfire. Here is a State map of Arizona. And the area
in yellow is pretty much the forested area of our
State, with the area depicted in red the class 3
area.
So you can see that a great deal of our ponderosa
pine forest here is in very dire condition and needs
to be treated as soon as possible.
The Grand Canyon is right here. You can see on the
north rim, there are significant areas that need to be
treated. Over here, near the Navaho Indian
Reservation, there are areas that need to be treated.
Flagstaff is here; you can see the mountains that rise
over 12,000 feet just north of Flagstaff. Those areas
are very much in danger. You have the Prescott
National Forest, Coconino National Forest, the Tonto
National Forest. The Apache Indian Reservation is
probably the largest. This area is the watershed for
Phoenix, the Gila River and its tributaries. It
provides a great deal of the surface water for the
city of Phoenix and surrounding areas.
These are beautiful mountain areas with a base
elevation of over 7,000 feet. This area over here is
9,000 feet. The mountains rise over 11,000 feet,
covered with ponderosa pines, spruce, fir, aspen, and
others trees. All of this area is in grave danger of
beetle kill disease, mistletoe, wildfire, and being
weakened and dying from insufficient nutrients and
water because of the condition of the forest.
It is a very matted, tightly packed forest with all
of the little diameter trees literally squeezing out
the big trees that we all want to save. It is called a
dog hair thicket. It is so thick that a dog can't even
run through it without leaving some of his hair
behind.
Let me show you an example of what the forest used
to look like and how it looks today. On the top you
see a photograph of 1909. You can see these beautiful
big ponderosa pine trees. There are some smaller ones
back here. You have different age growths, and that is
the way you like to have a forest so as the big ones
grow older and die, there are others to take their
place. You see a great deal of grass, sunshine, open
space. You can imagine this is a very healthy forest
because you don't have too much competition for what
the trees need to grow. It is also a wonderful
environment for elk and deer and butterflies and
birds. It is open. You have plenty of grass for forage
and so on. 
This is the same area in the year 1992. This is the
way much of our forests look today--absolutely dense,
crowded. I am not sure if the chart is observable
here, but you can see that the forest is now very
crowded. Here you have beautiful, large ponderosa
pines, a couple more back here, but they are being
squeezed out by all of the smaller diameter trees.
What we are talking about in management is not
cutting the big trees, not logging the forest. We are
talking about taking out the bulk of these smaller
diameter trees that are not doing anybody or anything
any good and are clogging up the forests, preventing
the grass from growing. They are ruining the habitat
for other animals and creating conditions for insects,
disease, and catastrophic wildfire. 
For those who say we don't want to go back to
logging, nobody is talking about that. We are talking
about saving these big trees, not cutting them down.

The problem is, a lot of the environmental
community is in total concert with this general
management. But you have a very loud, activist,
radical minority that is so afraid commercial
businesses will want to cut large trees, that they
want to destroy any commercial industry. In the State
of Arizona, there is essentially no logging industry
left. We have two very small mills, and the Apache
Indian Reservation has two mills. The Apache
Reservation I will get to in a moment because that is
where the Rodeo-Chediski fire occurred.
What we are talking about here is having
well-designed projects, after consultation with all of
the so-called stakeholders, with the Forest Service
having gone through all of the environmental planning
and designating projects, stewardship projects with
enhanced value so that they can go to these commercial
businesses and say: Can you go into this forest and
clean all of this out and make it look like this?
Whatever you take out of here that we mark for you to
be able to take out, you can sell that. You can turn
it into chipboard, fiberboard. You can turn it into
biodegradable products for burning and creating
electricity. You can perhaps take some of the
medium-size trees and get some boards out of them,
maybe some two-by-fours. Can you make enough of a
profit to do this for us because there is not enough
money for us to appropriate to treat 30 or 40 or 50
million acres?

