. .

>> the forest service must comply with well over 50 separate laws like clean water act and ep -- endangered species act. three years. not to mention the threat of frivolous lawsuits. these are fundamental and systemic problems contributing to the national forest system. it's time that congress and the administration advocate for solutions that imfriewf

management of our forests. tough decisions will have to be made for policies that promote stream lining so the forest service can conduct this kind of work. if anything changes, everything goes up in smoke. i recognized distinguished member and offer any remarks she might have. >> thank you, this is a an very important hearing and we appreciate all of the witnesses giving time and perspective and exter pis. i would like to give a thanks to chris wood, and so so happy that you are here and look forward to

your input on the critical issues. this summer was as we know another record-breaking wild fire season. we know that our thoughts and prayers are with the families. a warming climate coupled with record drought in fire-prone areas that is made the problem worse and more complex to deal with it. while there's not a single issue to fix the problem, there's solution that we can enact now that make a significant difference. i hope we talk about those

today. oversees the forest service about the urgent need to fix the fire services budget. fixing the fire service budget is of paramount importance and needs to be priority for the congress and the committee and others. the forest service is routinely forced to transfer funds away from forest restoration and must use the funds to help pay for fire fighting. this dynamic known as fire transfer or borrowing is a huge problem like the chairman talked about. these transfers cause a stop-work order on ongoing projects that place forests at risk from fire to endangered species when this work can't be

completed. so they could spend that money on fighting fires. there are stories familiar that colleagues know across country. it's time to address. end fire transfers by allowing the worst 1-2% of firefighters, fight more effectively by using disaster funds. these are disasters like any other disaster in the country rather than having transfer funds from other accounts as they are now doing. i'm pleased to be a cosponsor of the legislation and i hope we pass the bill.

the 2014 farm bill made significant reforms the way we manage national forest as we discussed building on these changes, something -- i'm hopeful that we will talk about this morning, i suggest that we continue to prioritize the full implementation. last week the state of michigan and the forest service entered into a good-neighbor agreement, expanded in the farm bill are a great way that states and federal government can partner to help restore our forests and sustain the more than 26,000 jobs that depend on healthy vibrant forests in michigan. mr. chairman, i hope the committee is going to continue to build census to free up needed resources to carry out

policies that our committee as a whole has long championed. i appreciate again your calling this meeting and as always look forward to looking with everyone on the committee. thank you. >> i appreciate the comments by colleague and friend. i'm eager to hear testimony from all of you as all members are in a very important issue. first witness is mr. dan dessecker, ruffed grouse society, sustain species. dan joins us from wisconsin.

welcome, i look forward to your testimony. our next william -- witness is william dougan, prior to his current position mr. dougan served in a variety of capacities throughout his career with the department of interior and u.s. former service fight fighter. mr. ken stewart will be introduced by the distinguished senator, senator david perdue. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm pleased to introduce my stewart. he serves as chairman for the board of trusties for the american forest foundation. he returned to work as new reformable products institute after having retired of senior

adviser at georgia tech in 2010. he joined state government in september 2004 when he was appointed director of the georgia forestry commission. mr. stewart's perspective on wild fire for the private land owners is important in our state since georgia has more privately-owned commercial timberland than any state in the country. 55% is owned by private individuals. only 8% by public federal state and county. we should draw on mr. stewart's wealth in knowledge and voices and concerns are critical as we discuss forest management and issues that impact them directly. we look forward to your testimony. >> our next witness is mr. chris

treese. i recognize the distinguished senator. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you to you senator to allow me to introduce chris treese. he serves as the manager for the colorado river water conservation district, he oversees issue that is affect the colorado river and over the years we've worked with chris on a number of issues important to this committee. you should know, mr. chairman, helped developed portions of the conservation title of the 2014 title, he helped ensure that it ensured on water quantity on the partnership program. he also helped this bill around the forestry reforms, this includes the new treatment program for forest suffering from insect and disease epidemics which is so important to our state of colorado. so i would like to welcome chris

