Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. DAINES. Mr. Chairman, as a fifth generation Montanan and an avid sportsman, I understand how protecting our beautiful landscapes and unmatched recreational opportunities are important to our way of life in Montana.
As much a part of Montana as our enjoyment of the great outdoors is our timber industry--or at least what used to be one. The timber industry has declined by 90 percent since I was a kid. Since then, the wildfires and beetle kill have worsened. Our loggers play an important role on the front lines of protecting our outdoor heritage, and we must never forget that.
I'm very concerned that many of these special places are being destroyed because the Forest Service does not have the tools necessary to manage these lands responsibly. H.R. 1526 gives the Forest Service the tools to protect and enhance our forests and will allow our timber industry to get back to work. It will cut the red tape that has held up responsible forest management and timber production. It includes comprehensive reforms to discourage and limit the flood of frivolous appeals and litigation. It also requires the Forest Service to increase timber harvests on nonwilderness lands now that it will have much needed latitude to do its work.
This improved management will protect the health of our forests and watersheds, the safety of our communities, jobs in the timber industry, and our cherished access to the outdoors. H.R. 1526 would help create 68,000 jobs and nearly 5,000 jobs in Montana. H.R. 1526 would allow access to marketable timber for our mills in Montana and breathe life back into this dying industry.
This bill keeps the Federal Government's commitment to provide crucial revenue to our forest counties. It extends the Secure Rural Schools program for 1 year as the new timber program stands up. SRS has provided essential stopgap funding for timber counties since 2000, but many of our counties are tired of seeing the funds depend on the whims of Congress.
This bill has the support of the National Association of Forested Counties. This bill also has the support of the National Education Association because they recognize the economic development and revenue that will be generated by our bill will strengthen our rural schools in States like Montana. Importantly, this bill helps to protect healthy forest management from habitual lawsuits brought by fringe groups.
My amendment would strengthen the bill's protections against court-ordered obstruction. Unfortunately, obstructionist tactics too often stop them from going forward. In region one alone, at least 40 percent of timber sales in fiscal '12 and fiscal '13 have been appealed or litigated. A top U.S. Forest Service official recently acknowledged that the abundance of litigation has played a ``huge role'' in blocking responsible timber sales.
In March of this year, the Friends of the Wild Swan, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and others halted a much needed timber sale called the Colt Summit Project near Seeley Lake in Montana due to a minor technical error by the Forest Service involving the impact on the habitat of a listed species, the Canadian lynx.
Like the Colt Summit Project, oftentimes timber sales are stopped in their tracks by court-issued injunctions that are based solely on alleged procedural violations such as mere paperwork errors. My amendment would prohibit these injunctions that are based on nonsubstantive allegations.
Injunctions on timber sales often turn into permanent delays, leaving dying timber to rot and lose value. My amendment would allow these critical projects to move forward while litigation on the merits of the case is pending. In doing so, it will help ensure that responsible timber sales come to fruition.
My amendment simply allows projects like the Colt Summit Project to move forward while the merits of the case continue to be examined. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of making our forests healthier.
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Mr. DAINES. Mr. Chairman, I respect the comments made by the gentleman from Oregon; but when we look at the State of Montana and see a 90 percent reduction in forest timber harvest on national forestlands, and when we hear from the Forest Service officials the number 1 issue is litigation, it is time that we put in place measures and reforms this amendment addresses, that addresses that those kind of concerns of procedural nature will not stop an entire forest project.
This is a very real issue in my home State. I saw it literally firsthand when I was visiting the Pyramid sawmill in Seeley Lake, when we saw, because of, literally, a small, little procedural error on one of 14 counts, that stopped an entire timber harvest.
This is getting out in front and saying, let's not let the trial lawyers and the courts control the forests. Let's let the people have control of the forests and restore the jobs that are needed and the revenue back to our schools.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time
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Mr. DAINES. Mr. Chairman, nationwide, more than 73 million acres of Forest Service lands and hundreds of millions of acres of other Federal lands are at risk for catastrophic wildfire. As our timber industry has declined by 90 percent in recent decades, however, our National Forest System has lost much of the labor force to sustain our forested ecosystems and to protect our communities.
The Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act addresses both challenges, providing the Forest Service with much-needed latitude to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires while revitalizing our country's dying timber industry.
I'm offering an amendment to hold the Forest Service accountable for doing the work required in this legislation. My amendment would simply require the Secretary of Agriculture to submit to Congress an annual report. In fact, the amendment specifies this annual report is one page in length. Rarely do we see a report here in Washington that is less than about 3 inches thick. This is going to require that it's just a one-page summary, simple, focused on the results for each Forest Service revenue area.
On this report, we would report the annual volume requirements in effect for that fiscal year: the volume of board feet actually harvested, the average cost of preparation of timber sales, the revenues generated from such sales, and the amount of receipts distributed to each beneficiary county. The amendment would also require that the Forest Service place the report on its Web site.
The American people whose lives are often in the paths of catastrophic wildfire, whose jobs rely on access to timber, and whose school systems and public works rely on revenues generated from Federal land within its borders deserve transparency and accountability in our Federal Government's land management, and our country needs results.
My amendment brings all three principles to the Forest Service as the agency implements H.R. 1526.
I urge the adoption of my amendment.
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Mr. DAINES. I appreciate the gentleman from Oregon's remarks there.
Let me say this. I spent 28 years in the private sector having managed complex operations. And so what this amendment does, it doesn't preclude the Forest Service from generating all the data in the format that the gentleman from Oregon referenced. What this is asking for here is a one-page summary, a dashboard, if you will, so we can see, kind of cut to the bottom line in terms of the numbers that I pointed out here.
So often in Washington we are drowning in data. We're starving for wisdom. This is a simple dashboard that cuts to the bottom line here of looking for the volume of board feet actually harvested, the cost of the preparation of sales, the revenues generated from the sales, and the amount of receipts distributed to the beneficiary counties. That's the one-page summary.
All the other data can be contained in the other reports for the perusal of Members and others who want to see it, but this just cuts to the chase to give a simple, one-page dashboard of what the bottom-line results are as a result of this bill.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. DAINES. I just would say that, as I've been back here, moving from the private sector to the public sector, sometimes you have got to lay out in specificity the need for a one-page summary of what's going on so that Members and anybody else that wants to see can see, can take the 30,000-foot view here in terms of this program being successful or not.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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