We are talking about a lot of money we simply don't
have. You have to rely upon the commercial businesses
to do that. Some of the radicals are so concerned that
when they are doing this job for us, they will say: We
don't have anything more to do; we want to take the
big trees. And they are concerned that we won't have
the ability to tell them no. Therefore, they are going
to prevent us from cleaning up the forest for making
it healthy again. They will create a condition that
results in the catastrophic wildfires I was talking
about; in effect, cutting off our nose to spite our
face.
We are not going to do what everybody recognizes
needs to be done because maybe when that is all done,
40 years from now, somebody will say: We want to go
after the big trees.
Does anybody believe the political environment in
that setting is going to permit us to do that? None of
us are going to agree to that. I don't agree to it
today.
Let me tell you a story. Former Secretary of
Interior Bruce Babbitt is a very strong supporter of
what we are talking about. An area he used to hike in
when he was young is called the Mt. Trumbull area on
the north rim of the Grand Canyon north of Flagstaff.
As Secretary of Interior, being BLM land under the
jurisdiction of the Department of Interior, he was
able to do the rules and regulations that enabled us
to go in and do the clearing. So they hired a couple
of brothers that had a small business. They brought
some pieces of equipment down from Oregon. One of them
was a very small caterpillar thing that could snip all
these small diameter trees. They cleaned out a fairly
good size area. They made enough money to be in
business, and isn't that fine. What they left was a
forest that looked more like this.
I remember one tree that a BLM person there said: I
have to show you this. Here was a tree that looked
like a big California sequoia. It was a big ponderosa
pine. The boughs came all the way down to the ground.
And all around it were these small dog hair thicket
kind of trees and brush. He said: We have to get them
to clean this out because this tree is very much in
danger of burning. If any spark comes within a mile or
so, it will just climb up this ladder.
That beautiful tree, that was maybe 200 or 300, 400
years old, is going to go up in flames. That is the
kind of tree we are trying to protect. For those who
say we want to somehow do logging and so on, I simply
say they are wrong; we are not. This is what we are
trying to create, not this.
Let's go on to talk about some of the other
aspects. In Arizona, there were about 4 million acres
classified as condition 3, meaning most subject to
catastrophic wildfire. Nationally, there are just
under 75 million such class 3 acres. Out of this, the
Forest Service identifies about 24 million as the
highest risk of catastrophic fires. And this
definition means they are so degraded that they
require mechanical thinning before fire can be safely
reintroduced.
According to the General Accounting Office, we have
a very short period of time in which to treat these
acres. According to a 1999 study, the GAO says we have
10 to 25 years to treat this 30 plus million acres of
class 3 land if we are to prevent unstoppable
fires.
This shows you what can be done when you treat the
acres. This is full restoration, meaning we have gone
in and cut out quite a few of the small diameter trees
leaving relatively few, mostly larger trees per acre.
This is exactly what this particular acre had on it
when the cutting and thinning had been done, going in
and cutting out the small diameter trees.
In Arizona you can introduce fire in prescribed
burns during the month of October and November because
it is cooler. It is moist, and the fires are not going
to get out of control. Fire was introduced here in
this area in October, the wet month, and you can see
that it is burning along the ground, burning the fuel
that has accumulated on the ground. It is not going to
go through this tree here or these trees here. It may
burn some of the smaller trees, but what is going to
be left is a nice environment in which you have
grasses that can crop up the next spring and
reintroduce a lot of species and habit and protect, as
well, from fire. 
If lightning were to strike one of these trees and
start a fire, it would return along the ground like
this. In the hot summer months, once it has been
treated, it is likely, with all of the fuel having
burned off the previous winter, the fire will move
around the ground and it will not crown out to a
higher degree of fire.
The reason you cannot treat these forests with fire
alone, and you have to mechanically thin and cut out
some of the underbrush first, is demonstrated by the
next chart. This shows you what happened when we left
this many trees per acre. This shows you when you do
minimal thinning. They didn't do very much thinning,
and they reintroduced fire, and you can see this fire
is starting to climb the trunks of these trees and is
going to crown out. You see it coming up along the top
of this tree. It is going to catch the crowns of a lot
of these larger trees. They are at great risk of
burning and a fire starting. This is during the wet
month of October when you have a lot of moisture. If
you don't take out very many trees, a la this
particular treatment here, minimal thinning, and you
introduce fire, you are going to have a risk of fire
in the hot months. It is going to be a very grave
risk. 