treese and thank him for the opportunity to be here today. >> thank you, senator. our next witness is chris wood. currently serves as president and ceo of trout unlimited which is a conservation to protect and restore north america's water sheds. mr. wood has also served in a variety of positions within the u.s. forest service and bureau of land management during the clinton administration. welcome to our panel, i luke forward to your testimony. it should be noted that the committee worked very hard to get witnesses addressing this issue by the name of wood and treese. [laughter] >> let's start off with our first panelists, you may begin, sir. >> members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here with you this morning. if we are to maintain the full

array of forest wildlife on national forest we have to maintain the full array wild habitats. frankly, we are not doing that at this point. eastern united states has accomplished on average minimum goal habitats as identified in forest plans. we need to expand active management to move beyond that small number and to do this we need to provide the agency with adequate personnel and financial resources. unfortunately as you pointed out, the u.s. forest service becomes fire service. when 50% of the budget is eaten alive, that can make it very difficult for the agency to accomplish much of anything else and a big chunk of that money is going to megafires which are increasingly common in landscape and unfortunately become so. every year like wild wire fires

in the west, we face tornadoes and hurricanes and we treat them and fund them as a natural disasters they are. it's time weonsider doing the same thing for these megafires, these large massive fires that simply consume the landscape. personal and financial resources used to combat the megafires, natural disasters are unavailable. this leads to a lose of wildlife habitat and loss of wildlife. declining throughout forest across the country particularly in the east. elkon deer. hunting is a big business. 11 million across the nation and the expenditures that those

folks provide to rural economy account for major portion of the $34 million of hunters spend every year. when you look at region 9, approximately -- if you look at species that require habitats, those are to be six times as likely to be declining as they are increasing. region 8, south eastern portion in the country, same birds, nine times as likely to be declining as they are increasing. we need to address that. these trends are reversible. this committee and others in congress did a great job in farm bill and providing good neighbor authority which would be helpful. it's getting into gear but we think it has tremendous potential to enhance what we can do on landscape by expanding state and other private

partnerships, targeted exclusion to address insect and disease issues. again, an excellent tool, we need to expand these tools. one way to do so would be to identify additional targeted exclusions particularly one geared toward providing wildlife habitat diversity in the forest. we need to enhance budgetary certainty within the agency. we have to give them the resources to meet the challenges they face. in summary, wildlife is the window through which many within our national view our national franchisors and we need to enhance the ability of the agency to meet the objectives and expectations of the public. thank you. >> mr. dougan. >> thank you, chairman roberto erts and >> thank you chairman roberts, members of the committee.

prior to being elected i spent 31 years working for the federal government, i worked primarily in the u.s. forest and spent 22 years fighting fires. the only thing you're in trouble are equipment and the men and women brave in the fire line. it's important to train so they can be safe and complete the mission. seven of the worst fire seasons since 1960 have occurred in the last 15 years. this year nearly 54,000 wild fires have burned acres compared to nearly 69 wild fires burning 6.5 million acres. we must recognize that this is the new normal and must change the way we do business to account for it. the usda inspector general issued report that predicted future shortages of qualified

firefighters in the forest service. that prediction is coming to fruition and is a major problem. the development of a consistent certification and training system administered by the national wild fire coordinating group is an achievement. we hope will take consistency and training to the next level. unfortunately the program has been underutilized in our view. the rate for wild fires is high. my union worked with representatives bishop in the house and senator in the senate on flexibility act. i would like to thank senator johnson for his assistance in bringing the bill forward when it was passed and signed into law by the president in august. experience is hard earned on the

fire line. prior to passage of the legislation, the firefighter career path was blocked by flawed and dysfunctional regulations which prevented long-term temporary employees from being able to advance their creaser. because of the barrier of career advancement many firefighters have left. it would ensure that they are allow to compete for permanent positions when they become vacant. i'm disappointed to report that that we are still awaiting opm to issue implementation guidance to federal agencies, unfortunately, while we wait hiring workforce is already underway. agencies are not considering long serving seasonal firefighters for career positions under merit promotion. if this doesn't change within the next few weeks, the knowledge lost we have seen for far too long already will continue another year. funding for wild fire

