Speaking before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, Dave Daley, among three other individuals, offered the members their expertise on forest and wildfire management through practices such as prescribed burns.
The hearing, titled, “Wildfire in a Warming World: Opportunities to Improve Community Collaboration, Climate Resilience, and Workforce Capacity,” focused on the need for local collaboration with government entities to address wildfire resistance and climate change. The hearing came as severe drought is affecting the West, threatening to make 2021 an intense wildfire season.
Daley, who was representing the California Cattlemen’s Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association as the Federal Lands Committee chair and chair of the Public Lands Council Ecosystem and Environment Committee, shared his experience as a survivor of the 2020 Bear Fire in Butte County, CA.
Daley, a fifth-generation cattle producer, lost 80 percent of his herd to the fire or due to injuries and the once-thriving landscape turned into ash and sterile dirt.
“From the beginning, stewardship of the land and an active engagement with the natural resources around me was a necessary and inevitable outcome of our cattle operation,” Daley testified. “Ranchers cultivate landscapes that have healthy soil, flourishing plant biodiversity, and intact water features. We do so as an obvious component of our operations, but also because there is an inextricable and innate desire to take care of the resources that take care of you. It is an immense responsibility and an immense privilege.”
Daley stated the cycle of fuel loading, wildfire and loss of biodiversity decreases carbon storage in the soil and releases “immense volumes of carbon.” Daley pointed out the wildfires in California in 2020 emitted “approximately 112 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, roughly equivalent to more than 24 million cars.” Daley warned that overcautious policy to correct perceived wrongs resulted in decreased active management of forests, grasslands and rangelands.
“The world is changing. The climate is changing,” Daley said. “We live in a time where communities are expanding further into forested areas while residents are further away than ever before from the direct knowledge of the farm or the wilderness. Too often, preparations for wildfire focus on defensible space and thinning in the wildland-urban interface without acknowledgement that strategic and widespread intervention is desperately needed across hundreds of millions of acres.”
Daley stated Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has not only increased firefighting capacity but also “a strategic plan to reduce fuels through the use of prescribed fire and other tools.” He stressed that keeping an ecosystem healthy requires coordination between state, federal and non-governmental entities. Daley also stated the rural economy needs “predictable jobs” in forestry, land management, and energy.
“Restoring ecologies and making landscapes more resilient means cultivating experts in environmental analysis,” Daley said. “It means supporting ranchers who are bringing home the next generation of agriculture and land managers. It means ensuring that there are healthy landscapes for future generations by investing in those who can do the boots-on-the-ground work of reseeding and prescribed fire management. It’s not just the temporary investment in seasonal fire crews, despite their immense value and contribution to safe communities. It is an all-of-the-above approach that rural stakeholders have been bringing to Congress for years in hopes that Congress would listen.”
House Committee on Natural Resources Ranking Member Bruce Westerman (R-AR-4) said at the hearing, “Political showmanship must not get in the way of the very people we are here in Congress to serve,” and Congress cannot serve in a “political bubble.”
“We need experience and expertise like Mr. Daley’s to give us perspective on how we can improve our environmental policies. I thank Mr. Daley for taking the time to come testify before the committee today and look forward to working with him more in the future.”
Others testifying
In addition to Daley, the committee heard from three others with diverse expertise in forest management.
Dr. Courtney Schultz, associate professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at Colorado State University, stressed the need for “place-based partnerships that yields progress and innovative solutions.”
“Effective collaboration, leadership, and capacity—within and among agencies’ partners—are the most pivotal factors that impede or promote success,” Schultz said. “There are no simple policy solutions in this context. Instead, policies that facilitate communication among stakeholders and collaboration across jurisdictions, and increase funding and capacity for the necessary work, are the most important paths forward.”
Schultz pointed out that due to the 2002 Hayman fire in Colorado, resulting in $26 million damage to watershed infrastructure, collaboration efforts between U.S. Forest Service, water utilities and others resulted in fuel reduction in areas on the Front Range. Schultz recognized while some may not like the use of prescribed burns, 60 percent of the U.S. Forest Service budget goes towards fire suppression, “resulting in deleterious impacts to other programs, including restoration and fuels reduction, due to decreased funding and workforce capacity.”
“We found that the biggest barriers to progress are lack of funding and capacity, particularly because qualified fire personnel are increasingly pulled onto wildfires, but also due to seasonal employment and a general decrease in staff capacity. Resource sharing to leverage capacity across agencies and partners is essential for success,” said Schultz.
Dr. Beverly Law, professor emeritus of Global Change Biology & Terrestrial Systems Science at Oregon State University, focused her testimony on forest carbon and biodiversity conservation for climate resilience and effects of fire. Law testified that broad-scale thinning of forests results in more carbon emissions than would be released by fire.
“Young trees will eventually grow to have large carbon stocks that contribute to climate mitigation but allowing some existing forests with their large carbon stocks to continue to accumulate carbon will accumulate far more carbon out of the atmosphere during the critical coming decades,” Law said.
Law asserted that wildfires have less of an impact on carbon emissions than the harvesting of trees to reduce fire loads. Law pointed to a study in Idaho ponderosa pine plantation that showed removing 40 percent of the “live biomass” resulted in the release of about 60 percent of that carbon over the next 30 years. Additionally, Law stated thinning results in the loss of whole ecosystem carbon and protected the large trees that store and accumulate the most carbon and are more drought- and fire-resistant than young trees.
Riva Duncan, executive secretary Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and retired fire staff officer, U.S. Forest Service, testified that the fire season has turned into a fire year and the demand on firefighters is also year-round. Duncan stated the current federal fire workforce is “woefully understaffed and overworked, and people are at their breaking point.” Duncan said firefighters endure long shifts in extreme conditions away from their families for months at a time with “embarrassingly low pay.”
“Firefighters are leaving federal service for more lucrative wildland jobs with state agencies, municipal departments, utility providers and even insurance companies,” Duncan testified. “These are people with many years of specialized experience and training who cannot be readily replaced. In my last two years with the Forest Service, we struggled to fill many of our positions. In 2020, for the first time, we could not staff all of our engines seven days.”
Duncan stressed the time is now for action, the issues are more significant than one agency and will take “complex and expensive solutions.” —Charles Wallace, WLJ editor