Let's turn to the third chart, which shows what
happens when you don't do anything at all, you only
burn. This demonstrates why you have to do thinning
first. No thinning was done on this particular acre.
This is during the cool, wet month of October in
Arizona. They introduced fire, and look at what
happened. It got out of control and created a crown
fire. This is the beginning of what the Rodeo-Chediski
fire looked like.
So it is too late in much of our forests to
introduce prescribed burning. It will go out of
control. You have to go in, as I said, and thin it out
first and then, that fall, you set a prescribed burn
and you burn all of the fuel on the ground.
Thereafter, the grasses grow and everything
regenerates and you have a very nice environment. 
There is another myth. I talked about cutting
old-growth trees. When people talk about saving old
growth, we need to be careful because the reality is
that a lot of old-growth trees, particularly in
Arizona, are not big trees at all. They are not the
ones you necessarily want to save. If you have been on
the California coast, perhaps you have seen trees over
a thousand years old. Some of the oldest ones are
gnarled. 
Which tree here is the oldest? Interestingly, this
smaller tree is 60 years old and this bigger one is 55
years old. This is the younger tree--the big one. This
tree was in an area that wasn't competing for a lot of
nutrients, water, and sun. It was in a more open area.
It grew as you would expect it to--very well, very
quickly, and very big.
Obviously, this is a tree we are going to want to
preserve. It will get bigger and bigger. But if you
have that area in which the trees are crowded together
in these very dense thickets, you can have a tree no
bigger than this small one after 60 years. In fact, I
have another one about the same size that is 88 years
old. 
Old growth would be something over 120 to 150
years. We have trees not much bigger than this that
are designated old growth. We desire to create an
environment in which you get these big beautiful trees
that grow old and big and create the habitat for all
of the fauna I discussed before for which we are
trying to preserve the forests. This is an
illustration of why you don't want to have arbitrary
limits on cutting old-growth trees. The tree you want
to save is this big one, not that one, the small one.
That makes a much nicer environment and one that is
better for the wildlife.
Let me now discuss one of the concerns that has
cropped up during the discussions about the kind of
legislation we want. 
There are those organizations in the environmental
movement that understand there is too much public
opinion in favor of doing something to manage our
forests now because of this wildfire season, this
catastrophic fire season. They understand they have to
make some concessions. They have concluded that the
best thing to be for is what they call urban/wild
interface management. What that is supposed to mean is
that you can go in and thin the areas right around
communities and right around people's expensive
million-dollar summer homes, and the like, but you
cannot go out into the forests themselves.
We will put up the chart that shows the class 3
lands.
The problem is, first of all, it treats very few
acres. This will illustrate the point. We don't have
very many communities in these forests. There are five
or six little towns in this whole area here. To do
urban/wild interface management alone, by going out a
half mile around the city limits of those little
towns, is going to do nothing to enhance the
environment in the rest of the forest. It will do
nothing to protect the habitat of the endangered
species out there. Actually, it does very little to
protect the communities themselves.
The Rodeo-Chediski fire--and I will show you the
chart later--burned with such ferocity and intensity
that the small areas that had been treated provided
little or no protection. It was only the areas where
there had been a larger area of treatment that were
protected as a result of the fire. 
I can tell you, while the fire was still burning in
the eastern area, we helicoptered up to the
Rodeo-Chediski lookout and we drove about another 2
miles on a road that divided between an area that had
been treated--that is to say, there had been thinning,
and I believe prescribed burning in the area as well,
and on the other side of the road it was not treated.
The side that was not treated looked like a moonscape.
There was no living thing. Every tree had all of the
branches and pine needles burned off--nothing but
ghostly, ghastly sticks. On the side that was treated,
you could hardly see that a fire had gone through
there. It laid on the ground, and it burned itself
out. It was in a large enough area that it did not
burn in that area. 