suppression continues to be a problem. with the occurrence increasing it has increased dramatically. the budget for the forest service was $2.5 billion, of that 708 was for fire sur presentation. thiswhen this happens agencies transfer funds from other programs to cover shortfall. in fiscal year 2015 forest service was forced to transfer $700 million from other programs in order to be able to continue to pay for suppression costs after initial funding was exhausted. many of the canceled programs are those designed to reduce

severity of wild fires. we urge congress to pas the funding act to address this. reduction of hazardous fuel in forests must be part of a strategy to reduce the risk of wild fires escaping initial attack and becoming catastrophic in nature. simply increasing the suppression budget by itself will not be effective in reduce the impacts of wild fires. it's time for congress to take action to provide the resources and the flexibility necessary to protect the critical resources found in national forests across the country and to protect communities across the nation from wild fire. the reforms cannot wait until next year. they need to be acted on immediately. i thank the committee for holding this hearing and i would be glad to answer any questions that you might have. >> thank you very much for your

testimony on behalf of firefighters and all members of the committee will join me in try to light a fire under personnel management. [laughter] >> this is the perfect time for the hearing. fire season is coming largely to an end right now and i am so impressed of how well informed the committee about the issues we are facing. the american forest foundation represents the interest of 22 million families forestland owners across the country. and these are the private land owners that we are talking about here. the interest your leadership on this issue is very important to us and i would like to also submit -- excuse me, for introduction of the record report, it's not just a

publicland's issue, i am going to talk not the public side but the private side today. 30% of the lands in the 11 western states are privately owned. of that 40% of the high-fire threat lands are owned privately or critical fire ha zard area. the interesting part of that 64 million westerners depend on that water shed for their drinking waters. the catastrophic wild fires that are facing west are so hot that creates parking lot effect. when we have snow or rain it runs off and takes all the debris and it doesn't soak up as would normally happen and filter it. as a result a lot of the municipalities are spending millions of dollars treating the water that they depend on. 64 million westerners.

the american forest foundation dug into this mostly in the private side, what we basically found there's barriers to action. part-time that own the land are ready to go. 77% say there's a disconnect, a couple of things we need to deal with it, one is the cost of it f we treat our lands and the neighbors don't, what happens, what do we accomplish? they have a good point. it's appropriate for congress to begin dealing with for sure. metrics that were mentioned earlier, a decade ago 50% now and two-thirds in 2025 if something is not done. the impact outside for this is what's important and you think that georgia and southern states which also in the mid-western states fire problems, but they are impacted and seen 12% decrease in the last five years

in budget. part of are mitigation programs which cause this not to happen. some individual programs are down 20%, early it was mentioned the borrowing program, that is a significant issue in terms of the effect on programs and some 40% of the service foresters have been laid off in the states. so my -- this isn't all about problems, part of it is about solutions and particularly focus on private lands here. first we recommend there's three solutions to consider, one is we just must fix how wild fire fighting is funded, obviously, congressional action is needed and has been introduced to treat like other federal emergency funding. secondly, we need funding to better enable the treatment of private family lands and do it on a landscape approach. this is simply words that say, we need to be collaborative and work with partners, u.s. fire

service, conservation service, local and community agencies as well so that we have a coordinated landscape approach. third, certainly is about markets. that's near and dear to my heart. it starts with markets. we have a way of spending some public money to develop and support those markets through loans and grant programs to help develop them. so mr. chairman, members of the committee, certainly the time to act is now. thank you for your consideration and i believe that what we are talking about here should have good bipartisan support. >> 30% of the forestland is held in private hands and you're rather dramatic that 64 million people depend on the water supply with regards to the real problems that we face. mr. treese. >> good morning, thank you

