Walden, McInnis Unveil Bipartisan Healthy Forests Restoration Act

Measure would address wildfire, hazardous fuels build-up in forests; legislation put on fast track – committee mark up next week

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Congressmen Greg Walden (R-OR) and Scott McInnis (R-CO) today unveiled comprehensive legislation to address America’s growing forest health crisis, which has manifested itself in the exploding number of large-scale catastrophic wildfires and the growing incidence of fast-spreading insect and disease outbreaks nationwide.  The measure, entitled the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, was authored by Walden and McInnis, as well as House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.  The bill has over 70 bipartisan cosponsors representing geographically diverse districts.

The introduction of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a continuation of an effort that occurred last year when a bipartisan group of lawmakers – Walden, McInnis, Miller (D-CA), Defazio (D-OR) and Shadegg (R-AZ) – came together after the conclusion of last year's severe wildfire season to craft legislation that would give the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) the tools they need to expeditiously treat the 190 million acres identified by federal land managers as being at unnaturally high risk of catastrophic wildfire.

"This bill is a critically needed step forward in our efforts to improve the health of our forests and reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires," said Walden.  "The Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a reasonable and balanced proposal to direct the timely implementation of management activities to safeguard federal forest ecosystems, as well as the communities and private lands that border them.  This legislation will streamline the appeals process to ensure that hazardous fuel reduction projects aren't endlessly appealed, but it will guarantee that citizens have the opportunity to appeal government decisions.  Nationwide the measure also addresses the severe problem of massive pest and pathogen outbreaks that are degrading forest ecosystems.  Our bill represents a comprehensive plan focused on giving federal land managers and their stakeholders and partners the tools they desperately need to respond to the growing forest health crisis."

Walden continued, "Beyond its positive effects on the health of our forests, our bill will also create jobs and provide economic stimulus to the communities near federal forests.  By facilitating hazardous fuel reduction projects and other initiatives to improve forest health, we can employ many of the workers who were left behind following the decline of the timber industry."

Said McInnis, “The proliferation of catastrophic wildfire and massive insect and disease outbreaks is, in my estimation, the single largest and most daunting challenge facing our natural resource managers today.  It’s a wildland epidemic that is going to continue to despoil our air, water and wildlife unless and until policy makers chart a decisive new course.  This bill sets that course in a thoughtful, deliberative and balanced way.”

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act would establish streamlined procedures to hasten the implementation of scientifically proven management techniques such as thinning and prescribed burning on national forests and BLM lands at unnaturally high risk of catastrophic wildfire or large-scale insect and disease epidemics.  The bill would place express priority on management of wildfire-prone lands near communities and sources of municipal drinking water.  Of the 190 million acres at unnaturally high risk of wildfire, the bill stipulates that these expedited procedures could be used to treat hazardous conditions on 20 million acres.

The bill codifies the bipartisan Western Governor’s Association’s (WGA) collaborative model for both identifying and receiving public input on forest management projects.  To ensure that the public has a full opportunity to engage public land decision makers, the legislation calls for an additional open public meeting on all projects implemented under the bill’s expedited authorities, providing an opportunity for public input over-and-beyond current public hearing requirements. 

In order to accelerate the implementation of forest management work, the bill would require that federal land managers perform a full environmental analysis only on the proposed forest management action, and not on a litany of additional alternatives to the proposed action.  If, after engaging its own scientists and the public under the WGA’s collaborative model, public land managers decide to thin and then control-burn 1,000 acres of at-risk lands, a full environmental analysis and documentation of the impacts of that project would be required, including any potential effects on water quality and wildlife.  However, the agency would not be required to perform time-consuming analysis and documentation on alternatives that consider the impacts of the treatment on, for example, 10 acres or 10,000 acres, as is currently the case.  After public input in the case of the example, however, the agency may modify the parameters of the original 1,000-acre project and its accompanying analysis if decision makers and the public were to discover new information or change their minds during the course of the multiple-layered public input process.

The bill also directs the Forest Service to establish an alternative administrative objections process to the Forest Service’s current conflict-oriented appeals process.  The new objections process would apply only to hazardous fuels projects on Forest Service lands that meet the terms of the legislation.  The Forest Service is the only land management agency to have an appeals process codified in statute, established as a legislative rider to an appropriations bill in the early 1990s.  In other words, a hazardous fuels reduction project implemented on at risk lands on the Deschutes, Wallowa-Whitman, or Rogue River National Forests face a significantly higher administrative appeals bar than the exact same project would encounter if implemented in Crater Lake National Park (Park Service), the Klamath Basin Wildlife Refuge (Fish and Wildlife Service), or the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument (BLM).

With regard to litigation surrounding a project implemented under the Healthy Forests legislation, federal courts would be required to extend any preliminary injunctions every 45 days.  Currently these preliminary holds can stay in place for months at a time without judicial attention, even as forest conditions worsen.  The bill also directs federal courts to weigh the potentially devastating environmental consequences associated with management inaction, as well as give deference to the Forest Service and BLM’s scientific determinations as to the environmental utility of a project in reducing the threat of wildfire to forest ecosystems.

The Forest Service and BLM would not be authorized to use the expedited analysis procedures in wilderness areas, national parks, wildlife refuges and lands where, by an act of Congress or Presidential proclamation, the removal of vegetation is prohibited or restricted.  Additionally, the bill provides that the Forest Service will not be allowed to build new permanent roads in Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRA’s) under the bill’s expedited procedures.

In recognition of the fact that declining forest conditions is not a phenomenon limited to public lands, the legislation also establishes the Healthy Forest Reserve Program, a private forestland conservation initiative that would support the establishment of conservation easements on one million acres annually of declining forest ecosystem types that are critical to, among other things, the recovery of threatened, endangered and other sensitive species.  The program, supported by wildlife and environmental organizations including Environmental Defense, will facilitate the voluntary protection and restoration of otherwise imperiled forest ecosystems, while protecting the rights of private landowners once an easement has expired under the Endangered Species Act’s safe harbor allowances.  The program is authorized as part of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act for 5 years at $15 million a year 

Finally, the bill (1) directs federal land managers to conduct an accelerated program to plan, conduct, and promote research on a number of the largest insect infestation types, in an attempt to more quickly glean which techniques are most effective in slowing their rapid spread; (2) facilitate the utilization of the otherwise valueless wood, brush, and slash removed in conjunction with forest health project in the production of biomass energy; and (3) authorize federal funding to support community-based watershed forestry partnerships that address critical forest stewardship, watershed protection, and restoration needs at the state and local level.

Congressman Walden represents the Second Congressional District of Oregon, which includes 20 counties in southern, central and eastern Oregon.  He is a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as the Committee on Resources.