Unfortunately, where you had just a thin, light,
little strip of a quarter mile or half mile, the fire
jumped right over it. I saw that as well in different
areas. 
Part of the problem is a phenomenon that exists
particularly in the West, where you have dry, hot
conditions on the ground. The fire crowns out, as you
have seen on television, and these massive spires of
flame go 100, 150 feet in the air, which creates a
plume of high, hot air, smoke, ashes, cinders, carried
upward, and it looks like a mushroom cloud from an
atomic kind of explosion because the column of hot air
rises like this and it creates a mushroom effect. It
gets up into the cooler atmosphere, 15,000, 20,000
feet, and it cannot rise any more because the heat
doesn't sustain it. The cool air dampens it down and
begins to create condensation. Eventually, the weight
of the plume that has risen is greater than the
capacity of the hot air to sustain it and it
collapses. The firefighters call it a phenomenon of a
collapsing plume. What happens then is the whole thing
comes crashing down, creating a huge rush of air down
on the ground, which pushes out all of the hot
cinders, sparks, smoke, and ash out, like this, for 2
or 3 miles.
That happened many times in the Rodeo-Chediski
fire. I witnessed the creation of one such plume in an
area of Canyon Creek, where I have been hiking and
camping. It was devastated by this fire. So it doesn't
do you any good to create a bulldozer kind of a
firebreak, or a quarter of a mile or half mile of
thinning, if the fire can spread with such ferocity.
That is what happened over and over in this particular
fire.
Let me explain that, notwithstanding the fact that
there had been some treatment around some of our
communities. Just stop and think about this for a
moment. About 30,000 Arizonans had to pick up
everything they had within about a 6-hour--I forget
exactly how many hours of warning it was, but it was
very few hours. They had to pick up what they could in
their pickup trucks and cars and find somewhere else
to live for the next 2 weeks. Show Low, AZ, is a town
of over 20,000, 25,000 people, and in Pinetop and
Lakeside and McNary, a few smaller towns, they had all
had to leave. They could not go back in for anything.
A few people tried to feed livestock and keep horses
and cattle and pets alive, but a lot was lost when
these people had to be gone for 2 weeks. 
Just think of having to leave your home and not
knowing whether it was going to burn or not. Some did
burn, but the towns were saved. 
Interestingly, one of the reasons Show Low was
saved was that a canyon to the southwest had been
treated. It had been thinned, and there had been
prescribed burning in that area I believe 2 or 3 years
before; I have forgotten exactly how long before.
When the fire hit that area, the combination of
that plus the backfire they lit in this particular
canyon prevented the fire from reaching the
outskirts--it reached the outskirts but prevented the
fire from burning the town of Show Low.
Think about that. What we need to do is not treat
quarter-mile or half-mile or even mile-long strips of
property around fancy summer homes or small
communities but, rather, treat the forest itself--as
much as we can treat, as quickly as we can treat it.
Only in that way will we get the environment back to
the healthy state it was. 
Only by treating large areas of the forest will we
be able to return it to the status shown on this
chart, where the small mammals will have a place to
graze, really small animals will have a place to hide
from the hawks, which will have a place to get the
small mammals. We will have the birds, the
butterflies, and more introduced as a result of this
kind of treatment.
I mentioned before the issue of salvage timber.
There is objection even to going in and cutting down
the trees. I will show a chart of these trees. This is
a huge amount of timber that could be salvaged as a
result of the fire. In this kind of landscape, we need
to cut some of the trees to lay it down and stop some
of the erosion which inevitably occurs because of this
kind of fire. It will enhance the regrowth of that
area. Even seeding and planting does not do any good
because the water washes all that material into the
streambeds and it does not take. 
This is timber that has a huge amount of value if
it is able to be removed quickly, but disease will set
in and deterioration will occur within a few months.
If it is not removed in a 12-to-18 month period, it is
lost. This is one way to help pay for what we are
trying to do. Rabid, radical environmentalists do not
want to even salvage that timber. Why? Again, because
it will actually provide some jobs for the commercial
timber industry and the mills that would mill the
trees into lumber. They do not want them to be in
existence because they then pose a threat to the rest
of the forest. That is their logic. It is amazing
logic. 