chairman roberts, thank you senator bennett for the generous introduction. members of the committee, i have the honor to represent my employer the colorado river conservation district and the national water resources association and its members across 13 western states. as this committee knows the founding purpose of the national forest system was to secure favorable water flows. the currently degraded conditions are adversely impacts water chemistry, wild fires are becoming more frequent and significantly larger. colorado alone from 2004 to 2007, 40,000 acres of forestland was burnt. that jumped to 140,000 acres per year. while wild fires can cause

significant loss of water and water infrastructure, impact to the water community after the fire is out. water flooding, excuse me, recurring threat postfire. a 2003 study found post fire runoff can increase erosion rates increase up to 100 times over prefire conditions. remediation costs quickly runs to the tens of millions, additionally treatment water, suffer similar or greater increases, nearly all the costs are born by local utility and water providers. federal actions mustards both fire suppression and fire prevention. i applaud senator

bennet, already address fire borrowing and cannot come at the expense of fire prevention. record-setting wild fire in colorado raised across denver's foothills as uncontrollable wild fire until it reached an area that had been thinned and immediately dropped to lessor intensity. created innovative and competitive grant program to encourage and facilitate water shed partnerships. the federal forest acts build on the good work of this committee and the 14 farm bill by local governments by expediting

permitting for qualification projects. too often environmental permitting comes as impediments to critical, time-sensitive ground action. these are good start. the deteriorating conditions of our first didn't come overnight and do not contend that immediate action is possible, but immediate -- excuse me, immediate resolution is possible but immediate action is imperative. the western water community is committed to working collaboratively over the long haul to improve our forest's health. i look forward to your questions. >> mr. treese, thank you very much for your testimony specially emphasizing the need for expediting policy as best we

can do that. mr. wood. >> thank you, chairman roberts and committee members. my name is chris wood, i'm the president and ceo of trout unlimited. thank you for the opportunity to testify here today on wild fire management on public lands. the committee is right to focus on the issue. high levels of wild fire spending including wholesale borrowing are substantially undermining the ability of the forest service to manage our national forest. i offer this testimony today on what have of trout unlimited and 165,000 members, many of whom use and enjoy national forest around the country. half of the nation's blue ribbon flow around. contributing factors include changing climate conditions, hotter, dryer summers, longer,

more severe drought, and the legacy timber management policies that have left many of our forest areas vulnerable. the practice of budget rating to fight fires significantly disrupts the mission of the forest service and the very health of the forests underneath jurisdiction. the more money that is transferred or reallocated to fight fire, the less money is available for restoration ability that would improve and minimize severity and impact of fires. we need to address two related problems. a solution to fire funding would allow access to disaster funding and addressing the -- excuse me, address the increasing costs of suppression over time. the wild fire disaster funding

act is the right solution to solve this problem. in addition, we must accelerate the scope and pace of restoration on national forestlands. as mentioned, the recent farm bill created opportunities included targeting for certain project permanent contract authority and expansion of good neighbor authority. cutting trees alone, restoration must be looked at. must be approached by looking at how to best recover functions that keep the land healthy, closing a relocating roads, removing small dams and ensuring adequate flows of water and thinning are all part of restoration strategy.

our general approach should be to allow forest burn in remote areas so long as they do not pose risk to communities. ..

without objection it is so ordered. i'm going to ask members to limit their comments to four minutes in the hope that we can conclude this hearing as we do have a vote at 11. we have seven members. we now have six members present. thank you, david. the distinguished senator from colorado -- five. i see our distinguished ranking member five and 220 is for, correct? i think we can do this. we asked the cooperation of the witnesses and we thank you again for your testimony.

