Western wildfire is clearly a big issue, especially after last year’s record wildfires. Everybody knows something needs to be done and straightforward plans are still in discussion.
Last week a House subcommittee on natural resources held a hearing on “Wildfire in a Warming World.” These hearings are always interesting because you get to see how government really works, and the partisan bickering that goes on. I’m not sure how they select folks to give testimony. I assume the leadership gets more than the minority and you could sure tell that in this case.
I understand that they need to have structure in these hearings but it’s hard to make any real decisions in a two-hour hearing and give each person five minutes to testify or ask questions. In this case, questions were either about climate change or wildfire, not a lot of middle ground. Then someone needs to propose a bill and go through the process of making it a law. By then, this Congress is done and you must work on a new one, unless you have a super majority, which is political, not practical.
The main solution I heard to combat wildfire and climate change was to provide more money to improve firefighters’ pay and benefits. Plus, more money for research and more money for local collaboration. Dr. Courtney Schultz from Colorado State University wanted more money, more capacity and to prove the value of research and that fuel treatments do work. She cited the need for good fire on the ground, partnerships, collaborative leadership and capacity programs.
Then there was Dr. Beverly Law, professor emeritus of global change biology at Oregon State University, who testified that broad-scale thinning of forests results in more carbon emissions than would be released by fire, creating a multi-decade carbon defect that conflicts with climate goals. She said fire emissions are small relative to harvest emissions. Which makes me wonder why we have reduced harvesting timber in the West in the first place.
Our third witness, Riva Duncan, executive secretary of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and a retired fire staff officer who served 30 years for the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon, advocated for better pay, benefits, work hours, for firefighters. She again asked for more money to improve the lives of wildfire fighters.
Then there was the cattle industry’s star of wildfire issues, Dr. Dave Daley, whose ranch was burned up and destroyed last year along with other ranchers in California. Dave’s testimony was about getting it done. He didn’t care about the politics but wants the committee to act. He said that they must remove or streamline things like NEPA, engage local communities in the decision-making process, reduce the barriers to get things done. He pleaded his hope that these mostly young, Congress people don’t go back to their offices and forget about this problem. Dave and perhaps Duncan were the only people who had any real skin in the game.
Interesting testimony from the four witnesses, but when you want to discuss fire and climate change, we have come to a chicken-and-the-egg-type situation. We know that excessive fuels have built up over the years and need to be thinned. Ponderosa pine forests can withstand burning the understory but, when you get into spruce and fir forests, it’s a different story, as many in the West know. Burning is not always the right thing, where grazing may be the right thing, and vice versa.
But, convincing a subcommittee of young Eastern Congresspeople—who didn’t run for office due to wildfires—to act… well, their long-term attention is difficult and you only have two years to convince this crowd that we need to return Western resource management and utilization back to the locals to make decisions. At least give it to the state level and give the states block grants to pay for it.
Also, I heard some discussion about creating more private-public partnerships to accomplish the capacity and expense issue. And I’m sure you can imagine which side of the aisle that came from.
I’m not a political activist, but I get frustrated with the federal government which has assumed too much power over the years. The state governments are perfectly capable of handling wildfire issues, except for maybe California, but this country is still a republic of the states and the Feds are to respond to the states; I suggest we let that happen. And pray for more spring rain. — PETE CROW