Most of the Rodeo-Chediski fire was not on Forest
Service land. Sixty-some percent was on the White
Mountain Apache Indian Reservation. One can see on
this chart the area of the fire. The green area is the
Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, and the yellow area
is the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.
The White Mountain Apache Tribe relies a great deal
on the revenues of its timber operations to sustain
its tribal operations. In fact, it is the tribe's
biggest source of revenue.
Also significant to the tribe is the revenue it
derives from the hunting that it permits on its land.
The White Mountain Apache Tribe for decades has been
very smart about how they have managed their forests.
They understand that if you are going to have wild
turkey, if you are going to have bear, if you are
going to have wildcat, huge elk that people are
willing to pay $10,000 to hunt, if you are going to
have that kind of wildlife that will bring in these
kinds of trophy hunters who will pay the tribe a lot
of money to hunt on the reservation, then you have to
do a couple of things. First, you can only take out
the number of animals necessary to keep healthy herds,
a healthy group of bear or lion, or whatever it might
be. So they take out very few of those animals, just
enough to keep the forest ecosystem in balance.
Second, you have to have a healthy forest. You have
to have a forest that is not all grown over in this
dog-hair thicket environment but, rather, the more
open forest that I showed before. The reason is that
these elk have to have grass on which to graze, as I
said. You are not going to have an environment where
the lions are going to be able to go after the smaller
critters because there will not be any small critters
if they do not have places to forage and places to
hide.
The White Mountain Apache Tribe has been very smart
about the way they have managed the forests. They have
not been subject to the same restrictions as has the
Forest Service. They have been able to do more
prescribed burns. They have been able to do thinning
and utilize that small-diameter timber in their mills,
and they have taken out modest amounts of medium- and
a little bit of larger diameter timber as well. 
Some environmentalists say: You cannot do that;
there has to be a diameter cap of 20 inches, 16
inches, or some number. The tribe has not been
subjected to that. It has asked itself the
question--it is the type of question experts, such as
Wally Covington from Northern Arizona University, ask:
Not to define old growth or diameter cap, but take a
look at the area and determine its carrying capacity.
What will this particular area carry? What did it
carry 100 years ago in terms of the kinds of trees,
and other growth, and the number of trees? 
When one determines that, then one knows what kind
of treatment is called for. In some areas, you are
going to cut all but 150 trees, leaving mostly large
trees with a few more intermediate-size trees. In
other areas, you may cut less. It may be that an area
is so full of medium-size growth trees, let's say
20-inch diameter trees--you may be taking several of
those out or maybe quite a few of those out. It does
not mean you are harming the environment. It means you
are reducing the number of stems to the carrying
capacity of the land so it can rejuvenate, so it can
grow back, and the trees left will be the magnificent
trees we are trying to preserve. We will have grass
and all the rest that is necessary for healthy flora
and fauna. 
That is the idea of this treatment. Over the years,
the Apache Tribe has done a good job managing their
forests. As a result, they have had less of a problem
with fire. There are several different areas that have
been treated, and in the bear report that followed the
devastating fire, there is quite a bit of discussion
about the kind of timber that was lost, the areas that
were not as heavily damaged, and a discussion of the
areas preserved, by and large, because they had been
treated in the past. 
I find it interesting, by the way, and I am going
to digress here--let me make this point. We need to
help the Fort Apache Tribe salvage the timber that is
salvageable in this area. They do not have the
capacity in their mills to do it, but they can mill
some of it and then sell some of it to others. They
have to get to it right away. They are making plans to
do that. They need about $6.7 million to complete this
project. I hope we will be able to provide that to
them and it will help sustain the reservation.
As to the Forest Service, there are objections
already to salvaging the same timber. We do not know
where this boundary is when we are on the ground. It
is all the same. Why the Apache area can be salvaged
but not the Forest Service area I cannot explain.