mr. best actor, kenya further elaborate on the need for maintenance of early so sessional stage for its habitat or especially -- mr. best actor -- from this kind of maintain early successional stage forest habitat it seems to me if we do this we can avoid a lot of the problems later on. >> thank you, mr. chairman. early successional force are basically young forests characterized by thick, dense protective cover, dense growth and hesitation. they have a host of wildlife species view of anywhere else so we have to have those in the landscape. they host a variety of pollinators, a class of critters right now we are concerned about, pollinator numbers are declining across the country for various reasons. so without question we have to employ additional active

management to try and get a better balance doing a mature forest and a young forests recognizing the mature forests are equally as important as our young forests. but when we see the latter decline at such a precipitous rates, we have to increase our efforts to address that. i go to do so will simply mean that the species that are of great ecological importance, and some regard economic importance come will reaching a standing on the landscape. that failure to do so from my perspective, and i'm a little biased as a biologist but i think it would be irresponsible. >> into very much. i am going to yield to the distinguished ranking member. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. thank you to all of you. just a simple question first. i want to make sure we are clear. i would like each of you to just

indicate whether or not your organization supports the wildfire disaster funding act. if we could just start with mr. dessecker. >> yes. >> yes. >> absolutely. >> yes, ma'am. >> yes. >> i think we have unanimous. that's great to know. it's a great place to start. let me then go to more specific kinds of questions and let me start with mr. wood, chris wood. when you talk about the partnerships, and for your work with trout unlimited as well as with the forest service in the past, could you talk a bit more about additional examples and details to illustrate how damaging the fire transfers are to agencies and the partners when you're trying to do the work that you are doing? >> yes, ma'am. what's happening is that

organizations that work with the forest service are doing everything they can to spend as much fun as it possibly can before june or before the fire season starts. in places like michigan we have seen inventories come important road inventories that are not being done to help identify places where colbert's and the landscape need to be replaced because they are bleeding sediment into rivers. we have seen lots of endangered species work it would be done it can't be done and, of course, the more we do to offset the need, the less social and economic disruption we have. essentially it was set early were basically robbing peter to pay paul. we are taking money away from programs that help tomato managed of the landscapes but great economic opportunity and jobs nor to fight fire. >> that's very much. mr. dessecker, could you talk all of it more on the 2012 forest planning rule, you see

new opportunities to improve the way the agency develop management plans that will reduce fire risk and restore wildlife habitat? >> i think the primary impetus with regard to the implementation fact committee you're referring to, we are very interested in the idea of collaboratives, bringing people to work together to project planning, during forest planning so there's a greater volume. we feel quite strongly about what to be careful because i don't want to speak for the numbers of the committee but i think it's fair to suggest that there is broad consensus that if we can reduce their rank or we'll have more funds to spend on conservation. >> thank you very much. and mr. dugan, i wonder if you might speak a little bit more about your observations over the years. you started you said in 1979 with the forest service, and what implications and changes

have you seen for the wildland firefighters were out on the front lines? >> i think it's pretty clear that when you look at wildfires over the last 10 to 15 years we are seeing an increase in the severity of the fires. these fires are burning hotter. they are covering a lot more ground in shorter periods of time which creates problems from a safety standpoint for these crews that are out there on the landscape trying to dig fire lines to stop these fires that were see a lot more crown fires where the fire gets up into the tops of the trees and it can spread very rapidly. these fires can create their own weather system, and much o of te large amount of money that is being spent on flyers is with 1% of the fires that escape initial

containment, and then the landscape characteristics are such as he forest characteristics are such that they become catastrophic very quickly, placing it on the firefighters but the communities in and around these fires endanger. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just comment as we close, will not have a chance to ask mr. treese but i appreciate your mentioning regional conservation program, look forward to talking more about that. i think i was one of the real successes of the last farm bill and we are hopeful it will continue to be a positive tool. >> senator tillis. >> thank you, mr. chair. mr. dougan, i have a question. i understand the discussion going around a fire borrowing but i have a question may be related to some of the underlying cause. what thoughts do you have on things that we can do to reduce the cost of suppressing large fire? >> i think we need to invest more in pre-suppression

activities. it's the same approach as going to a dentist in getting your teeth cleaned. it's insurance, trying to not get a cavity. that same principle applies in the forest. with actively managed these forests. if you look at the predominance of forests out in the west united states, these are fire adaptive forests. they depend on fire and the problem that we have out there today is our own making over the last 100 years. we have been very aggressive in putting out every fire that starts and not allowing fire to have a natural role in the landscape and in the ecosystem. and because of that we've had these large buildups above ground fuels and standing fuel. so if we get a fire going now, it creates a problem. we have to be actively managing, actively look at reducing hazard. hazard. >> i agree with the also prevention argument. the question about once that occurs, are we as a fish as we

can possibly be and told me trying to address these wildfires once. are? >> i think is always room for improvement. when i look back, greg and look back on his of firefighting in this country other than some of the new technology that we have in terms of having planes for dropping fire retardant and we didn't have it at the beginning of the 1900 but in terms of the actual work and the tools that people on the ground or using to dig fire lines, that really hasn't changed very much over the last 100 plus years but i think it's worthwhile thinking about asking the fire agency such as the forest server -- service and be held and whether there's any interest whether they think there would be any good outcomes and investing some and researcher looking at new technology to help these folks out on the line.

>> what about the structural relationships with states? i'm from north carolina. we got a lot of firefighters going west from time to time to assist. how would you assess that cooperative relationship when you need additional resources to go out of there? >> it's absolutely critical. this year at its peak of the spicy we had over 30,000 people on our fire lines nationwide fighting fire. so without having the ability to move crews, whether they are contracted griscom whether they are federal employees, without the ability to move those folks where we need them for the most fires, most critical fires are, we would have a much worse situation. i really appreciate the fact that your state and others have pitched in over the years and made people available. >> i want to keep to my time

because the chair scares me, but -- [laughter] but i do appreciate all the witnesses. i appreciate all the witnesses being here and really appreciate any feedback after the hearing in my office. thank you. thank you, mr. chair. >> senator klobuchar. >> thank you, mr. chairman. minnesota, forests are a big part of the culture for state and economy employing 40,000 people in the forest industry, $9.7 billion. it's what my grandpa did after the mine closed down. so it's near and dear to my heart. i like so many people talked about debate am most concerned about the fact that the transfers of money which have to take place for emergency for fighting fires is taking away from what we can do to prevent these fires from happening in the first place. budget transfers prevented the forest from conducting fuels reduction burns on one or safety five acres this year. this work not only protects the forest from wildfires but also

the surrounding communities. mr. treese, you talked about how communities and water infrastructure is impacted and often destroyed by wildfires. how have water resource agencies had to adapt their safety procedures to accommodate wildfire risk? >> thank you, senator. they have done their best but it's an enormous investment. some of the larger communities have been able to create redundancies, interconnects with cooperating neighboring agencies, neighboring utilities, and created or established multiple watershed sources for their water. that for the most part, however, that's not possible in world colorado, western colorado, mostly small communities. that is so the cost prohibitive and they simply run the risk. >> exactly. mr. stewart, what role can private forest land owners played restoring forest health?

>> i speak mostly to the private land owner but, in fact, it's a cooperative effort i also talk about neighbors and public lands and private lands our neighbors throughout the country. they both need to be actively managed, and the lack of management combined with the climate conditions we find in the drought to go in the west are all contributing factors where we find ourselves. but interestingly, this ultimately gets back to the budget. if we spend money on the budget, maintain the programs which continue to improve the land and invest in the state and local programs that they forest service has committed improved over time and it makes, mitigates risk to get something wicked continue to invest in. >> thank you. mr. dessecker, maybe mr. wood over there, again back to my original point here, what do you think we should be doing beyond putting the money into fighting fires, what should we be doing

to change some of our policies, craft solutions to address policies and along those lines what concrete steps we take to assist the forest service? i know in minnesota they haven't done, then it reached even the goals of how many trees should be cut and it's great and for the problem because the fire thing can go more rampant. mr. dessecker? >> very simply, secure the fiscal, the budgetary authority of the agency funded these things as the way they are. natural disasters. as opposed to taking money from the budget and allow them personnel resources to get the work done on the ground. that's been identified through the planning process. >> thank you. go ahead, mr. wood? >> i think it's been said before. and ounce of prevention is worth a pound after. we should take steps to make