Nobody can rationally explain it. We need to salvage
there as well. Yet there are those who object to any
opportunity to salvage this timber.
One of the ideas for legislation was to have an
opportunity to complete some stewardship projects or
enhanced value projects that would in a temporary
way--maybe over a 3-year-period of time, for
example--treat areas of the forest that have not
burned to see how well this kind of management
worked.
This has been tried in the past. One of the cases
is the so-called Baca timber sale. When we talk about
timber sales, some of the more radical
environmentalists get all upset because we are
actually going to sell some timber to a mill that can
mill it into lumber and build homes and lower the
price of homes, by the way, so we do not have to buy
all the timber from Canada at higher prices. 
This Baca timber sale was proposed in 1994 to
reduce hazardous fuels both in the interface and to
improve forest health. It followed 5 years of planning
and public participation. All the stakeholders were
involved. But environmentalists appealed and litigated
the case for 3 years.
The Baca timber sale was in this area. When the
Rodeo fire went through that area, it burned about 90
percent of the proposed area. An area that could have
been treated, that could have been made healthy, that
the fire would largely have skipped around, was left
to be ravaged by this catastrophic fire. The same
environmental groups currently threaten lawsuits that
would prevent the restoration of this area, which is
why I mention that.
I ask my colleagues, when are we going to say we
are no longer going to be jerked around by the radical
environmentalists' agenda to destroy the commercial
timber industry so they never have to worry about any
big trees being cut, in the process permitting the
forests to burn, destroying the habitat, endangering
lives, burning homes, and burning up the same trees
they want to save, as well as the environment for the
species?
I mentioned before some of the species. The goshawk
is an example. In 1996, the Forest Service proposed a
project to thin near the nest of the goshawk, partly
to reduce the fire hazards that were presented to the
goshawk. These radical environmentalists appealed.
That year the fire burned through the forests,
including the goshawk nest. That is what happens when
irresponsible environmentalists have control.
What does the control result from? It results from
the fact we have a legal system that was designed to
provide the maximum environmental input into decisions
about abuse by some of the radical environmental
groups. Let me cite some statistics from a report
released in July by the Forest Service that covered
the appeal and litigation activities on the mechanical
treatment projects during the last 2-year period. Out
of 326 Forest Service decisions during this study
period, 155 were appealed, more than half; 21
decisions that were administratively appealed
ultimately led to Federal lawsuits.
What happens with the lawsuits? You get an
injunction which prevents you from moving forward with
the project. In many cases either it burns while the
project is pending or the Forest Service decided to
move on rather than fight the appeal. The appeal,
therefore, goes away, the work never having been
done.
In the southwestern region of Arizona and New
Mexico, 73 percent of all treatment decisions were
appealed. Nationwide it was almost half--48 percent of
the project decisions in fiscal year 2001 and 2002.
Again, 73 percent in our area were appealed.
We cannot operate that way. The Forest Service is
spending half of its budget preparing for these
projects and fighting them and doing the work in
litigation and on appeals to respond to the
environmental community activity. About half of their
budget is spent directly fighting the appeals, dealing
with the injunctions, or preparing the projects in
such a way as to be immune from this kind of
litigation, which almost inevitably appears anyway.

On administrative appeals alone in 1999 through
2001, in Arizona--just one State--environmental groups
filed 287 administrative appeals; 75 of these were
filed by two groups that are very active. In
litigation in the last 5 years, the Sierra Club and
the Center for Biological Diversity litigated 11
projects in Arizona and in 10 years litigated 17
projects, including the Baca timber sale which was 90
percent burned while on appeal because of the
litigation that ensued.
This is what has to stop. The administration,
President Bush, has visited these areas and has
concluded that the best way to try to deal with this
problem is to keep the environmental laws in place so
there is never any question about the application of
the proper standards for the projects that are
developed but to make it more difficult for those who
are appealing for the sake of delay, to delay projects
to the point they are no longer worth proceeding. In
other words, move the process along.