sure our committees are safe first and foremost by doing hazards fuel treatments around those communities making sure we're protecting homes by taking fire wise measures and operating a larger landscapes in terms of our restoration. the first thing we have to do is fix the fire borrowing problem. >> exactly. and thank you mr. dougan for your work as well. i will give you a question on the record. i'm sure you will look forward to that. thanks. >> i would like to remind the new members, not the new members, the members who have come to the committee at this particular time that we are on a four-minute time schedule trying to make the vote. senator ernest? >> thank you, mr. chair very much. thank you all for joining us today. i'm sorry to join the discussion so late, but if you would come have any of your agencies or organizations utilized or witnessed utilization of the national guard forces in any of these forest fire or fire activities? entity could just please share

with us about the experience. >> this season was the first time since ugly 2006 when the national guard and military forces were called in to stop with the firefighting work, workforce. the forest service and other agencies responsible for managing those incidents utilized many hundreds if not thousands of military personnel. >> anybody else have experience in utilizing any of the national guard? well, we do have some wonderful army guard and air guard out of there and want to reinforce that we shouldn't overlook the capabilities that are available with those types of response units. so that's all i have. thank you, mr. chair. >> i thank the senator. senator bennet. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i want to say to you on behalf of the people i represent in colorado how much we appreciate your holding this

hearing. i think the testimony has just been excellent, and what comes through to me is there is a compelling consensus that what we are doing now does not work and that we've got to change it. it's long overdue and you're bringing attention to this issue i think comes at a critical moment when we can get it done. look, there are two big issues. and the first is come in the name of fiscal responsibility we are managing our forests in the most fiscally irresponsible manage -- manner we can manage them. we're taking the money that could be spent on medication and on restoration -- mitigation, and using them to suppress fires at this not money left to restore. that's why we talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish. that's what it is. it's ridiculous and we've got to stop. nobody at the local level would accept this way at managing their resources, and we shouldn't accept it either. the second part, i know it's

fashionable now, we have a debate in this congress about what the role of what the federal air but should be. anybody who is downstream of these headwaters in colorado each care about the condition of the forests in colorado. we are all in this together. we are one nation and i can't think of an issue where it's more true than here. so what we're doing right now i think fails the test in terms of fiscal responsibility and fails the test in terms of anybody's respective in terms of what federalism means. i hope we can get this legislation passed. i thank you all again for your excellent testimony. mr. treese, it's been great to work with you over the past number of years and before the process was a difficult budget resulted in a collaborative product that everyone could support and we are seeing the benefits come to projects as you mentioned to treat 3000 acres of forest effective eyed insect and disease epidemic. not the short-term as i mentioned it's clear we have to

fix this fire borrowing problem but i wonder if you could explain to us from your perspective as a water provider why it's so critical to address that in of these projects are working in colorado? >> thank you, senator. the projects are, in fact, working but they're working on a limited basis, small acreage is but critically important. it is the prevention, it is as the commercial says pay me now or pay me later. this is an opportunity to treat the forest both to the categorical exclusion and effective program you mentioned also uses the extension of the good neighbor policy to work on both federal and private land cooperatively and conjointly in neighboring forests to address larger watershed that is used by both the city of grand junction at the larger water district around that city, roughly 100,000 people. >> maybe that's a good point of consensus we've heard which is the significance of collaboration in order to get

this done. fire doesn't know any boundari boundaries. mr. wood, i'm running out of time here. it's my own fault. i blab which i don't usually do. it's not even the subject of this hearing what i want to thank you for leading the effort on good samaritan legislation to address the acid mine drainage that is polluting streams across the west. this is something we really need to address. i wonder if you could spend less than a minute talking about where you are and where you think we are headed. i have 21 seconds. >> i will be brief. thank you for those kind words. there's essentially to problems with abandoned mines. there are literally thousands of them around was affecting water quality. one is we need relief from liability that's implicit in the clean water act and were making progress there. number two we need more funding to clean those up. >> china, thank you.

>> i thank the senator from colorado. not a sunflower on the end of the planes. if the smoke is billowing we know we have a problem. coupe, your upper next. >> nineteen mr. chairman. and -- thank you, mr. chairman and ranking member stabenow. it's good year from stakeholders on the stage. it's an important issue which deals with budgetary impacts and threats to our national resources on the federal estate private land. mr. chairman, i am pleased to have these are distinguished leaders in our conservation forestry and wildlife communities. you all recognize the urgent need for changes in our current forest management policies. a lot of hearing today i think is focused on firefighting, borrowing, with the cost of fighting fires rising to $3 billion this year.

but we've got to find a more effective means of paying for fighting those fires and eliminate the borrowing from forest management fund. i also believe, mr. chairman, that it is imperative that we couple funding firefighting with improve forest management. failure to improve forest management will result in a continuation of dangerous increase in forest fires in damage to private property into the environment. are three things i think that can be done to improve forest management dramatically. and three changes of suggest i want to get our panel's reaction to this but first would be to expand the use of chemical exclusions under need the. second reduce litigator risks and third importation of large landscape management plans, one of which is on the ground in the black hills national forest in south dakota has been proven to be very effective in battling the pine beetle infestation we have had.

so mr. chairman, i just regret once again we have a problem. assembly can do so by throwing more money at it. but i believe that if we can take a measured commonsense approach to managing our forests and clearing a path with our federal agency to manage them effectively we can make much better use and even reduce the funding that is dedicated to fighting fires. so i would like to get the panels reaction if i might do just that ultimately things i've suggested to ask the question, do you believe that these following three items, if implemented, would -- categorical exclusion from expansion under nepa, reducing litigator risk when collaborative forest management projects are a limited, and allowing the use arbitration as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, and then finally increase use of large landscape management plans?

mr. stewart? >> i will speak to the landscape approach, which i see is a partnership, a collaborative approach both public and private. i think it's probably were our biggest strength is the biggest opportunity that we have isn't focusing on a common objective based on a large-scale landscape. i think that's a big part of the solution. >> on the categorical exclusion issue, i think in areas where you've got broad agreement among multiple pictures have come together in some sort of collaborativcollaborative i this and the processor core but is probably a good idea. i would be nervous about doing that writ large because what you do is you integrating antagonism and people will feel cut out of the process. so that's my only comment. >> i would also like to comment on the landscape idea. i know out in eastern oregon, my

labor organization is working as part of a collaborative effort on stewardship with the communities in eastern oregon, with other stakeholders, timber companies and environmental groups, bringing people together to talk about landscapes and what needs to be done in trying to iron out and reach agreement on as many issues in terms of how we should manage that land and what we should manage that land for in terms of timber and other values. we are having some success doing that. so i think those kinds of efforts we bring stakeholders together and then told everybody accountable for coming up with a solution, i think that's a good approach to supplement this idea of landscape. because as has been pointed out th,fire knows no geographical boundaries and we cannot just

treat federal lands and let state and private lands go untreated because that's not going to solve the problem. >> anybody else? >> yes to all three. >> good. that's the answer i was looking for. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> i thank the senator from south dakota. he isn't really focused on the one question i was going to ask with regards to the landscaping issue and i appreciate that very much. and i think that analyst for answering. senator boozman, let me remind all members about has started. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just want to take a second i just want to take a second to highlight the efforts of my home state college, congressman westerman who is a professional engineer and the only forrester in congress. he worked in forestry or almost two decades, and earned a masters of forestry degree from yale university in 2001.

is a diverse haggerty play football at university of arkansas so his legislation from the resilient federal forest act treats both the success of overgrown mismanage forest and symptoms which include wildfire, disease and insect infestations. i strongly support the bill. i'd like to ask consent that we include a bipartisan op-ed that congressman westerman and his democratic colleague have written entitled resilient federal forest act to treat symptoms and diseases into the record. very quickly, mr. stewart, one of these issues largely high profile in the west, we have serious impacts in the south and i'm really pleased that you were a witness and from that region which includes a significant point of federal forest, private family planned own, ownerships and an assortment of things. while i know you report focused largel