The President's idea is you still have to have
sales or projects that comply with the NEPA process
where there is environmental review by the State
holders, but you cannot get a temporary restraining
order or preliminary permanent injunction in court
unless the court decided the case and imposed a
permanent injunction on the sale, but you could not go
in advance and get that injunction, which is
frequently what happens today. 
In addition to that, the administrative appeals
would be reduced or eliminated for certain sales. If
you want to file suit, you can file suit and go
directly to the judge. The hope would be that the
judge would decide the case quickly and therefore
either the project moves forward or it doesn't, but
everyone knows they can move forward with alternative
plans if the project cannot move forward. It seems to
me on a trial basis, a limited basis, that would make
sense. 
What we proposed was we limit this proposal to
class 3 areas--in my State of Arizona it would be only
the red areas--that we limit it in time to maybe a
3-year authorization so we see how it works. If people
do not think it works, we do not have to continue it.
And that we limit the amount of acres that would be
treated--maybe 5, 7, or 10 million acres per year,
something like that. That, obviously, could be
negotiated. And you would limit the way in which the
appeals could be brought and have no temporary
restraining order or preliminary injunction to be able
to stop a particular sale. There would also be no
limitation on the salvage projects I mentioned before.

Now, would these projects be logging? Would they be
clearcut, et cetera? Of course not. First, they would
have to be pursuant to the plans that have been
developed by the forests. All of these regional plans
have long ago discarded any kind of clearcut cutting.
They have basically adopted the management theory of
reducing the small diameter underbrush and small
diameter trees, leaving, by and large, the larger
older trees that we want to preserve. 
Those are the plans in place now. They are the
plans that would be proposed. If there is any plan
that is not consistent with that, obviously, people
could file a lawsuit and they could go to court and
say, judge, this is not consistent with what we had in
mind. And the court, of course, could say, that is
right. If the proper environmental analysis had not
been done or was inconsistent with the plan, the
project could be stopped. That is what we are
proposing.
As I said before, we have been in negotiations with
our friends on the other side of the aisle. I mention
in particular Senator Feinstein from California has
been very helpful in trying to find some middle
ground, to craft a plan to permit us, over a very
short period of time, to be able to treat a small
amount of acreage and see how well it works. If it
works well, perhaps we could go on from that. We got
to the point of having a 1-year authorization, with 5
or 7 million acres maximum to be treated. It would be
limited to this class 3 area. And a high priority
would be given to urban wildland interface and to
municipal watershed areas. Even that has not been
accepted.
The question is whether or not we are going to be
able to reach an agreement that permits us to fairly
quickly pass an amendment, have it adopted and sent to
the other body so we can begin negotiation for a
conference report that enables us to send something to
the President and begin treating these forests or
whether we are basically going to be in a stalemate or
gridlock with the two different camps in the Senate,
neither one having the votes to prevail, with the
result that nothing comes out of this legislative
session and we will be left with an opportunity
missed, and a heightened risk for the forests that we
want to preserve. 
That is the choice before the Senate. I call upon
my colleagues who have been working on this to try to
find a way to enable us to be able to treat some of
the acres in good faith, and see how it works, and if
it does work well, as we predict it will, to enable us
to expand that to the roughly 30 million acres that
the General Accounting Office said we need to treat or
else see burned. 
Those are the stakes. I call upon my environmental
friends, who are mostly concerned about protecting
these areas of the forests, to think about the
priorities.
Do we want to protect the habitat for those
endangered species that we all would like to preserve?
Do we want to protect the habitat for all the other
flora and fauna? Do we want to have a healthy forest
or do we want, in effect, to let it go to seed,
risking catastrophic fire, disease, and insect
devastation which will not protect the environment but
will destroy it for all the purposes I mentioned
before? 
That is the choice before us. It seems to me there
is no better time to act and, in fact, this may be the
last opportunity to act this year in order to achieve
this result. I urge my colleagues to find this
compromise; if not, to support the kind of effort I
propose that is a limited project with very tight
constraints--in effect, a pilot or demonstration
project to see if we can make this kind of forest
management work.
I thank my colleagues for their indulgence.

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